~CONTRIBUTORS' NOTES~

JAMES CERVANTES has had work in many literary journals and is the author of The Fires in Oil Drums (San Pedro Press), The Year IsApproaching Snow (W.D. Hoffstadt & Sons), and The Headlong Future(New Rivers Press), which won The Capricorn Poetry Prize.  He is the editor of Salt River Review.  "Spring Loaded" is from an anthology he co-edited with Leilani Wright, Fever Dreams: Contemporary Arizona Poetry, published by the University of Arizona Press.

JOHN GILGUN is the author of a number of poetry and short-story collections, including The Dooley Poems (Robin Price) and EverythingThat Has Been Shall Be Again: The Reincarnation Fables of John Gilgun(Bieler Press), as well as a novel, Music I Never Dreamed Of (Amethyst Press)."The Ant in the Shadow of This Blade of Grass" is from his collection titled From the Inside Out, published by Three Phase Publishing.

LAURA KENNELLY is the editor of Grasslands Review.  Her chapbook of poetry, The Passage of Mrs. Jung, was published by Norton Coker Press.  "Pre-Op" is from an anthology she edited, A Certain Attitude: Poemsby Seven Texas Women, published by Pecan Grove Press.

MARY LINXWEILER is completing a senior honors project in creative writing at Valparaiso University.  She has published poems in The Lighterand Ariel. Her poetry has been selected a winner in the Triton College national Salute to the Arts competition and has been chosen as an Honorable Mention for the annual Academy of American Poets Award.  "Fearless" first appeared in The Lighter.

WALT MCDONALD is Paul Whitfield Horn Professor of English and the Director of Creative Writing at Texas Tech University.  The author of seventeen books, he has won three Western Heritage Awards from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Three Texas Institute of Letters Poetry Prizes.  "The Winter They Bombed Pearl Harbor," "Leaving the Scene," and "The War in Bosnia" are from his most recent collection, Blessings the Body Gave, winner of the Ohio State University Press / The Journal Award in Poetry.  "Advice I Wish I'd Been Told" first appeared in Clackamas Literary Review.

JOHN RUFF teaches in the English Department at Valparaiso University, where he is the Assistant Dean of Arts and Sciences.  He also is the poetry editor of The Cresset.  His work has appeared in a variety of literary magazines, including Seneca Review, Poetry Northwest,Seattle Review,Xavier Review,and River City. "'July, 1935-1943' (From a Painting by Charles Burchfield)" is from an anthology titled A Poetic Vision: Poets' Responses to the Artworkof Charles Burchfield, published by the Brauer Museum of Art and the Valparaiso University English Department.

MARGOT SCHILPP's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, Southern Review, The Gettysburg Review, Denver Quarterly, American Lettersand Commentary, Many Mountains Moving, Verse, Meridian, and elsewhere.  She is completing a Ph.D. in Creative Writing at the University of Utah, where she is the editor of Quarterly West.  "The Fish Channel" first appeared in Green Mountains Review.