Crab Creek Review: Notes on Contributors: Autumn/Winter 2002

BARRY BALLARD, Burleson, Texas, writes sonnets that have appeared in Smartish Pace, Rosebud, Hollins Critic, and National Forum, His most recent collections are Green Tombs to Jupiter (Snail's Pace Press Poetry Prize, 2000) and A Time to Reinvent (Creative Ash Press Poetry Prize, 2001). "'The Mountain' was inspired by a trip to Winterpark, Colorado. The scenery left you awestruck, and every individual came there with more than recreation on their mind. For my wife and me-a chance to find ourselves."

BOE R. BARNETT, Fairbanks, Alaska, lives with his wife and pets. This afternoon he collected spruce tips he'll brew beer with. His poems have appeared in EM, StringTown, and Ice-Floe, among others. "Once, during winter, when it was 48 below, a friend and I stood drunk in this field for an hour, watching the finest aurora either of us has ever seen. This poem is that place in the summer."

GAYLORD BREWER is an associate professor at Middle Tennessee State University, where he edits Poems and Plays. His most recent collections of poems are Four Nails (Snail's Pace Press, 2001) and Barbaric Mercies (Red Hen Press, forthcoming). "I wrote 'Another Kind of Morning' in my log house in Tennessee on a clear December morning. I was neither depressed nor hung over and found the even keel of the day only moderately disconcerting; it passed soon enough."

LEE COOPER, Seattle, Washington, grew up among family and friends who worked in the automobile factories of Flint, Michigan. She has also lived in Hawaii, Montana, and Idaho. She works with her husband in the industrial forging business they own. Her poems come from all of these places. "When I heard Denise Levertov say that if you live in the Pacific Northwest you will eventually write a poem with a heron in it, I thought, 'not me.' Then a heron appeared in our factory. It insisted on being in a poem of its own."

SCOTT FERRY, Seattle, Washington, is a licensed acupuncturist who recently returned to Seattle with his wife, Robin. His work has appeared in Pontoon and Bitter Oleander. "I grew up in Huntington Beach, CA where the entire west side of the city is a suburb built on wetlands. This was always unsettling to me. This poem comes from that fear."

VICTOR GISCHLER, Claremore, Oklahoma, teaches creative writing at Rogers State University. His novel Gun Monkeys was nominated for the Edgar Award. "The universal shopping experience for the husband-men who have been married longer just stay home."

JOSEPH GREEN, Longview, Washington, has taught English at Lower Columbia College for sixteen years. His chapbook The End of Forgiveness is available from Floating Bridge Press. "'Nice Hat' records a scene from Dutch Henry Homestead, where I spent seven months as PEN Northwest's Boyden Wilderness Writer. 'Man on Ice' speaks for itself."

JOHNNY HORTON, Seattle, Washington, studies poetry in the MFA program at the University of Washington, where he is the coordinating editor of the Seattle Review. "I often wonder what beauty can be found at the nexus of civilization and wilderness."

ROMANA IORGA, Tucker, Georgia, is a Romanian writer living in the United States. She is the author of two books of poetry, Simple Hearing (Semne, 2000) and Song of Arrival (Glasul, 1995), which won the 1996 prize for the "Best first book of poetry" by Romania's literary society. In the U.S. her work has appeared in 2River View, Dislocate, BigCitLit, and Maverick Magazine. "'The Mirror' describes the state of parallel being, and the loneliness and inner conflict that this condition creates. As a hopeless example of what Isaiah Berlin called a 'rootless cosmopolitan,' I am naturally drawn to cultural and emotional states of limen."

JAMES JAY, Flagstaff, Arizona, teaches poetry part time at Northern Arizona University and works as a Wildland Firefighter in the summers. He received an MFA in Poetry from the University of Montana in 1998. His most recent work has appeared in Cutbank, Carbon 14, and Thin Air. "These poems are from a series inspired by my late, great friend, Andre the Giant. 'And So the War Began' comes from an essay written by Pablo Neruda regarding Lorca's execution and fascism."

NATHAN S. JONES, Ann Arbor, Michigan, was born and raised in Iowa, and is currently pursuing an MFA at the University of Michigan where he has received the Theodore Roethke Poetry Prize and the Bain-Swiggett Poetry Prize. He has work forthcoming in Valparaiso Poetry Review. "In representing one of my father's odd habits (in this case his mouth agape when watching television), I wanted a mildly surreal moment to occur. Somehow that surreal moment grew to encompass the poem, and I lost control, which is usually for the best."

BILL KELLER, Kingston, New York, lives with his wife and two daughters in the Hudson Valley, where he works as a technical writer. His stories have appeared in Sou'wester, American Literary Review, and Ascent, among others.

RICHARD KENEFIC, Ft. Wayne, Indiana, works for a small electronics company and has had poems published in Yankee, New Orleans Review, Notre Dame Review, and Seattle Review, among others. "As children, my sister and I would chase each other through a U-shaped storage area in the basement of a duplex where our grandfather stored mirrors. After his death, this memory resurfaced and became for me a metaphor for living with her absence."

SARA MONAHAN, Princeton, New Jersey, is employed by Westminster Choir College of Rider University. Her poems have appeared in North Dakota Quarterly and Crazyhorse.

