Oregon
Literary
Review
vol. 2, no. 2

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Contributors

Contributors to our current issue are:

Chris Abani was imprisoned, tortured, and sentenced to death for his literary activities before fleeing Nigeria. He is the author of critical acclaimed short stories novels and poetry. His poems in this issue are from his fourth collection of poetry, Hands Washing Water (Copper Canyon Press, 2006.) He is an associate professor at The University of California-Riverside, a Lannan Fellow, and a recipient of a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award.

Taha Muhammad Ali was born in Galilee and for decades has owned The Promenent Souvenir Center of Nazareth just steps down the hill from the Basillica of the Annunciation. He has published short stories and four collections of poetry. Poems in this issue are from the bilingual collection So What:New & Selected Poems,1971-2005 (Copper Canyon Press,2006),translated by Peter Cole, Yahya Hijazi, and Gabriel Levin.

Britta Andersson is from Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. She recently completed her BFA in Creative Writing at The Institute of American Indian Arts. She has been accepted into the Creative Writing Program at NYU.

Mariana Arévalo studied filmmaking at NYU and has directed two short films, Love (Abridged Edition) and Blind Date. She's done commercials in Mexico and recently developed a travel agency.

Joe Balaz edited Ho’omanoa: An Anthology of Contemporary Hawaiian Literature and is the author of Domino Buzz, a CD of music-poetry (www.joebalaz.com). “Isolated Word” is a selection from the CD. His writing has appeared in Hawaii Review, Wisconsin Review, Kaimana--Literary Arts Hawaii and elsewhere.

Susan Beck is an artist who works and lives in Portland, Oregon.

Rebecca Bella wrote her play in verse while a studying in the Boston University Creative Writing Program Her own poetry and translations of Russian poetry have been published in A Public Space, 236, and Khudozhestvenyj Zhurnal. She was selected as one of the city laureates in the San Francisco Public Library Poets Eleven program. She teaches English at the Academy of Art University.

Jennifer Fox Bennett is an engineer-by-day, derby girl-by-night, and mildly-inebriated poet on the weekends. She rarely finds time for much of anything these days. An Odawa by way of Wikwemikong, Ontario and an Ojibwe by way of Bad River, Wisconsin, she's been eking out in the San Francisco Bay Area for six years, hoping to continue producing pieces of art while bringing home the bacon. She hopes to soon get her philandering, devil-may-care tukus to graduate school for Creative Writing. Let's wish her luck, shall we?

Mary BlackBonnet, an enrolled member of the Sicangu (Rosebud) Tribe, currently lives in Vermillion, SD, with her husband. She received her BA in English from the University of South Dakota, where she was named a Who's Who student among colleges and universities. In 2006, Mary was named one of Ten Outstanding Young South Dakotans for her contributions to literature. Mary's poetry has appeared in such places as Nagi-Ho journal, Tribal College Journal, and Potomac Review, and the forthcoming anthology: Wild in Our Breast for Centuries: Women and the Returning Realities of War. She will also have a poem in the forthcoming textbook: Sharing our stories of Survival. Her essays have appeared in Frontiers: A Journal in Women's Studies, Genocide of the Mind: New Native Writings and Eating Fire Tasting Blood: Breaking the Great Silence of the American Indian Holocaust.

Jenna Brager is a native of Baltimore, Maryland, and a graduate of Towson High School Law & Public Policy. She has been published in the Susquehanna Apprentice Writer, received two Gold Keys from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and received an award from the Goucher College Women Writing About Women Contest in 2006. She is currently studying Journalism and Anthropology with a minor in Women's Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, and plans to use her degree to work in the independent media and the social justice movement.

Jeff Brewer is the Editor of the Portland Review. He also attends Portland State University, where he is working on his M.A. in English Literature. This is his first publication.

Trevino Brings Plenty is an American and Native American; a Lakota Indian born on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation, South Dakota, USA. Some of his work explores the American Indian identity in American culture and how it has through genealogical history affected indigenous peoples in the 21st century. He writes of urban Indian life; it’s his subject.

