CONTRIBUTORS' NOTES

 

BOBBY NEEL ADAMS is a photographer living in New York. After getting picked up by the cops at LaGuardia Airport while he was photographing airplanes he wrote his first story, "How I Spent My Fifty-Third Birthday." It was published with photo illustrations in DAMn Magazine (Brussels) in 2007. In 2009, Adams suffered two toothaches and journeyed to Mexico on a medical holiday. His story, "Los Algodones: The Disneyland of Tooth Decay," was published in the Diner Journal in 2009. An excerpt was subsequently re-published in the Utne Reader and for unknown reasons re-titled "Border Crossing for a Root Canal." Following in the footsteps of such late-blooming writers as the Marquis de Sade, Anthony Burgess, and Charles Bukowski, Adams turned to writing in his fifties. He is presently working on eight new stories and continues to make and exhibit photographs.

JOSÉ Ð ALMEIDA was born in 1965 in Lisbon, Portugal. He studied design at the Graphic Arts School António Arroio, but it is a man of all trades. He is a painter and self-taught photographer, and his photography and photoart have been featured in several exhibitions since 2001. Find out more about his work at www.josealmeida-photoart.com.

JASON LEE BROWN is Series Editor of New Stories from The Midwest (Indiana University Press) and a contributing editor of River Styx. His writing has been nominated for six Pushcart Prizes and appeared in numerous literary journals, most recently The Literary Review, The Journal, Ecotone, Crab Orchard Review, and KROnline. He teaches writing at Eastern Illinois University and earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

TETMAN CALLIS earned a bachelor's degree in Philosophy, with high honors, from the University of Texas at El Paso, studied creative writing with Gordon Lish in New York City and at the MFA program at the University of New Mexico, and makes his living as a legal assistant. His stories and poems have appeared in various publications, including The New York Tyrant, Neon, Ontario Review, Denver Quarterly, and Cutthroat. Many of these are available at www.tetmancallis.com.

REBECCA COOK writes poetry and prose and has published in many literary journals. In 2012 new work appeared in Pank, Bitter Oleander, Grist, Southeast Review, Plume, Sliver of Stone, 2nd and Church, Stone Highway Review, JMWW, and Ilk. Her chapbook of poems, The Terrible Baby, is available from Dancing Girl Press. She blogs at godlikepoet.com.

ROB COOK's book-length poem Blueprints for a Genocide is available from Spuyten Duyvil. Work has appeared in The Bitter Oleander, Zoland, Caliban, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Versal, A cappella Zoo, Aufgabe, Arsenic Lobster, Colorado Review, Minnesota Review, etc. He lives in New York City and edits the journal Skidrow Penthouse.

RON CZERWIEN is the owner of Avol's, a used and out-of-print bookstore in Madison, WI. His poems have appeared in Alba: A Journal of Short Poetry, Arbor Vitae, After Hours, Hummingbird: Magazine of the Small Poem, Rosebud, Wisconsin Trails Magazine, Wisconsin Academy Review, and online at Moria, Nth Position, Qarrstiluni, Right Hand Pointing, and Shampoo. He also co-hosts the monthly "First Sunday Open Mike Poetry Readings" at The Fountain. "Poem for the Next Stranger I Meet" derives its form, in part, from a poem by Noelle Kocot.

MICHELLE DAVIS recently graduated from California State University, Fresno, with an honor’s degree in English and a minor in Creative Writing. Currently a freelance writer, Davis is working on a collection of short stories.

JACOB DOYLE is studying Creative Writing at Western Michigan University. He was born and raised in Flint, Michigan.

ELLEN ELDER has degrees from the University of Chicago, Miami University and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She spent her summers growing up in Ireland. Her poetry can be found in such places as The Cento: A Collection of Collage Poems (Red Hen Press) and online at Exquisite Corpse and DMQ Review, and is forthcoming in Prick of the Spindle and Descant. She was a runner-up in the Poetry Center of Chicago’s 2010 Annual Juried Reading Awards. She teaches at University of Cincinnati-Clermont College.

JEFF FRIEDMAN’s fifth collection of poetry, Working in Flour, was recently published by Carnegie Mellon University Press. His poems, mini stories, and translations have appeared in many literary magazines, including American Poetry Review, Poetry, 5 AM, Agni Online, Poetry International, Prairie Schooner, Antioch Review, Quick Fiction, Nighttrain, The 2River View, North American Review, Boulevard, and The New Republic. A contributing editor to Natural Bridge, he teaches at Keene State College in New Hampshire.

BENJAMIN GOLDBERG grew up outside Detroit, Michigan. He currently lives outside Washington, D.C., and works as a high school English teacher.

JOANNA L. GRISHAM holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Georgia College and an MA in English from Austin Peay State University. She currently lives in Lexington, Kemtucky, and teaches English composition and creative writing at two nearby universities. Her work has appeared in Reunion: The Dallas Review.

MICAH DEAN HICKS is an author of fables, modern fairy tales, and other kinds of magical stories. His work is published or forthcoming in over thirty magazines, including Indiana Review, Cream City Review, and SmokeLong Quarterly. His short story collection, Electricity and Other Dreams, is forthcoming from New American Press in early 2013.

ANTHONY JONES studied creative writing under Mona Simpson and David Wong Louie at UCLA, where he was awarded the Ruth Brill Scholarship. His short stories and poems have appeared in several publications including PANK, The Montreal Review, The Furnace Review, Poetry Quarterly, Black Heart Magazine, This Great Society, and Chaparral.

