Contributors - Issue 1
Omanii Abdullah-Grace has written three collections of poetry, including, most recently, This is Gonna Hurt Me a Whole Lot More'n It Hurts You. He has
taught at State University of New York (SUNY) at Morrisville and Syracuse
University and is the director of the Hank Gathers' Players, a multicultural
troupe of traveling college-student poets. Based in Syracuse, he focuses
his energies on conducting poetry workshops throughout the country at
youth centers, hospices, correctional facilities, high schools, and colleges. (more)
Diana
Abu-Jaber has been cited by critics as the pre-eminent Arab
American novelist of her generation. She was born in Upstate New York,
moved to Jordan when she was seven, and has lived between Jordan and America
ever since. She studied with Joyce Carol Oates at the University of Windsor
and with John Gardner at SUNY Binghamton, where she completed her doctorate.
She is the author of Arabian Jazz, which was nominated for the
PEN/Faulkner award, and Crescent, which won the 2004 PEN Center
USA Award for Literacy Fiction. Her memoir, The Language of Baklava,
is a reminiscience of growing up in Syracuse, and her forth-coming novel, Origins, is also set in Syracuse. She is writer-in-residence
at Portland State University, and lives in Florida for several months
each year. (more)
Paul Aviles is a poet, translator, and essayist working on a
new book of poems entitled Funeral Tunes. He has an M.F.A. in
creative writing from Syracuse University and has received fellowships
from the Saltonstall Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts,
and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is a professor of English
at Onondaga Community College.
Kyle
Bass holds an M.F.A. in playwriting from Goddard College.
Kyle is a recipient of the New York State Foundation for the Arts fiction
writing fellowship, and has been nominated for a Mentor Project 2007 fellowship
at the prestigious Cherry Lane Theatre in New York. His play Fall/Out was produced by the Kitchen Theatre Company in Ithaca, New York, and his play, Wind
in the Field, received a staged reading at the 2006 Great
Plains Theatre Conference, hosted by Edward Albee. He teaches playwriting
at Goddard College and Syracuse University, and is at work on a full-length
play, Leeboe and Sons, and a screenplay, Bridgewater. (more)
Mark
Bender has received awards from Communcation Arts magazine
and the New York Society of Illustrators, and has won both gold and silver
Addys. Mark is a full-time faculty member at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh,
a member of the Pittsburgh Society of Illustrators, and a recent graduate
of Syracuse University's master's program in illustration. (more)
Douglas
Biklen is a fine-arts photographer who specializes in abstract images
of urban and rural scenes. His photography has been exhibited at the Delavan
Art Gallery (Syracuse), the Nancy
Price Gallery (Jamaica, Vermont), and the Brandon
Artists' Guild (Brandon, Vermont), where he is a member. He is dean
of the School of Education at Syracuse University and is internationally
known for his reseach on autism. Biklen co-produced the Academy-Award-nominated
CNN/State-of-the-art film, Autism Is A World (2004), and the
award-winning film, My Classic Life as an Artist: A Portrait of Larry
Bissonnette. He is author of Autism and the Myth of the Person
Alone (NYU Press, 2005). (more)
Larry
Bissonnette is a Vermont-based painter and writer who is the subject
of My Classic Life as an Artist: A Portrait of Larry Bissonnette,
an award-winning documentary film by Douglas Biklen and Zach Rossetti
of Syracuse University. Larry wrote the narration script for the film,
which chronicles his liberation from a ten-year institutional confinement
(during which he was diagnosed in turn as mentally retarded, schizophrenic,
clinically insane, and autistic), and his evolution as an artist. He now
lives at home with his family and continues to work in his studio and
at weekly GRACE workshops with Howard
Community Services in Burlington, Vermont. See graceart.org for a description of this organization's work with "outsider"
artists. (more)
Stephen
Carlson completed his undergraduate degree at the Art Institute of
Chicago and was awarded the Anna Louise Raymond traveling fellowship to
Central and South America. He received his M.F.A. from Yale University,
and is a professor of art at Syracuse University and the associate dean
of the School of Art and Design. (more)
Regis Cook is a member of the Bear Clan of the Mohawk Nation. He lives in the Onondaga Nation and
is in the 8th grade at the Onondaga Nation School. Regis excels in traditional
learning and is a singer at the Longhouse.