David Brooks is a painter. His website is www.dfbrooks.com.

Katherine L. Browning, a senior at St.Ann's School, New York, N.Y. will be attending Harvard University this fall.

Martin Burke is a poet and playwright. His poems have appeared widely in journals in the UK (Stride, Shearsman, more), the United States (Verse, Drunken Boat, more), Ireland (Virtual Writer, The Dublin Quarterly, more), Austria (Poetry Salburg Review), and Sweden (Ars Interpres). His two most recent books are The Other Life (FootHills Publishing, NY, 2004) and The Weave That Binds Us (Inner Circle Publishing, Iowa, 2004) with two new books scheduled to appear soon. His plays have been performed in the UK, the US and Belgium. Burke was born in Ireland but now lives and works in Brugge, Belgium.

Pris Campbell was a clinical psychologist and sailor/traveler when illness forced her to park her vagabond shoes. She started writing poetry in 1999. Her work has appeared widely, including in Limestone Circle, Blackmail Press, Verse Libre, The Dakota House, Erosha, Muse's Kiss, and Peshekee River Poets. She lives in Florida.

Edmund J. Campion has been a professor of French since 1977 at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He earned his Ph.D. in French from Yale in 1976. His research interests, teaching, and publications have dealt with Erasmus, French writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and Senghor's poetry. He is currently writing a book on Senghor as a Catholic poet for the Edwin Mellen Press.

Henry Carlile is the author of three collections of poetry. His first book, The Rough-Hewn Table, won the Devins Award in 1971. Carlile is the recipient of two Pushcart Prizes, two PEN Syndicated Fiction awards, and Crazyhorse magazine's 1988 Poetry Award and has held grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Oregon Arts Commission, and the Ingram Merrill Foundation.

Siv Cedering is the author of twenty books and four books of translations. She is an exhibiting sculptor and painter, a book illustrator, and the writer of songs and TV programs for children. Her writing, in Swedish and English, has appeared in Harper's, Science, Ms., The New Republic, BLM, Paris Review, Georgia Review and elsewhere. Her work has appeared in more than 200 anthologies and textbooks.

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke has authored Blood Run; Off-Season City Pipe; Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer; Year of the Rat; and Dog Road Woman. She has edited five journals/anthologies including the newly released Ahani: Indigenous American Poetry, which features writing by indigenous peoples of both North and South America, and was published as a special issue of To Topos: Poetry International. She is of Cherokee, Huron, Creek, Metis, French Canadian, Portuguese, Scot, Irish and English descent. An alumnus of the Institute of American Indian Arts, she is currently a professor of creative writing there.

Olivia A. Cole, a senior at St.Francis High School, Louisville, KY, will be attending Columbia College, Chicago, this fall.

Dawn Corrigan has published at Hobart, Pindeldyboz, Monkeybicycle, Defenestration, 55 Words, The Dream People, and VerbSap. Her play "September" appeared in the Winter/Spring 2007 issue of the Oregon Literary Review. Her nonfiction appears regularly at The Nervous Breakdown (http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/).

James Crumley is the author of nine hardboiled crime novels and two short story collections. The Mexican Tree Duck (1994) won the Dashell Hammitt Award. His latest novel is The Right Madness (2005).

Chris Cunningham has directed a number of music videos, as well as the films Rubber Johnny, Flex, Monkey Drummer and several videos.

Lynn Darroch has written about jazz and other music for 25 years. His reviews, previews and commentaries appear regularly in the Oregonian, and he has contributed frequently to Jazz Times and other nationally-circulated magazines. He edited the monthly Jazzscene for eight years. His work appears in such books as The Encyclopedia of United States Popular Culture (Popular Press) and Jumptown: the Golden Years of Portland Jazz (Oregon State University Press). He was on the faculty at Mt. Hood Community College for 18 years.

