Contributors’ Notes
(vol. 29, #3)
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MALCOLM ALEXANDER’s poems have appeared in previous issues of NER, as well as in The North American Review, The Southern Review, Colorado Review, Black Warrior Review, Rattle, Beloit Poetry Journal, Verse Daily online, and numerous other places. He currently lives in Tucson, Arizona, and welcomes comments at malcolmalexander11@gmail.com.

MARIANNE BORUCH’s six poetry collections include Grace, Fallen from (Wesleyan, 2008) and Poems: New and Selected (Oberlin College Press, 2004). In the Blue Pharmacy (Trinity University Press, 2005) is her second book of essays about poetry. She teaches in the M.F.A. program at Purdue University and in the Warren Wilson M.F.A. Program for Writers. Her awards include Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation.

VICTORIA CHANG’s second book of poems, Salvinia Molesta, will be published by the University of Georgia Press in fall 2008 as part of the VQR Poetry Series. Her first book, Circle, won the Crab Orchard Review Open Competition and was published in 2005 by Southern Illinois University Press. She edited Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation (University of Illinois Press, 2004) and lives in Irvine, California.

GERI DORAN is the author of Resin, which received the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. A recent Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholar, she currently teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Oregon.

MOLIA DUMBLETON holds degrees from Oberlin College, Rice University, and Northwestern University, where she was nominated for the Best New American Voices anthology and awarded the 2008 Master’s in Creative Writing Program’s Distinguished Thesis Award. She teaches creative writing at DePaul University’s School for New Learning and is editorial director of a small publishing firm outside of Chicago. This is her first publication.

PAUL EGGERS , a former UN relief worker, is the author of a novel, Saviors (Harcourt, 1999), and a short-fiction collection, How the Water Feels (Southern Methodist University Press, 2002). His short-fiction collection manuscript, The Departure Lounge, of which “What’s Yours, What’s Mine” is part, just won the 2008 Ohio State University Press Prize in Short Fiction and will be published by Ohio State University Press in 2009. He is currently an associate professor of English at Cal State, Chico.

TED GILLEY works at the Chapin Library of Williams College. His poems have appeared recently in Poetry Northwest, Free Verse, and The National Review and are forthcoming in Rattle and The Mind’s Eye. His stories have been published in Northwest Review, Prairie Schooner, The Other Side, and other magazines and anthologies.

JANET GROTH is an emeritus professor of English. Her latest book, with David Castronovo, is Critic in Love: A Romantic Biography of Edmund Wilson (Shoemaker & Hoard, 2007). “Homage to Mister Berryman” is part of a memoir in progress. She lives in New York City.

SCOTT HIGHTOWER’s third collection, Part of the Bargain (Copper Canyon Press), received the 2004 Hayden Carruth Award. He is also the recipient of a Willis Barnstone Translation Prize. A native of central Texas, he lives and works in New York City.

TED HUGHES (1930–98) published his first collection of verse, The Hawk in the Rain, in 1957. Lupercal (1960) and Selected Poems (1962) soon followed. Other poetry collections include Wodwo (1967), Crow (1970), Wolfwatching (1989), New Selected Poems, 1957–1994 (1995), and Birthday Letters (1998). He also wrote many books for children, including The Iron Man (1968, also published as The Iron Giant) and Remains of Elmet (1979), in addition to plays, essays, and translations. Among the many poetry anthologies he edited is The Rattle Bag (1982, with Seamus Heaney). In 1984 he was appointed Britain’s Poet Laureate. He died in London, 1998.

ERIC KARPELES is a painter who was educated at Haverford College, Oxford University, and The New School. He lives in northern California. The essay that appears in these pages is the introduction to his forthcoming book, Paintings in Proust, to be published by Thames & Hudson in October 2008.

AUGUSTA LARNED (1835–1924) contributed sketches, stories, and poems to various periodicals, including the New York Evening Post and Harper’s magazine. In 1870–71, she assisted in editing The Revolution, a women’s rights journal. Her books include Home Stories (6 vols., 1872–73), Talks with Girls (1874), Old Tales Retold from Grecian Mythology (1875), The Norse Grandmother (The Elder Edda) (1880), Village Photographs (1887), and In Woods and Fields (1895).

