~CONTRIBUTORS' NOTES~

JONATHAN ALEXANDER is an Assistant Professor of English and Women's Studies at the University of Cincinnati, where he teaches writing and computer-assisted composition, as well as lesbian and gay literature.  His published articles include work on queer theory, uses of theory in writing instruction, and analyses of the representation of sexuality and identity.

PATRICIA FARGNOLI's poetry in this issue is reprinted from her first book of poems, Necessary Light, which was selected by judge Mary Oliver as the winner of the May Swenson Poetry Prize and published by Utah State University Press.  In addition, she has received the Robert Frost Literary Award.  Her work has appeared widely in numerous literary journals, including Indiana Review, Laurel Review, Midwest Quarterly, Ploughshares, Poetry, and Poetry Northwest.  She teaches at the Keene Institute of Music and Related Arts.

JENNIFER FETT is a graduate of Valparaiso University and a winner of an Academy of American Poets Award.  She is currently working in the editing department of a firm in Evanston, Illinois, where she plans on attending graduate school at Northwestern University.

H. PALMER HALL is the author of From the Periphery: Poems and Essays (Chili Verde Press) and the editor of A Measured Response (Pecan Grove Press), an anthology of Vietnam War literature.  He was a Vietnamese interpreter/translator in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968.  He also has co-edited The Librarian in the University (Scarecrow Press).  His poems have appeared in Ascent, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, The Florida Review, Southern Indiana Review, and elsewhere.  He teaches English and is the library director at St. Mary's University.  "Ghost Lights" and "New Names" are reprinted from his latest book, Deep Thicket & Still Waters, just published by Chili Verde Press.

RUSS KESLER teaches at the University of Central Florida, where he has been editor of The Florida Review.  His poetry has been published in a number of literary journals.  "From a Fifties Childhood" first appeared in Connecticut Reviewand "Self Portrait" first appeared in New Virginia Review.

RACHEL LODEN is the author of a chapbook of poetry, The Last Campaign, winner of the Hudson Valley Writers' Center / Slapering Hol Press Prize for Poetry in 1998.  Her poems in this issue are reprinted from a first full-length collection of poems, Hotel Imperium, chosen a winner of the University of Georgia Press's Contemporary Poetry Series Competition.  Her work has also been included in the 1995 Best American Poetry anthology, as well as various journals, including Antioch Review, Boulevard, New American Writing, and Paris Review.

KATHLEEN MULLEN is a professor in the English Department and Director of the Teaching Resource Center at Valparaiso University.  "Cleome" first appeared in The Cresset.

LEILANI WRIGHT's first collection of poems, A Natural Good Shot, chronicling a four-year period when she lived in and renovated a log cabin in the Tonto National Forest of northern Arizona, won the White Eagle Coffee Store Press Poetry Prize.  She co-edited an anthology of contemporary Arizona poetry, Fever Dreams, published by the University of Arizona Press, and from which "Flash Flood" is reprinted.  Her work also has appeared in many literary journals, including Atlanta Review, Hawai'i Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, and South Carolina Review.