Mahmoud Darwish perhaps the most distinguished Arab poet writing today is the author of more than twenty books of poetry and ten of prose, and is the editor of the international journal al-Karmel, based in Ramallah. He is the recipient of a Lenin Peace Prize, the Lannan Prize for Cultural Freedom, and the French medal for Knight of Arts and Letters. His poems in this issue are from the bilingual collection, The Butterfly's Burden (Copper Canyon Press,2007), translated by Fady Joudah.

Maaike Davidson is a playwright.

Jon Davis has published five collections of poetry, including Scrimmage of Appetite, for which he received a 1998 Lannan Award in Poetry. He recently completed three new manuscripts, The Pot Spinners, Hetronymy: An Anthology, and Twenty Songs of Despair: The Poems of Chuck Calabreze. Poems from the new manuscripts have recently appeared in Sentence, Dragonfire, The New Hampshire Review, Ontario Review, and Indiana Review. He is Chair of the Institute of American Indian Arts' BFA Creative Writing Program; in addition, he teaches screenwriting for the ABC/IAIA Summer Television and Film Workshops. He blogs at http://voydofcourse.blogspot.com.

Tom Doulis is a novelist and literary historian. He's a Professor Emeritus in English at Portland State University.

Christine Eagon is a fine art photographer, international postal artist, painter, and art educator. Her work is represented in Kresge Museum of Art and private print collections in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. Christine is the Director of Inner Light Photographic Society and teaches through Oregon College of Art and Craft, Newspace Center for Photography. She lives in Vancouver , Washington

George Evans is the author of five books of poetry published in the US and England, including The New World (Curbstone Press), and Sudden Dreams (Coffee House Press). His poetry, fiction, essays, and translations have been published in literary magazines throughout the US, and in Australia, England, France, Ireland, Japan, Nicaragua, and Viet Nam. His has received writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lannan Foundation, the California Arts Council, and a Japanese government Monbusho Fellowship for the study of Japanese literature. An antiwar activist veteran of the Viet Nam-American War, he is one of the subjects of the 2006 radio series "Shared Weight," a six episode program addressing the impact of war on culture and society produced for National Public Radio (NPR) by the Center for Emerging Media in Baltimore.

Ronnetta Fagan is a writer, a teacher, and a lawyer. She attended Harvard-Radcliffe College where she created a special concentration in Cultural Studies and wrote her senior thesis on black women's film. She then attended the University of Michigan law school and practiced as a corporate attorney for nearly a decade. Her fiction was selected as a finalist in Glimmer Train’s Summer 2006 short fiction contest. She has attended writing workshops at Sewanee, Tin House, Iowa and has been awarded a residency at the Vermont Studio Center for fall 2007. Ronnetta coaches adults and children in the craft of writing and is a Writer-in-Residence in the Houston public schools through their Writers in the Schools program. She is working on her first novel and a memoir. ‘The Old Neighborhood’ is part of her memoir.

Stacy Feder graduated from the University of Madison-WI with a degree in English and Creative Writing and is currently attending Portland State University to fulfill a lifelong dream of acquiring a Masters of Poetry. At the moment, she is working on an anthology of short stories and poems about her childhood entitled Gross Morals, a collection of modern-day German fairytales Schwestern im Sturm, and a series of children's books called Stacy Stories. She is determined to have a life supported by writing what she loves.

Jennifer Foerster is a graduate of the Institute of American Indian Arts and holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College. She has been the recipient of the Truman Capote Fellowship, the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony Fellowship, the Naropa Summer Writing Program Fellowship, and the Vermont Studio Center Mill Atelier Fellowship. She has been published in Red Ink, Tribal College Journal, Shenandoah, Atlantis, The Cream City Review, Ploughshares, Passages North, and To Topos: Poetry International. She is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma and lives in San Francisco.

S. G. Frazier is of the Oklahoma Cherokee people. He received his BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts and currently is earning his MFA at Syracuse University. His poems have recently appeared in American Poet and Ontario Review. He maintains a web site at santeefrazier.com .

