~CONTRIBUTORS' NOTES~

BARRY BALLARD's sonnets have most recently appeared in The Evansville Review, National Forum, Rosebud, and Smartish Pace.  His most recent published collections: First Probe to Antartica (Bright Hill Press Award for 2001) and Plowing to the End of the Road (Finishing Line Press Award for 2002).

JARED CARTER is the author of three collections of poetry.  Work, for the Night Is Coming (MacMillan, 1981) received the Walt Whitman Award; After the Rain (Cleveland State Poetry Center, 1993) was awarded the Poets' Prize; and Les Barricades Mystérieuses was published by Cleveland State Poetry Center in 1999.  He was a finalist for the 2003 Howard Nemerov sonnet award.

BARBARA CROOKER won the 2003 Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Competition, judged by Stanley Kunitz.  her newest chapbook is Greatest Hits: 1980-2000 (Pudding House Publications).  She has new work in America, The Christian Century, Cream City Review, and Smartish Pace.  Recent work has also appeared in the following anthologies: Food Poems (Bottom Dog Press) and Red, White, and Blues in America (University of Iowa Press).

J.P. DANCING BEAR has published poems in numerous journals, including Adirondack Review, Atlanta Review, New York Quarterly, North American Review, and Seattle Review.  His chapbook, What Language, won the 2002 Slipstream Press Poetry Prize.  Another chapbook, Blue Hand, was published by Pudding House Press in 2002.  His book, Billy Lost Crow, will be published by Turning Point Books in 2004. 

WILLIAM DORESKI has had poetry and reviews appear recently in African American Review, Harvard Review, and The Literary Review.  His recent books are Suburban Light (poetry — Cedar Hill, 1999) and Robert Lowell's Shifting Colors (criticism — Ohio University Press, 1999).  He teaches at Keene State College.

ANNIE FINCH's books of poetry include Calendars (Tupelo Press, 2003), Eve (Story Line Press, 1997), and the performance poem The Encyclopedia of Scotland (Salt Publishing, 2004).  She has translated the complete poems of Renaissance poet Louise Labé (forthcoming from the University of Chcago Press) and written the libretto for an opera based on the life of Marina Tsvetaeva, which premiered recently from the America Opera Projects in New York.  Her book of essays, The Heart of Poetry, is forthcoming in the Poets on Poetry series from the University of Michigan Press.  She teaches on the creative writing faculty at Miami University, Ohio.

CAROL FRITH co-edits the poetry journal Ekphrasis.  Her chapbook, Moving Like a Blue Flame, was the winner of the 2001 Medicinal Purposes chapbook competition.  Never Enough Zeros was co-winner of the 2001 Palanquin Press chapbook competition.  Another chapbook, In and Out of Light, was published by Bacchae Press in 2002.  Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals, including Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, California Quarterly, Clackamas Literary Review, Cutbank, Cumberland Review, the Formalist, Midwest Quarterly, New Laurel Review, River Oak Review,  and Sundog: the Southeast Review. 

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.

GRAY JACOBIK's poetry has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Kenyon Review, Ontario Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, Sycamore Review, and many other journals, as well as in two editions of the annual Best American Poetry anthologies.  Her book, The Double Task (University of Massachusetts Press, 1998), received the Juniper Prize.  The Surface of Last Scattering (Texas Review Press, 199) was a winner of the X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize.  A third collection, Brave Disguises (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002), won the AWP Poetry Series Award.  She has also been the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Creative Writing. 

DOUG JONES is the editor of a small book publishing house in the Northwest and an instructor in philosophy at New St. Andrews College.  Currently pursuing an MFA in poetry at the University of Idaho, he has had essays published in Books and Culture, Premise, and Table Talk.

GREG KEELER has published six collections of poetry.  His poems also have appeared in various anthologies, including Literature, edited by X. J. Kennedy, and Strong Measures, edited by Philip Dacey and David Jaus.

CHERYL LACHOWSKI currently teaches at Bowling Green State University.  Her poetry collection, Homing, was the winner of the 2001 Bluestem Poetry Award.  Her poems have also appeared in a wide variety of literary journals, including Carolina Quarterly, Kansas Quarterly, Passages North, Prairie Schooner, Southern Poetry Review, and Sou'wester.  She has released a CD of poetic voice-overs of Tim Story's Beguiled album, titled Beguiled Improvisations.  "Looking West" is an improvisation on music by Peter Buffett.

JOEL LONG's first book, Winged Insects, was the winner of the White Pine Press Poetry Prize in 1999.  His poetry has also appeared in various magazines, including Bellingham Review, Crab Orchard Review, Mid-American Review, Prairie Schooner, Seattle Review, Sonora Review, Sou'wester, and Willow Springs.  His poems have also been anthologized in American Poetry: The Next Generation, Essential Love, and Fresh Water.   

CHELLE MIKO has had poetry published in the Mid-America Poetry Review, The North American Review, The Paumanok Review, Poet Lore, and elsewhere.

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

LEE PASSARELLA has had poetry in Antietam Review, Chelsea, Cream City Review, The Literary Review, Tar River Poetry, The Wallace Stevens Journal, and The Writer's Journal, among others.  His long narrative poem based on the American Civil War, Swallowed Up in Victory, was published by White Mane Books in 2002.  He is a senior technical writer, teaches English part-time at Georgia Perimeter College, and acts as a senior literary editor for Atlanta Review.  

MARIANNE POLOSKEY's poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals, including the Christian Science Monitor, Connecticut Review, Louisiana Literature, North American Review, Paterson Literary Review, and War, Literature & the Arts, as well as the anthologies Inside Grief and American Diaspora: Poetry of Displacement.  Her first collection of poetry is Climbing the Shadows (Chi Chi Press, 2000).  

JOHN POPIELASKI has had recent poems in The Amherst Review, The Formalist, and The Portland Review.  His first collection of poetry, Contemporary Martyrdom (Birch Book Press, 2002) was named a "Best Pick' by Small Press Review.  

JENDI REITER is the editor of Poetry Contest insider, an online publication.  She has had poetry and book reviews published in various journals, including The New Criterion, Poetry, and The Saint Ann's Review, as well as in the Best American Poetry anthology series.

CAROL COFFEE REPOSA's poems have appeared in many literary magazines, including Amarillo Bay, Blue Mesa Review, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Concho River Review, Descant, The Formalist, San Jose Studies, and Southwestern American Literature.  She has three collections of poetry: At the Border: Winter Lights, The Green Room, and Facts of Life.  She has received two Fulbright/Hays Fellowships, the first for study in Russia and the second for research in Peru and Ecuador.  She teaches at San Antonio College.

MARGOT SCHILPP's work has been published in American Letters & Commentary, Crab Orchard Review, Denver Quarterly, The Gettysburg Review, Green Mountains Review, High Plains Literary Review, The Journal, and Southern Review, among other journals.  She has been a fellow at Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, the Fundacîon Valparaiso (Spain), and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.   Her first  book of poetry is The World's Last Night (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2001).  A second collection of poems is forthcoming from Carnegie Mellon University Press.

ANGELA VOGEL received a Maryland State Arts Council Award for Poetry in 1995.  Her poems have appeared in Black Dirt, California Quarterly, Cape Rock, The Cream City Review, Evansville Review, jabberwock Review, and New Millennium Writings.  She teaches composition and literature.