Contributors' Notes

Spring 2009

 

meena alexander's poetry includes Illiterate Heart, winner of the PEN Open Book Award, Raw Silk, and Quickly Changing River. She is editor of Indian Love Poems, and of the forthcoming Poetics of Dislocation (Michigan, 2009). She is Distinguished Professor of English at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY.

 

sinan antoon is an Iraqi born poet and novelist who moved to the United States after the 1991 Gulf War. He has published a novel, I`jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody (City Lights) and a collection of poems, The Baghdad Blues (Harbor Mountain Press). He teaches at New York University.

 

sujata bhatt has published seven collections of poetry with Carcanet Press. The recipient of numerous awards, her latest book, Pure Lizard, was short-listed for the Forward Poetry Prize, and received the German Literature Prize, Das neue Buch, in 2008.

 

jaswinder bolina is the author of Carrier Wave, winner of the 2006 Colorado Prize for Poetry.

 

marianne boruch's sixth collection of poems—Grace, Fallen from—was published by Wesleyan in 2008. A second book of essays on poetry, In the Blue Pharmacy, came out from Trinity in 2005. Since 1987, she has taught in the graduate writing program at Purdue and, semi-regularly, in the M.F.A. program at Warren Wilson College.

 

kevin clark's book In the Evening of No Warning (New Issues) earned a grant from the Academy of American Poets. He's published poems in the Georgia Review, Iowa Review, Crazyhorse, Gulf Coast, and others. His criticism appears in the Georgia Review, Southern Review, Poetry International, and Contemporary Literary Criticism.

 

andria nacina cole has published short stories in Urbanite, Sensations Magazine, and Fiction Circus, among others. She is the recipient of grants from Maryland State Arts Council and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. She is the founder of the Flanked Women 's Writers Conference.

 

carolyn creedon currently lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she completed her M.F.A. in poetry at the University of Virginia.

 

carl dennis is the author of ten books of poems, most recently Unknown Friends, published by Penguin in 2007. The two poems published here will be appearing in a new collection, Callings, that will appear from Penguin next year.

 

patrick donnelly's collection of poems is The Charge (Ausable, 2003). The quote from Verlaine in "Threat" translates the line "Ainsi qu'une flamme entoure une flamme" from La bonne chanson XXI, which Donnelly used to sing in a song by Gabriel Fauré.

 

patricia fargnoli's latest book, Duties of the Spirit (Tupelo, 2005) won the 2005 Jane Kenyon Literary Award. Her new book, Then, Something is forthcoming from Tupelo Press. The New Hampshire Poet Laureate from 2006-2009, Patricia has published widely in such journals as The Massachusetts Review, North American Review, Mid-American Review, and Poetry.

 

daisy fried's My Brother is Getting Arrested Again was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. A recent Guggenheim Fellow, she lives in Philadelphia.

 

diane gilliam is the author of two collections of poetry, Kettle Bottom (Perugia, 2004) and One of Everything (Cleveland State, 2003). She is the winner of the 2008 Chaffin Award for Appalachian Literature.

 

annie guthrie is a writer, jeweler, and artist living in Tucson. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Tarpaulin Sky, In Posse Review, and Fairy Tale Review. She is currently working on a novel.

 

marilyn hacker is the author of eleven books of poems, including Essays on Departure (Carcanet, 2006) and Desesperanto (Norton, 2003), and of eight collections of translations from the French, most recently Marie Etienne 's King of a Hundred Horsemen (FSG, 2008), winner of the Robert Fagles Translation Prize. Her new book, Names, will be published in 2009.

 

jim hagan was the 2005 winner of the William Redding Poetry Prize awarded by Larry's Tavern in Columbus Ohio, a long running venue for local poets. He has had poems and essays published in The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Penguin Review, and Heartlands: A Magazine of Midwest Art and Writing.

 

terrance hayes's most recent of three collections is Wind in a Box. His honors include a Whiting Writers Award, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, a National Poetry Series award, a Pushcart Prize, three Best American Poetry selections, and an NEA Fellowship. His poems have appeared in a range of journals, including The New Yorker, Poetry, and The American Poetry Review. He is a Professor of Creative Writing at Carnegie Mellon University, and lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with his family.

 

ilya kaminsky is the author of Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo). He lives in San Diego, and teaches at San Diego State University.

 

brigit pegeen kelly teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her most recent book is The Orchard, published by BOA Editions.

 

mark kraushaar's poetry has appeared Beloit Poetry Journal, Gettysburg Review, Third Coast, Crab Orchard Review, Shenandoah, and /NOR, among others. His work has received Poetry Northwest's Richard Hugo Prize and was included in Best American Poetry 2006. New work is forthcoming from Michigan Quarterly, and Cincinnati Review. A collection will be out in spring of 2009 through University of Wisconsin Press as the winner of the Felix Pollak Prize.

 

maxine kumin's newest poetry collections are Still To Mow and Jack and Other New Poems. Her awards include the Pulitzer and Ruth Lilly Poetry Prizes, and the Harvard Arts and Robert Frost Medals. She and her husband live on a farm in New Hampshire.

 

lynn levin is the author of three collections of poems, most recently Fair Creatures of an Hour, forthcoming this spring from Loonfeather Press. She teaches at the University of Pennsylvania and at Drexel University, where she is also the executive producer of the television show, The Drexel InterView.

