Contributors

Ayelet Amittay is an MFA student at the University of Michigan — Ann Arbor. Her poems have most recently appeared in The Comstock Review.

Denise Bergman is the author of Seeing Annie Sullivan, poems based on the early life of Helen Keller’s teacher (Cedar Hill Books, 2005), and editor of City River of Voices, an anthology of urban poetry (West End Press). Her poems have been published widely. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Ben Berman spent time teaching in Zimbabwe. The poem 6/1 won the 2002 Erika Mumford Prize from the New England Poetry Club. He has poems published or forthcoming in Natural Bridge, Poet Lore, Salamander, The Powhatan Review, Inkwell and others. He currently teaches high school in Boston.

CL Bledsoe is an editor for Ghoti Magazine (www.ghotimag.com). He has work most recently in Natural Bridge, Diner, The King’s English, and forthcoming in Margie. He currently attends the MFA program at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia.

Gaylord Brewer is a professor at Middle Tennessee State University, where he edits Poems & Plays. His most recent books of poetry are Barbaric Mercies (Red Hen, 2003) and Exit Pursued by a Bear (Cherry Grove, 2004).

Shane Brown is a photographer and native Oklahoman. He is continuously working on a project photographing the cultural landscape of the Great plains. At present, Shane is working on an MFA in Photography at the University of Oklahoma. The Great Plains photographs can be seen at his website: www.shanebrownphotographic.com

Anthony Butts also has poems forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, 5 AM, Black Warrior Review, Journal of Poetry Therapy, Xavier Review and Christianity and Literature. He is the author of Little Low Heaven (New Issues 2003), winner of the Poetry Society of America’s 2004 William Carlos Williams Award for best book of poetry.

Adam Chiles’ work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in, The Indiana Review, Phoebe, Perihelion, Poet Lore, Smartish Pace and The Beloit Poetry Journal. He currently teaches at Cesar Chavez Charter School in DC.

Ethan J. Hon works in Omaha, Nebraska.

Joanna Ialuna studied English Literature and Creative Writing as an undergraduate at Kenyon College and has a Master’s in Creative Writing from Boston University. Her work has recently appeared in the Mid-American Review.

Ruth Ellen Kocher is the author of One Girl Babylon (New Issues Press 2003) When the Moon Knows You’re Wandering (New Issues Press, 2001), winner of the Green Rose Prize in Poetry, and Desdemona’s Fire (Lotus Press, 1999), winner of the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award. Her work has appeared in various journals, including Washington Square Journal, Ploughshares, Crab Orchard Review, Clackamas Literary Review, The Missouri Review, African American Review, The Gettysburg Review, and Antioch, among others, and has been translated into Persian in the Iranian literary magazine She’r. She has also worked as a fellow in the Cave Canem Workshop and Retreat. She lives in St. Louis, MO, and teaches literature and writing at the University of Missouri, St. Louis.

Yahia Samir Lababidi (Nietzschean@hotmail.com) is a Lebanese-Egyptian aphorist, essayist and poet. In addition to contributing frequently to Middle East arts and culture magazine, Bidoun, his work has appeared in international journals: The Idler (UK) and Arena (Australia) as well as regional magazines Carnival Arabia and Enigma.

Jeanne Larsen’s new book of translations, Willow, Wine, Mirror, Moon: Women’s Poems from Tang China, will be published in November 2005 by BOA Editions. Recent poetry and creative nonfiction appears in Arts & Letters, Crab Orchard Review, The Florida Review, New Delta Review, Tusculum Review, The Literary Review, Tiferet, Southern Poetry Review, Fourth Genre, and Pleiades. The author of three novels and a book of poems, she has a short story in the summer issue of The Sewanee Review.

Brian Leary is a recent recipient of the Katherine C. Turner prize from the Academy of American Poets and Arizona State University. He is the founding editor of the online journal 42opus.