Sean Funk is a student at Portland State University studying Applied Linguistics. He also has a degree in Computer Information Systems. When not at school, he enjoys reading, genealogy, and spending time with his dogs Sophia and Cosmo.

Paul Giles is Professor of American Literature and Director of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford, U.K. His most recent book is Atlantic Republic: The American Tradition in English Literature (Oxford University Press, 2006).

Patricia Goedicke was the author of twelve collections of poetry, including As Earth Begins to End, Invisible Horses, and The Tongues We Speak: New and Selected Poems. She taught Creative Writing at the University of Montana for twenty-five years. She died July 14, 2006 of complications from cancer at age 75. Her last manuscript,The Baseball Field at Night, will be published by Lost Horse Press in 2007.

Jo Grishman was born and raised in New York City and has studied education, sociology and social work in addition to raising a family. After raising her family she attend the Post Baccalaureate program at the Maryland Institute of Art which was her first formal art training. Since then she has been sculpting at the Oregon College of Art and Craft as well as constantly taking workshops in her primary medium of clay to help her continue to evolve.

Michael S. Harper "has published more than ten books of poetry, most recently Selected Poems (ARC Publications, 2002); Songlines in Michaeltree: New and Collected Poems (2000); Honorable Amendments (1995); and Healing Song for the Inner Ear (1985). His other collections include: Images of Kin (1977), which won the Melville-Cane Award from the Poetry Society of America and was nominated for the National Book Award; Nightmare Begins Responsibility (1975); History is Your Heartbeat (1971), which won the Black Academy of Arts & Letters Award for poetry; and Dear John, Dear Coltrane (1970), which was nominated for the National Book Award." (poets.org)

Phillip Hamrick lives in the Village of the Evergreens and teaches at Youngstown State University. His work can be found in places like Denver Syntax (under the pen name Paolo Rhys) and in the Istanbul Literature Review. He also has work forthcoming in Southern Gothic.

H. Suzanne Heagy's poems, stories and reviews have appeared in genesis, Lynx Eye, Poetry Southeast, and Horizons, the annual publication of the South Carolina Writers Guild. She lives for the moment in Wisconsin, where she teaches literature and writing at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and works as fiction editor for cream city review.

Robin Henderson is a self-taught musician. "Sunset" is his first musical. Currently he is working with a British librettist on a new adaptation of Dracula.

Richard Hugo's first book of poetry was published in 1961; his last in 1980. He was the director of the creative writing program at the University of Montana. Hugo received numerous fellowships and awards, including the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He also published chapbooks and a mystery novel. Hugo died in September of 1982.

Adam Hurst has an original and unique improvised melodic style of cello playing. His music blends Middle Eastern, Indian, and Gypsy traditions with Western Classical in haunting, and seamlessly flowing compositions. He has been described as "mesmerizing", "spiritually inspiring", and "a hypnotic cello player". Live and on his recordings, he performs alone.

June Jordan (1936-2002) was one of the founding poets of Teachers and Writers Collaborative, and as a Professor of African American Studies at the University of California-Berkley, founder and director of the Poetry for the People program. She was the recipient of a Rockerfellow Grant, a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Award, and a special United States Congressional Recognition for "outstanding contributions to literature, the civil rights movement, and in recognition of outstanding and invaluable service to the community." Poems in this issue are from Directed by Desire:The Collected poems of June Jordan (Copper Canyon Press,2005)

Milton Kessler (1930-2000), described by Heather McHugh as half Zen master and half Walt Whitman, was an outstanding teacher and professor for more than thirty years. A poet of quiet international acclaim, he published five books. He was a Robert Frost and Edward Mac Dowell Foundation Fellow, and taught at SUNY-Binghamton. Poems in this issue are from Free Concert; New and Selected Poems (Etruscan Press, 2003).

David Lee lives in Texas. He has been a semiprofessional ball player, a boxer, pig farmer and Milton scholar. His latest collection is So Quiet the Earth, Copper Canyon Press, which turns toward the voice of the desert he knows so well.

