~CONTRIBUTORS' NOTES~

KRISTIN ABRAHAM has had work published in various literary magazines, including Cafe Review and The Journal. Her collection of poetry, Orange Reminds You of Listening, won the 2005 Elixir Press chapbook contest. She currently teaches at Adrian College in Michigan.

MARY BIDDINGER is the author of Prairie Fever (Steel Toe Books, 2007), and her poetry has appeared in numerous journals, including Crazyhorse, Iowa Review, Notre Dame Review, and Ploughshares. She is an associate editor of Rhino and the founding editor of Barn Owl Review. Biddinger teaches creative writing and literature as an Asistant Professor at the University of Akron.

RONDA BROATCH is the author of Some Other Eden, (Finishing Line Press, 2005).  She also is the recipient of the 2005 Kay Snow Poetry Award, the 2006 WPA William Stafford Award, and a 2007 Artist Trust GAP Grant.

PETER COOLEY has published seven books of poetry, six of them with Carnegie Mellon University Press, which will release his new volume, Divine Margins, this year. His poems have appeared widely in literary journals, including Chelsea, Kenyon Review, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, Salmagundi, Southern Review, and Southwest Review. 

LIGHTSEY DARST received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Literature in 2007. Her recent work has been published in Antioch Review, Gulf Coast, The Literary Review, and New Letters.

CAROL V. DAVIS won the 2007 T.S. Eliot Poetry Award for her collection of poems, Into the Arms of Pushkin: Poems of St. Petersburg. Her work also has appeared in a number of literary journals, including Atlanta Review, Bellingham Review, Mid-American Review, Nimrod, and Prairie Schooner. She has served twice as a Fulbright scholar in St. Petersburg, Russia. Davis teaches at Santa Monica College. 

LYNNELL EDWARDS is the author of The Farmer's Daughter (2003) and The Highwayman's Wife (2007), both published by Red Hen Press. Her poetry and reviews have appeared in numerous literary journals, including Dos Passos Review, Georgia Review, Los Angeles Review, Pleiades, Poetry East, Rain Taxi, Southern Poetry Review, and Verse Daily.  She is the recipient of the 2007 Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council. Edwards lives in Louisville, Kentucky, where she teaches writing and literature courses at the University of Louisville.

CHRIS ELLIS has had previous poems and an interview of Jonathan Holden published in Valparaiso Poetry Review. She is a veterinarian who co-authored a book of avian and exotic animal studies. She also was a member of the Center for Disease Control in Fort Collins, Colorado, but now works and continues graduate studies at Kansas State University.

PATRICIA FARGNOLI, New Hampshire's Poet Laureate, is the author of three poetry books and two chapbooks of poems. Her latest book, Duties of the Spirit (Tupelo Press, 2005) was the winner of the 2005 Jane Kenyon Poetry Book Award. Her first book, Necessary Light (Utah State University Press), won the 1999 May Swenson Book Award. She has a new collection of poems forthcoming from Tupelo Press.

JOHN FINDURA received his BA from the William Paterson University of New Jersey and his MFA from The New School. His poetry and criticism have appeared in journals such as Alehouse, Fugue, Mid-American Review, and Verse. He lives and teaches in Northern New Jersey.

JEFFREY FRANK is a doctoral student in the Program of Philosophy and Education at Teachers College. His poetry has appeared in Anon and his book review of Robert Frost's notebooks was recently published in the Teachers College Record.

BRENT GOODMAN is the author of two chapbooks of poetry, Trees Are the Slowest Rivers (Sarasota Poetry Theatre Press,) and Wrong Horoscope (Thorngate Road Press), which won the 1999 Frank O'Hara Chapbook Award. His poems have appeared in various literary jornals, including Beloit Poetry Journal, Court Green, Green Mountains Review, Poetry, Poetry East, Puerto Del Sol, Rattle, and Zone 3.

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.

JULIA KASDORF's books of poetry include Eve's Striptease (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998) and Sleeping Preacher (1992), which received the 1991 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize and the Great Lakes Colleges Award for New Writing in 1993. She is also the author of the biography Fixing Tradition: Joseph W. Yoder, Amish American (2003) and The Body and the Book: Writing from a Mennonite Life, 1991-1999 (2001), which won the Book of the Year Award from the Modern Language Association's Conference on Christianity and Literature. With Michael Tyrell, she edited the anthology Broken Land: Poems of Brooklyn (2007). Kasdorf's poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Paris Review, and Poetry, as well as numerous anthologies. She currently teaches creative writing at Pennsylvania State University.

APRIL LINDNER's poetry collection, Skin, received the 2002 Walt McDonald First Book Prize from Texas Tech University Press. Her poems have appeared in The Formalist, Hudson Review, Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, and many other magazines, as well as in anthologies and textbooks, including Good Poems (Garrison Keillor, ed.); Poetry: A Pocket Anthology (R. S. Gwynn, ed.); and Western Wind (edited by John Frederick Nims and David Mason). With R. S. Gwynn, Lindner co-edited Contemporary American Poetry, an anthology in Longman's Penguin Academics series.  She also edited Lineas Connectadas (Sarabande Books 2006), an anthology of new poetry from the United States, translated into Spanish for a Mexican audience. April Lindner is an associate professor of English at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia.

