Excerpts & Contributors: Fall 2003

 On this page we provide excerpts, commentary, and biographical notes for our Fall 2003 contributors.  If you wish to read the authors' entire work, please purchase a copy of this issue.  Order forms are available by clicking here or by clicking the “Subscribe” link at the bottom of this page.

Prose

Chrissy Kolaya, Artist's Statement on "Crime Scene"

          Of "Crime Scene," Kolaya offers: "The outline of this story was written on the sly at a job I had five years ago.  At first, I thought I had experienced a miracle and written the entire thing in less than an hour.  I was ecstatic.  Then I went back and reread.  It needed lots of fleshing out, which happened slowly over the next year or two."

Biographical Note

          Chrissy Kolaya is a poet and fiction writer from Chicago who's living as a fish out of water in rural Alabama.  She has an MFA in Poetry from Indiana University and is currently at work on a novel.

Rosemary M. Magee, Artist's Statement on "Extinction"

          Of her story "Extinction," Magee says, "Fiction that tests fundamental assumptions about who we are as human beings—that questions our ability to understand ourselves and our behavior—intrigues me.  In exploring these matters, I often find myself drawn to the rich, evocative terminology of science.  In this story, the word 'extinction' occurs within the specific framework of cognitive behavioral psychology; at the same time it suggests additional layers of meaning.  For me, scientific terms provide an avenue into the interior by exploring the nature of relationships and the condition of intimacy; this I consider to be the essential raw material of fiction."

Biographical Note

          Rosemary M. Magee is currently Senior Associate Dean at Emory University and Executive Director of the Arts Project.  She holds a PhD in Literature and Religion from Emory, and her academic focus is Southern Women Writers.  She has been writing short fiction for the past several years and is a regular artist-in-residence at the Hambridge Center in north Georgia.  She was awarded 2nd prize in the Authors in the Park Contest for her story, "Making Out," which was published in Fine Print.  In May 2003, her short story, "Double Helix," appeared in the summer fiction issue of Atlanta Magazine.

Bonnie Nadzam, Artist's Statement on "Shearing Forces"

          Nadzam offered a little background about her story, "Shearing Forces": "I was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and have been moving progressively farther west since I was ten.  Along the way, I've met a few tough, expert young men.  I didn't expect for 'Shearing Forces' to end up such a tribute to Weston's oh-so interminable expertise and strength of character.  I'd meant for the story to focus more on Allie's failings, and her inability to live in the moment as herself.  It all turned on me a little."

Biographical Note

          Bonnie Nadzam currently lives in Tempe, Arizona—her seventeenth address (six states) in five years—where she is working on her MFA in fiction at Arizona State University.

Scott Yarbrough, Artist's Statement on "Mother in Law"

          Yarbrough says his story, "Mother in Law" was born from "a lot of things that have happened over the last year—my wife's pregnancy, the eventual birth of our daughter, the handling of the Jessica Lynch affair and the invasion of Iraq in general (which prompted me to set this story around the time of the first Gulf War)—combined with my thoughts about this fierce older woman named Myrtice who used to work for my mother and an urge to write about strong (but, like good coffee, not too sweet) Southern women.  I enjoyed Myrtice Walker Livingston's character a great deal."

Biographical Note

          Scott Yarbrough has, over the past year, published stories in The Main Street Rag, The Clackamas Literary Review, The New Orleans Review, and Thirteen Stories.  He placed honorable mention in last year's Lorian Hemingway Short Story competition and was a finalist in the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Writing Novel-in-Progress Competition.  He graduated from Florida State University and earned a PhD at the University of Alabama.  He currently teaches at Charleston Southern University and lives with his wife and brand new baby girl and excellent golden retriever in Charleston, South Carolina.

Poetry

Candace Black, Artist's Statement on "The Chessmen of Lewis: The Castled Queen"

          Of "The Chessmen of Lewis," Black writes: "This poem was inspired by a replica of one of the Lewis Chessmen, 12th-Century Scandinavian chess pieces carved from walrus tusk ivory, and discovered in a sandbank on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides in 1831.  A friend had brought it back from London as a gift, and as the knight sat astride is sturdy pony on the shelf above my desk, I knew I wanted to write a poem in the voice of one of the pieces.  I quickly realized that the queen was the only piece capable of speaking about them all, not only from a position of power in the game but also from a woman's intimate knowledge of her community's daily life.  Of course, I had to ask my chess-playing son for help with the title, wanting a gambit that involved the queen and isolation."

Biographical Note

          Candace Black has published poems in numerous magazines, including The Seattle Review, Quarterly West, Three Rivers Poetry Journal, Passages North, and Folio; her nonfiction appeared recently in poemmemoirstory. Her first book of poetry, The Volunteer, won the 2000 Minnesota Voices Poetry Award and was released by New Rivers Press in October 2003.

