Contributors' Notes: Issue Five (Fall 1997)

About the Artist: Jan Reaves has an M.F.A. in Painting from the University of Oregon. She has taught at the Zweibrucken American School, Zweibrucken, Germany, the Pacific Northwest College of Art, and the University of Oregon. Her work has been exhibited throughout the Pacific Northwest, and her extensive exhibition credits include recent exhibits at Laura Russo Gallery, Portland; Seattle Art Pavilion; St. John's University, Jamaica, New York; and Creative Material Group, Place Pigalle, San Francisco.

Artist's Statement: The "Amoskeag Paintings" are part of a body of work that began in the summer of 1990 in a studio in the Amoskeag Millyard, Manchester, New Hampshire. I am after form that is a distillation of an observable fact. The subject matter of the "Amoskeag Paintings" is the landscape of the millyard with its smokestacks, bell towers, bricks and cubic architectural forms. The content of the paintings dwells in the space between abstraction and representation. Here the images reveal forms that retain a highly combustible potential for making literal and associative connections.

Michael Azre attended Ohio State University to pursue an MFA in Creative Writing. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

Claire Bateman's first book, The Bicycle Slow Race, was published by Wesleyan University Press in 1991. Her second collection, Friction, recently won the Eighth Mountain Poetry Prize, and will be published next year. She teaches at the Fine Arts Center of Greenville, South Carolina, for talented high school artists.

Joelle Biele's poems have appeared in Antioch Review, Poetry Northwest, and Indiana Review. She lives in Washington, D.C.

Becky Bradway has stories forthcoming in Cream City Review and Wheststone, and is finishing her doctorate at Illinois State University.

Marsha de la O recently received an MFA from Vermont College. She is a teacher at the Summer Writing Camp at University of California, Santa Barbara, and a member of the South Coast Writing Project. She lives in Ventura, California with her husband and daughter.

Page Dougherty Delano's poetry has appeared in Kenyon Review, Antioch Review, and Agni. She is a recipient of fellowships from the Mid-Atlantic Arts Consortium and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and has a manuscript that is currently a finalist for the 1997 Walt Whitman award.

Denise Duhamel is the author of five books of poetry: Exquisite Politics (a collaboration with Maureen Seaton), Kinky, Girl Soldier, The Woman with Two Vaginas, and Smile!, as well as four chapbooks, the most recent of which is How the Sky Fell.

Sarah Freligh's short stories have appeared in many literary journals, including Cimarron Review, Iowa Woman, and Painted Bride Quarterly. She lives in Rochester, New York.

J. Robert Lennon has recent poetry and fiction in American Short Fiction, Marlboro Review, and High Plains Literary Review. His novel, The Light of Falling Stars, will be published by Riverhead Books this fall.

Lisa Lenzo's first book, Within the Lighted City, won the 1997 John Simmons Short Fiction Award and will be published by the University of Iowa Press. Her stories have appeared in the Alaska Quarterly Review and Michigan Quarterly Review, among others, and on National Public Radio. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Western Michigan University.

Gordon Massman has been an acquisitions editor for many years. He now lives in Boulder, Colorado, where he is a literary agent for scholars.

John Minichillo has published short stories in Naugahyde Literary Journal and the German Web-zine Der Busch. "Department of Cemeteries" was inspired by summer cemetery work and Dostoevsky's "Bobok." He received his MFA from Western Michigan University, and now lives in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

Lorna Nyenhuis Cook has been a waitress, a legislative assistant, and a social worker. "The Whole World" is her second published story.

Ron Nyren's short stories have appeared most recently in Barnabe Mountain Review and Mississippi Review. He is a Creative Writing graduate student at the University of Michigan.

C. Mikal Oness is the Founding Editor and Publisher of Sutton Hoo Press, a literary fine press which publishes limited edition hand-made books. He received a PhD in English at the University of Missouri-Columbia, and has poems in several literary magazines, including Black Warrior Review and Cutbank.

Shelley Stenhouse has been published in numerous journals, and has work forthcoming in Antioch Review. She has been nominated for a Puschart Prize in Poetry. "Green-Back-A-Dollar" is part of her novel in progress.

Marcia V. Stucki has had poetry and short fiction published in The North American Review, Sou'wester, Epoch, and Sycamore Review, among others. She lives in Galesburg, Michigan.

Tomaz Salamun is a Slovenian poet, at the moment living in New York as a Cultural Attaché at the Consulate General of Slovenia. His last book is The Four Questions of Melancholy: New and Selected Poems, edited by Christopher Merrill, and published by White Pine Press.

Marc J. Sheehan has published over a hundred poems in such journals as New York Quarterly, Michigan Quarterly Review, and High Plains Literary Review. He works with the American Red Cross Blood Services and is a staff writer for the Lansing Capitol Times.

Russell Thorburn received an artist's grant from the Arts Foundation of Michigan in 1996. He has since completed a book of poetry entitled The Judas Fan Club. He is raising three sons in Marquette, Michigan.

Chase Twichell's most recent book is The Ghost of Eden (Ontario Review Press, 1995). She teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Princeton.

Susan Weinberg's fiction and memoirs have appeared in Gettysburg Review, The Journal, Other Voices, and elsewhere. She was a Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer at Stanford University, and currently teaches fiction writing at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina.

Scott Withiam's poems have recently appeared, or are forthcoming, in Cimmaron Review, Sow's Ear Poetry Review, Poet Lore, and Poetry Motel. A graduate of the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College, he co-edits a small literary journal, The Onset Review.

David Wojahn's most recent book is The Falling Hour (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997).

Dean Young's most recent book is Strike Anywhere. In the Spring Semester, 1998, he will be a visiting professor at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.