PAUL MORRIS, Paris, France, has spent the last few years trying to combine writing, teaching and traveling. He has spent time in Manchester, Mexico City and Madrid but now lives and works in Paris. He is currently working on a novel but still writes occasional short stories. "In Europe right now internal frontiers are dissolving while external ones are fortified, and the difference between an ex-patriot and an immigrant seems only to be the colour of one's skin. I started this story in Andalusia one afternoon, with sand blowing in through the windows."

THERESA NEINAS, Seattle, Washington, has spent all of her college and university years taking every art class under the sun. Years later she shwoed up at a Christmas lino block party to make "Holiday Stamps." It has since evolved into much more. Who knew?

NANCY PAGH, Bellingham, Washington, teaches at Western Washington University. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Grain, B.C. Studies, and the Bellingham Review. She earned a Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia and has eaten at many a Chinese Canadian Food Restaurant. "'Pig' is partly a found poem, gleaned from numerous restaurant placemats and one oddly translated tabletop advertisement for imported beer."

RACHEL PASTAN, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Mademoiselle, and The Threepenny Review, among others. She is the winner of the Arts and Letters fiction contest (2001) and the PEN Syndicated Fiction Project. She has previously been the recipient of state arts grants from Wisconsin and Delaware.

NATHANIEL PERRY, Providence, Rhode Island, attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. When not writing, he can often be found playing the tuba. "This poem was conceived at lunch one day in the midst of my very brief tenure at a certain orange home improvement establishment."

PETER PEREIRA, Seattle, Washington, is a family physician and founding editor of Floating Bridge Press. His first chapbook is The Lost Twin (Grey Spider, 2000). He recently won the 2002 Hayden Carruth Award, and Copper Canyon will publish his book Saying the World in 2003. "'Lost' was written during a memorable trip to Venice with my partner Dean. 'Giving Way' is one in a series of garden poems exploring love and death and the changing of the seasons. I think September is my favorite month-the changing colors, the ripening fruits, the flowers gone to seed-it all comes with a deep sense of completion and satisfaction."

HELEN ALENE POLLACK, Bolivar, West Virginia, has work forthcoming in THEMA. "My initial premise was that the relief of the survivor is tempered, even ruined, by remorse. The survivor's shame and guilt expose us all as surely as if we undressed in public."

DIANA RENN, a Seattle native, now teaches writing and literature at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston. She has published fiction and essays in The Indiana Review, The Santa Barbara Review, The Beacon Street Review, South American Explorer, and others. Contemporary English, her new ESL textbook, is forthcoming from McGraw-Hill. "I have long been fascinated by the precariousness of so many Northwest homes: houses perched on cliffs, apartments hugging hills, windows and decks competing for views. In a land of earthquakes and frequent rains, I find myself wondering how long they will last."

KAREN RIGBY, Minneapolis, Minnesota, is an MFA student at the University of Minnesota. She has been published in Beloit Poetry Journal, and Field, among others.

JAMES SILAS ROGERS, St. Paul, Minnesota, is managing editor of New Hibernia Review, an Irish Studies Quarterly. His poetry has recently appeared in Natural Bridge and Café Solo. He is currently working on a collection of essays. "This poem recalls a time more than twenty years ago. My wife's family no longer gathers around that big green carved table, and if they did, some of the faces would be gone; but she still makes rutabagas for every holiday."

PB RIPPEY's poems have appeared in Red River Review, The Chattahoochee Review, Phoebe, Poetry NZ, and work is forthcoming in ZYZZYVA. She is finishing a collection of short stories and a first book of poetry. She lives in Hollywood with her cat. "I'm going through an 'I'm totally obsessed with my past' phase that is coming out in my work, but in poems that aren't really my past, not really, not mine, not at all-you see I have this friend... ."

TOM SHEEHAN, Saugus, Massachusetts, has a new novel out, Vigilantes East, released by Publish America. He has been cited with a Silver Rose award by American Renaissance for the 21st Century (ART) for excellence in the art of the short story. "My wife is the most compassionate hospice nurse, and this is a salute to her on a rare day off."

JOHN SHERIDAN, Oxford, United Kingdom, is originally from Dayton, Ohio, but currently living in England where he is working on a Ph.D. in English literature at Oxford University. He writes fiction and poetry. "I was walking down High Street one October evening when it began to rain, and having no umbrella I sought shelter in the gated entrance of the town's twelfth-century covered market. Very shortly a few fellow wanderers stepped in after me. We exchanged some grim smiles and disgusted shakes of wet heads, and out of those few, beautifully unguarded moments came 'Outside Golden Cross Covered Market.'" Ed. note: Anagnorisis, according to Webster's, is that "critical moment of recognition or discovery, especially preceding peripeteia."

NAO TAI, Lewiston, Idaho, grew up in the maze of northwestern Tokyo and traced his way to Lewiston. He received his BA in English/Creative Writing from Lewis-Clark State College this spring. "Something was there that night-the world in the distance, holding my stare."

BILL YAKE, Olympia, Washington, is a freelance writer living at the edge of Green Cove Creek Ravine. His three chapbooks are out of print, while his poems have recently surfaced in Fine Madness, Rattle, Wild Earth, Albatross, and Runes. "Looking northish from a Hartstine Island log home bluff, I puzzled over how to describe the land- and sea-scape. A deer swam on shore and, dripping saltwater, gracefully clambered out."

TOMMY ZURHELLEN, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, has been published in Crab Creek Review, West, The Carolina Quarterly, and The MacGuffin. He teaches writing at the University of Alabama.