Contributors' Notes
MASTHEAD
Guest Editor
Joy Harjo
Editor
Don Lee
Managing Editor
Gregg Rosenblum
Poetry Editor
David Daniel
Associate Fiction Editor
Maryanne O'Hara
Founding Editor
DeWitt Henry
Founding Publisher
Peter O'Malley
Assistant Fiction Editors: Jay Baron Nicorvo and Nicole Kelley. Editorial Assistants: Shannon Miller and Elizabeth E. Partfitt. Bookshelf Advisors: Fred Leebron and Cate Marvin. Proofreader: Megan Weireter.
Fiction Readers: Kathleen Rooney, Christopher Helmuth, Eson Kim, Simeon Berry, Dan Medeiros, Leslie Busler, Maureen Cidzik, Jessica Keener, Matthew Modica, Wendy Wunder, Cortney Hamilton, Emily Ekle, Hannah Bottomy, Ashley Joseph O'Shaughnessy, Asako Serizawa, James Charlesworth, Patricia Reed, Leslie Cauldwell, Joanna Luloff, Scarlett Stoppa, Megan Weireter, Tammy Zambo, Sarah Whittleton, Emily Santolla, and Marin Buschel. Poetry Readers: Kathleen Rooney, Simeon Berry, Autumn McClintock, Zachary Sifuentes, Christopher Tonelli, Elisa Gabbert, Erin Lavelle, Tracy Gavel, Jennifer Thurber, and Robert Arnold.
CONTRIBUTORS
chris abani is the author of the novels GraceLand and Masters of the Board and the poetry collections Kalakuta Republic, Daphne's Lot, and Dog Woman. A Middleton Fellow at the University of Southern California, he teaches in the M.F.A. program at Antioch University and is a visiting assistant professor at the University of California, Riverside.
ai is the author of seven books of poetry, including Dread (Norton, 2003) and Vice (Norton), which won the 1999 National Book Award. She is a full professor at Oklahoma State University and is currently working on a memoir about her family of Native Americans, Irish, Scots-Irish, and mulatto people in Texas and Oklahoma.
ellen bass's most recent book, Mules of Love (BOA Editions), won the Lambda Literary Award for Poetry. Among her other awards are the New Letters Prize, the Larry Levis Prize from The Missouri Review, and a Pushcart Prize. She teaches poetry and creative writing in Santa Cruz, California. See www.ellenbass.com.
rick bass is the author of twenty books of fiction and nonfiction, most recently Caribou Rising. In 2005, Houghton Mifflin will publish his new novel, The Diezmo. He is a board member of the Yaak Valley Forest Council, the Montana Wilderness Association, and various other environmental groups. He lives with his family in northwest Montana.
bruce bond's most recent collections of poetry include Cinder (Etruscan, 2003), The Throats of Narcissus (Arkansas, 2001), and Radiography (BOA Editions, 1997). Presently he is Professor of English at the University of North Texas and Poetry Editor for American Literary Review.
melanie cesspooch is an enrolled member of the Northern Ute Tribe, Whiterocks, Utah. She graduated with her B.F.A. in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Currently she is working on a poetry manuscript and is employed as a lab technician at the IAIA.
marilyn chin is the author of Dwarf Bamboo and The Phoenix Gone, The Terrace Empty. Her latest book, Rhapsody in Plain Yellow, was published by Norton in 2002. She has won numerous awards for her poetry, including a Radcliffe Institute fellowship from Harvard and two NEA fellowships. She co-directs the M.F.A. program at San Diego State University.
eddie chuculate (Creek/Cherokee) is from Muskogee, Oklahoma. He has published stories in Weber Studies, Many Mountains Moving, and The Iowa Review, and has a story forthcoming in the Winter 2004 edition of Manoa. A Stegner fellow at Stanford University from 1996–98, he now lives in Albuquerque, where he is a copy editor and columnist at The Albuquerque Tribune.
sandra cisneros was born in Chicago in 1954, the third child and only daughter in a family of seven children. Her books include two poetry books, My Wicked Wicked Ways and Loose Woman; a collection of stories, Woman Hollering Creek; a children's book, Hairs/Pelitos; and two novels, The House on Mango Street and Caramelo. She lives in San Antonio, Texas.
jan clausen has new poems out or forthcoming in Bloom, Fence, The Hat, Margie, and The North American Review. The recipient of a 2003 NYFA Poetry Fellowship, she teaches at Eugene Lang College and in Goddard College's M.F.A. writing program. Her most recent book is Apples and Oranges, a memoir.