John
Bul Dau fled Sudan in 1987 at age 12 to escape extermination by
the Muslim-controlled government. After time spent in a refugee camp in
Kenya, John eventually came to Syracuse in 2001, where he works at St.
Joseph's Hospital and studies part time at Syracuse University. John's
odyssey is documented in God Grew Tired of Us, a film directed
by Christopher Quinn, produced by Brad Pitt, and narrated by Nicole Kidman,
which won a major prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 2005. It is scheduled
for public release in spring 2007. John balances work, family (he is a
new father), and college with the demands of a tour to promote his memoir,
just published by National Geographic Books and excerpted in this issue.
See godgrewtiredofus.com for more information about his documentary film. (more)
Stephen
Dunn is a graduate of Syracuse University's master's program
in creative writing. He is the author of fourteen collections of poetry,
including Dfiferent Hours, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001,
and Loosestrife, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist
in 1996. His other awards include the Academy Award in Literature from
the American Academy of Arts and Letters, fellowships from the Guggenheim
and Rockefeller Foundations, the Levinson and Oscar Blumenthal Prizes
from Poetry and the Theodore Roethke Prize from Poetry Northwest.
His latest book of poems, Everything Else in the World, was issued
by Norton in 2006. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Creative
Writing at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, but spends much of
his time in Frostburg, Maryland, with his wife, writer Barbara Hurd. (more)
Rhina
P. Espaillat is an acclaimed poet who has published in many major
journals and anthologies. Born in the Dominican Republic, she has lived
in the U.S. since 1939 and writes in both Spanish and English. She has
four poetry collections in print, including Where Horizons Go,
winner of the 1998 T.S. Eliot Prize, and Rehearsing Absence,
winner of the 2001 Richard Wilbur Prize. She is included in Landscapes
with Women: Four American Poets, by Singular Speech Press, and has
been featured on Prairie Home Companion. She runs a monthly workshop,
the Powow
River Poets, and coordinates a monthly reading series and a yearly
poetry contest, both sponsored by the Newburyport
(Mass.) Art Association. She delivered the Stephen Crane Memorial
lecture at Syracuse University in 2006. (more)
David Eye left New York and a career in theater in August
2005 to pursue an M.F.A. in poetry at Syracuse University. As mid-life
crises go, he figured this would be better than a red convertible.
LaToya
Ruby Frazier is from Pittsburgh. She earned her B.F.A. in
photography and graphic design from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania,
and is pursing her M.F.A. in art photography at Syracuse University. Her
photographs have been exhibited at Light
Work, the Community
Folk Art Center, and the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, and Schweinfurth
Memorial Art Center in Auburn, New York. Frazier has taught photography
at Syracuse University and has conducted various workshops in Central
New York. Her film, A Mother to Hold, has been screened in several
film festivals and won the Producer's Choice award at the Women of Color
Film Festival in 2006. She won the College Art Association's Professional
Development Fellowship for Visual Artists in 2006. (more)
Mary
Gaitskill is the author of the novels Two Girls, Fat
and Thin and Veronica, as well as the story collections Bad Behavior and Because They Wanted To. The latter
was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner prize in 1998. Her story, "Secretary,"
was the basis for the feature film of the same name. Her stories and essays
have appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, Best
American Short Stories, and The O. Henry Prize Stories.
In 2002 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction; she is an
associate professor of English at Syracuse University. Her novel, Veronica,
was nominated for the National Book Award and the National Critic's Circle
Award, and named one of the ten best books of 2005 by the New York
Times.(more)
Bob
Gates studied photography at the University of Iowa School of Art
while completing his Ph.D. in English, after which he joined the English
department at Syracuse University. His photographs have won awards in
regional and national competitions, have appeared in individual and juried
group exhibitions, and have been published in such magazines as Photolife (Canada), MaVista (UK), Photographic, Shutterbug, Outdoor
Photographer, and Popular Photography. His extensive work
can be viewed at bobgatesphoto.com.
