2008 Spring Issue
Contents
Artwork
Apoala with Tree #4; Aztec Calendar;
Toltec Elegy;
Solola Market;
Labna with Flowers, Mexico;
Sacred Valley, Peru;
Edzna with Tree, Mexico;
Machu Picchu, Peru;
Xochimilco, Mexico;
and Apoala with Cactus—
After graduating from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville with an MFA,
Michael Aakhus received a grant to
continue his work at the Roswell Artist in Residence Program in New Mexico.
His internationally-exhibited artwork takes a primary interest in Latin
American indigenous cultures, and is represented in many public and private
collections throughout the United States and other countries.
Poetry
Mary C. Mohr Poetry Award First Prize Winner:
"Skin"—Kristine
Rae Anderson’s poems have appeared in Crab Creek Review,
Entelechy International, Phase and Cycle, the anthology
Active Voices IV, and elsewhere. In 2005 Anderson was awarded a Tomales
Bay Fellowship in poetry, and she was awarded a Fishtrap Fellowship for
2006. She teaches English at Riverside Community College in Riverside,
California.
Mary C. Mohr Poetry Award Second Prize Winner: “Dirge
for the White Birds Standing in a Marsh, Seen Through a Train Window on the
Day After Thirty-fifth Birthday”—Sam
Witt's first book of poetry, Everlasting Quail, won the
Katherine Nason Bakeless First Book Prize in 2000, sponsored by Breadloaf,
and was published by UPNE the following year, at which time Witt received a
Fulbright Fellowship to live and write in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Witt has
participated in poetry festivals at Druskininkai and Vilnius at the
invitation of the Lithuanian government; he has been a resident at the
Breadloaf Writers' Conference and at Yaddo; and his poems have been
published in Virginia Quarterly, Harvard Review, Georgia Review, Denver
Quarterly, Colorado Review, Fence, and New England Review, among other
journals. His second book, Sunflower Brother, won the Cleveland State
University Press Open Book competition for 2006. Witt is currently looking
for a publisher for his new manuscript, Occupation: Dreamland, while
serving as a visiting assistant professor of English at Whitman College.
Mary C. Mohr Poetry Award Third Prize Winner: “Unrepeatable
Poem”—Christina
Hutchins has worked as a biochemist and a Congregational (UCC)
minister, and she currently teaches philosophy of religion/aesthetics at
Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley. Recent poems are published in The
New Republic, The Missouri Review, Antioch Review,
Prairie Schooner, Denver Quarterly, The Southern Review,
and Sycamore Review. She lives in Albany, California.
Mary C. Mohr Poetry Award Third Prize Winner: “Lambing
Season”—Cora Stryker
is a former tropical field biologist and urban gardener and the recipient of
the University of California Poet Laureate Award, the Bobette Bilble
Gugliotta Memorial Scholarship in Creative Writing, and the 2008-09
Steinbeck Fellowship at San Jose State. As a Steinbeck Fellow, she will be
working on her first novel, Manzanita, which is set in a
post-petroleum San Francisco.
“Colored Store,” “Come-Along,” “Moment
of Here,” “Goose Blind” & “Incident with Black
Woman in a Truck”—Dave
Smith is the author of Little Boats, Unsalvaged (Louisiana
State University Press, 2005), his fourteenth collection of poetry; The
Wick of Memory, New and Selected Poems, 1970-2000; Onliness, a
novel; Southern Delights, a collection of stories; and two
collections of essays: Local Assays: On Contemporary American Poetry
and Hunting Men: A Life in the Life of Poetry (Louisiana State
University Press, 2006). He was the editor of The Southern Review
from 1990-2002 at Louisiana State University, where he also was the Boyd
Professor of English, and has edited The Essential Poe, The
William Morrow Anthology of Younger American Poets and The Pure Clear
Word: Essays on the Poetry of James Wright. Currently, he is the editor
of the Southern Messenger Poetry Series at Louisiana State University and
the Eliot Coleman Professor of Poetry at Johns Hopkins University. Smith has
won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in Poetry, the John
Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Lyndhurst
Fellowship, as well as the Virginia Prize in Poetry and an Award in Poetry
from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He is an
elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.
“The Hinckley News,” “Choir School,” “Girl
Sleeping on a Trampoline,” “Snow Angels,” & “The
Book Thief” —Leslie
Adrienne Miller is author of five books of poetry, The
Resurrection Trade and Eat Quite Everything You See from
Graywolf Press, and Yesterday Had a Man in It, Ungodliness,
and Staying Up For Love from Carnegie Mellon University Press.
Miller is a professor of English at the University of Saint Thomas, in Saint
Paul, Minnesota.
“His Heart”—Michelle
O’Sullivan lives on the west coast of Ireland. Her work has
appeared in The Sunday Tribune, Iota, Mobius, Mslexia, The Shop, New Voices,
and Crannog and various other publications. Forthcoming work will appear in
The London Magazine, PN Review, The Interpreters House, Obsessed with
Pipework and Equinox. Nominated for The Hennessey Award 2007, she is
currently working on a collection of poetry, as well as a collection of
short fiction.
“She Yells George Shrinks from the Basement,”
"My Life in Sunglasses," "Mostly Ever After," "I'm Your Huckleberry," &
"Jerusalem"—Austin Hummell’s
books are Poppy (Del Sol Press) and The Fugitive Kind
(University of Georgia Press). He teaches at Northern Michigan University
and is poetry editor of Passages North.