allison hedge coke is the author of two poetry collections, Off-Season City Pipe and Dog Road Woman, winner of the 1998 American Book Award, and a memoir, Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer. "Ghost Deer" is from her forthcoming book of poetry with photographs of Indigenous mound sites critically endangered in the far eastern end of the Great Plains. She teaches in the M.F.A. program at Northern Michigan University.
brendan constantine's collection Hyenas 57 was a finalist for the National Poetry Series. His work has appeared in ArtLife, The Cider Press Review, and Abalone Moon, among other journals. He teaches poetry at The Windward School in Los Angeles.
jon davis, Creative Writing Chair at the Institute of American Indian Arts, is the author, most recently, of the screenplays Gift of the Condor and Catamount Falls, and a play, Anna Without Angels. Poems by heteronyms appear in Hanging Loose, Blue Mesa, Luna, Obsidian, American Letters & Commentary, Tar River, poemmemoirstory, Calyx, and The Muse Strikes Back.
ron de maris is a Miami poet. His work has appeared in many magazines, including Poetry, The New Republic, The Nation, APR, The Sewanee Review, The Southern Review, The Antioch Review, The Gettysburg Review, New England Review, and more. His book-length manuscript, The Architect of the Infinite, is in search of a publisher.
chard deniord is the author of three books of poetry, Asleep in the Fire (Alabama, 1990), Sharp Golden Thorn (Marsh Hawk, 2003), and Night Mowing (Pittsburgh, 2005). His poems and essays have appeared recently in The American Scholar, New England Review, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. He teaches at Providence College and directs the low-residency M.F.A. program at New England College.
valerie duff is the coordinator of PEN New England. Her poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly, P.N. Review, Salamander, and elsewhere, and she has received individual artist grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the St. Botolph Foundation. She completed her M.Phil. in Creative Writing at Trinity College, Dublin, in 2002.
martín espada's seventh poetry collection, Alabanza: New and Selected Poems, 1982–2002 (Norton, 2003), received a Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement and was named an American Library Association Notable Book. Another collection, Imagine the Angels of Bread (Norton, 1996), won an American Book Award. He teaches at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst.
monica ferrell is a Wallace Stegner fellow at Stanford University and a past "Discovery"/ The Nation prizewinner. Her poems are forthcoming in Slate, The New York Review of Books, and Denver Quarterly.
jennifer foerster is a graduate of the Institute of American Indian Arts in New Mexico, where she currently lives. She has published in Tribal College Journal and Red Ink Magazine, and has been the recipient of the Ataa'xum Fellowship at Dorland Mountain Arts Colony. She also makes ceramic sculpture.
javier f. gonzalez was born in 1976 in Bogotá, Colombia. Primarily a visual artist, he received his B.A. in Fine Arts in 1998, then moved to study in Italy, New York, and finally Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he began his studies as a creative writer. He writes poetry and essays on painting and art theory.
jennifer grotz is the author of Cusp (Houghton Mifflin, 2003), winner of the Bakeless Prize and the Texas Institute of Letters Natalie Ornish Prize. Her translations of La Tour du Pin's psalms received an award from the American Translators Association and appear in New England Review, Center, Lyric, and elsewhere.
donald hall has published fifteen books of poems, including Without, Old and New Poems, The One Day, and, most recently, The Painted Bed. In 2003, he published a book of short stories, Willow Temple, and Breakfast Served Any Time All Day, new and selected essays on poetry. The Best Day, The Worst Day, a memoir of his life with Jane Kenyon, will appear in April 2005.
jeff hardin teaches at Columbia State Community College in Columbia, Tennessee. His poems have appeared in Iron Horse Literary Review, Mid-American Review, Poem, West Branch, and elsewhere. He is the author of two chapbooks, Deep in the Shallows and The Slow Hill Out. His first collection, Fall Sanctuary, received the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize from Story Line Press and will appear in December 2004.
travis holland's stories have previously appeared in Glimmer Train, Five Points, and The Quarterly. A graduate of the University of Michigan, where he recently received his M.F.A., he lives in Ann Arbor with his wife, Amy, and their son, Aidan. He is currently working on a novel.
maxine kumin's fifteenth poetry collection, Jack and Other New Poems, will be published in January 2005. Her awards include the Ruth E. Lilly Poetry Prize and the Pulitzer Prize. She served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1980–81. She and her husband live on a farm in central New Hampshire.
alex kuo just completed residencies at Bellagio on a Rockefeller Foundation grant and at Knox College as Distinguished-Writer-in-Residence. His most recent book, Lipstick and Other Stories (the title story appeared in Ploughshares Vol. 26/4), received the American Book Award.
