Contributors' Notes

MASTHEAD

Guest Editors

Madison Smartt Bell & Elizabeth Spires

Editor

Don Lee

Poetry Editor

David Daniel

Assistant Editor

Gregg Rosenblum

Assistant Fiction Editor

Maryanne O'Hara

Associate Poetry Editor

Susan Conley

Founding Editor

DeWitt Henry

Founding Publisher

Peter O'Malley

Assistant Fiction Editor: Nicole Hein.
Editorial Assistants: Hannah Bottomy, Michael Homler, Kat Steiger, and Jean Hopkinson.
Poetry Readers: Tracy Gavel, Christopher Hennessy, Aaron Smith, Michael Carter, Jennifer Thurber, January Gill, Brian Scales, Renee Rooks, Michelle Ryan, Tom Laughlin, and Joanne Diaz.
Fiction Readers: Darla Bruno, Elizabeth Pease, Laurel Santini, Eson Kim, Wendy Wunder, Kathleen Stolle, Amy Shellenberger, Nicole Vollrath, Emily Doherty, Kriss Fikkan, Joseph Connolly, Debra DeFord, Billie Lydia Porter, Michael Rainho, Karen Wise, and Tammy Zambo.

CONTRIBUTORS

penelope austin is a community arts activist, co-owner of Changeworks, a center for arts education, and founder/president of the Coalition of Independent Artists and Artisans in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Her poems have appeared in the Philadelphia Poetry in Motion series,
The
American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review,
The New Republic, and elsewhere. Essays on her experience with cancer were recently published in
Prairie Schooner.

aliki barnstone's most recent book of poems,
Madly in Love, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She edited the anthologies
A Book of Women Poets from Antiquity to Now (Schocken, 1992) and
Voices of Light: Spiritual and Visionary Poems by Women Around the World (Shambhala, 1999). She teaches at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

bruce beasley is the author of three collections of poems, mostly recently
The Creation, winner of the 1993 Ohio State University Press/
Journal Award, and
Summer Mystagogia, winner of the 1996 Colorado Prize. He teaches at Western Washington University.

geoffrey becker is the author of a collection,
Dangerous Men, which won the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, and a novel,
Bluestown. He has also received the Nelson Algren Award, an NEA fellowship, and a Tara Fellowship from the Heekin Foundation. He teaches at Colgate University.

john bensko's books of poetry include
Green Soldiers (Yale) and
The Waterman's Children (Massachusetts), as well as
The Iron City, forthcoming soon from the University of Illinois Press. He teaches in the M.F.A. program at the University of Memphis.

dinah berland's poems have appeared in
The Antioch Review, The Iowa Review, New Letters, and other publications. She received a 1997-98 fellowship in poetry from the California Arts Council and works as a book editor for Getty Trust Publications in Los Angeles. This is her fourth appearance in
Ploughshares.

kate borowske lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, and is a librarian at a small, private university. She holds an M.F.A. in painting from the University of Iowa.

a. v. christie's first book of poems,
Nine Skies, appeared in the National Poetry Series in 1996, selected by Sandra McPherson. Her poems have been published in
The Iowa Review, Poetry Northwest, The American Scholar, and the
Southwest Review, among other magazines. A recent NEA fellowship recipient, she was Visiting Poet at Bryn Mawr College last spring.

michael collier's fourth book of poems,
The Ledge, is forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin. He is the co-editor, with Stanley Plumly, of
The New Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry (New England, 1999).

carolyn cooke lives in Point Arena, California. Her work has appeared in
The Paris Review, The Best American Short Stories, and in two
O. Henry Awards anthologies.
The Bostons, her first collection of short stories, will be published by Houghton Mifflin in October 2000.

wyn cooper's second collection of poems,
The Way Back, will be published in the spring of 2000 by White Pine Press. Recent poems appear in
Denver Quarterly, Fence, and several anthologies, including
Outsiders. He wrote the profile of Madison Smartt Bell that appears in this issue. He lives in Vermont.

