Contributors' Notes: Issue Six (Spring 1998)

About the Artist: Sydnee Goldstein Peters has an M.F.A. in Painting from Western Michigan University and a B.F.A. in Multi-Media Drawing from the University of Iowa. Her work has been exhibited in many galleries and is presently represented by Vesuvius Gallery in Glenn, Michigan. In addition to her ten years experience as an art instructor, she is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, most recently the Irving S. Gilmore Emerging Artist Grant. She lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan with her husband and two small boys.

Artist’s Statement: I am inspired by language and the simplicity of certain word combinations. In my studio I keep a list of 100 words—I, thou, we, this, that, who . . . —which I am drawn to because of their ability to cross societal and cultural boundaries. Combinations from this list give me the facility to create an image which may or may not relate to the words. My interpretation of this vision is intuitive, as one might interpret a dream. I am interested in the mystery of how simple language can contribute to the development of an image. The beauty and eloquence that particular word combinations inspire is what I strive for in my own imagery.

Deborah Bayer’s short prose pieces have appeared in Hanging Loose, Alaska Quarterly, American Writing, Cream City Review and elsewhere. March Street Press recently released her chapbook, Jailer’s Inn.

Robin Behn is the author of two books of poems, Paper Bird (Texas Tech) and The Red Hour (HarperCollins) and co-editor of The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises from Poets who Teach (HarperCollins). She has poems appearing in Field, New Letters, Colorado Review, and The Iowa Review. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Alabama.

Greg Dunne lives in Kyoto, Japan where he teaches English as a second language. He has recent work in Willow Springs, Poetry East, and The Kyoto Journal.

Cameron K. Gearen lives in Bloomington, Indiana, where she is pursuing an MFA in poetry at Indiana University. She is a poetry editor of the Indiana Review. Her work has appeared in Crazyhorse, River Oak Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review and Primavera. In 1994, she won the Grolier Prize for Poetry.

Mary Jo Firth Gillett’s poems have appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Harvard Review, Third Coast, Sycamore Review, Green Mountains Review, Passages North, and other journals. She has an MFA in writing from Vermont College.

Elizabeth Gold lives in New York City. Her work is forthcoming in The Notre Dame Review.

Paul Guest is the Morris Doctoral Fellow at Southern Illinois University, lives in Georgia, and has poems forthcoming in Hayden’s Ferry Review.

Karri Harrison grew up in Hendersonville, Tennessee, attended the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and is currently working on her MFA at the University of Iowa.

Conrad Hilberry’s most recent book is Sorting the Smoke: New and Selected Poems, published by the University of Iowa Press in 1990. Louisiana State University will publish a new collection to be called Player Piano. He teaches at Kalamazoo College.

Ana Jelnikar was born in 1975 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She is finishing her studies in the Department of English Language in the Philosophical Faculty in Ljubljana.

Richard Jones is the author of nine volumes of poetry including Country of the Air, At Last We Enter Paradise and A Perfect Time, all from Copper Canyon Press. His forthcoming book is a sonnet sequence entitled 48 Questions from which the four poems in Third Coast are excerpted. He is a professor at DePaul University in Chicago where he directs the creative writing program. He lives in Evanston with his wife Laura and their son Andrew.

Terry Alan Kirts is on the faculty in the English departments of Butler University and Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis. A native of the small town of Sainte Marie, Illinois, he received his MFA from Indiana University in 1995 where he studied on a Ruth Lilly Fellowship. His poems have recently appeared in Green Mountains Review, The Flying Island, Artful Dodge, New Delta Review, Sycamore Review, and other publications.

Jeanne LeVasseur is a Family Nurse Practitioner and holds an MFA in writing from Vermont College. Her poetry has appeared in Yankee Magazine, Nimrod, Kansas Quarterly, and Journal of the American Medical Association and other publications.

John Lofy teaches at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. His work has appeared in the New Orleans Review, on Michigan Public Radio, and elsewhere.

Gian Lombardo’s latest collection of prose poems is Sky Open Again (Dolphin-Moon Press, 1997). The work in this issue is from Who Lets Go First, a collection of quasi-narratives based on the I Ching.

Tod Marshall has recent work in Colorado Review, American Poetry Review and Boulevard. He teaches at Rhodes College in Memphis.

Sara McAulay teaches writing at California State University, Hayward. Her publications include three novels (Catch Rides, In Search of the Petroglyph, and Chance) and stories and essays in several magazines. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. In recent years she has developed an interest in hypertext, and is now working on a series of linked short prose pieces for publication on the World Wide Web. Ms. McAulay lives in the San Francisco Bay area.

Emily Meier’s fiction has appeared most recently in North American Review, The Florida Review, where she won the 1996 Fiction Prize, Puerto del Sol, The Greensboro Review, and the British literary journal Stand. She has fiction forthcoming in Prairie Schooner and an essay has been selected to appear in Editor’s Choice 4: Essays from the U.S. Small Press. She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.

J. Morris is a writer and musician living near Washington, D.C. His stories and poems have appeared in many literary magazines in the United States and England, including The Missouri Review, Western Humanities Review, Five Points, Staple, and Prairie Schooner.

Diane Seuss-Brakeman lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan where she teaches at Kalamazoo College. Her work has appeared in Indiana Review, Tamaqua, Northwest Review, Exquisite Corpse and the anthology A Loving Testimony: Remembering Loved Ones Lost to AIDS. She won the 1996 Jewel Heart poetry contest in Ann Arbor, where she read with Allen Ginsberg and Patti Smith.

Lisa Sewell’s book The Way Out has been accepted for publication by Alice James Books.

Reginald Shepherd’s first two books Angel, Interrupted and Some Are Drowning were published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Wrong, his third book, will be available in 1999 from the University of Pittsburgh Press. He was a recipient of the 1995 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship. Mr. Shepherd lives in Chicago.

Angela Sorby was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest but recently spent some years in Illinois, the "Land of Lincoln," earning her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. She teaches American literature and creative writing at Linfield College in Oregon. Her first book, Distance Learning, is forthcoming from New Issues Press.

Dennis Vannatta has published stories in many magazines and anthologies, including The Quarterly, Antioch Review, and The Pushcart Prize XV. Two of his collections have been published by White Pine Press: This Time, This Place (1991) and Prayers for the Dead (1994).

Dean Young’s most recent book is Strike Anywhere.

Uros Zupan is a Slovene poet who has published three books of poems in his native Slovenia. He has also won several awards, including Best First Collection Award and Preseren Foundation Prize (Slovenia’s National Book Award). His poems have been published in ten languages and included in many anthologies. His chapbook Psalms was published by Poetry Miscellany Chapbooks in 1994.