patrice de la tour du pin (1911–1975) was best known in France for the three-volume multi-genred work entitled Une Somme de poésie, and several shorter books of poetry, including Psaumes de tous mes temps, which collects the psalms he wrote and revised throughout his life.
josé f. lacaba has published five collections of poetry in Tagalog, but it is his work as freelance journalist, screenwriter, editor, translator, and university lecturer that pays the bills. His screenplay credits include Filipino films that have been shown at various international film festivals, including Cannes, Berlin, and Toronto.
harriet levin's first book of poems, The Christmas Show, was the winner of a Barnard New Women Poet's Prize and the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award. Recent work appears in Denver Quarterly, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, and Pennsylvania English. She directs the Writing Program and the Honors Concentration in Creative Writing at Drexel University.
yiyun li came to the U.S. from China in 1996 and began to publish in English in 2002. Her fiction and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Gettysburg Review, and elsewhere. Winner of the first Plimpton Prize for New Writers, she is currently an M.F.A. candidate at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her first book, a collection called The Princess of Nebraska, will be published in 2005.
chip livingston's poetry has been published recently in Brooklyn Review, Apalachee Review, Cimarron Review, and Stories from the Blue Moon Café, Volume 3. His fiction has appeared previously in Ploughshares, as well as in Rosebud, Crazyhorse, Blithe House Quarterly, and other journals. He lives in New York City.
adrian c. louis has taught in the Minnesota State University system since 1999. He has written several books of poems and fiction, including the novel Skins, which was produced as a feature film in 2002.
jeredith merrin is the author of two collections of poetry, Shift (1996) and Bat Ode (2001), both from the University of Chicago Press. Her essay on John Clare appears in the most recent issue of The Southern Review. Her new poetry manuscript is entitled Mon Age.
dan namingha was born in 1950 in Keams Canyon, Arizona, and now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He studied art at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, and the American Academy of Art in Chicago. His work has been included in over fifty exhibitions and may be found in museum collections in the U.S., Germany, England, and Slovakia. See www.namingha.com.
alicia ostriker has published ten volumes of poetry, including The Crack in Everything and The Little Space, both National Book Award finalists. A new book, No Heaven, is due this spring. Her most recent prose volume is Dancing at the Devil's Party: Essays on Poetry, Politics, and the Erotic.
elise paschen is the author of Infidelities, winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize, and Houses: Coasts. Her poems have been published in The New Republic, Poetry, The New Yorker, and in numerous anthologies. She is co-editor of Poetry in Motion, Poetry in Motion from Coast to Coast, and Poetry Speaks.
lucia perillo's fourth book of poems, Luck Is Luck, will be published soon. Her poetry and prose have appeared in many small magazines, and earned her a MacArthur fellowship in 2000. She lives in Olympia, Washington.
josé edmundo ocampo reyes was born and raised in the Philippines. He holds an M.F.A. in writing from Columbia University.
david romtvedt's past books of poetry include Certainty (White Pine) and A Flower Whose Name I Do Not Know (Copper Canyon), a selection of the National Poetry Series. His recordings with the Fireants are Bury My Clothes and Ants on Ice. He is the current poet laureate of the state of Wyoming.
william pitt root's first book, The Storm and Other Poems (Atheneum, 1969), will be republished in a facsimile edition in 2005; he will also have a chapbook of new work coming out from Carolina Wren Press. Having traveled in Sweden and Prague this past summer, he confesses his delight with recently having left teaching to resume writing full-time.
jess row's first collection of stories, The Train to Lo Wu, will be published by the Dial Press in January 2005. His work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories 2001 and 2003 and The Pushcart Prize XXVI. He lives in New York City and is an assistant professor of English at Montclair State University.
cathie sandstrom's work has appeared in Solo, Lyric, Cider Press Review, the anthologies Matchbook and So Luminous the Wildflowers, and is forthcoming in Runes. A two-time winner in the Lannan Foundation's Poetry in the Windows, she has lived in Japan, England, Denmark, the Deep South, the Carolinas, and Appalachia. She now makes her home in Sierra Madre, California.
philip schultz's latest book is Living in the Past (Harcourt, 2004). The Holy Worm of Praise came out in 2002. His work has won the Levinson Prize from Poetry, the Lamont Prize, an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a National Book Award nomination. He directs The Writers Studio in New York City.
rebecca seiferle's third poetry collection, Bitters (Copper Canyon, 2001), won the 2002 Western States Book Award and a Pushcart Prize. Her translation of Vallejo's The Black Heralds was published by Copper Canyon Press in late 2003. She will be Jacob Ziskind poet-in-residence at Brandeis for 2004–05.
