Contributors Summer 2012

Cover

Lightmark No. 56, Cenci Goepel + Jens Warnecke.

Lightmark, the body of work by the German artists Cenci Goepel and Jens Warnecke, was created by photographing moving light sources at night. Long exposures, up to an hour in length, are required to allow torchlight to take form and for the very low level of ambient light, usually from the moon, to illuminate the scenery. Using a digital medium format camera for their photography, Goepel and Warnecke focus on photographic techniques rather than post processing to achieve the results they are aiming for. The couple travel all over the world in search of locations with secret natures they seek to reveal through their light paintings. For more information on their work, their website is www.lightmark.de.

Prose

Garth Risk Hallberg is the author of A Field Guide to the North American Family. His writing has appeared in Glimmer Train, Canteen, Slate, The New York Magazine, New York magazine, and Best New American Voices 2008.
Scott Nadelson is the author of three story collections, most recently Aftermath (Hawthorne Books). His stories and essays have recently appeared in Ploughshares, New England Review, Crazyhorse, Post Road, and Glimmer Train. A winner of the Oregon Book Award, the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award, and the Reform Judaism Fiction Prize, he teaches at Willamette University and in the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA Program at Pacific Lutheran University. His first book of nonfiction, The Next Scott Nadelson: A Life in Progress, is forthcoming.
Gerald Shapiro authored three collections of fiction: Little Men, Bad Jews and Other Stories, and From Hunger. Bad Jews was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award for fiction and From Hunger won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for Jewish fiction. He co-wrote (with Peter Riegert) the screenplay for the film King of the Corner, an adaptation of Bad Jews. He also edited the anthology American Jewish Fiction: A Century of Stories and co-edited (with Leonard J. Greenspoon and Ronald A. Simkins) Food and Judaism.
Robert J. Stevens writes fiction by hand in New York City, where he is training to be a spiritual counselor. His work has also appeared in Joyland and Threepenny Review.
Justin Taylor is the author of The Gospel of Anarchy and the story collection Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches at the Pratt Institute.
Nancy Welch is a professor of English at the University of Vermont and author of The Road from Prosperity: Stories (Southern Methodist UP). Her stories have appeared in Greensboro Review, Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. Her story ‘‘Mental,’’ from Prairie Schooner 73(2), received a Readers’ Choice award and O. Henry citation.
Melissa Yancy’s short fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train Stories, One Story, Meridian, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Los Angeles, where she has worked in the nonprofit sector for the last ten years.

