Bill Broun, a graduate of the creative writing program at the University of Houston, works as a journalist in London, England. “Why Are You Still Here?” comes from a collection of stories about various addicts, The Happy People Are Safe. His work has also appeared in the Indiana Review.
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin (1870-1953), although relatively unknown in the West, is among Russia’s most important writers of the twentieth century. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1933, and his works remain popular classics in Russia today. “Raven” first appeared in Dark Avenues, Bunin’s last story collection, published in 1943.
Sándor Csoóri, a leading contemporary Hungarian poet, essayist, and scriptwriter, has been called “the genius of discontent” and is considered to be one of the most prominent artistic spokespersons for the Hungarian people during the past four decades. He is the author of thirteen volumes of poetry and five volumes of essays. Recipient of the Attila Józef Prize in Poetry, he also won the prestigious Kossuth Award, Hungary’s greatest honor for achievement in artistic and scientific work.
Sharon Dilworth is the author of two collections of short stories, The Long White and Women Drinking Benedictine. She lives in Pittsburgh.
Stuart Dischell is the author of Good Hope Road (Viking, 1993) and Evenings & Avenues (Penguin, 1996). He teaches in the M.F.A. program at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.
Albert Goldbarth is the author of numerous volumes of poetry, including Heaven and Earth, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award. His most recent collection of poetry is Troubled Lovers in History (Ohio State University Press). He lives in Wichita, Kansas. Photo by Nathan Filbert.
Egito Gonçalves has published twenty-one volumes of poetry. His most recent book, And Yet It Moves, won the Poetry Prize of the Portuguese PEN Club in 1995 and the Grande Prémio de Poesia of the Portuguese Writers Association in 1996. Through translator Alexis Levitin, his poems have appeared in numerous magazines, including Agni, Harvard Review, International Poetry Review, and Salamander, as well as in the anthology Leading Contemporary Poets.
Debora Greger‘s most recent works include Desert Fathers, Uranium Daughters (1996) and God (forthcoming in 2000), both from Penguin. She teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Florida.
Beth Gylys‘s book Hand on a Streetcar Rail (Silverfish Review Press, 1999) won the Gerald Cable First Book Award. Her work has appeared in New Republic, Paris Review, Antioch Review, and elsewhere.
Daniel Halpern is the author of nine books of poems, most recently Selected Poems (Knopf). In 1999 Knopf published a new collection, Something Shining, and Penguin Putnam will publish The Art of the Story: Short Stories by Contemporary International Writers.
Brian Henry was a Fulbright Scholar in Australia in 1997-98. His poetry and criticism have appeared in numerous American, Australian, British, and Irish magazines. He has edited Verse since 1995.
Graham Hettlinger holds an M.F.A. in poetry writing from the University of Virginia and an M.A. in Russian literature from Ohio State University.
T.R. Hummer‘s most recent poetry collection is Walt Whitman in Hell (LSU). A professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, he has been a Guggenheim Fellow and is the 1999 recipient of the Hanes Poetry Prize.
Gray Jacobik‘s recent collection of poetry, The Double Task, received the Juniper Prize (University of Massachusetts Press, 1998). Her new work appears in American Voice, Ontario Review, and Alkali Flats. She teaches literature at Eastern Connecticut University.
Ha Jin has published several books of poetry and fiction. His novel Waiting was just published by Pantheon Books. His poems in this issue are from a new book of poetry titled Wreckage, which will be due from Hanging Loose Press in fall 2000.
Barbara Jordan is author of Trace Elements (Penguin, 1998) and Channel (Beacon, 1990), which won the Barnard New Women Poets Prize. She teaches creative writing at the University of Rochester.
John Kinsella‘s recent books include The Hunt and Poems 1980-1994. He is editor of Salt, coeditor of Stand, and a fellow of Churchill College in Cambridge, England. Photo by Jeff Doyle.
Li-Young Lee is author of two books of poems, Rose and the city in which I love you (both from BOA Editions, Ltd.) and a book-length prose poem, The Winged Seed, to be published by Hungry Mind Press in 1999.
