Contributors
Gene Bednarek ("Five Photographs") had his first photo published at age 10. He attended the Southeastern Center for Photographic Studies where he studied with Mary Ellen Mark, Cole Weston, and others. In 1995, he received a BFA in electronic media arts from the University of Florida. His photos, portraits, illustrations, and artwork have appeared in hundreds of publications and several exhibitions. He lives with his wife, Kim, and son, Jackson, in Gainesville, Florida.
Poet and filmmaker James Broughton ("Last High Kuku") died on May 17, 1999, in Port Townsend, Washington. His ashes were left at Pere Lachaise cemetery with Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and Oscar Wilde; at Santiago de Compostela at the tomb of St. James; and in the Mediterranean near the border of France and Spain where Joel Singer, Broughton's lover, powdered his own hair and beard with ashes and dove into the clear waters. This was Broughton's last "high kuku" OBR11 was dedicated to this creator of over 20 books of poems and 23 films.
George Elliott Clarke's ("Homage to Hardial Bains (1939-1997)" & "To Juanita Pleasants") books include Satlwater Spirituals and Deeper Blues and Lush Dreams and Whylah Falls (Polestar Books). Originally from Nova Scotia, Clarke teaches at the University of Toronto.
Cid Corman ("Six Poems") continues to add to his massive quantity of small, quiet, but vast poems in Kyoto, Japan.
Joseph De Quattro ("Angus in Extremis") was raised in Andover, Massachusetts. He has six older sisters and presently resides in New York where he is working on a novel.
Miles Efron ("Robert Creeley's So There: Poems 1976-1983" & "Pollen" & "Well" & "Wrens") lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. This is the first appearance of his work in print.
Michael Estabrook ("Old Habits Die Slow (or is it slowly)" & "Note from my Brother Kerry to Athena, his Sister-in-Law") is working on a master's in Comparative Literature at Harvard. His poetry has appeared in over 400 magazines, including OBR6 and 8.
Charles Fort ("Through William Blake's Eyes") holds the Reynolds Endowed Chair in Poetry at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. His books include Darvil, The Town Clock Burning, and the recent We Did Not Fear the Father: New and Selected Poems.
Zoe Francesca ("Gabrielle Burton's Heartbreak Hotel") holds an MFA from Mills College and was recently published in The Seattle Review. She is currently studying under the poet Mark Wunderlich in San Francisco.
Damion Higbie ("Fishing at Midnight to Hide from the Dashboard Saviors" & "A Sparrow Dying of Jazz") is a technical writer for an IT consulting firm in Herndon, Virginia. He was a winner of the 1997-1998 AWP Intro Journals Project for poetry, and his work has appeared in Willow Springs, Black Bear Review, and OBR11.
Stanley Jenkins's ("Beyond the Piney Woods") writing has appeared in a number of print and electronic magazines, including Amelia, CrossConnect and Blue Moon Review. He writes a regular column for Eclectica. He lives and works in New York.
Rick Levin's ("No Anchorage") collection of short stories was a finalist for the Middlebury College Bakeless Literary Prize last year. He lives in Seattle, writes for The Stranger, and is working on another book of fiction.
Lyn Lifshin's ("September 26, 1996" & "Cat Women") last book, Cold Comfort, published by Black Sparrow was a finalist for the Patterson Award. Her new book, Before It's Light will be reviewed in a future OBR. Lifshin has published over 100 books, edited four major anthologies of women's writing, and was the subject of a documentary film Not Made of Glass.
Lindsay Martell ("Mark Jacobs's Stone Cowboy") is a freelance news reporter and a frequent contributor to New Moon Magazine. Her work has appeared in the Tokyo-based journal, MemoRandom, and the San Francisco Foghorn. She is currently appearing on MathTV in Oakland, California.
Jim Massey ("Eudora's Neighbor") is the curator of the UNC-Chapel Hill Herbarium and a faculty member in the Biology Department at UNC-CH where he teaches taxonomy and floristics. This is his first published poem in a literary magazine.
Kevin McGowin's ("Journal No. 3") poems "Geriatrics" and "A Burial" have been selected to appear in Earth and Soul: An Anthology of North Carolina Poetry, due from Kostroma Organization by the end of the year. The anthology will also be translated into Russian and circulated there by the organization.
Jessica Mersky ("Steven Polansky's Dating Miss Universe") is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at Penn State University. She is currently at work on her first novel.
Thomas Meyer ("Trakl") lives in the mountains of western North Carolina and the Yorkshire Dales. A gathering of his old and new poems, At Dusk Iridescent, has just appeared from The Jargon Society and will be reviewed by critic Jim Cory soon in OBR. Poetry editor Jeffery Beam will review it in Lambda Book Report in April.
Jill Meyers ("Rick Harsch's The Driftless Zone" & "King of the Roadkills by Bucky Sinister") is a freelancer who specializes in arts reviewing. She's working on a choose-your-own-adventure story about a dangerous dinner party.
M. A. Roberts ("Convert" & "Curse") directs the Writing Center at Virginia Intermont College. Recently, his poem "Letter from the Foothills" received an honorable mention in the Now and Then Poetry Contest, judged by poet Fred Chappell.
Robert West ("Al Miginnes's Taking Up Our Daily Tools") is a doctoral student in English at UNC-Chapel Hill. His poems have appeared in Pembroke Magazine, Tar River Poetry, Asheville Poetry Review, Hummingbird, and other magazines. He served for two years as poetry editor and one year as editor of The Carolina Quarterly.
Allegra Wong ("The Lake") has a BA in English Literature from Wheaton College Scriptorium. She moderates at SayStuff.com, teaches at Writers On The Net, and divides her time between New York City and Dartmouth, Massachusetts. She has one son.