theodore deppe's most recent book is
The Wanderer King (Alice James, 1996). His work appears in current issues of
The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Green Mountains Review, Gulf Coast, The Minnesota Review, The Nebraska Review, Poetry Northwest, New England Review, and
The Pushcart Prize XXIV. "Translations from the Irish" is inspired by poems of Cathal Ó Searcaigh.

timothy donnelly's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in
American Letters & Commentary, Denver Quarterly, The Paris Review, Verse, and elsewhere. His manuscript
Accidental Species was awarded Columbia University's 1999 David Craig Austin Prize. He is co-editor of poetry at
Boston Review and a Ph.D. student in English at Princeton University.

walt foreman earned his M.A. from The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University in 1995. He is currently pursuing an M.F.A. in screenwriting in the film school at the University of Southern California. He has a story forthcoming in
Ontario Review.

carol frost is the author of two chapbooks and six full-length collections of poems, including
Liar's Dice, Day of the Body, Chimera, Pure, and
Venus and Don Juan, the latter two published by TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press. A volume of her new and selected poems,
Love and Scorn, is due out from TriQuarterly Books in the spring of 2000.

george garrett is the author of thirty books, and the editor or co-editor of nineteen others. This past fall, he edited
The Yellow Shoe Poets (Louisiana). He teaches at the University of Virginia.

frank x. gaspar is the author of three collections of poetry. His latest,
A Field Guide to the Heavens, won the 1999 Brittingham Prize for Poetry. New work appears in
The Kenyon Review, The Georgia Review, The Bellingham Review, The Gettysburg Review, and others. His first novel,
Leaving Pico, was published in the fall by Hardscrabble Books/University Press of New England, and won a Barnes & Noble Discover Award.

brian glaser works as an English teacher in California and Mexico. He has studied poetry under Charles Altieri and Anne Middleton. "The World I Painted Twenty Years Ago" is his first poem to appear in print.

greg glazner's books are
From the Iron Chair, which won the Walt Whitman Award, and
Singularity, both published by W.W. Norton. His poems have appeared in
New England Review, Southern Poetry Review, and
Third Coast. He directs the creative writing program at the College of Santa Fe, where he co-edits
Countermeasures.

loren graham is a graduate of the M.F.A. program at the University of Virginia and is currently a member of the creative writing faculty at Hollins University. His first book,
Mose, was published in 1994 by Wesleyan University Press. "The Banquet" is part of a narrative sequence of sonnets in progress.

laurie greer's work has appeared in
Poetry,
The Virginia Quarterly Review, and other literary journals. She won an Academy of American Poets Award in 1994. "Orpheus Crossing" is part of a longer sequence on modern and mythic violence. She lives in Washington, D.C.

allen grossman is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Humanities at Johns Hopkins University. His most recent books are
The Ether Dome and
The Philosopher's Window, both from New Directions, and
The Long School Room: Essays, from Michigan University Press.

jeffrey harrison is the author of
The Singing Underneath (1988) and
Signs of Arrival (1996). His poems have appeared in
The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Nation, Poetry, and in many other magazines. He won a Pushcart Prize in 1998 and is a Guggenheim fellow this year.

william heyen is Professor of English and Poet in Residence at SUNY Brockport. His books include
Erika: Poems of the Holocaust,
Ribbons: The Gulf War, and
The Host: Selected Poems, from Time Being Books,
Crazy Horse in Stillness, winner of 1997's Small Press Book Award for Poetry, and
Pig Notes & Dumb Music: Prose on Poetry, from BOA Editions.

mary-beth hughes lives in Brooklyn, New York. Her fiction has appeared in
The Georgia Review. She is a staff member of the Writing Seminars at Bennington College, where she has also taught fiction writing in the July Program. She is at work on a novel.

cynthia huntington's prose memoir,
The Salt House, was published in August 1999 by the University Press of New England. Her most recent book of poetry,
We Have Gone to the Beach, won the Jane Kenyon Award from the New Hampshire Writers' Project. She lives in Hanover, New Hampshire, where she is Director of Creative Writing at Dartmouth College.