Alexis Levitin, whose recent translations have appeared in Boulevard, Prairie Schooner, and Partisan Review, has published thirteen volumes of translations, including seven collections of poems by Eugenio de Andrade. He is working on an anthology of twentieth-century Portuguese poetry and has received support from the Witter Bynner Poetry Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Laurence Lieberman‘s books of poetry include Compass of the Dying (University of Arkansas Press, 1998), The Regatta in the Skies: Selected Long Poems (University of Georgia Press, 1999), and forthcoming Flight from the Mother Stone (due out from University of Arkansas Press in spring 2000). His new poems appear in American Poetry Review, Sewanee Review, Partisan Review, Hudson Review, and elsewhere. Photo by William Wiegand.
Tod Marshall teaches at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee.
W.S. Merwin is author of The Vixen (Knopf, 1996), Flower & Hand (Copper Canyon, 1997), and The Folding Cliffs, a narrative poem (Knopf, 1998). Photo by Matthew Carlos Schwartz.
Edward Nobles is the author of Through One Tear and A Small Cluster of Stars, both published by Persea Books. He was included on the Library Journal‘s prestigious list of “24 Poets for the 21st Century.”
Steve Orlen‘s most recent book is Kisses (Miami University Press, 1997). He teaches in the M.F.A. program at the University of Arizona and in the low-residency M.F.A. program at Warren Wilson College.
Edith Pearlman‘s collection of stories, Vaquita (University of Pittsburgh Press), won the 1996 Drue Heinz Award for Literature. Her story “Chance” was included in Best American Short Stories 1998.
Carolyn Perry, assistant professor of English at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, is coeditor of The Dolphin Reader (Houghton Mifflin, 1999) and Southern Women’s Writing (University of Florida, 1995). Her latest work is editing The History of Southern Women’s Literature (to be published by LSUP).
Len Roberts‘s two most recent books of poetry, The Trouble-Making Finch (1998) and Counting the Black Angels (1994), were published by the University of Illinois Press. His book of translation, Selected Poems of Sándor Csoóri, was published by Copper Canyon in 1992. Photo by Jim Manis.
Barry Sanders is professor of English and the History of Ideas at Pitzer College, Claremont, California. His latest work includes The Private Death of Public Discourse (Beacon Press, 1998). A short story, “Dostoyevsky in the Slow Lane,” appeared in the North American Review in January 1998. He was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Sherod Santos‘s fourth book of poems, The Pilot Star Elegies, was published by W.W. Norton & Co. in February 1999. He teaches in the English department at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Peter Schmitt is author of Hazard Duty and Country Airport, both from Copper Beech. His recent work appears in the Hudson Review and the Southern Review. He received the Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets and the “Discovery” / Nation Prize.
Christine Schutt‘s first story collection, Nightwork, was published by Knopf in 1996. Winner of O. Henry and Pushcart prizes, she lives and teaches in New York City.
Mária Szende has co-translated and published, with Len Roberts, many of Sándor Csoóri’s poems. She teaches English literature and language at Janus Pannonius University in Pécs, Hungary.
Bruce Weigl‘s books include Mountain River: Poetry from the Wars in Vietnam, coedited with Nguyen Ba Chung and Kevin Bowen (University of Massachusetts Press, 1998), and Angel Riding a Beast, poems by Liliana Ursu, co-translated with the author from Romanian (Northwestern University Press, 1998). In spring 1999, he also published Archeology of the Circle: New and Selected Poems (Grove/Atlantic Press) as well as After the Others (TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press).
Brenda Williams‘s stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Essence, Mississippi Review, Quarterly West, and on Selected Shorts (National Public Radio). She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
David Wojahn‘s most recent collection of poetry, The Falling Hour, appeared from the University of Pittsburgh Press in 1997. He teaches at Indiana University and in the M.F.A. program at Vermont College.
Wayne Zade is professor of English and director of creative writing at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. His recent poems have appeared in the Cortland Review, Sport Literate, Appalachia Quarterly, and Real Poetik. He has also published reviews in All About Jazz.
