Contributor Notes
DC BERRY's most recent book is Divorce Boxing (Eastern Washington University Press, 1998).
LISA BESKIN's first book of poems, My Work Among the Faithful, was the winner of the 2003 Blue Lynx Prize and was published by Lynx House Press. Recent work has appeared in Volt, FIELD, Fence, and other places. She teaches creative writing in Western Massachusetts.
ANNE BOYER grew up in the middle of Kansas. She now lives in Iowa. Her work is in or forthcoming at Eratio, The Diagram, Painted Bride Quarterly, New Letters, Shampoo, The Denver Quarterly and elsewhere.
KARL ELDER is Lakeland College's Fessler Professor of Creative Writing and Poet in Residence. Among his honors are a Pushcart Prize, inclusion in the Best American Poetry (2000 & 2005), the Lucien Stryk Award, a Mikrokosmos Prize for Poetry, grants from the Illinois Arts Council for poetry and fiction, and Lakeland's Outstanding Teacher Award. Two new collections of poetry from Elder are scheduled to appear in 2005: Mead: Twenty-six Abecedariums (Marsh River Editions) and The Minimalist's How-to Handbook (Parallel Press). For nearly three decades he has edited and published the literary magazine Seems.
JEFF ENCKE has recently published Most Wanted: A Gamble in Verse, a deck of playing cards featuring excerpts of love letters written to Saddam Hussein and other war criminals, available at www.matlub.net. His poetry has recently appeared in Barrow Street, Black Warrior Review, Colorado Review, Octopus Magazine, Salt Hill, 3rd Bed, and Quarterly West, among others.
RYAN FLAHERTY's selections published here are taken from a long poem cobbled together on 3 x 6 foot sheets of paper tacked to a door propped up in his Ann Arbor attic. Other poems from this series are forthcoming in Chelsea and DIAGRAM.
DEAN GORMAN lives in Portland, Oregon and works as a cable technician. He will be attending Vermont College starting in January for a Masters in Writing. His self-published chapbook Winter Blimps Leaving is avaliable only to close friends.
MATT HART is a co-founder and editor of Forklift Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking, & Light Industrial Safety. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Canary, Painted Bride Quarterly, and Ploughshares, among other journals. Recent work can be seen online at DIAGRAM, Octopus, and Unpleasant Event Schedule. He teaches in the Academic Studies Department at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.
SHANNON JONAS, originally from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, is finishing his last year in the MFA program at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. You may find his recent work in Diagram and Stickman Review, among other journals.
ALEX LEMON’s most recent poems are forthcoming in AGNI, Cimarron Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Indiana Review, Pleiades, Post Road, Swink, Salt Hill, Washington Square and other journals. Among his awards are grants from the Jerome Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is the poetry editor for Konundrum Engine Literary Review and teaches creative writing at Macalester College, in St. Paul, Minnesota. Hallelujah Blackout is an excerpt from a book-length sequence of poems of the same name.
TIMOTHY LIU is the author of Of Thee I Sing (University of Georgia Press, 2004); Hard Evidence (Talisman Books, 2001); Say Goodnight (1998), which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award; Burnt Offerings (1995); and Vox Angelica (1992), which won the Poetry Society of America's Norma Farber First Book Award. He has also edited Word of Mouth: An Anthology of Gay American Poetry, (Talisman House, 2000). His poems have been included in more than twenty anthologies and have appeared in such magazines and journals as Antioch Review, Denver Quarterly, Grand Street, Chelsea, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and TriQuarterly. Timothy Liu is an Assistant Professor at William Paterson University; he lives in Hoboken, New Jersey.
JOYELLE MCSWEENEY's second book, The Commandrine and Other Poems, was released this Fall from Fence. She lives in Tuscaloosa and has recently co-founded Action Books with her husband, Johannes Göransson.
STAN MIR’s poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in American Letters & Commentary, GutCult, and Verse, among other places. He lives in Rhode Island.
DANIEL NESTER is the author of God Save My Queen: A Tribute and God Save My Queen II: The Show Must Go On, both from Soft Skull Press. His work has appeared in Open City, Nerve, Black Book, The Best American Poetry 2003, among other publications. He is sestinas editor for McSweeney's and edits the online journal Unpleasant Event Schedule. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.
NATE PRITTS' poems have appeared or are forthcoming in POOL, Rattle, Cimarron Review, 5AM, DIAGRAM, and Forklift, Ohio with critical work appearing in New Writing(UK) and Midwest Quarterly; his chapbook, The Happy Seasons, is online in its entirety from Swannigan & Wright. He is the editor & sole shareholder of H_NGM_N, an online journal of poetry and poetics. Originally from Syracuse, NY, he lives in Natchitoches, LA, with his wife, Rhonda, and kids Dylan and Laney (and Oscar the dog).
PETER JAY SHIPPY is the author of Thieves’ Latin (University of Iowa Press). He will have new work appearing in American Poetry Review, Barrow Street, and Octopus Magazine, among others.
SHEILA SQUILLANTE's poems have appeared in such journals as Quarterly West, Prairie Schooner, The Southeast Review, Connecticut Review, Clackamas Literary Review and others. She is the associate director of the MFA program at Penn State, where she also teaches composition and creative writing.
TONY TOST is the author of Invisible Bride and a former co-editor of Octopus. Please drop by Spaceship Tumblers, an audio poetry blog that Tony has recently started up. His work can be found in The Hat, Verse, Jacket, LIT and Titanic Operas. A chapbook, World Jelly, is forthcoming from Effing Press.
JAMES WAGNER is the author of the false sun recordings (3rd bed). Poems from his manuscript, Trilce, have appeared or will appear in Bridge, gam, and Parakeet. Stories from Workbook, his nonfiction collection, have appeared or will appear in Castagraf, Cimarron Review, Fence, 5_Trope, and McSweeney's Internet Tendency. He writes reviews of current poetry books, chapbooks, and literary magazines at his weblog, Esther Press (estherpress.blogspot.com), and lives in Syracuse, New York.
FRANZ WRIGHT was born in Vienna in 1953 and grew up in the Northwest, the Midwest, and northern California. His most recent works include Walking to Martha's Vineyard, which received a Pulitzer Prize, The Beforelife, and Ill Lit: Selected & New Poems. He has been the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Fellowship, and the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, among other honors.