reginald shepherd is the editor of The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries, which was published this past fall by the University of Iowa Press. He is the author of four books of poetry, including Otherhood (Pittsburgh, 2003) and Some Are Drowning (Pittsburgh, 1994), winner of the 1993 AWP Award. He lives in Pensacola, Florida.
quentin sherwood received a B.A. from Kalamazoo College and an M.F.A. from Warren Wilson College. His poems have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, New Letters, and Dunes Review. He and his wife resided in Michigan. An accomplished athlete, musician, and painter, he worked as a newspaper reporter, kayaking instructor, and carpenter. He was killed while bicycling in September 2002. He was forty years old.
cathy song is the author of Picture Bride, Frameless Windows, Squares of Light, School Figures, and The Land of Bliss. She lives with her family in Honolulu.
gary soto's forthcoming books include a young adult short story collection, Help Wanted (Harcourt, 2005), and a book of middle-grade poems, Worlds Apart: Traveling with Fernie and Me (Putnam, 2005).
gerald stern recently published a small book of sayings, or petite narratives, called Not God After All (Autumn House). His next book of poems, Everything Is Burning, will be released by W.W. Norton in the spring of 2005. He lives in Lambertville, New Jersey.
marc j. straus has two collections of poetry, One Word (1994) and Symmetry (2000), both from TriQuarterly–Northwestern University Press. "Alchemy" is from a new set of doctor poems, which together with his patient poems are being staged Off-Broadway in the production Not God and will be published by Northwestern in 2005. He runs a medical oncology practice in New York.
robert sullivan belongs to the New Zealand Maori tribe Nga Puhi. He has written four poetry books, a graphic novel, and a children's book, and won many New Zealand awards. He works as Assistant Professor of English at the University of Hawai'i, Manoa. See www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz./authors/sullivan/.
arthur sze is the author of The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970–1998 and The Silk Dragon: Translations from the Chinese. A new collection of poems, Quipu, will be published in 2005 by Copper Canyon Press. He lives in Santa Fe and teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts.
laura tohe is Diné (Navajo). She authored Making Friends with Water and the award-winning No Parole Today, and co-edited Sister Nations: Native American Women Writers on Community. She writes essays, stories, and children's plays that have appeared in Canada and Europe, and is Associate Professor of English at Arizona State University.
alpay ulku's first book, Meteorology (BOA Editions, 1999), was selected as an "Exciting Debut" by the Academy of American Poets. Poems from his second manuscript are in recent issues of Ploughshares, The Malahat Review, Atlanta Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, Crazyhorse, and Canary Review. He works as a technical writer in Chicago.
pamela uschuk is the author of the award-winning Finding Peaches in the Desert and One Legged Dancer. Her work has appeared in over two hundred journals and anthologies worldwide. Her forthcoming book is Scattered Risks (Wings). She directs the Salem College Center for Women Writers.
g. c. waldrep's first book, Goldbeater's Skin, won the 2003 Colorado Prize for Poetry, as well as a Greenwall grant from the Academy of American Poets. His work has appeared recently in Colorado Review, New American Writing, Ninth Letter, Quarterly West, American Letters & Commentary, and other journals. Currently he divides his time between North Carolina and Iowa.
charles harper webb's most recent book of poems, Tulip Farms and Leper Colonies, was published in 2001 by BOA Editions. He edited Stand Up Poetry: An Expanded Anthology, which was published by the University of Iowa Press in 2002. Recipient of grants from the Whiting and Guggenheim foundations, he teaches at California State University, Long Beach.
orlando white is Diné (Navajo) from Sweetwater, Arizona. His clans are of the Zuni Water Edge People and born from the Mexican Clan. He is currently a creative writing student and holds an A.A. degree from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
nance van winckel's fourth collection of poetry is Beside Ourselves (Miami, 2003). She has received two NEA poetry fellowships. New poems appear in The Gettysburg Review, Agni, and elsewhere. She has also published three books of short fiction, most recently Curtain Creek Farm (Persea, 2000). She teaches in the M.F.A. programs at Eastern Washington University and Vermont College.
scott withiam's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Field, Tar River Poetry, Sonora Review, 5 A.M., English Journal, Blue Mesa Review, The Marlboro Review, The Florida Review, Puerto del Sol, and Drunken Boat. His first book, Arson and Prophets, was published by Ashland Poetry Press in the fall of 2003.
xu xi is the author of several books, including the novels The Unwalled City and Hong Kong Rose. She also co-edited City Voices, an anthology of Hong Kong writing in English. She currently teaches at Vermont College's M.F.A. program, and lives somewhere between New York, Hong Kong, and New Zealand. See www.xuxiwriter.com.