Karl Lind is a thirty three year old filmmaker and video artist currently residing in Portland Oregon. Over the past several years his short films and videos have screened internationally in Micro-cinemas, Film Festivals and Art Galleries. His work focuses on investigating the in-between spaces between fact and fiction, emotions, memory and "reality" Karl has also collaborated with other artists on multi-media performance art pieces and installations. Karl also likes to make music videos and documentaries.

Matt Love is the author of the Beaver State Trilogy: Grasping Wastrels vs. Beaches Forever Inc.: Covering the Fights for the Soul of the Oregon Coast (2003), The Far Out Story of Vortex I (2004) and Red Hot and Rollin™: A Retrospection of the Portland Trail Blazers™ 1976-77 Championship Season. He is a regular editorial and book review contributor to Oregonian, a columnist for In Good Tilth and Bear Deluxe magazines, and teaches English and history in the Lincoln County School District. He lives at the Oregon Coast where for eight years he has served as caretaker of the Nestucca Bay National Wildlife Refuge.

Evelina Zuni Lucero, Isleta/Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo, is the chair of the creative writing program at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is the author of the novel Night Sky, Morning Star (University of Arizona Press).

Emily Lundin is researching on a Creative Writing Fulbright Fellowship while finishing a novel set in Mississippi, where she grew up. Her work is forthcoming in CUE: a Journal of Prose Poetry, Bordercrossing Berlin, and Cutthroat: a Journal of the Arts. She teaches creative writing at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg and lives in Berlin.

Tupper Malone is a sculptor who recently branched into water media.

Hannah Martin joined the military after a first aborted attempt at college; she spent her early adult years traveling the world, first as a Marine and then as a sailor. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Hannah is currently finishing up a master's degree in Theater Arts with a focus in playwrighting. Her short fiction has been published in periodicals such as Down in the Dirt, Oysters and Chocolate and New Moon.

Scott McCarthy is a graduate of Slippery Rock University's writing program. He lives in Pittsburgh where he teaches and share living quarters with his cat, Armando. His stories and essays have been published in Farmhouse Magazine, The Square Table and Cherry Bleeds.

W.S.Merwin is the author of numerous books of poetry and translations and winner of a Pulitzer Prize for poetry, the Tanning Prize, and the Bollinger Award. He lives in Hawaii. Poems in this issue are from Migration: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press,2005).

Tom Meschery is a ten year former NBA power forward, who played for the Philadelphia and San Francisco Warriors, and the Seattle Supersonics. He has been a head coach for the Carolina Cougars of the ABA and an assistant coach for the Portland Trailblazers under Lenny Wilkens. Meschery is a graduate of the University of Iowa Workshop and a retired high school AP English teacher in Reno, Nevada. He is the author of the poetry collections Over the Rim and Nothing We Lose Can Be Replaced. Muscle Memory is memoir in progress.

Stephen Meyer graduated from Indiana University with a Master's degree in vocal performance, and a PhD in Music History from SUNY Stony Brook. Since 1998, he has been a member of the Department of Fine Arts at Syracuse University, where he is the director of the Music History and Cultures Program. His research specialty is early nineteenth-century opera, and he has published articles on Beethoven, Mozart, Marschner, and others in numerous scholarly journals, including the Journal of the American Musicological Society and the Cambridge Opera Journal. His book Carl Maria von Weber and the Search for a German Opera was published in 2003 by Indiana University Press. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a Fulbright scholarship and an NEH Summer Stipend, In addition to his scholarly work, Professor Meyer has also been active as a performer. He appears as the bass singer in Dorian Recordings 2004 release "The Triumph of Love and Death" with Piffaro and the Concord Ensemble. He is currently working on a project concerning early sound recordings of Wagnerian works.

Tiffany Midge is the author of Outlaws, Renegades and Saints (Greenfield Review Press, 1996) and recipient of the Diane Decorah Memorial Poetry Award from Native Writers' Circle of the Americas. Previous publication credits include, Shenandoah, Poetry Northwest, North American Review and Cold Mountain Review. Currently, Midge is an MFA candidate at University of Idaho and am an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux.

