Contributors' Notes Brian Bartlett of Halifax has published the poetry collections Underwater Carpentry and Planet Harbor from Goose Lane Editions, and next spring Ekstasis Editions is publishing his Granite Erratics. This year he is writing poetry, fiction, and personal essays while revelling in his first sabbatical from teaching at Saint Mary's University.
Bruce Bentzman writes... "This Bronx born bard has been orbiting the Sun since 1951. I grew up, but very slowly, mostly in the suburbs of Philadelphia. An average student whose academic education petered out about midway through college. Lots of jobs. Failed in my first marriage; it interfered with our friendship. Got divorced and restored that excellent friendship. Succeeded in a second marriage, and this time it was a package deal that included two kids, now grown. I have been writing since I was twelve and have had poems published in dribbles since 1971. In the Autumn of 1995 I entered Cyberspace and had my first short story published. Since then my short stories and poems have appeared in The Alsop Review, The Free Cuisenart, Gruene Street (where it might be invisible, but it is there), In Vivo Magazine, The Morpo Review, Snakeskin, Southern Ocean Review, and Zuzu's Petals Quarterly. Presently, I support this writing habit by working for AT&T as a Communications Technician. I am a practicing Peripatetic Minister of Secular Humanism."
Avery Chenoweth's writing has appeared in too many publications to get a handle on, including among them Harper's, Lingua Franca, the Sewanee Review, and the New York Times Magazine. This is his first appearance online. He has recently completed both a novel and a play.
Ian Colford lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His work has appeared in a number of print literary journals, including Event, Grain, Zygote and the Dalhousie Review, and online in The Gutter Voice. A research monograph entitled "Writing in the Electronic Environment" was published by the Dalhousie University School of Library and Information Studies in 1996. He is the editor of Pottersfield Portfolio.
Ted Corcoran received his MFA from the University of Virginia. He lives and works in Charlottesville, Virginia, with his family and many, many worms. He has recently completed a novel.
Alfred Corn is a widely published poet, critic, editor, and reviewer. Among his many books of poetry are Notes From a Child of Paradise, The West Door , and Autobiographies. Forthcoming are a new collection of poems, Present, a textbook on prosody, and Part of His Story, a novel. The translation included here is his second appearance in an online journal.
Alan Cumyn is the author of two novels, Waiting for Li Ming and Between Families and the Sky, and a guide to international employment called What in the World is Going On? His fiction has appeared in a number of literary journals and in Best Canadian Stories 1996. He lives in Ottawa.
Kingston, Ontario writer Richard Cumyn is a contributing editor to The Blue Moon Review who we've cajoled into taking on the role of Fiction Editor, beginning next issue..
Steve Emerson's fiction has appeared in other Web magazines, including Enterzone and Obscure. He has a Web site at http://www.teleport.com/~semerson
J.P. Fassler is working on his undergraduate degree in philosophy and english and plans to persue a career teaching creative writing. He comes from Chicago and is fond of shiny suits.
Dennis Finnell's first collection of poetry, Red Cottage, won the 1990 Juniper Prize from the University of Massachusetts Press. His second, Beloved Beast appreared in 1995 from University of Georgia Press. The two poems included in this issue of BMR are sections of a long-poem-in-progress which is based upon Paul Gaugin's painting "Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?"
Brent Goodman lives in Madison, Wisconsin. Most recently he has poems published or forthcoming in Poetry, Passages North, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Poetry East, and in the anthology A First Light on Calypso Publications.
Jack Hettinger teaches literature, writing, and speaking courses at the College of Mount St. Joseph in Cincinnati, Ohio. He published short stories in Sun Dog: The Southeast Review and Kansas Quarterly/Arkansas Review in Spring, 1996, and previously in The Madison Review, Ambergris, The Portland Review, and RE Arts & Letters. Another story has been accepted by Flipside, pending revisions. In July, 1985, he received an Ohio Arts Council fellowship for writing fiction.
Jennifer Howard's fiction has appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review; she has contributed features and reviews to the Washington Post, the New York Times Book Review, Newsday, Southern Quarterly and other publications. She has been on staff at the New York Review of Books and the Wilson Quarterly, and is now a part-time assistant editor at the Washington Post Book World. She lives in Charlottesville, Va., where she's at work on a novel.
The rumor is that Thomas Hubschman plans to appear in every issue of Blue Moon. So far, it's true. His writing has also been broadcast on the BBC, and appears elsewhere both on- and offline.
P.J. Jason's short stories have appeared in such publications as African Voices, Mississippi Review, Fiction International, ACM (Another Chicago Magazine), River Styx, Rosebud, Papyrus (Greater Hartford African American Writers Guild), Salmagundi, Wascana Review (Canada), Black River Review, Private Arts, Dream Forge, Rave Review, Spike (England), and Uno Mas Magazine.
Judy Leemann is an artist living in Charlottesville, Virginia, who's also studying to be a teacher of the Alexander Technique, a form of psycho-physical reeducation. She writes: "I love the place between the beautiful and the disturbing, making visible what's most often left unseen. I make experiments--sealing all sorts of things into airtight plastic bags and just letting them do their thing, watching them change over the course of weeks and months, and then documenting the results with a scanner. Most images in this issue were made this way."
John O'Brien is a professor at Illinois State University, where he edits the Review of Contemporary Fiction. This piece first appeared there, in an issue titled "The Future of Fiction," guest-edited by writer David Foster Wallace.
Ottawa poet and novelist Colin Morton's writing has appeared in a dizzying number of periodicals and anthologies, including such online journals as Kudzu, In Vivo, InterText, Gruene Street and The Morpo Review. He has published four books of poetry, In Transit, This Won't Last Forever, The Merzbook: Kurt Schwitters Poems, and How to Be Born Again, and a novel, Oceans Apart. Colin recently returned from a year as writer-in-residence at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota.
Eric Nelson teaches Creative Writing and English courses at Georgia Southern University. The most recent of his three collections of poetry, The Interpretation of Waking Life, was winner of the first annual Arkansas Poetry Award. It was published in 1991 by University of Arkansas Press. The three sonnets included here are part of a sequence called "Mysterious Ways."
Christian Petersen's stories have appeared in such prestigious Canadian literary journals as The New Quarterly, Prism International, Pottersfield Portfolio, and The Fiddlehead. He lives in Williams Lake, British Columbia, where he writes and teaches.
Tristan Seifer is a writer and teacher of writing living in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Mary Lee Settle appears courtesy of Bookstacks, Unlimited. She's the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Book Award.
A long-time teacher at M.I.T and U. C. Santa Barbara, Barry Spacks is the author of various novels, stories, and seven poetry collections (most recent: Brief Sparrow, L.A. press Illuminati, and Spacks Street: New & Selected Poems, Johns Hopkins). Since June of '96, many of his poems have turned up in over a dozen e-zines on the Net.