Contributors' Notes: Issue Nine (Fall 1999)

About the Artist:  Mary Manusos, professor at Ohio University for 27 years, has been a printmaker, photographer and painter. She is currently creating images reminiscent of her impression of the culture she grew up in. She continues to work in an auto-graphic manner reflected first in the images she created in D'Art Objects, a collaboration with John Chakeres, published by Nuance Press in 1979. Her images have been shown in over 300 exhibitions in the US and abroad, including Franklin Furnace, the Museum of Modern Art, and The San Francisco Museum of Art. Her work has been included in many juried exhibitions including the 2nd Kochi International Triennial Exhibition of Prints in Japan and eleven American embassies abroad. She continues to work in her favorite media of etching on handmade paper. Her work can be seen at http://oak.cats.ohio.edu/~manusos.

Artist's Statement:  I am working with traditional printmaking techniques on hand made paper. Both the paper and print carry the image in order to create a feeling of layers of information. One sees a marriage of the bright colors, light and architecture of the Latin American culture. The images are indicative of the stillness and fragile nature of the architectural landscapes they represent. The quiet tenuous balance of man and nature, the layers of culture left behind by abandoned structures and the stillness of the moment of reflection and observation are auto-graphic, postulative, and timeless.

Carl Auerbach is an associate professor of psychology at Yeshiva University, specializing in family psychology and the psychology of trauma. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Paulette Beete lives in Chicago where she writes about language, music, and The Mighty Blue Kings. Her work has appeared or will appear in Rhino, Crab Orchard Review, and Callaloo. She sends her thanks to Maureen for teaching her collage and to Ross for not minding having her and her notebook in the front row.

Heidi Bell is a recipient of an Irving S. Gilmore Emerging Artist Grant from the Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo. Her prose has appeared in Crazyhorse, Black Dirt, and Beloit Fiction Journal.

Clifford Browder's long novel Metropolis deals with New York City 1830-1880; these excerpts are from Book 1. Other excerpts have appeared in Quarter After Eight. His poetry has been published in various reviews.

Sharon Bryan's most recent book of poems is Flying Blind, from Sarabande Books. She has taught at a number of schools, including the University of Washington, Dartmouth, the University of Houston, Western Michigan University, and Kalamazoo College. She is currently at work on a memoir, Traveling Light.

Kevin Grauke is a Ph.D. student in the English program at SUNY Buffalo, where he serves as co-editor of the literary journal, Kiosk. He has published work in The Wisconsin Review and The South Dakota Review, and is currently one of Buffalo Literary Center's Western New York Writers-in-Residence.

Jennifer Hancock is a Ph.D. student at Oklahoma State University, where she serves as associate editor for the Cimarron Review. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Antioch Review, Quarterly West, Puerto del Sol, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Faultline.

Bob Hicok's Plus Shipping is just out from BOA Editions. The Legend of Light, his previous collection, was an ALA Booklist Notable Book of the Year. An NEA fellow for 1999, he will have a poem in The Best American Poetry 1999.

Dennis Hinrichsen's most recent book is The Rain that Falls This Far (Galileo/1991). His work appears or is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, Poetry Northwest, and Crazyhorse. He teaches at Lansing Community College.

Terry Kirts lives and teaches college English and writing in Indianapolis. His poems have appeared in Green Mountains Review, Artful Dodge, The James White Review, and previously in Third Coast. He recently wrote the text for a choral requiem that was premiered by the Philadelphia-based Bridge Ensemble, and he is currently working on an internet-based installation of photos and poems.

Carolyn Kizer is the author of seven books of poetry, two books of essays, one book of translations, and has edited three additional works (100 Great Poems by Women and The Essential John Clare). Her most recent book is Harping On, Poems 1985-1995 (Copper Canyon). She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1985 for Yin, New Poems.

Dana Levin is a 1999 NEA fellow and teaches at the College of Santa Fe. Her book In the Surgical Theatre was chosen by Louise Gluck for the APR/Honickman First Book Prize and will be out from Copper Canyon Press this fall. She currently has work in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Marlboro Review and Countermeasures.

Valerie Loveland's poetry has appeared in The Peninsula Review, Pegasus, and Thorny Locust. She lives and writes in Barrington, New Jersey.