E. Ethelbert Miller is the author of seven collections of poetry. His latest is How We Sleep On the Nights, We Don't Make Love (Curbstone Press, 2004). He edited two anthologies and wrote the memoir, Father Words. Mr.Miller is the chair of the Humanities Council of Washington D.C. and the Director of the African American Resource Center at Howard University.

John C. Morrison works for Literary Arts in Portland. His poems have appeared recently in Poet Lore, Sycamore Review, and Tar River Poetry. His first book, Heaven of the Moment, won the Rhea & Seymour Gorsline Poetry Competition and will be published this year.

Thylias Moss is a "poet, writer, and playwright, who has published a number of poetry collections, children’s books, and plays. Among her awards are a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Artist's Fellowship from the Massachusetts Arts Council, and the Witter Bynner Award for poetry." (Wikipedia)

Duane Niatum has published six books of poems, including The Crooked Beak of Love (West End Press). He was twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He has a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Michigan.

Lars Nordström was born in 1954 in Stockholm, Sweden where he lived until 1974. He was educated at the University of Stockholm, Portland State University, and Uppsala University, where he received his Ph.D. in American literature in 1989. He is the recipient of several Fulbright grants and Swedish Institute grants, as well as a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Fellowship. In 1988 he settled with his wife and two sons on a small vineyard in Beavercreek, Oregon, where he farms wine grapes, writes and translates. Lars Nordström has published poetry, prose, interviews, translations, and scholarly material in many magazines in a number of different countries. His most recent publication is a book of oral histories of recent Swedish immigrants to the Pacific Northwest entitled: De nya utvandrarna: Tio svenskar i nordvästra USA berättar (2005).

DG Nanouk Okpik is Inupiat from Alaska. She graduated with honors from Salish Kootenai College on the Flathead Reservation in Northwest Montana with an Associates in Liberal Studies and received her BFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts. While at IAIA, she received--among other awards--the Truman Capote Scholarship and a fellowship to the Centrum / Port Townsend Writer's Conference.

Lisa Olstein is the recipient of a pushcart prize and a fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She is a co-founder of the Juniper Initiative for Literary Arts and Action. Poems in this issue are from Radio Cracklin, Radio Gone (Copper Canyon Press,2006).

Mary Anne O'Neil has taught French language and literature at Whitman College for thirty years. She holds a doctorate in Romance Languages from the University of Oregon (1979). She is especially interested in modern French poetry and is currently completing a book on the poetry of Pierre Emmanuel.

Deleana Otherbull is a student of psychology at the University of Arizona where she is biding her time until she graduates in December 2007. She is of the Crow and Northern Cheyenne tribes of Montana. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 2006. Among other awards, she was a Truman Capote Scholar for the years 2005-2006. Eventually, she hopes to pursue a career in clinical psychology, with the intention of writing self-help books for creative writing students.

Cesare Pavese (1908-1950)-poet, novelist, diarist essayist, translator and critic of American literature. He was among the leading Italian writers of the twentieth century. He received the Premio Strega, Italy's most prestigious literary prize. Poems in this issue are from Disaffections: Complete Poems 1930-1950, translated by Geoffrey Brock (Copper Canyon Press,2002).

Peter Pereira is a family physician at High Point Community Clinic in West Seattle. He is the author of three books of poetry and the winner of a Hayden Carruth Award.

Ilan Postupetski has participated in music festivals in Israel, Lithuania, The Czech Republic, Finland and the United States. He has collaborated with Asaf Sagiv to produce a recording of ten original compositions. He studied Film Scoring at Berklee College of Music and performed and recorded in the New England region. He has now returned to the Israeli music scene where he is a pianist, producer, composer and arranger. You can find his music at: www.ilansmusic.com.

Bill Ransom's work as a firefighter/EMT in Central America in the 1980s led to his poetry CD, War Baby. The author of numerous poetry collections and novels, he teaches at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. Recent fiction, "Scraps," appears in Carve magazine.