(more)
Mary
Giehl was a registered nurse for 22 years, working in Pediatric ER,
ICU, and Transport units. She completed her B.F.A. in fiber arts and her
M.F.A. in sculpture at Syracuse University, and teaches part time in Syracuse's
sculpture and fiber/materials studies program. She is active in the Syracuse
arts community as the chairperson of the Westcott
Art Gallery. Mary was an artist-in-residence at the Delaware
Center for the Contemporary Arts, and will be an artist-in-residence
in Ecuador in 2007. (more)
Thomas
Glave, winner of the O. Henry Prize for fiction, was nominated
by the American Library Association for their Best Gay/Lesbian Book of
the Year for Whose Song? and Other Stories. He is also author
of an essay collection, Words to Our Now: Imagination and Dissent (winner of the 2006 Lambda Award in Nonfiction), and editor of the forthcoming
anthology Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from
the Antilles (Duke University Press, 2007). He is an associate professor
of English and Africana Studies at SUNY Binghamton. (more)
Jakk Glen III is a senior at Corcoran High School in
Syracuse. He is 18 years old. He plays varsity football and throws shot-put
and discus for the varsity track and field team. His favorite professional
football team is the Philadelphia Eagles. He works part time at a local
nursing home and participates in community-wide dialogues on race. He
hopes to major in psychology when he attends college next fall.
Wendy Gonyea is a member of the Beaver Clan of the Onondaga
Nation. She is a former teacher-counselor and editor of the Onondaga
Nation News. She is actively involved in education and in speaking
and writing on behalf of the Onondaga Nation.
Lewraine Graham has exhibited paintings, assemblage,
and installation art for over 20 years. She studied at the Art Students
League in New York and the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford, England. Starting
out as a painter, she began her assemblage work in 1993. She worked and
exhibited in the New York/New Jersey area until 1998, when she moved to
Syracuse. She is represented by the Jan Weiss Gallery in New York, and
the SKH Gallery in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
Christopher
Gray is an architect and professor in the Syracuse University School
of Architecture. Although he has been taking photographs for most of his
adult life, he became a photographer about five years ago when he purchased
his first digital camera. More of his work can be found at christophergrayphoto.com. (more)
Kelle
Groom has published two poetry collections: Underwater City (University Press of Florida, 2004) and Luckily (Anhinga Press,
2006). Her poems have appeared in DoubleTake/Points of Entry,
the New Yorker, Ploughshares, Poetry, Witness,
and other magazines. She wrote many of the poems in her first book while
living in Central New York. A native of Massachusetts, she now lives in
New Smyrna, Florida. She is grants administrator and communications coordinator
for Atlantic
Center for the Arts. (more)
David
Hajdu is the author of two award-winning books: Lush
Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn and Postively Fifth Street:
The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina, and Richard
Farina. He is a columnist for the New Republic and writes
frequently for publications such as the New York Review of Books,
the New Yorker, and the Atlantic Monthly. Hajdu teaches
magazine journalism in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications
at Syracuse University. His contribution to this issue will appear, in
different form, in his next book, The Ten-Cent Plague, to be
published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in fall 2007. (more)
Elaine Handley has a Ph.D. in creative writing from SUNY Albany and is associate professor
of writing and literature at Empire State College in Saratoga Springs,
New York. She was co-recipient of the 2006 Adirondack
Center for Writing Literacy Award in poetry. She has received a New
York State Council on the Arts individual artist's grant to complerte
work on Deep River, a novel about the Underground Railroad set
in Upstate New York, a chapter of which is published in this issue. (more)
Duriel
E. Harris is a co-founder of the Black Took Collective and
poetry editor for Obsidian
III. Her first book, Drag (Elixir Press, 2003), was
hailed by Black Issues Book Review as one of the best poetry
volumes of the year. She is at work on Amnesiac, a media art
project (poetry volume, DVD, sound recording, web site) funded in part
by the University of California Santa Barbara Center for Black Studies
Race and Technology Initiative. Amnesiac writings appear or are
forthcoming in Nocturnes, The Encyclopedia Project, Mixed Blood, and
The Ringing Ear. A performing poet/sound artist, Harris is a Cave
Canem fellow, recent resident at The
MacDowell Colony, and member of the free jazz ensemble, Douglas Ewart
& Inventions. She teaches English at St. Lawrence University in Canton,
New York. (more)
Wendy Harris has had her work shown at the Edward
Hopper House, the Everson
Museum, the Schweinfurth
Memorial Art Center, and the Delavan
Art Gallery. Wendy picked up her first pastel in a noncredit class
at University College in 1996 and has been passionate about the medium
and painting ever since. She is director of development at University
College of Syracuse University.