Poetry

Keith Alexander lives in Los Angeles and part of the year in Frankfurt. He has had poems published in numerous journals including Seneca Review, The Sun Magazine, Massachusetts Review, and Salt Hill Journal. At present he is translating a small selection of German poems and finishing his own collection of poems, his first, The Book of Treatments.
Bruce Bond’s most recent and forthcoming collections of poetry include Choir of the Wells (Etruscan P), The Visible (LSU P), Peal (Etruscan P), and Blind Rain (LSU P). Presently he is Regents Professor of English at the University of North Texas and poetry editor for American Literary Review.
Gloria Boyer’s poetry has appeared in a number of literary journals, including Poetry Northwest, Seattle Review, and Pennsylvania Review. She was a recipient of the Theodore Roethke, Vernon M. Spence, Joan Grayston, and Academy of American Poets College poetry prizes. She lives in Pennsylvania and works as a technical writer.
Fleda Brown’s memoir is Driving with Dvoˇrák (U of Nebraska P). Her most recent collection of poems, Reunion (U of Wisconsin P), won the Felix Pollak Prize. The author of five previous collections of poems, Brown has won a Pushcart Prize, the Philip Levine Prize, the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award, and her work has twice been a finalist for the National Poetry Series. She is professor emerita at the University of Delaware and past poet laureate of Delaware. She now lives in Traverse City, Michigan, and is on the faculty of the Rainier Writing Workshop, a low-residency MFA program.
Paul Dickey’s They Say This Is How Death Came into the World (Mayapple P) was nominated for the 2011 National Book Award. Dickey’s poetry recently has appeared or is forthcoming in Verse Daily, Rattle, Sentence, Mid-American Review, and Potomac Review, among many other online and print publications. His poetry chapbook is What Wisconsin Took (Parallel P).
Brandi George’s work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Cimarron Review, Gulf Coast, CutBank, Best New Poets 2010, and elsewhere. She currently resides in Tallahassee, Florida, where she teaches writing.
Robert Gibb’s books include The Origins of Evening (Norton), which was a National Poetry Series winner. Among his other awards are two National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) fellowships and a Pushcart Prize. His two new books of poetry are Sheet Music (Autumn House P) and The Empty Loom (Arkansas P).
Jean Janzen has six collections of poetry, the most recent titled Paper House (Good Books). Entering the Wild, a memoir, is forthcoming. She is the recipient of a NEA award and has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
John Kinsella’s new volume of poetry is Jam Tree Gully (Norton). His volume of short stories, In the Shade of the Shady Tree (Ohio University P), is forthcoming.
Maxine Kumin’s seventeenth collection of poetry, Where I Live: New and Selected Poems 1990–2010 (Norton), received a Los Angeles Times Book Award. A former U.S. poet laureate and winner of the Pulitzer and Ruth Lilly Prizes, she lives with her husband on a farm in New Hampshire.
Robert McNamara’s most recent book of poetry is The Body and the Day. He has received fellowships from the NEA and Fulbright Scholar Program, and has translated with the author Sarat Kumar Mukhopadhyay a volume of his selected poems, The Cat Under the Stairs. His third book of poems, Incomplete Strangers (Salmon P), is forthcoming.
Sharon Olds is the author of nine books of poetry, the most recent being One Secret Thing (Random House). She held the position of New York State Poet from 1998 to 2000 and was elected an Academy of American Poets chancellor in 2006. She teaches graduate-level poetry workshops at New York University and a workshop at Goldwater Hospital in New York.
Donald Platt’s fourth book of poems is Dirt Angels (New Issues Poetry & Prose). He has been awarded two fellowships from the NEA and three Pushcart Prizes. His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in the American Poetry Review, AGNI, Shenandoah, and Western Humanities Review. He is a professor of English and teaches in the MFA program at Purdue University.
Chad Prevost has authored two full-length collections and two anthologies. His forthcoming collection is Life’s White Machine. He serves as publisher and editorial director of C&R Press. His creative work is in print in the Huffington Post, Mid-American Review, Puerto Del Sol, Seattle Review, Sentence, Southern Review, and City of the Big Shoulders (Iowa UP).
Floyd Skloot’s newest books are the poetry collection The Snow’s Music (LSU P), the memoir The Wink of the Zenith: The Shaping of a Writer’s Life (U of Nebraska P), and the short story collection Cream of Kohlrabi (Tupelo P). His seventh collection of poems, Close Reading (Tupelo P), is forthcoming.
Avery Slater’s work has recently appeared in Raritan, Slate, Poetry London, and Literary Imagination. She is a PhD student in English at Cornell University where she co-curates the experimental poetry reading series SOON.
Jason Tandon is the author of three collections of poetry: Give Over the Heckler and Everyone Gets Hurt (Black Lawrence P), winner of the 2006 St. Lawrence Book Award; Wee Hour Martyrdom (sunnyoutside); and Quality of Life (Black Lawrence P). He teaches in the writing program at Boston
University.
Alexandra Teague is the author of Mortal Geography (Persea), winner of the 2009 Lexi Rudnitsky Prize and the 2010 California Book Award. Her poetry has appeared in Best American Poetry 2009, Best New Poets 2008, and many journals. The recipient of a 2011 NEA grant, she is an assistant professor of poetry at the University of Idaho.
Katie Umans has published poems in Crazyhorse, Columbia, Indiana Review, Barrow Street, and elsewhere. Her latest work, Flock Book (Black Lawrence P), won the St. Lawrence Book Award and is forthcoming. She currently lives in New Hampshire, where she was supported by a State Council for the Arts grant.
Charles Harper Webb’s most recent book is Shadow Ball: New and Selected Poems (U of Pittsburgh P). What Things Are Made Of (U of Pittsburgh P) is forthcoming. He is a recipient of grants from the Whiting and Guggenheim foundations and directs the MFA program in creative writing at California State University–Long Beach.

Reviews

Elinor Benedict has published five chapbooks and two collections of poetry, the most recent being Late News from the Wilderness. Her first book, All that Divides Us, won the May Swenson Award. She is working on a third collection titled Early Girl. She was the founding editor of Passages North.
Alyse Bensel currently is pursuing her MFA at Penn State University. She teaches at nonprofit organizations and works for a share program at a local Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm. Her poetry has appeared in MAYDAY Magazine, Cider Press Review, Foothill Poetry, Meadowland Review, among others.
Catherine Grandorff is a writer, activist, and graduate student at South Dakota State University, where she currently serves as head editor for Oakwood: SDSU’s Literary and Art Magazine. Her work will appear in the forthcoming volume Influence, Action, and Voice: Contemporary South Dakota Women.
Brooke Horvath teaches at Kent State University. His most recent books are The Lecture on Dust (Bottom Dog P), a collection of poetry, and Entrapment and Other Writings (Seven Stories P), a selection of Nelson Algren’s unpublished and uncollected work, co-edited with Dan Simon.
Marianne Kunkel’s poems have appeared in Columbia Poetry Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Poet Lore, Rattle, and elsewhere. Her chapbook The Laughing Game (Finishing Line P) is forthcoming. She is the managing editor of Prairie Schooner.
Steve Langan is the author of Freezing, Meet Me at the Happy Bar, and Notes on Exile and Other Poems. His poems are in recent or forthcoming issues of North American Review, Gettysburg Review, Fence, Iowa Review, Pool, and Copper Nickel. Langan lives in Omaha, Nebraska, and on Cliff Island, Maine.
Willis Goth Regier is the director of the University of Illinois Press. His most recent book is Quotology (U of Nebraska P), which was selected as a Choice ‘‘Outstanding Academic Title.’’
Matthew Shenoda is the author of the poetry collections Somewhere Else (Coffee House Press), winner of the American Book Award, and Seasons of Lotus, Seasons of Bone (BOA Editions).