~CONTRIBUTORS' NOTES~

WILLIAM ALLEGREZZA teaches at Indiana University-Northwest, and he edits the e-zine moria.  He has published numerous poems, translations, and reviews online and in print.

STEPHEN BENZ has published poems in Borderlands, Clackamas Literary Review, Mangrove, Tar River Poetry, and TriQuarterly, among other journals.  He is also the author of two books of creative nonfiction: Guatemalan Journey (University of Texas Press) and Green Dreams (Lonely Planet).

REBECCA DUNHAM is a graduate student seeking a Ph.D in Creative Writing at the University of Missouri.

MARY CARTER GINN is a free-lance writer and former columnist.  Her poetry has been published in two anthologies Fishing Underground: A Poet's Guide to Creating, Publishing and Beyond and Meanderings: A Chemung River Watershed Anthology, as well as various literary journals.  She is a co-author with Jerry Fong of the chapbook, All I've Known of Wanting (H & H Press).  Her honors include grants from the New York State Council on the Arts and Poets & Writers Magazine.

H. PALMER HALL is the author of five books, including The Librarian and the University (Scarecrow Press), A Measured Response (Pecan Grove Press), and Deep Thicket & Still Waters (Chili Verde Press).  His poems, essays, and short stories have also appeared in numerous literary journals, including Ascent, North American Review, Texas Review, and War, Literature & the Arts, as well as various anthologies.  He is the library director and teaches English at St. Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas.  "Why I Still Write about the War" is reprinted from his latest book, Reflections on Writing, Publishing, & Other Things (Pecan Grove Press).

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. 

RHODA JANZEN teaches creative writing at Hope College in Holland, Michigan.  She has recently had work appear in American Literary Review, Borderlands, The Gettysburg Review, and The Yale Review.

ROBIN KEMP is a 2003 Hambidge Center for the Arts fellow.  She holds an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of New Orleans, and she has work in various magazines, including Chattahoochee Review and Texas Review.

JESSE LEE KERCHEVAL is the author of six books, including Space, a memoir about growing up in Florida during the moon race.  Her second poetry collection, Dog Angel, is forthcoming from the University of Pittsburgh Press.  She teaches at the University of Madison-Wisconsin, where she directs both the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and their new MFA program.

JEFF KNORR is the author of a collection of poetry, Standing Up to the Day (Pecan Grove Press), and the co-author of Mooring Against the Tide: Writing Poetry and Fiction (Prentice Hall), as well as the co-editor of A Writer's Country (Prentice Hall).  His work has appeared in Chelsea, Connecticut Review, Red Rock Review, and other journals.  He teaches literature and writing at Sacramento City College. 

HEATHER MARING is a graduate of the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop currently earning a Ph.D. in creative writing at the University of Missouri.  Her poetry was selected as a winner of the Associated Writing Programs-Intro Award. 

JANET MCCANN is a professor in the English Department at Texas A & M University.  Her most recent book of poetry is Looking for Buddha in the Barbed Wire Garden (Avisson Press).  She has also edited two anthologies of poetry.  Her poems have appeared in  numerous magazines, including Kansas Quarterly, McCall's, New York Quarterly, Nimrod, and Parnassus. 

ANDREW MULVANIA, a doctoral candidate in the creative writing program at the University of Missouri-Columbia, received an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Virginia in 1999 and has been the recipient of Jacob K. Javits and Henry Hoyns Fellowships. His poems have appeared in various journals, including The North American Review, Poetry, and Southern Poetry Review.

JIM MURPHYis an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Montevallo in Alabama.  His chapbook, The Memphis Sun (Kent State University Press), was a Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Award winner.  Some of his poems have recently appeared in or are forthcoming from Alaska Quarterly Review, Brooklyn Review, Cimarron Review, Fine Madness, Gulf Coast, Painted Bride Quarterly, Puerto del Sol, Southern Poetry Review, Southern Review, TriQuarterly, and others. 

NICOLE PEKARSKE is completing her Ph.D. at the University of Missouri. She received a Thors Memorial Grant in 1996 and has had poems appear in such journals as Georgia Review, Gettysburg Review, and Poetry Monthly (UK). 

SHEROD SANTOS is the author of five books of poetry, most recently this year's The Perishing (W.W. Norton) from which the poems in this issue are reprinted.  His previous collection of poems, The Pilot Star Elegies, was a finalist for both the National Book Award and The New Yorker Book Award.  His other honors include an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the B.F. Connors Long Poem Prize from the Paris Review, and the Poetry Society of America's Lyric Poetry Prize.  His book of essays on poetry and poetics, A Poetry of Two Minds, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism.  He is Curators' Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Missouri.

PETER SERCHUK is the author of Waiting for Poppa at the Southtown Diner (University of Illinois Press).  His poetry has also appeared in various literary journals, including American Poetry Review, Mid-American Review, North American Review, Paris Review, and Poetry. 

RITA SIGNORELLI-PAPPAS's poems have been published widely and have most recently appeared in The Literary Review, Shenandoah, Southwest Review, and The Women's Review of Books.   She lives in Princeton, N.J. and works at the Educational Testing Service.

ANN SILSBEE's book, Orioling, won the Benjamin Saltman Prize and was published this year by Red Hen Press just before her death.  Her poems have been published in Atlanta Review, Nimrod, Seneca Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, and other journals, as well as a chapbook, Naming the Disappeared.  A posthumous collection of her poetry, The Book of Ga, is forthcoming in 2004.  

RICARDO STERNBERG's collection of poems , Bamboo Church (McGill University Press) was published this year.  He is also the author of two previous collections of poetry, The Invention of Honey and Map of Dreams, both published by Vehicule Press.  His poems have also appeared in a variety of magazines, including American Poetry Review, Descant, The Nation, Paris Review, Poetry, and others. 

KATHRINE VARNES is editor with Annie Finch of the recent An Exaltation of Forms (University of Michigan Press) and Assistant Programs Director for the Center for the Literary Arts in Columbia, Missouri.  She's had poems recently published in American Literary Review, Comstock Review, and Salt River Review.

BENJAMIN VOGT was recently a finalist for the Stadler Fellowship, has an MFA from Ohio State University, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in poetry at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His poems have been published or will soon appear in Adirondack Review, Comstock Review, Diagram, Evansville Review, and Harpur Palate.  "Uncle with Landscape  — Kansas 1954" will be included next fall in the anthology Red, White and Blues: Poetic Vistas on the Promise of America, edited by Virgil Suarez and Ryan G. Van Cleave.
 

The author photo of Sherod Santos is by Alan Kennedy.