Contributors' Notes: Issue Seven (Fall 1998)

About the Artist: Paul Robbert received his BA and MA degrees from Michigan State University and taught in the Department of Art at Western Michigan University for forty-one years until his retirement in April of 1998. His work been exhibited throughout the world, including a one-person show at the Museum Moli Paperer de Capellades in Barcelona, Spain, and is included in the collections of The Upjohn Institute, Albion College, Michigan State University, Boston Museum, Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, and many other private and public collections.

Artist's Statement: Over the last twenty years, I have been engaged with both the technical and aesthetic aspects of hand papermaking. My own background is that of a painter/printmaker and has easily translated into my image-making in paper. Work in the Full Circle Series represents an on going quest involving images in which selected simple geometric forms of a universal nature are chosen and combined with ambiguous forms and spaces of more complexity. My imagery involves the use of both abstract icons and geometric forms deriving from the unconscious (my major source of imagery since early childhood). Most intriguing to me in my work with paper has been the flexibility and directness offered by this medium.

Jack Butler was born in Alligator, Mississippi and is the son of a Southern Baptist minister. He has worked as a Southern Baptist preacher, a fried-pie salesman, an agricultural analyst, and the Assistant Dean of a college. He is the author of four novels: Jujitsu for Christ, Nightshade, Living in Little Rock with Miss Little Rock, and, most recently, Dreamers.

Amy England is in the Ph.D. program in creative writing at the University of Denver. Her work has appeared or will appear in Chicago Review, TriQuarterly, and Indiana Review. The poems in Third Coast are part of a work in progress on the excavation of the Sanctuary of the Great Gods on Samothrace. The material quoted in "Jericho, Trumpet" is from Gerard de Lairesse's 1778 book The Art of Painting.

Jeffrey Franklin's poetry has recently appeared in The Asheville Poetry Review, Cumberland Poetry Review, The Hudson Review, and Southern Poetry Review. He works as an assistant professor of Victorian literature at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, where he lives with his wife Judy Lucas and their two children.

Dobby Gibson won an AWP Intro Award for poetry in 1997. His fiction and poetry appear in New England Review, Crazyhorse, Cottonwood, and as an electronic text installation for the show "Lost and Found" in the NFA Space, an art gallery on Chicago's North Side. He is currently teaching his dog Hoagy to play Three Card Monte with a milk bone and three upturned coffee mugs.

Grace Grafton has worked for many years with the California Poets In The Schools, teaching elementary school students to write poetry. Her poems have appeared widely in small press publications, including Coracle, Americas Review, Estero, and Poetry Flash.

James Grinwis lives in Amherst, Massachusetts and is enrolled in the MFA program at the University of Massachusetts. His work has appeared in Mudfish, Nexus, and The Satellite Review.

Daniel Gutstein's work has appeared in Ploughshares, Fiction, and The Midwest Quarterly, and is forthcoming in The American Scholar and Poet Lore. A former economist, farm hand, and tae kwon do instructor, he has taught creative writing at two universities. He is at work on a collection of poems entitled Undoing.

Richard Jackson has written three books of poems, most recently Alive All Day (1992), and two books of criticism, most recently Dismantling Time In Contemporary American Poetry. He has been a Fulbright exchange poet to Yugoslavia and has won four Pushcart Prizes. His work has appeared in The Best American Poetry 1997, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Georgia Review, Gettysburg Review, Antioch Review, Harvard Review, and other journals.

Leslie Johnson's fiction has been broadcast on National Public Radio and published in many journals including Carolina Quarterly, The Threepenny Review, Puerto del Sol, River City, So to Speak, and Beloit Fiction Journal. She lives with her family in rural Connecticut, teaches at a local college, and works as an artist-in-residence for the Connecticut Arts Commission.

David Kresh lives in Washington, D.C. He is the reference specialist in poetry at the Library of Congress and the poet-in-residence at Capitol Hill Day School. Two collections of his poems have been published: Bloody Joy: Love Poems (Slow Dancer Press) and Sketches After "Pete's Beer" (Stone Man Press).

Richard Lyons teaches at Mississippi State University. His first collection, These Modern Nights, appeared in 1988 from the University of Missouri Press. His second collection, Hours of the Cardinal, is forthcoming from the University of South Carolina Press.

Deanne Lundin is a recent graduate of the MFA program at the University of Michigan. Her poems have appeared in journals including Colorado Review and The Kenyon Review.

Peter Markus has worked as a professional bird watcher and lion tamer and is also an avid whiskey bottle juggler. He is currently unemployed though is considering going back to school to become a certified street preacher. He lives somewhere in North America.

Lee McCarthy lives in Bakersfield, California, a city distinguished by its once-upon-a-time burning of The Grapes of Wrath on the main library steps. Her publications include Desire's Door (Story Line Press) and a chapbook, Combing Hair with a Seashell (Ion Books).

Joshua McKinney is the author of two chapbooks: Permutations of the Gallery (Pavement Saw Press 1996), and the forthcoming Saunter (Primitive Publications). His poetry has appeared in Boulevard, Denver Quarterly, International Quarterly, Willow Springs, and many other journals. He is creative writing coordinator at Valdosta State University.

Diane Mehta's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Antioch Review, Callaloo, Gulf Coast, The Columbia Review, Salamander, The Formalist, The Journal, Weber Studies, The Lines Review, and the anthologies Contours of the Heart: South Asians Map North America and Living in America. She recently won an international merit award from The Atlanta Review.

Allan Peterson's poems have recently appeared in Gettysburg Review, Agni, Indiana Review, The Journal, New Letters, and Epoch. The author of two chapbooks, Small Charities (Panhandler Press) and Stars On a Wire (Parallel Editions), he has received a fellowship from the NEA.

Richard Robbins directs the creative writing program and Good Thunder Reading Series at Mankato State University in Minnesota. His Invisible Wedding (University of Missouri Press, 1984) is still in print, and a new collection, Famous Persons We Have Known, is forthcoming from Eastern Washington University Press.

Beth Lee Simon has fiction, personal essays, or poems in The Antioch Review, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere, including The Sacred Place (University of Utah, 1996). She is a recipient of an Indiana Arts Grant and the Bellingham Poetry Award. She is an assistant professor at Indiana University Purdue University.

Judith Taylor's poems have appeared or will appear in American Poetry Review, Poetry, The Antioch Review, American Voice, Crab Orchard Review, Sonora Review, and Nimrod. She is a Contributing Editor of The Marlboro Review and teaches private classes in poetry, fiction, and literature in Los Angeles.

Scott Withiam lives in Wareham, Massachusetts where he co-edits The Onset Review. Poems from his manuscript, Hungry Nation, have recently appeared in Cimarron Review, Farmer's Market, The MacGuffin, Nightsun, The Louisville Review, and Press. Poems are forthcoming in Calliope, Harvard Review, Poet Lore, and Zone 3. His work was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 1998.

Gina Withnell recently completed her MFA at the University of Oregon, and is now busy working as an adjunct and raising her 18-month-old son. Her work has most recently appeared in Exhibition, Poetic Space, and Portlandia Review of Books.

Brian Young's poems have appeared recently in Arshile, Fence, ACM, and the internet publication N/Formation.