~CONTRIBUTORS' NOTES~

JEFFREY ALFIER lives in Bechhofen, Germany, and he has formerly served as an adjunct faculty member with City Colleges of Chicago's European Division.  He is a member of the United Poets Coalition.  His publications include A Time of Trial (Hidden Brook Press, 2002), Uno: A Poetry Anthology (Xlibris, 2002), and Because I Fly (McGraw-Hill, 2001).  His poetry has appeared in many journals, including CrossConnect, Melic Review, Paumanok Review, Pif Magazine, Poetry Greece, The Richmond Review, Trinity College Journal, and Web Del Sol.

KEVIN ARNOLD is president of  Poetry Center San José, which has recently moved into the historical home of Edwin Markham.  He is also active in the MFA program at San José State University and in Waverly Writers, a Palo Alto poetry group.

CLAIRE BATEMAN has had three books of poetry published: The Bicycle Slow Race (Wesleyan University Press), Friction (Eighth Mountain Press), and At the Funeral of the Ether (Ninety-Six Press).  Her fourth collection of poems, Clumsy, is forthcoming from New Issues Press.

ACE BOGGESS has had work in Atlanta Review, California Quarterly, Florida Review, Harvard Review, Notre Dame Review, and many other journals.  He is a 2001 fellowship recipient from the West Virginia Division of Culture and History.

KIM BRIDGFORD directs the writing program at Fairfield University, where she is a professor of English and poetry editor of Dogwood.  Her poetry has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Georgia Review, Massachusetts Review, North American Review, Redbook, and Witness.  She received an NEA Fellowship for 1999-2000, and she has two forthcoming books of poetry, Eden's Gift from Aralia Press and Undone from David Robert Books.

CYRIL DABYDEEN has written eight books of poetry, five collections of short stories, and three novels.  He has also edited two anthologies.  His work has appeared widely in literary magazines and anthologies in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Asia, and the Caribbean.  He is a former Poet Laureate of Ottawa, where he teaches at the University of Ottawa.

R. G. EVANS has had poetry and fiction in The Best of Pif Magazine Offline, Comstock Review, and Paterson Literary Review, among other publications.  He teaches high school English in New Jersey and is a student in the MFA Creative Writing program at Fairleigh-Dickinson University.

BERNARDINE EVARISTO is the author of a poetry collection, The Island of Abraham (Peepal Tree, 1994), and two novels in verse, Lara (Angela Royal Publishing, 1997) and The Emperor's Babe (Hamish Hamilton Press, 2001) — a work centered upon the life of Zuleika, the daughter of Sudanese migrants in London in 211A.D., and from which the poems included in this issue are drawn. Lara won the EMMA Award for Best Novel, and The Emperor's Babe received a Writers' Award.  Evaristo's writings have been widely published in anthologies, magazines, and newspapers, and she has written for theater and radio.  She was the Poetry Society's Poet in Residence at the Museum of London in 1999.  In 2002, she was Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia and at Barnard College.

ANN FISHER-WIRTH has had poems published in Comstock Review, Feminist Studies, Florida Review, Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, Louisiana Literature, and Southwest Review.  She received an Artist Fellowship from the Mississippi Council for the Humanities.  Her first collection of poems, Blue Window, is forthcoming from Archer Books.  She teaches poetry and environmental literature at the University of Mississippi.  For the 2002-2003 academic year, she holds the Uppsala Chair of American Studies at Uppsala University in Sweden.

CHARLES FISHMAN is director of the Distinguished Speakers Program at the State University of New York at Farmingdale, where he previously directed the Visiting Writers Program for 18 years. His books include Mortal Companions, The Firewalkers, Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust, and The Death Mazurka, which was selected by the American Library Association as one of the outstanding books of 1989.  His eighth chapbook, Time Travel Reports, was published by Timberline Press in 2002.

JEFF FRIEDMAN's latest collection of poetry is Taking Down the Angel (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2003), in which "Two Salesmen (Sunday Night, Fall 1961)" appears.  His previous books of poetry include The Record-Breaking Heat Wave (BkMk Press — University of Missouri-Kansas City, 1986) and Scattering the Ashes (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1998).  His work has appeared widely in literary magazines such as American Poetry Review, Antioch Review, Manoa, New England Review,Pleiades, and Poetry.

ALICE FRIMAN has recently had work appear in Boulevard, Georgia Review, Poetry, and Prairie Schooner, among other journals.  Her latest collection of poems, Zoo (University of Arkansas Press, 1999) won the Ezra Pound Poetry Award from Truman State University and the Sheila Motton Prize from the New England Poetry Club.  She is a recipient of a Creative Renewal Fellowship from the Arts Council of Indianapolis, and she was a winner of the James Boatwright Prize from Shenandoah.  "This April" first appeared in The Ohio Review.

PAMELA GARVEY has had poems previously published in such journals as Pleiades, The Santa Barbara Review, Sonora Review, The South Carolina Review, and Sou'wester.  She is a professor of English at St. Louis Community College-Meramec.

GREGG HERTZLIEB is the Director of the Brauer Museum of Art at Valparaiso University.  He has been awarded the Edward L. Ryerson Traveling Fellowship by the School of the Art Institute in Chicago and a Conant Writing Award for Poetry from Millikin University.  His artwork has been exhibited widely, including at the Aron Packer Gallery, August House Studio, the Central School of Art and Design in London, Columbia College, Elgin Community College, the Goodman Theater, and Struve Gallery. 

Z. MICHAEL JACK has had poems published in various literary journals, including Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, Louisville Review, New Orleans Review, and Third Coast.  His poetry also has received the Prentice Hall Poetry Prize.  He is an Assistant Professor of English and Journalism at Tusculum College in Greeneville, Tennessee.

ADRIANNE KALFOPOULOU's first full-length collection of poetry, Wild Greens, was published by Red Hen Press in 2002.  Fig won the 2000 Women's Poetry Chapbook Contest from the Sarasota Poetry Theater Press.  She has also written on 19th- and 20th-century texts for various scholarly journals and published a volume of criticism, The Untidy House: A Discussion of the Ideology of the American Dream in the Culture's Female Discourses (Edwin Mellen, 2000).  She teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Laverne's Athens campus in Greece.

KAREN MCCARTHY is an editor of two anthologies: Bittersweet: Contemporary Black Women's Poetry (The Women's Press, 2000), which was nominated for Best Book in the EMMA Awards, and Kin: New Short Fiction by Black and Asian Women (The Women's Press, 2002).  She has also written scripts and screenplays for British theater and television.

STEVEN SCHROEDER teaches in Liberal Studies and Philosophy at Roosevelt University in Chicago.  He is the author of four books, and his poetry has appeared in a number of journals, including The Cresset, Georgetown Review, Halcyon, Petroglyph, and Rhino.

LIZ TILTON is a graduate student working toward a PhD. in English at the University of Cincinnati.

LAURA LEE WASHBURN is an Assistant Professor at Pittsburg State University, an editorial board member of the Woodley Memorial Press, as well as the author of This Good Warm Place (March Street Press, 1998) and Watching the Contortionists (Palanquin Chapbook Prize, 1996).  Her poetry has appeared in such literary magazines as Clackamas Literary Review, The Journal, and Quarterly West.

JAMES R. WHITLEY's poetry collection, Immersion (Lotus Press, 2002), was selected by Lucille Clifton as the winner of the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award.  His work has been published in various journals, including Coal City Review, Icon, Peregrine, and Xavier Review.