Cathy Tagnak Rexford, Inupiaq/French/English, is of Kaktovik, Alaska. She has a B.A. in Native American Studies from the Evergreen State College, a B.F.A. in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Cathy also works with Native Movement, a non-profit dedicated to sustainability and youth leadership. She is currently writing a children's novel and now lives in Alaska.

Phoebe C. Rusch attended Interlochen Arts Academy, Interlochen Michigan, and is interested in the connection between art and human rights advocacy, history, theater, film, any form of communication, cultural dissonance, people. She is a Presidential Scholar and has been accepted at Princeton. After college she'd like to continue writing poetry and plays and perhaps be a foreign correspondent.

Vern Rutsala is the author of twelve collections of poetry, including The Window, Laments, The Journey Begins, and Little-Known Sports. Among the awards for his work are a Guggenheim Fellowship, two NEA grants, the Juniper Prize, an Oregon Book Award, two Carolyn Kizer Poetry Prizes, the Duncan Lawrie Prize, a Pushcart Prize, the Akron Poetry Prize, the Northwest Poetry Prize, and a Masters Fellowship from the Oregon Arts Commission.

Asaf Sagiv is currently a student at the Berklee College of Music, has composed music for the Harvard-Radcliffe Dance Company and, in collaboration with Ilan Postupetski, for the Boston Playwrights' Theatre. His music, including compositions and productions as well as his guitar performances, has also received recognition in his native Israel. Asaf will be moving to LA shortly upon graduation from Berklee to work as a film/media composer. You can find his recordings at www.myspace.com/knowtheasylum, www.myspace.com/asafsagiv and www.asafsagiv.com.

Guilherme Schroeter is a composer of Neoclassical music, Jazz, and Pop. He was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1960 to a family of musicians. He received his Music Degree in 1988. He has been a concert pianist as well as a composer. Schroeter has written over 200 works.

Kim Shuck is a mixed Tsalagi, Sauk/Fox and Polish educator, writer and weaver. Shuck has had myriad jobs, which include writing math curricula, frothing cappuccino, teaching at the university level and being the mom of three kids who are even now entering teen hood. She has attended way too much school, one product of which is an MFA. In late summer of 2005 she made a trip with poets to Jordan in the interest of peace and communication. Her book Smuggling Cherokee from Greenfield Review Press, won the 2005 first book award from the Native Writer's Circle of the Americas.

Jim Shugrue works as a bookseller in Portland, Oregon. His poems and reviews have appeared in International Quarterly, Fine Madness, Poetry East and elsewhere. His chapbook Small Things Screaming (26 Books) was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. He is a founding editor of Hubbub Magazine.

Ryan Smithson served in Operation Iraqi Freedom from November 2004 to December 2005. He is currently a Criminal Justice major at Hudson Valley Community College. He is twenty-one years old and is writing a collection of essays about his experiences in Iraq.

Garrett Socol's first play, "The Shadow of Greatness," premiered at the Berkshire Theatre Festival 2000 in a production that starred Richard Chamberlain. His second play, "Bicoastal Woman," enjoyed a successful run at the Pasadena Playhouse in 2003. Garrett (sometimes credited as Gary) has written numerous non-fiction pieces for print magazines including Cosmopolitan, McCall's and Movieline. His short fiction has been published in Ghoti Magazine, Monkeybicycle, and McSweeney's.

Joseph A. Soldati is a poet, translator and essayist. His poetry has appeared in the anthology Line Drive: 100 Baseball Poems. He is the author of a collection of poems, Making My Name.

Lisa M. Steinman teaches at Reed College and is the author of five books of poetry and three books about poetry. She is working on a new book about American poetry with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Arthur Sze is the author of eight books of poetry, including Quipu, The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970-1998, and The Silk Dragon: Translations from the Chinese, all from Copper Canyon Press. "The Double Helix?" first appeared in Conjunctions, while the translations are from The Silk Dragon.