Susan Lewis’ poetry and fiction has appeared in The New Orleans Review, Seneca Review, Pool, The Berkeley Poetry Review, CrossConnect, Fugue, Eclipse, The Sycamore Review, Phoebe, So To Speak, and many other literary journals. Her collaborations with composer Jonathan Golove have been recorded by The Maelstrom Percussion Ensemble and performed at the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall.

MaryJo Mahoney has poetry and creative nonfiction forthcoming or in recent issues of The Paris Review, Witness, Tampa Review, Colorado Review, Seattle Review, Washington Square, Praire Schooner, Northwest Review and Pennsylvania English. She is grateful to the editors of Cimarron Review for publishing “The Listening Circle” as fiction though this “story” is part of a creative non-fiction manuscript that merges fictional methods with autobiographical truth aims. She is an assistant professor of English at Elmira College in NY.

Dorene O’Brien’s fiction has appeared in Clackamas Literary Review, New Millennium Writings, the Connecticut Review, the Chicago Tribune and others. She has won Red Rock Review’s Mark Twain Award for Short Fiction, the New Millennium Fiction Award and the Chicago Tribune Nelson Algren Award. She has also won the 2004 Bridport Prize and has received a creative writing fellowship from the NEA.

Gillian Parrish graduated from George Mason University with a BA in Religious Studies. She is currently living in India with her partner in crime in the company of crows and cows, cornfields, and the occasional kingfisher.

Jay Ponteri has a story forthcoming in Del Sol Review. He recently published work in Eye-Rhyme: A Journal of New Literature, and has just finished a collection of linked stories titled, The Planet of Body Parts. He
lives in Portland, Oregon.

Gretchen Primack’s publication credits include The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, FIELD, The Tampa Review, and others. Her manuscript, Fiery Cake, has been shortlisted for several prizes. She lives in the Hudson Valley.

Michael Robins’ poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Spinning Jenny, Black Warrior Review, Hubbub, Backwards City Review, Unpleasant Event Schedule, Boston Review and elsewhere. He is a contributing editor at Born Magazine and lives in Chicago.

Eva Saulitis has published poems and essays in Quarterly West, Prairie Schooner, Northwest Review, Crazyhorse, Alaska Quarterly Review, Ice-Floe, Connotations and in several anthologies including the American Nature Writing series. She’s a contributor to Homeground: A Literary Guide to Landscape Terms, forthcoming from Trinity University Press. Her essay collection was finalist in the Tupelo Press non-fiction competition last year.

Reginald Shepherd is the editor of The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries, published by the University of Iowa Press in 2004. He is the author of four books of poetry, all from the University of Pittsburgh Press, including Otherhood (2003), which was a finalist for the 2004 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and Some Are Drowning (1994), which won the 1993 AWP Award. He lives, writes, and dodges hurricanes in Pensacola, Florida, where live oaks and magnolias are evergreens.

Virgil Suárez was born in Havana, Cuba in 1962. Since 1974 he has lived in the United States. He is the author of over twenty books of prose and poetry, most recently Infinite Refuge, Palm Crows, Banyan, and Guide to the Blue Tongue. In the Winter of 2005, the University of Pittsburgh Press will publish 90 Miles: Selected and New Poems. He is the co-editor of four anthologies published by the University of Iowa Press: American Diaspora, Like Thunder, Vespers, and Red, White and Blue. He is currently writing a new novel and restoring a ’55 Chevrolet. He lives and works in Florida and loves the great city of Miami where he spends every chance he gets.

Terry Ann Thaxton’s first manuscript, Getaway Girl won the 18th Annual Frederick Morgan Poetry Prize and will be published by Story Line Press (November 2005). She teaches creative writing at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, where she is also the Poetry Editor of The Florida Review.

Jim Zervanos’s stories have appeared in The Green Mountains Review, The Chicago Quarterly Review, Folio, failbetter.com, and elsewhere. He has a story forthcoming in Phillyfiction, an anthology featuring Philadelphia writers. He is a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.