HALLDOR LAXNESS (1902–98), a poet, novelist, playwright, and world traveler, was one of the great figures of modern Icelandic literature. The novel Vevarinn mikli frá Kasmir (1927; The Great Weaver from Kashmir), considered his first major work, reflects his spiritual turmoil as well as his wide-ranging, experimental style. Laxness later turned to communism, and his views were reflected in his works of the 1930s and ’40s. He published a series of controversial novels set in an Icelandic fishing village, including púvínvi Dur hreini and Fuglinn í fjörunni (1931–32; both tr. Salka Valka), Sjálfstætt fólk (1934–35; Independent People), and Ljós heimsins (1937–40; World Light), which blend social criticism with a rigorous prose style. Laxness later embraced the medieval Icelandic saga and was credited by the Swedish Academy with having “renewed the great narrative art of Iceland.” The trilogy Íslandsklukkan (1943–46; Iceland’s Bell) established him as the country’s leading writer; he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1955. His later novels are more introspective and lyrical, and once again engage in modernist experimentation. In the 1970s and ’80s he published several volumes of memoirs. His work includes sixty books in all.

JYNNE DILLING MARTIN lives in a fortress in Brooklyn and works at Random House. Her poetry has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Boston Review, Indiana Review, New Orleans Review, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere.

GARY L. MCDOWELL’s poems have appeared recently in Colorado Review, Copper Nickel, DIAGRAM, Ninth Letter, The Pinch, RHINO, Salt Hill, and The Southeast Review. He is also co-editor, with F. Daniel Rzicznek, of an anthology of essays and poems celebrating the prose poem, forthcoming in 2010 from Rose Metal Press. He has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize and is pursuing his Ph.D. in Poetry at Western Michigan University. He is the poetry editor of Third Coast.

STEPHEN O'CONNOR is the author of three books: Rescue (Harmony, 1989), Will My Name Be Shouted Out? (Simon & Schuster, 1997), and Orphan Trains (Houghton Mifflin, 2001). He teaches in the M.F.A. programs of Columbia University and Sarah Lawrence.

STEVE ORLEN has published six books of poetry, including The Elephant’s Child: New & Selected Poems 1978–2005 (Ausable, 2006), Kisses (Miami University Press, 1997), and This Particular Eternity (Ausable, 2001). Among his awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship, three NEA grants, and the George Dillon Memorial Award for Poetry. He teaches at the University of Arizona in Tucson and in the Warren Wilson M.F.A. Program for Writers.

CARL PHILLIPS’s most recent book is Speak Low, forthcoming from Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2009. Phillips teaches at Washington University in St. Louis. “Night” was delivered as the Phi Beta Kappa poem at the 2008 Harvard Commencement Exercises.

PHILIP ROUGHTON is a prolific translator of Halldór Laxness’s works. His translation of Iceland’s Bell won the American-Scandinavian Foundation Translation Prize in 2001 and Second Prize in the 2002 BCLA John Dryden Translation Competition. He has also translated chapters from The Fair Maiden.

LAURA SIMS is the author of two poetry books: Practice, Restraint, recipient of the 2005 Fence Books Alberta Prize, and Stranger, forthcoming from Fence Books in 2009. She has also published four poetry chapbooks, including Bank Book (Answer Tag Press) and Paperback Book (3rd Bed). She has written book reviews and essays for Boston Review, Rain Taxi, and The Review of Contemporary Fiction and has recently published poems in the journals Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, and Crayon.

FRANCIS-NOEL THOMAS is at work on a memoir called Why I Learned French.

MAUREEN O'HARA URE teaches painting and drawing at the University of Utah. Her work is included in collections throughout the United States and overseas. The Sightseer, a handcolored letterpress book in response to travels in India, was published last year under her imprint, The Hand in Glove Press. More images may be seen at www.maureenoharaure.com.

BRENDA WINEAPPLE is the author of Hawthorne: A Life (Random House, 2004), Genêt: A Biography of Janet Flanner (University of Nebraska Press, 1992), and Sister Brother: Gertrude and Leo Stein (Putnam, 1996; Bison Books, 2008). Her essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in many publications, among them The American Scholar, The New York Times Book Review, Parnassus, Poetry, and The Nation. A Guggenheim fellow, a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, and twice a fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities, she teaches in the M.F.A. programs at Columbia University and The New School and lives in New York City.

TOM YORI, an “autodidact” without degree, has been publishing sporadically since 1976, following his concern (Quakerspeak) or vocation (Catholicspeak) for, vaguely, working class experience. This is his second appearance in NER. He is currently in or recovering from another major depression—knowing how to fend off destructive thoughts, unable to prevent their upwelling or feeling physically lousy.