Contributors’ Notes, Vol. 31, #1 (2010)
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LINDA BIERDS ’s eighth book of poetry, Flight: New and Selected Poems, was published in 2008 by Putnam’s. Her awards include four Pushcart Prizes, the Virginia Quarterly Review’s Emily Clark Balch Poetry Prize, and fellowships from the Ingram Merrill, the Guggenheim, and the MacArthur foundations, and (twice) from the NEA. She is a professor of English at the University of Washington.

YVES BONNEFOY, often acclaimed as France’s greatest living poet, has published eight major collections of verse, several books of tales, and numerous studies of literature and art. He succeeded Roland Barthes in the Chair of Comparative Poetics at the Collège de France. His work has been translated into scores of languages, and he is also a celebrated translator of Shakespeare, Yeats, Keats, and Leopardi. Most recently, he has added the European Prize for Poetry of 2006 and the Kafka Prize for 2007 to his list of honors. He lives in Paris.

MARIANNE BORUCH ’s recent work includes a sixth collection of poems, Grace, Fallen From (Wesleyan, 2008), out in paperback this spring, and a second book of essays on poetry, In the Blue Pharmacy (Trinity, 2005). She’s been awarded fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation. The piece appearing in this issue of NER is from The Glimpse Traveler, an unpublished memoir. She teaches in the M.F.A. program at Purdue University and often in the Warren Wilson M.F.A. Program for Writers.

ROGER CAMP ’s photographs have been published in more than a hundred magazines, including Darkroom Photography, American Photo, Popular Photography, Graphis, and North American Review. He is the author of three books, Butterflies in Flight (Thames & Hudson, 2002), 500 Flowers (Dewi Lewis Media, 2005), and Heat (Charta/DAP, 2009). As a teacher of photography and/or literature, he has held positions at Eastern Illinois University, the University of Iowa, Columbus College of Art & Design, and the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris. A recipient of the Lecia Medal of Excellence, he has also been a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown.

TONY ELIAS lives in Seattle, where he works as an editor at Microsoft Game Studios. His writing has appeared in HEAT, Westerly, and Arena. An earlier novella, “The Animal Doctor,” appeared in NER (28.3).

CASTLE FREEMAN JR.’s last appearance in NER was with the story “Driving Around” (26.4). He is also the author of the novels Go with Me and All That I Have, published in 2008 and 2009, respectively, by Steerforth Press. He lives in southern Vermont.

LOUIS DE GRANDPRE (1761–1846) was born in St. Malo and died in Paris. He published numerous accounts of his wide-ranging travels, one of which is excerpted in this issue.

BENJAMIN S. GROSSBERG is the author of two poetry collections, Underwater Lengths in a Single Breath (Ashland Poetry Press, 2007) and Sweet Core Orchard (University of Tampa, 2009). A chapbook, The Auctioneer Bangs His Gavel, was published by Kent State in 2006. He teaches at the University of Hartford.

JENNIFER GROTZ’s second book of poems, The Needle, is forthcoming in Spring 2011. Her first book of poems, Cusp, was chosen by Yusef Komunyakaa for the Bakeless Prize and published by Houghton Mifflin; it also received the Natalie Ornish Best First Book Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. Her poems and essays, as well as translations from both the French and Polish, appear widely in journals such as New England Review, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and American Poetry Review, and in anthologies such as Best American Poetry and Legitimate Dangers. She teaches poetry and translation at the University of Rochester and also serves as the assistant director of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.

ELLEN HINSEY is the author of Update on the Descent (Notre Dame/Bloodaxe, 2009), The White Fire of Time (Wesleyan/Bloodaxe Books), and Cities of Memory, which was awarded the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. She has edited and translated (with Constantine Rusanov) The Junction: Selected Poems of Tomas Venclova (Bloodaxe, 2008), and her poems and essays have appeared in publications such as the New York Times, the New Yorker, and New England Review. The recipient of a Berlin Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Berlin, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Award, and a Lannan Foundation Award, she has lived in Paris since 1987.

HOWARD KAPLAN’s work has appeared in the Atlantic, the New Yorker, and Vanity Fair. “The Grafter and the Picker” is part of a book he’s writing entitled The Gentleman Grafter.

JONATHAN LEVY is the author of many plays for adults and children as well as several works of scholarship and criticism. He is Distinguished Teaching Professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and has contributed frequently to NER.

BETH LORDAN is the author of the novel August Heat (HarperCollins, 1989), the short-story collection And Both Shall Row (Picador, 1998), and the novel in stories But Come Ye Back (William Morrow, 2003). She teaches fiction writing and directs the program in Irish and Irish Immigration Studies at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

JYNNE DILLING MARTIN’s poetry has appeared in numerous journals, including Kenyon Review, Boston Review, TriQuarterly, and Ploughshares. She won the 2009 “Discovery”/ Boston Review/92nd Street Y Prize, was a 2008 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize finalist, and has been a Yaddo fellow.

JEN MCCLANAGHAN earned her M.F.A. from Columbia University and her Ph.D. from Florida State University. Her poetry manuscript was a 2009 finalist for the Dorset Prize, the National Poetry Series, and for the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in Iowa Review, AGNI online, FIELD, and elsewhere. Currently, she’s practicing the banjo in Baton Rouge, where she is a Resident Scholar at the Southern Review.

KIEK NESSET is the author of two books of short stories, Paradise Road (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007) and Mr. Agreeable (Mammoth Press, 2009), as well as a nonfiction study, The Stories of Raymond Carver (Ohio University Press, 1995). Two books of poems and translations are forthcoming: St. X (Lewis Clark Press) and Alphabet of the World (University of Oklahoma Press). He is recipient of the Drue Heinz Prize in literature, a Pushcart Prize, and grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. His stories, poems and translations have appeared in the Paris Review, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Southern Review, Kenyon Review, Gettysburg Review, Iowa Review, AGNI, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. He teaches creative writing and literature at Allegheny College.

ERIC PANKEY is the author of eight collections of poems, the most recent of which is The Pear As One Example: New and Selected Poems 1984­–2008 (Ausable, 2008). He is the Heritage Chair in Writing at George Mason University where he teaches in the M.F.A. program.

CHELSEA RATHBURN’s poems have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, Ploughshares, and the New Republic, among other journals. The recipient of a 2009 fellowship in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, she lives in Atlanta with the poet James May.
 
HOYT ROGERS translates poetry and other literary works from the French, German, and Spanish. His translations of Borges appeared in the Viking-Penguin centenary edition, and his translation of Yves Bonnefoy’s The Curved Planks, with accompanying essays, was published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in 2006. He is also the author of a collection of poems, Witnesses, and a volume of criticism, The Poetics of Inconstancy. His original work, essays, and translations have appeared in a wide variety of books and periodicals. He lives in the Dominican Republic.

ELIZABETH SCHULTE’s short fiction has appeared in Hot Metal Bridge and Witness. She lives with her husband in Fresno, California, and is at work on a novel.

AUSTIN SEGREST will begin his Ph.D. in poetry at the University of Missouri in the fall. His poems have appeared in Yale Review, TriQuarterly, Ploughshares, and
other publications.

MEGAN STAFFEL’s new collection of short fiction is called Lessons in Another Language (Four Way Books, 2010). She is the author of the novels The Notebook of Lost Things (Soho, 1999) and She Wanted Something Else (North Point, 1987) and a story collection called A Length of Wire (Pym Randall, 1983). Recent stories have been published in Ploughshares, Northwest Review, and Seattle Review. She teaches in the Warren Wilson M.F.A. Program for Writers and can be reached at www.meganstaffel.com.