jonathan david jackson is a poet, dancer, and choreographer. He is a Presidential Fellow in Dance at Philadelphia's Temple University and a Visiting Lecturer in Jazz Dance Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

josephine jacobsen's most recent book of poems,
In the Crevice of Time: New and Collected Poems (Johns Hopkins), was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1995. Her occasional prose,
The Instant of Knowing, was published by Michigan in 1997. She lives in Baltimore and received the Robert Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America in 1998.

bethalee jones is a recent graduate of Goucher College, where she majored in English literature with an emphasis in creative writing. Previously, she had a story published in
The Potomac Review. She is currently writing a novel.

cynthia kadohata was born in Chicago and grew up in Arkansas and Chicago. She is the author of the novels
The Floating World and
In the Heart of the Valley of Love. "Gray Girl" is part of a novel in progress called
The Four of Us.

samara kanegis has spent several years researching and working within various North American circuses. Her first play,
Two Trailers, was recently produced in Baltimore, and she is currently at work on a collection of short stories reflecting circus life. She resides in Baltimore and the Pacific Northwest.

erika krouse's work has recently appeared in
The Atlantic Monthly and
Story. She received her M.A. in English/Creative Writing from the University of Colorado. She is currently living in Boulder, Colorado, and working on her first book of short stories.

maxine kumin has published twelve books of poetry, most recently
Selected Poems 1960-1990 and
Connecting the Dots. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 1999, she has just published a murder mystery:
Quit Monks or Die! She and her husband live on a farm in New Hampshire.

david lehman's poem in this issue, "December 25," is from
The Daily Mirror: A Journal of Poetry, which Scribner is publishing in January 2000. The book consists of one hundred fifty of the poems he wrote after embarking on the experiment of writing one a day.

phillis levin is the author of
Temples and Fields and
The Afterimage. Her poems have appeared in
The Best American Poetry 1998, The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Paris Review, and
The Nation. She has been the recipient of an Ingram Merrill grant and a Fulbright fellowship to Slovenia, and is The Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholar for 1999-2000. Her third collection,
Mercury, is forthcoming from Penguin Putnam in the spring of 2001.

kathy mangan's first full-length collection of poems,
Above the Tree Line, was published by Carnegie Mellon University Press in 1995. Her work has appeared in
The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, The Pushcart Prize XV, and the new anthology
Boomer Girls. She teaches literature and writing at Western Maryland College.

cleopatra mathis's most recent book is
Guardian, published in 1996 by Sheep Meadow Press. She teaches creative writing at Dartmouth College.

john mcmanus spent his childhood in Blount County, Tennessee, and studied English and creative writing at Goucher College and at the University of Exeter in southwest England, graduating in May 1999.
Stop Breaking Down, a collection of sixteen stories, will be published by Picador Press in July 2000. Soon thereafter, he will begin graduate studies at Hollins University. He currently lives in Baltimore.

jonathan musgrove's poetry has appeared in several journals, most recently in
The New Criterion. He is currently enrolled in the graduate writing program at Hollins University.

d. nurkse's forthcoming work includes
Leaving Xaia and
The Rules of Paradise, both from Four Way Books, and poems in
The New Yorker and
The Paris Review. He received the 1998 Bess Hokin Prize from
Poetry, and teaches privately and in the prison system.

sue owen's third book of poetry,
My Doomsday Sampler, was published in the fall by LSU Press. In 1998, she received the Governor's Arts Award for Professional Artist of the Year from the Louisiana State Arts Council. She teaches in the English department at LSU as Poet-in-Residence.

patrick phillips is a native of Georgia who now lives and works in New York City. His poems have appeared recently in
DoubleTake, New England Review, and
The Gettysburg Review. He is a founding member of the Poison Clan collective.

stanley plumly's
Now That My Father Lies Down Beside Me: New and Selected Poems will be published by the Ecco Press next year.