FRANNIE LINDSAY's second volume of poetry, Lamb, was selected Perugia Press's 2006 Intro Award winner and was the runner-up for the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. Her first volume,  Where She Always Was (Utah State University Press, 2004), was selected by J.D. McClatchy as the winner of the May Swenson Award. Her poems also have appeared individually in Atlantic Monthly, Black Warrior Review, Field, Harvard Review, Prairie Schooner, Quarterly West, Southern Review, Yale Review, and many other journals. They have also been featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, and they have been read by Garrison Keillor on National Public Radio's Writer's Almanac.

JOANNE LOWERY's poems have appeared in many literary magazines, including Atlanta Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, 5 AM, Passages North, and Poetry East.

JENNIFER MACPHERSON is a founding editor of Comstock Review and she currently serves as Senior Editor. Her work has been published widely in such journals as Calyx, Connecticut Review, Louisiana Literature, The MacGuffin, Poet Lore, Poetry International, Sulphur River Literary Review, and South Carolina Review. She is the author Stuck in Time (2002) and Greatest Hits (2001), both from Pudding House Press. Her other collections include A Nickel Tour of the Soul (FootHills Press, 2004), and In the Mixed Gender of the Sea (Spire Press, 2004) which won the Spire Press Poetry Book Award. Her latest book is Rosary of Bones (Cherry Grove Collections, 2007). A school psychologist for over twenty-five years, MacPherson lives in Syracuse, NY.

GREG MCBRIDE's poems, essays, and reviews appear in various journals, including Chaatauqua Literary Journal, Connecticut Review, Gettysburg Review, Hollins Critic, Poet Lore, and elsewhere. He is the editor of Innisfree Poetry Journal.

PEGGY MILLER leads poetry workshops and is an editor for Comstock Review.  She is the author of What the Blood Knows (Custom Words, 2007), the chapbook Martha Contemplates the Universe (Frith Press), and a Greatest Hits chapbook from Pudding House Press. Her poems have appeared in Connecticut River Review, Karamu, Lucid Stone, and others.

JOEY NICOLETTI has had work in various periodicals, including Aethlon, Free Lunch, Gulf Stream, Italian Americana, Red River Review, and other journals. He teaches creative writing at Kent State University. 

DOUG RAMSPECK's poetry collection, Black Tupelo Country, was selected for the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry and will be published by BkMk Press in the fall of 2008. His poems have appeared in Confrontation Magazine, Connecticut Review, Hunger Mountain, Nimrod, Rattle, Seneca Review, West Branch, and numerous other literary journals. He teaches composition and creative writing, as well as directs the Writing Center, at The Ohio State University at Lima.

SEAN DAVID ROSS's work has appeared in, among others, Beacon Street Review, GSU Review, GW Review, Mad Poet's Review, and National Forum. He teaches 9th and 10th grade English at a Jewish private school in Phoenix.

LEX RUNCIMAN is the author of Out of Town (2004), part of the Northwest Poetry Series from Cloudbank Books.  His second collection, The Admirations, won the Oregon Book Award.  A new volume of poetry, Starting from Anywhere, is forthcoming from Salmon Publishing in 2009. His work also has appeared in such magazines as Antaeus, Missouri Review, Northwest Review, Verse, and others.  He teaches at Linfield College.

DON SCHOFIELD's poems, essays and translations have appeared in numerous American journals, including New England Review, Partisan Review, and Poets & Writers, as well as in journals in Europe and Asia.  The recipient of the Allen Ginsberg Award, he has also received honors from, among others, the State University of New York, Anhinga Press, Southern California Anthology and Princeton University, where, in 2002 he was a Stanley J. Seeger Writer-in-Residence.  His poetry volumes include Of Dust, a chapbook from March Street Press (1991); Approximately Paradise, a book-length collection (University Press of Florida, 2002); and the anthology Kindled Terraces:  American Poets in Greece (Truman State University Press, 2004).  A resident of Greece for over 25 years, he lives in Thessaloniki, and he is currently the Dean of Perrotis College, a branch of the American Farm School.

MARTIN WALLS is a Witter Bynner Poetry Fellow of the Library of Congress. He has published two volumes of poetry: Small Human Detail in Care of National Trust (New Issues, 2000) and Commonwealth (March Street, 2005). Individual poems have been published in Commonweal, Epoch, Field, Gettysburg Review, The Nation, Salt Hill, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. Other honors include a The Nation/Discovery prize and a Breadloaf Writers' Conference scholarship. Walls is managing editor of Syracuse-based Bentley-Hall, Inc., which publishes International Musician and Making Music magazines.

LAURA MADELINE WISEMAN's poetry and short stories have appeared in Blackbird, Geist, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Talking River Review, among other journals and magazines. She reads for and contributes book reviews to Prairie Schooner.

VINCENT WIXON is the author of two books of poems, The Square Grove (2006) and Seed (1993), and over the years he has published in various magazines and journals, as well as in three anthologies. Garrison Keillor read his poem “Tornado Weather” on The Writer’s Almanac. Wixon has produced videos on Oregon poets Lawson Inada and William Stafford, and has edited three Stafford books. He lives in Ashland, Oregon.