“A Thousand Words”—Sarah
Kennedy is the author of four books of poems, including
Consider the Lilies (David Robert Books), Double Exposure
(Cleveland State University Press), and Flow Blue (Elixir Press). Her
fifth book, A Witch’s Dictionary, is forthcoming from Elixir Press
and her sixth, Home Remedies, is forthcoming from LSU Press. Kennedy
has received grants from both the National Endowment for the Arts and the
Virginia Commission for the Arts, and she is a contributing editor for
West Branch and Pleiades. Kennedy is an associate professor at
Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Virginia.
“The News Today" & "Vortex: The Super-Sized
Supermarket"—Matthew
Guenette's poetry has appeared recently in Pindeldyboz
and Diagram. His first book, Sudden Anthem, winner of the 2007
American Poetry Journal Book Prize, is now available from Dream Horse Press.
He lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with his wife Julie and two unruly cats.
“Funhouse at Night”—James
Doyle's new book, Bending Under The Yellow Police Tapes,
was published by Steel Toe Books in June, 2007. He has poems coming out in
The Briar Cliff Review, Paper Street, Skidrow Penthouse,
Slant, and The Paterson Literary Review.
"Two breathings,” "Waiting," "Memory, if I
recall," "In a time of biblical references," & "Perhaps I'm in the wrong
mood to write a Christmas carol"—Bob
Hicok's most recent book is This Clumsy Living
(University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007).
"Leaf Blowers,” "Ambushed,” & “How
the Future Might Work Out”—Stephen
Dobyns is the author of 10 books of poems, 21 novels, and a book
of essays on poetry, Best Words, Best Order. His books of poetry
include Mystery, So Long (2005); The Porcupine’s Kisses
(2002); Pallbearers Envying the One Who Rides (1999); Common
Carnage (1996); Velocities: New and Selected Poems, 1966-1992
(1994); Cemetery Nights (1987), which won a Melville Cane Award;
Black Dog, Red Dog (1984), which was a winner in the National Poetry
Series; Heat Death (1980); and Concurring Beasts (1972), which
was the 1972 Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets. His
fiction includes the short story collection Eating Naked, the novel
The Church of Dead Girls, and the Saratoga mysteries featuring
Charlie Bradshaw.
Fiction
“Letters from Mrs. Chenowith”—In 2007,
Jill Walsh
received her MFA in creative writing from the University of Montana. She has
several creative projects underway, including a novel, a collection of short
stories and a children’s book, which she will also illustrate. She lives
with her husband and dogs in Scarborough, Maine.
“Declensions of the Verb To Buy” &
"Implements"—Susan Neville’s
essay collections include Indiana Winter and Fabrication. She
is the author of the story collections Invention of Flight, which won
the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, and In the House of Blue
Lights, selected as one of the "Best Books of 1998" by the Chicago
Tribune, and Iconography, a memoir and meditation on writing. Her
most recent book is Sailing the Inland Sea: On Writing, Literature, and
Land (Quarry Books, 2007). A recipient of a National Endowment for the
Arts Fellowship and a Pushcart Prize, Neville teaches at Butler University
in Indianapolis.
“Good Enough for Guppies”—Jacob
M. Appel is a graduate of the MFA program in creative
writing at New York University. His short fiction has recently appeared in
the Greensboro Review, The Missouri Review, StoryQuarterly,
Southwest Review and elsewhere. Appel currently teaches at the Gotham
Writers Workshop in New York City.
“Four Postcard Captions”—Michael
Martone
has recently published Double-wide, a collection of his work over the
past two decades, and Michael Martone: Fictions, a memoir in
contributor’s notes. He is the author of many books of short fiction
including
Seeing Eye, Pensées: The Thoughts of Dan Quayle, Fort Wayne
Is Seventh on Hitler's List, Safety Patrol, and Alive and Dead
in Indiana.
Michael Martone Answers Some
Questions >>
“The Pyromaniac's Chickens”—Adam
Peterson
graduated from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. His work has appeared
or is forthcoming in The Cream City Review and Flint Hills Review.
Reviews
“The Fates Embodied: Nickole Browns Sister”—Melanie
Jordan received her PhD in creative writing and literature
at the University of Houston. Her work has appeared in Iowa Review,
Black Warrior Review, Southeast Review, Diagram,
Poetry Southeast, and Pebble Lake Review.
“Pathos
and Paradoxes”—Patrick
Shaw is director of composition at the University of
Southern Indiana. Previously, he taught at Lindsey Wilson College, in
south-central Kentucky.
“Water
Cure by Percival Everett: A Review”—Contributing editor
Brenda DeMartini’s
stories and poems have appeared in Confrontation, Kansas Quarterly,
Minnesota Review, Mississippi Mud, The Sun, and
Three Rivers Poetry Journal.
"The Task of Truth”—Mihaela Moscaliuc’s co-translations of Romanian poetry appear in
Arts & Letters,
Connecticut Review,
Mid-American Review,
Mississippi Review, and elsewhere.
Other publications include articles in
Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal and History of the Literary Cultures
in East-Central Europe and
Interculturality and Translation; book reviews in
TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner,
Georgia Review,
Fugue, and
Poetry International; and poems in
Great River Review, Near East
Review, Crab Orchard Review,
New Letters,
The English Record, and
Meridians.
“Something Like Love: Review of Benjamin Percy's
Refresh, Refresh”—Ken
Gillam
is an assistant professor in rhetoric and composition and assistant-
director of the writing program at the University of Southern Indiana.
An Interview with Benjamin Percy
>>