 

maurice manning's fourth book, The Common Man, will be published in the fall. He is from Kentucky, and teaches at Indiana University and the M.F.A. Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

 

constance merritt's books are Blessings and Inclemencies (LSU, 2007) and A Protocol for Touch (UNT, 2000). Two Rooms, her third poetry collection, will be published in fall 2009 by Louisiana State University Press.

 

nadine sabra meyer's first book of poems, The Anatomy Theater, won the National Poetry Series and was published by HarperCollins in 2006. Her poems have appeared in many journals, and have won the New Letters Prize for Poetry and a Pushcart Prize. She is an Assistant Professor at Gettysburg College.

 

muriel nelson's books are Part Song (Bear Star) and Most Wanted (ByLine). Nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, her poems have appeared in The New Republic, Beloit Poetry Journal, and The Massachusetts Review, and on Verse Daily and Poetry Daily. She teaches at Pierce College in Washington State.

 

jacqueline osherow's most recent book is The Hoopoe's Crown (2005). Osherow has received awards from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the Poetry Society of America. She teaches at the University of Utah.

 

alicia ostriker's 1970s anti-war poem sequence The Mother/Child Papers was recently reprinted by the University of Pittsburgh Press. She is the author of eleven volumes of poetry, including the volcano sequence and No Heaven. Ostriker teaches in the low-residency Poetry M.F.A. program of Drew University.

 

marcia pelletiere is writer and musician living in Jersey City, New Jersey. Her poems have been published in journals including Southern Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Painted Bride Quarterly, The Marlboro Review, and Barrow Street. Pelletiere's "Little Noises" CD contains musical versions of her poems composed by over twenty-five outstanding musicians.

 

c. e. poverman has finished a novel, Degree of Difficulty, and a screenplay of "Baby R." He teaches at the University of Arizona.

 

julia randall (1923-2005) was one of America's purest and most original lyric poets. She published seven books of poetry, culminating in The Path to Fairview: New and Selected Poems (LSU, 1992); among her many awards were two NEA Fellowships, the Poetry Society's Shelley Award (1980) and The Poet's Prize (1988). Her poem "To a Goldfinch" was found on her desk after her death, and is, as far as can be known, the last poem she completed.

 

j. allyn rosser has published three books, Bright Moves (1990), Misery Prefigured (2001), and Foiled Again (2007). She teaches at Ohio University.

 

jess row is the author of the The Train to Lo Wu. His work has appeared recently in The Atlantic, Threepenny Review, and Granta, which named him a "Best Young American Novelist" in 2007. He teaches at the College of New Jersey and the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

 

tim seibles lives in Virginia and teaches in Old Dominion University's M.F.A. in Writing Program. His work has been recently featured in anthologies such as Manthology, Rainbow Darkness, and Evensong. He has published several collections of poetry including Hurdy-Gurdy, Hammerlock, and his latest, Buffalo Head Solos, each available from Cleveland State University Press.

 

rebecca seiferle's poetry collection, Wild Tongue (Copper Canyon, 2007) won the 2008 Grub Street National Book Prize in Poetry. Her translations of several Cuban poets are forthcoming in The Entire Island, edited by Mark Weiss, from the University of California Press in 2009. She was awarded a Lannan Fellowship in 2004.

 

taije silverman's debut collection of poems, Houses Are Fields, has just been published by Louisiana State University Press. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, Five Points, Shenandoah, Antioch Review, and elsewhere. Her translations of poems by Paolo Valesio are forthcoming in Pleiades.

 

bruce snider is the author of The Year We Studied Women, winner of the Felix Pollak Prize in poetry from the University of Wisconsin Press. His poetry has appeared in the American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Ninth Letter, and PN Review, among other journals. He lives in San Francisco.

 

heidy steidlmayer was awarded the J. Howard and Barbara M. J. Wood Prize from Poetry. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, TriQuarterly, and Michigan Quarterly Review, among others.

 

francine sterle is the author of Nude in Winter (Tupelo, 2006), Every Bird is One Bird (Tupelo, 2001), and The White Bridge (Poetry Harbor, 1999). Most recently, her poems have been anthologized in Letters to the World and To Sing Along the Way: Minnesota Women Poets from Pre-territorial Days to the Present.

 

terese svoboda's fifth book of poetry, Weapons Grade, will be published by the University of Arkansas Press this fall with poems from The New Yorker, TLS, Paris Review, Tin House, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. The University of Nebraska will publish Trailer Girl and Other Stories in paper simultaneously.

 

elaine terranova has new work appearing in Cincinnati Review and Pleiades. Her most recent book is Not To: New and Selected Poems. She teaches creative writing at Community College of Philadelphia and in the Rutgers, Camden M.F.A. Program.

sasha troyan was born in America but raised and educated in Paris, France. The Forgotten Island, the most recent of her two novels, was published by Tin House/Bloomsbury in 2004, and later published in England, Germany, Holland, New Zealand and Australia. Angels in the Morning was published in 2003 by The Permanent Press.

 

alpay ulku's first collection, Meteorology, (BOA) was selected as an "Exciting Debut" by the Academy of American Poets Book Club. He works as a business analyst and technical writer in Chicago.