~CONTRIBUTORS' NOTES~

GIL ALLEN lives in Travelers Rest, South Carolina, and teaches at Furman University.  His recent poems have appeared in a number of literary journals, including The James Dickey Newsletter, Pembroke Magazine, Poem, Poetry Bay, Shenandoah, South Carolina Review, and Verse Daily, as well as the anthology In a Fine Frenzy: Poets Respond to Shakespeare (University of Iowa Press).  He co-edited the anthology A Milllenial Sampler of South Carolina Poetry, published by Ninety-Six Press in 2005.    

NED BALBO's first book of poetry, Galileo's Banquet, received the Towson University Prize for Literature. His recent collection, Lives of the Sleepers, won the Ernest Sandeen Prize in 2005 and was published by the University of Notre Dame Press.  It also was a finalist for the Arlin G. Meyer Prize.  His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Antioch Review, Crab Orchard Review, Dogwood, Pleiades and many other journals. He teaches at Loyola College in Baltimore.

CLAIRE BATEMAN's books are The Bicycle Slow Race (Wesleyan, 1991), Friction (Eighth Mountain, 1998), At the Funeral of the Ether (Ninety-Six Press, 1998), Clumsy (New Issues Press, 2003), and Leap (New Issues Press, 2005).

ANNE BRITTING BOWMAN's work has most recently been published in Elysian Fields Quarterly, Fox Cry, Limestone, Midwest Poetry Review, Small Pond, and elsewhere.  She teaches high school English in Maine.

KIM BRIDGFORD directs the writing program at Fairfield University, where she is a professor of English and editor of Dogwood.  Her works of poetry and fiction have appeared in Christian Science Monitor, Iowa Review, Massachusetts Review, North American Review, Redbook, and Witness.  She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts.  Her books of poetry are Undone (David Robert Books, 2003) and Instead of Maps (David Robert Books, 2005).

MICHELLE BROOKS has had poetry and fiction in Alaska Quarterly Review, Baltimore Review, Blue Mesa Review, Cold Mountain Review, Confluence, Hayden's Ferry Review, Madison Review, Natural Bridge, Slipstream, and elsewhere.  She currently lives in Detroit, where she teaches creative writing.  Her first chapbook, No Half-Measures Here, won the Ledge Press Award in 2004.

MICHAEL DOBBERSTEIN teaches creative writing, desktop publishing, and literature at Purdue University-Calumet.  He has published poems in The Cumberland Review, The Formalist, The New Formalist, Poetry Magazine, and other journals.

JEANNINE DOBBS has had poetry in a number of journals, such as Chelsea, Massachusetts Review, and Shenandoah.  A collection of her work was published by Alice James Books as one-third of Three Some Poems.  Recently, her poetry has been reprinted in the anthology Ohio Review: New & Selected (1971-2001).

LYNNELL EDWARDS is the author of The Farmer's Daughter (Red Hen Press, 2003). A second collection, The Highwayman's Wife, will be published by Red Hen Press in the fall.  Her work has also appeared in numerous literary journals, including Dos Passos Review, Poems & Plays, Poetry East, and Southern Poetry Review. A regular reviewer for The Georgia Review, Pleiades, and Rain Taxi, she teaches at the University of Louisville.

BRENT FISK's writing has appeared in Kansas Quarterly, Pearl, Plainsongs, Rhino, Sulphur River Literary Review, and other journals.

DEBORAH FRIES has had poems published in numerous journals, including Cimarron Review, Cream City Review, and North American Review.  Her critical essays and articles have appeared in Milwaukee Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Terrain: A Journal of the Built and Natural Environments.  In 2004, Carolyn Forche selected her collection, Various Modes of Departure, for publication by Kore 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.

NORBERT KRAPF is the author of five full-length poetry collections, most recently Looking for God's Country, published by Time Being Books in 2005.  In 2006, Indiana University Press will publish Invisible Presence, a collaboration with Indiana photographer Darryl Jones.  His honors include the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America.  For 34 years he taught at Long Island University, where he directed the C.W. Post Poetry Center.

DIANE LOCKWARD's full-length collection of poetry, Eve's Red Dress, was published by Wind Publications in 2003, and her poetry has appeared widely in literary journals, including Ascent, Poet Lore, and Prairie Schooner.  Her poems also have recently been anthologized in the following books, Poetry Daily and Garison Keillor's Good Poems for Hard Times.

LAURIE MCDIARMID is Writer in Residence at St. Norbert's College.  A chapbook of her poetry, Float, is available from Finishing Line Press.

KATHLEEN MULLEN is professor emerita from the English Department at Valparaiso University.  Her poetry has appeared in The Cresset and previously in Valparaiso Poetry Review.

JEFF NEWBERRY is a student in the creative writing program at the University of Georgia in Athens.  His poems have appeared in California Quarterly, Eleventh Muse, G.W. Review, Permafrost, and storySouth, among others.

MAGGIE PAUL has published interviews of various poets, including Ralph Angel, Chris Buckley, Dana Gioia, Gary Young, and others.  Her chapbook of poems, Stones from the Baskets of Others, was published by Black Dirt in 2002.  She works as a non-fiction editor and college writing instructor in Santa Cruz County.

ALLAN PETERSON's manuscript of poetry, All the Lavish in Common, won the 2005 Juniper Prize and is forthcoming from the University of Massachusetts Press in 2006.  Anonymous Or won the Defined Providence Press competition and was published in 2002.  His recent journal publications include Adirondack Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Bellingham Review, Natural Bridge, Perihelion, Prairie Schooner, and West Wind.

MICHAEL SALCMAN was chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Maryland and president of the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore.  His poems have appeared in such magazines as Atlanta Review, Harvard Review, New York Quarterly, Nimrod, Poetry East, and Raritan, as well as in three chapbooks and a forthcoming collection, The Clock Made of Confetti (Orchises Press).

MATTHEW W. SCHMEER holds an MFA from the University of Missouri-St. Louis and edits Poetry Midwest.  He is the author of a chapbook of poetry, Twenty-One Cents (Pudding House Press, 2002), and his poems have recently appeared in Connecticut River Review, Natural Bridge, Segue, Sojourn, Soundings East, and Talking River Review, as well as other journals.  He is an assistant professor of English at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas. 

CATHERINE TUFARIELLO's first collection of poetry. Keeping My Name, was selected for the Walt McDonald Award and was published by Texas Tech University Press in 2004.  Keeping My Name won the 2005 Poet's Prize administered by the West Chester University Poetry Center, was chosen a 2005 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist, and was named a Booklist Editors' Choice for 2004.  Her poems and translations have appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies, including The Hudson Review, Poetry, Yale Italian Poetry, and The New Penguin Book of Love Poetry.  She has taught literature and writing courses at Cornell, The College of Charleston, the University of Miami, and Valparaiso University.  She currently works as the small grants administrator in the Project on Civic Reflection at Valparaiso University.  Sections I and II of "Light Riddles" previously appeared in The Susquehanna Quarterly. 

DAVI WALDERS' work has appeared in more than 150 publications, including American Scholar, Crab Orchard Review, Potomac Review, Seneca Review, and Washington Woman.  Her poetry has also appeared in various anthologies, such as Beyond Lament: Poets of the World Bearing Witness to the Holocaust (Northwestern University Press), Visiting Frost (University of Iowa Press), Women, Philanthropy, and Social Change (University Press of New England), and Worlds in Our Words: Contemporary American Women Writers (Prentice Hall).