Deborah Bogen, "Moving the Moon" and "Watching the News after Dinner, 1969"

Biographical Note

            Deborah Bogen's work has been published in Field, Poetry International, Mudfish, Lyric, Poet Lore, and others.  Her chapbook, Living by the Children's Cemetery, won the 2002 Byline Press Chapbook competition.  Her book-length manuscript, Landscape with Silos, was the runner-up for the T. S. Eliot Prize this year.  She moved to Pittsburgh from Southern California in 2000.

Bruce Bond, Artist's Statement on "Flame"

          Bond says the poem "Flame" began "in contemplation of a Georges de la Tour painting entitled The Repentant Magdalene, a painting from the artist's 'nocturne series' which is deeply indebted to Caravaggio's chiaroscuro works with their sense of luminosity, warmth, and heavy saturation of shadow.  The poem, like the painting, is thus a meditation on nocturnal space as evocative of the mortality, fragility, and introspection that preoccupy the figure of Mary Magdalene."

Biographical Note

            Bruce Bond's collections of poetry include Cinder (Etruscan Press, 2003), The Throats of Narcissus (University of Arkansas Press, 2001), Radiography (Natalie Ornish Award, BOA Editions, 1997), The Anteroom of Paradise (Colladay Award, QRL, 1991), Independence Days (R. Gross ward, 1990), and four chapbooks.  He has received fellowships from the NEA, the Texas Commission on the Arts, and other organizations, and his poetry has appeared in The Best American Poetry 2003, The Paris Review, The Yale Review, TriQuarterly, The Southern Review, and other journals.  He is currently Professor of English at the University of North Texas and Poetry Editor for American Literary Review.

Earl Coleman, Artist's Statement on "Comfort Food"

          Coleman offers the following about his poem "Comfort Food": "This poem is rare (coming from my pen) because it is straight reportage.  My belief is that all poetry and prose is and should be fiction, dependant always on the real, but never using it nakedly without fictionalizing it.  In a way, then, this poem was a gift to me.  I thank my Muse."

Biographical Note

          Early Coleman worked extensively as a publisher before turning to writing full-time about ten years ago.  He has been widely published, with two stories nominated for the Pushcart XXIII and XXVII anthologies and one story nominated for the Best American Short Stories series.  His book of poetry, A Stubborn Pine in a Stiff Wind (Mellen Poetry Press) was published in 2001.  To see more of his work, click onto nearbycafe.com/stubbornpine/stubbornpine.html.

Kathleen Halleron, Artist's Statement on "Waking"

          About her poem, "Waking," Halleron says she wrote the poem about "remembering the ease with which I accepted death as a young girl, simply because I could note make the logical connection between another's mortality and my own." 

Biographical Note

          Kathleen Halleron is a recent graduate of College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.  Her work has appeared in Tar River Poetry.  She lives in Paris, France.

Jeff Hardin, Artist's Statement on "Elder Poet's Final Tour"

          Hardin says this of his poem "Elder Poet's Final Tour": "It was written shortly after the 75th birthday celebration for Philip Levine held at Vanderbilt University in April 2003.  A panel of distinguished poets read a poem or two each.  The mood was genuinely celebratory in the best sense of the word, and I felt in that auditorium that language could be selfless, that language could really rescue us, that language could embolden us to meet a world of diminishing returns.  My poem, in some small way, is my way of saying 'thanks' to those poets for their wonderful reading and fellowship."

Biographical Note

            Jeff Hardin teaches at Columbia State Community College in Columbia, Tennessee.  His chapbooks include Deep in the Shallows (Green Tower Press) and The Slow Hill Out (Pudding House). Recent and forthcoming poems appear in The New Republic, Puerto del Sol, The Formalist, Rattapallax, New Orleans Review, and Smartish Pace.

April Lindner, "Dinner  at Brigham's"

Biographical Note

          April Lindner's collection, Skin, received the 2002 Walt McDonald First Book Prize from Texas Tech University Press, and her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Crazyhorse, Prairie Schooner, The Formalist, and The Carolina Quarterly, among other magazines.  Garrison Keillor read two of her poems on his syndicated radio show, The Writer's Almanac, in 2002 and published one of those poems in his anthology Good Poems.  Lindner currently teaches creative writing at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia and is co-editing an anthology of contemporary American poems with R. S. Gwynn in Longman's Penguin Academics series.

Carol Coffee Reposa, Artist's Statement on "Street Symphony, St. Petersburg"

          Reposa offers the following about her poem: "'Street Symphony, St. Petersburg' began in August of 1995 during a visit to Russia.  Early one morning—3:00 a.m., to be exact—I was awakened from a sound sleep by the shouts, curses, and jackhammers of a repair crew that had shown up outside our hotel to right a derailed trolley and straighten the track.  Unable to sleep in the din, I left my bed, stumbled to the makeshift desk, and began to scribble my impressions of this event, and of Russian noise in general.

          "My nocturnal jottings remain unnoticed among my papers until the summer of 2001, when I came across them while searching for something else.  Thinking this material perhaps could be shaped into a poem, I struggled through a first draft, then another, and another.  'Street Symphony' was the result."