lia purpura is the author of
The Brighter the Veil (Orchisis, 1996) and a collection of translations from Polish,
Poems of Grzegorz Musial: Taste of Ash and Berliner Tagebuch (Fairleigh Dickinson, 1998). Her collection of lyrical essays,
Increase, won the 1999 AWP Award in Creative Nonfiction. She lives in Baltimore.

john robinson is the author of two novels,
January's Dream and
Legends of the Lost. He has finished a collection of stories,
Centipedes on Skates, and is at work on a novel,
The Finite Passing of an Infinite Passion. He lives in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

jane shore's new book of poems,
Happy Family, is just out from Picador USA. Her second Lamont Prize-winning book,
The Minute Hand, will be reprinted as part of Carnegie Mellon's Classic Contemporary Series this year. Her third book,
Music Minus One, was a 1996 National Book Critics Circle Award nominee in poetry. A
Ploughshares guest editor in 1977, 1984, and 1997, she is a professor at The George Washington University.

christine stewart received a Ruth Lilly fellowship in 1998. Her work has appeared in
Five Points and
Poetry. She is currently enrolled in the master's program in creative writing at Hollins University.

susan stewart teaches poetry at the University of Pennsylvania. Her most recent book of poems is
The Forest, published by the University of Chicago Press.

virgil suarez's most recent collection of poems,
You Come Singing, was published by Tia Chucha Press/Northwestern University. A limited-edition book,
Garabato Poems, was also issued by Wings Press in San Antonio.
In the Republic of Longing, a new collection, is due out in the spring of 2000 from Bilingual Review Press. He teaches at Florida State University in Tallahassee, where he lives with his family.

jennifer tseng received an M.A. in Asian American Studies from UCLA and has been awarded fellowships from the Millay Colony for the Arts, the Syvenna Foundation, Cottages at Hedgebrook, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and the MacDowell Colony. Her work is forthcoming in
Green Mountains Review, Crazyhorse, Amerasia Journal, and
Hawaii Review. She is currently in the fiction program at the University of Houston.

michael tyrell's first manuscript of poems,
Invisible Station, was a finalist for the 1999 Yale Series of Younger Poets. His poems are in current or forthcoming issues of
The Paris Review and
The Western Humanities Review. He has reviewed books of poetry, fiction, and criticism for
Boston Review and
The Harvard Review.

belle waring's first collection of poems,
Refuge, was cited by
Publishers Weekly as a "Best Book" of 1990. Her latest book is
Dark Blonde (Sarabande), and she is editor of
River Hope, an anthology written and illustrated by her students at Children's National Medical Center, where she is Writer-in-Residence.

michael waters teaches at Salisbury State University in Maryland. Recent books include
Green Ash, Red Maple, Black Gum (BOA, 1997) and
Bountiful (Carnegie Mellon, 1992). Forthcoming are
New & Selected Poems (BOA, 2000) and his new edition of A. Poulin, Jr.'s
Contemporary American Poetry (Houghton Mifflin, 2000).

charles harper webb is a rock singer turned psychotherapist and professor of English at CSU, Long Beach. His book
Reading the Water (Northeastern) won the Morse Prize and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and helped him win a Whiting Writer's Award. His book
Liver won the Felix Pollak Prize and was published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 1999.

mark wunderlich's first book of poems,
The Anchorage, was published in 1999 by the University of Massachusetts Press. He was educated at the University of Wisconsin and Columbia University, and has received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Writers at Work, and Stanford University. His poems have appeared in
The
Paris Review, Boston Review, The Yale Review, Poetry, and numerous anthologies. He lives in San Francisco.

c. dale young's poems recently appeared or are forthcoming in
The Paris Review, The Partisan Review, Salmagundi, The Southern Review, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. He works as a physician at the UCSF-Stanford Medical Center in San Francisco and as Poetry Editor of
New England Review.

andrew zawacki is co-editor of
Verse and writes reviews for the
TLS. His poems have appeared in
Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Boston Review, The New Republic, Fence, Black Warrior Review, Agni, The Antioch Review, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. He studies in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.