MARCEL LECOMTE (1900–1966) was a Belgian writer and member of the Belgian surrealist movement. Although he published several collections of poetry including Démonstrations (1922) and Applications (1925, a work that showcased two drawings from his friend, artist René Magritte), Lecomte is best known as a journalist and critic. He wrote widely on art and literature and maintained weekly political columns in Le Rouge et the Noir and La Laterne. The poems translated for this issue originally appeared in Le Coeur et la Main, a collection published posthumously in 1968.

JOHN MCKERNAN is a retired comma herder after teaching forty-one years at Marshall University. His most recent book is a selected poems, Resurrection of the Dust. He has published poems in The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, The New Yorker, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Journal, Antioch Review, Guernica, Field, and many other magazines and literary journals. A native of Omaha, Nebraska, he now lives—mostly—in West Virginia, where he edits ABZ Press.

EDUARD MÖRIKE (1804–1875) was a poet of the so-called Swabian School that originated in southwestern Germany in the second half of the nineteenth century. His works were published primarily between 1878 and 1905, and in addition to poems, hymns, odes, and elegies, included a popular novel, Maler Nolten (1901), and a novella, Mozart auf der Reise nach Prag (1856). He also translated Anacreon and Theocritus.

TARA MAE MULROY is currently the Managing Editor of The Pinch Literary Journal and an MFA candidate in Poetry at the University of Memphis. She has work published or forthcoming in The Los Angeles Review, Grist, The Meadow, Connotation Press, and others. Her blog is located at taramaemulroy.wordpress.com.

BRYAN PAIEMENT graduated from the University of North Carolina-Wilmington with a degree in creative writing. He is currently at work on a collection of essays, from which "Reserved for the Son" is an excerpt.

MARK PARSONS has published poems in Indiana Review, CrossConnect, Curbside Splendor, and Smalldoggies.

KATE PARTRIDGE lives in Fairfax, Virginia, where she is a student in the MFA program in poetry at George Mason University. She is the Assistant Managing Editor of So to Speak and a blogger for Poetry Instigator. Her poems have appeared in Prime Number Magazine and Blast Furnace.

JOSH PETERSON's work has appeared in the New Ohio Review, FLATMANCROOKED, and Permafrost.

FREDERICK POLLACK is the author of two book-length narrative poems, The Adventure and Happiness, both published by Story Line Press. He is an adjunct professor in creative writing at George Washington University.

DEREK POLLARD is co-author with Derek Henderson of the book Inconsequentia (BlazeVOX). His poems, creative non-fiction, and reviews appear in American Book Review, Colorado Review, Court Green, Diagram III, H_ngm_n, Pleiades, and Six-Word Memoirs on Love & Heartbreak, among numerous other anthologies and journals. He is Assistant Editor at Barrow Street, Inc.; a Black Mountain Institute Fellow at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas; and is on faculty at Pratt Institute and at the Downtown Writer’s Center in Syracuse, New York.

MARY QUADE's poems and essays have appeared most recently or are forthcoming in West Branch, The Cincinnati Review, Crab Orchard Review, Smartish Pace, Flyway, Grist, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Hayden's Ferry Review, and Devil's Lake. Her Guide to Native Beasts was published by Cleveland State Unversity Poetry Center. She teaches creative writing at Hiram College.

MAGGIE ROSENAU is currently at work on a translation of prose by Liane Dirks, and an artistic project concerning German diaspora and pre-war Ukraine. Her poetry has appeared in Persephonyx, a German literary magazine.

RICHARD SONNENMOSER recently published fiction and poetry in Harvard Review, West Branch, Crab Orchard Review, Permafrost, and Quarter After Eight. He teaches at Northwest Missouri State University, where he is also co-editor of The Laurel Review.

BRETT STRICKLAND's work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Southeast Review, Cold Mountain Review, Rock & Sling, Arsenic Lobster, and Jacket. He is finishing a graduate degree in Education at the University of Toledo.

JEFFREY TAYLOR received degrees from the University of Utah and the University of Massachusetts. He lives in Jamaica Plain, MA.

K. A. WISNIEWSKI is editor of The Comedy of Dave Chappelle: Critical Essays (2009). His critical and creative work has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, most recently in The
Chariton Review, Bluestem, The Maryland Historical Magazine, The Chiron Review, CAIRN, and the Sierra Nevada Review. He teaches Public History at Stevenson University in Baltimore, MD.

KIRBY WRIGHT was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. He is a graduate of Punahou School in Honolulu and the University of California at San Diego. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. Wright has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and is a past recipient of the Ann Fields Poetry Prize, the Academy of American Poets Award, the Browning Society Award for Dramatic Monologue, and Arts Council Silicon Valley Fellowships in Poetry and the Novel. Before the City, his first book of poetry, took first place at the 2003 San Diego Book Awards. Wright is also the author of the companion novels Punahou Blues and Moloka'i Nui Ahina, both set in Hawaii. He was a Visiting Fellow at the 2009 International Writers Conference in Hong Kong, where he represented the Pacific Rim region of Hawaii. He was also the 2011 Artist in Residence at Milkwood International, Czech Republic.

RYO YAMAGUCHI’s poems have appeared recently in such magazines as American Letters & Commentary, Birmingham Poetry Review, and Washington Square, among others. He works and lives in Chicago. Please visit him at plotsandoaths.com.

 

 

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