Khaled Mattawa is the author of a book of poetry, Ismailia Eclipse (The Sheep Meadow Press, 1995), and the translator of two books of Arabic poetry, Hatif Janabi's Questions and Their Retinue (University of Arkansas Press, 1996), and Fadhil Al-Azzawi's In Every Well a Joseph is Weeping (Quarterly Review of Literature, 1997). He has received a Guggenheim fellowship and a grant from the NEA.

Paula McLain has been a work-study scholar at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and a resident at Vermont Studio Center and the MacDowell Colony. Her first book of poetry, Less of Her, will be published late this year by New Issues Press. She lives in Vermont where she teaches English at The Putney School.

Patricia McMillen is delighted to publish in Third Coast for the first time. When not busy being a man, she is occupied as (in alphabetical order) a homemaker, lawyer, and musician. "Yang" is dedicated to performance poet Charles Rossiter, whose poem "Yin" was its inspiration.

Jesse Millner received an MFA in creative writing from Florida International University in 1997. His poetry has appeared in Borderlands, Gulf Stream Magazine, Willow Springs, and The Yalobusha Review. He currently teaches at FIU.

Brian David Mooney attended Marlboro College and received his MFA from the University of Massachusetts. His poems and stories have appeared in The Raven Chronicles, The Seattle Review, and American Fiction: The Best of the Emerging Writers. He recently earned honorable mention in The Academy of American Poets/Joseph Langland Award for Excellence in Poetry.

Ed Ochester has two books forthcoming: Cooking in Key West (Adastra Press) and The Land of Cockaigne (Story Line Press). His most recently published collection is Allegheny (Adastra, 1995). He edits the Pitt Poetry Series.

Kirk Robinson is a poet from St. Louis, Missouri. He received an MFA in poetry from Ohio State University in 1998. His poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest and American Literary Review, and are forthcoming in the Virginia Quarterly Review.

Mary Ruefle is the author of four books of poetry; her most recent book is Cold Pluto (Carnegie Mellon, 1996). She has received both NEA and Whiting fellowships. She teaches at Vermont College and was recently a visiting writer at Ohio University.

Bob Russell was the recipient of two Pushcart Prize nominations last year and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant in Poetry. His most recent work appears or is forthcoming in Boulevard, Quarterly West, College English, The Southwest Review, and Witness. As a reporter for the Holyoke Transcript, he received an Associated Press Journalism Award and Pulitzer Prize nomination.

John Rybicki's first book, Traveling at High Speeds, is out from New Issues Press. His stories and poems have appeared in the North American Review, Field, The Quarterly, Quarterly West, and Yankee. He teaches creative writing at Kalamazoo College, Interlochen Center for the Arts, and out of his own home. And he likes to roll around in the dirt doing carpentry whenever he can.

Patty Seyburn's first book of poetry, Diasporadic, was chosen for the 1997 Marianne Moore Poetry Prize, and published in 1998. Her poems are forthcoming in CutBank, New Letters, and The Paris Review. She lives in Costa Mesa, California.

Allyson Shaw received her MFA from UC Irvine. She recently completed a novel loosely based on the life of Saint Catherine of Siena. Her work has recently appeared in Mudfish and Volt as well as the e-zines Melic Review and Octavo.

Traci Sobocinski has published fiction and poetry in The Mississippi Review, Deadsnake, Apotheosis, and Agni. She lives in Salem, Masschusetts.

Susan Varon started writing seven years ago, after a severe stroke rearranged her life. Her work has appeared most recently in Amaranth and Defined Providence, and is forthcoming in Passages North. She was runner-up for the 1998 New Voice Award of the Writer's Voice.

Ed Webster has published work in The American Scholar, Colorado Review, Fence, Western Humanities Review, and other journals, and in the anthology The Best American Poetry 1995, edited by Richard Howard and David Lehman. As of this writing, he lives in Philadelphia, where he works as a carpenter.

Saadi Youssef, one of the leading and most prolific Arab poets, was born in Iraq in 1933. He worked in teaching and journalism most of his life, and was jailed and exiled for his activism in socialist circles in Iraq. His works include 20 volumes of poetry, a novel, three books of criticism, and translations of Whitman, Cavafy, Ritsos, and Ngugi wa Thiongo, among others. He left Iraq permanently in 1979 and now lives in Jordan.