Biographical Note

          Carol Coffee Reposa's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Formalist, Blue Mesa Review, San Jose Studies, Descant, Amarillo Bay, Context South, The Texas Observer, Concho River Review, Southwestern American Literature, Borderlands, and other journals and anthologies.  She has three collections of poetry: At the Border: Winter Lights, The Green Room, and Facts of Life.  Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, she also has received two Fulbright/Hays Fellowships, the first for study in Russia (1995) and a second for research in Peru and Ecuador (1999).  She teaches English at San Antonio College.

Patricia Roth Schwartz, Artist's Statement on "Aquamarine, Lining of Silk"

           Schwartz says of "Aquamarine, Lining of Silk": "The origin of this poem is a photograph of my mother, taken in Nov. 1941 by my father, right before they got married that January.  He entered WWII six weeks later.  The poem deals with my trying to come to terms with the complicated relationship I had with my mother and the ambiguities of feelings still left in me.  This poem is part of a series about my family history, and all of these poems are included in an as-yet unpublished chapbook manuscript, Branches Still Covered with Leaves.

Biographical Note

          Patricia Roth Schwartz grows herbs and perennials on her 35-acre property, Sage-Thyme Haven, in Waterloo, New York, near the Finger Lakes.  She teaches at the Writers & Book Literary Center in Rochester, New York, as well as volunteering to conduct an ongoing poetry workshop in Auburn Correctional Facility, a maximum security men's prison.  Her work has been published or is forthcoming in numerous small press journals, including The Women's Review of Books, The Distillery, The Beloit Fiction Journal, Nimrod, The Clackamas Literary Review, South Carolina Review, RiverSedge, and Lullwater Review.  She received an ImageOut poetry award in 2002 and was a Finalist in 2003.  She was also selected as a Finalist in the Willamette Poetry Contest from The Clackamas Literary Review for 2003.

Megan Shevenock, Artist's Statement on "Twenty-Cent Orange"

           "Twenty-Cent Orange" is one of the poems from her self-published chapbook, Memory with a Red Lamp.

Biographical Note

            Megan Shevenock received her BA in Liberal Arts from Sarah Lawrence College in December.  Following graduation, she will move to Cambridge, England, to live and work for six months. She plans on attending graduate school for poetry in the Fall of 2004.

Enid Shomer, "Honeysuckle" and "Aubade with Herons"

Biographical Note

          Enid Shomer read recently at the University of Tampa.  Her most recent book, Stars at Noon: Poems from the Life of Jacqueline Cochran, has been adapted and expanded into a play by Karen Sunde (with Shomer) called The Fastest Woman Alive.  It has been read in concert or performed at the Cocteau Repertory and La Mama in New York, as well as in New Jersey and Massachusetts.  Shomer is currently finishing a second collection of short stories.

Floyd Skloot, "The Witness Tree"

           Skloot says "The Witness Tree" "was written at a time when so many people seemed to be ignoring the signs of impending storm."

Biographical Note

            Floyd Skloot's fourth book of poems, The End of Dreams, will appear in spring 2005 from LSU Press.  His poetry appeared recently in The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, Hudson Review, and elsewhere.  His memoir, In the Shadow of Memory (Nebraska, 2003) was a Barnes and Noble 'Discover Great New Writers' selection and was recommended by Book Sense 76.

Interview

William Tydeman, "The Search for a Seamless Coherence: An Interview with Barry Lopez"

Barry Lopez, Artist's Statement on "Pulling Wire"

           Regarding his story "Pulling Wire," Lopez says, "The title, 'Pulling Wire' and the image of an older man standing in the woods with his dog had been with me for years before I wrote the story.  That image was a natural starting point, but, as is often the case for me, I had no idea where the story was going when I started, beyond believing this man was probably a retired logger and that he was taking scrap metal out of the woods for some reason.

          "I also knew I wanted a calm tone in the piece, because I sensed something strange was going to happen.  It was a little bit of a surprise to find that the story ended up being very brief, after having wondered about it for so long.  It's set in the kind of country I've lived in for many years.  Elliot is not based on anyone I know, though I can easily imagine such a character turning up in the community in which I live."

Diane Hueter, "A Barry Lopez Bibliography"

Biographical Notes

William Tydeman is Director of the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library which houses the James Sowell Family Collection in Literature, Community, and the Natural World.

Barry Lopez's books include Arctic Dreams, for which he received the National Book Award, and most recently, an essay collection entitled About This Life and a collection of short stories entitled Light Action in the Caribbean.  He is the recipient of several major awards and fellowships and often collaborates with artists, composers, photographers, and dramatists on special projects.  His work is widely translated and anthologized.  He lives in western Oregon.

Diane Hueter is an Associate Librarian at the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library at Texas Tech University.

Photography

John Hodges, "At the Table"

Excerpt:

Biographical Note

John Hodges has published photographs and fiction in various journals, including Apalachee Quarterly, Alabama Literary Review, Witness, Coe Review, New Stone Circle, and Contact Sheet.  He currently attends Florida State University as a graduate student in creative writing.

Click Here to see excerpts from this issue's book reviews.

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