Greg Thielen lives in Tempe, Arizona with his wife and three daughters. He serves on the advisory board for the Virginia Piper School of Creative Writing at Arizona State University. He has also published interviews with Allen Ginsberg, Norman Dubie, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Alberto Rios in various literary journals. His chapbook, Vacancies, was the winner of the 1996 Sarasota Poetry Theatre's annual chapbook contest.

Susan J. Tweit is the author of ten books that explore the relationship between humans and other species and the landscapes we share. She's written for markets as diverse as Audubon Magazine, Popular Mechanics, Los Angeles Times, and the Martha Stewart Living Radio Network.

Phyllis Unkefer is from East Lansing, Michigan. She graduated from the Interlochen Arts Academy as a creative writing major in May 2006. She is currently taking a year off from her studies and living in Hong Kong, where she writes, sings, drums, goes to church, hikes, and travels to different countries in Southeast Asia. She plans to attend a university in the States next fall.

Phillip Van recently completed MFA studies in NYU’s graduate film program, Tisch School of the Arts, which he attended on a full Dean's Fellowship. He now works as a director and cinematographer in New York.

Aaron Walker received his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He also studied screenwriting at Portland State University. He currently lives in Portland, Oregon.

Luke Warm Water has been featured at poetry venues throughout the U.S. and in Europe, and won Poetry Slam competitions from Oregon to Germany. Recent literary publication credits include: Drumvoices Revue and Red Ink, and his book On Indian Time (2005) and forthcoming book Iktomi's Uprising (2007). Luke currently resides in northern California.

Ming Wei works in traditional Chinese watercolor styles.

Joel Weishaus is the Resident Writer at Museu do Essencial e do Além Disso, Bibliothecadas das Marauilhas, Rio de Jenerio, Brazil, and a visiting professor at Portland State University. His most recent book is The Healing Spirit of Haiku (coauthored with David H. Rosen). He has widely exhibited Digital Literary Art, in July, 2005, at the 2nd International Academic Conference of Analytical Psychology and Jungian Studies, Texas A&M University. He is a member of the International Association for Jungian Studies and the Oregon Friends of C.G. Jung.

James Welch (Blackfeet/Gros Ventre) was primarily a novelist, whose books include Fools Crow, Winter in the Blood, The Death of Jim Loney, The Indian Lawyer and others. His poetry has been collected under the title Riding the Earthboy 40.

Sari Weston’s essay “Cast Again” was a finalist in the 2004 Northwest Perspectives contest of the Oregon Quarterly. While living in Portland , she co-founded a local writing group, the Carbon River Writers, which hosted public readings for over two years. Recently transplanted to North Carolina , she is currently at work on a novel about the intersection of Yankees, bugs, traffic and old-timers in the New South -- and raising a son, Jack, aged two.

Orlando White is Diné (Navajo) from Sweetwater, Arizona. His clans are of the Zuni Water Edge People and born for the Mexican Clan. He holds a B.F.A. degree in creative writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Red Ink Magazine, To Topos, 26 Magazine, and Ur Vox. He is currently in the literary arts program at Brown University.

Leslie Wilson is Co-Principal of a media/film production company, AMI, and Executive Director and Editor-in-Chief of Americana: The Institute for the Study of American Popular Culture, which publishes both creative and scholarly texts. At Pepperdine University, she has directed the undergraduate program in creative writing, the MFA in screenwriting, WordFest, and the Fall Literary Arts Festival. Her most recent film script, Mississippi Son, was shot on location on the Mississippi Gulf Coast last summer and is currently on the film festival circuit. Her most recent script for stage, Faking It, premiered at the 2006 Fall Literary Arts Festival in Pepperdine's Raitt Recital Hall.

Elizabeth Woody (Navajo/Warm Springs/Wasco/Yakama) has received the 1990 American Book Award, Hedgebrook's J.T. Stewart award (for those who write transformational work), and the discretional William Stafford Memorial Award for Poetry from the Pacific Northwest Bookseller's Association in 1995. Please see www.hanksville.org/storytellers/ewoody for a complete CV and list of publications.