Lucy Harrison is a 30 year-old woman with autism. She
has learned to type to communicate and uses typing to produce her academic
work and poetry. Recently she earned a degree in psychology from LeMoyne
College in Syracuse. She likes to read Stephen King novels and Writer magazine, to which she subscribes. Her mom, Nita, has this to say about
Lucy: "To me the magic of poetry is as incomprehensible as the wordlessness
of autism. Given the right circumstances, Lucy emerges in her poems as
a powerful and eloquent voice. At other times, she remains behind that
mysterious wall." Lucy is the 2007 winner of the Bea González
Prize for Poetry.
Sarah
C. Harwell earned an M.F.A. at Syracuse University, and has published
a critically successful book of poems, with two other poets, titled Three New Poets (Sheep Meadow Press). She is a linguistic analyst
at Syracuse University, teaching computers how to parse and comprehend
the language of newspapers, dating web sites, and NASA engineers, and
as an adjunct instructor in the English department. She lives in Syracuse
with her daughter. (more)
Gail
Hoffman received a B.A. with Honors in fine arts from Dickinson College
and an M.F.A. in printmaking from Indiana University. She taught at the
Park School in Brooklandville, Maryland, before coming to Syracuse, where
she teaches 2-D creative processes and experimental animation in the foundation
department of the School of Art and Design at Syracuse University. Her
first solo show was at the Chuck
Levitan Gallery in Soho in 1998. She has exhibited her work at the Denise
Bibro Gallery in Chelsea and has been a National Affiliate Member
of SOHO20
Chelsea Gallery since 2001. (more)
Tom Huff is
a stone sculptor in various stones, styles, and mixed-media work. He began
carving at home, inspired by the artists of the Cattaraugus Seneca Nation,
and later attended the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe,
New Mexico, and the Rhode Island School of Design. He is an adjunct professor
at Onondaga Community College in stone carving and Iroquois art. Tom is
a published writer of prose and poetry and has served as editor for Stonedust,
an Iroquois newsletter. He lives on the Onondaga Nation with his wife,
sculptor Trudi Shenandoah, his son Charlie, and daughter Kali, and maintains
a carving studio. (more)
Mario Javier studied architecture and art education in
Cuba. He came to the United States through the visa lottery system with
his wife and two children in 2004, and resides in Syracuse. Recent projects
include "Growing Up in the Darkness," a mural focusing on family
literacy, commissioned by the CNY
Community Foundation and displayed at the Onondaga County Civic Center.
His work has been shown at the Community
Folk Art Gallery and at the Center for New Americans.
Michael Jennings was born in the French Quarter of New Orleans,
grew up in east Texas and Iran, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania
and the graduate writing program at Syracuse University. He is an internationally
recognized breeder and judge of Siberian Huskies and has written three books
on the breed. He has published five limited edition books of poems,
including The Hardman County Sequence, with photographs by Dorothea
Lange and a foreword by W.D. Snodgrass, which is now a collectors' item.
He is a CAPS Grant recipient and has had poems appear in such places as
the Georgia Review, Sewanee Review, Southern Review, and the Chattahoochee Review. His latest book, Silky Thefts,
was just released by Orchises Press in January 2007. He teaches at Cayuga
Community College in Auburn, New York.
Evalena Aisha Johnson is a senior at Nottingham High
School in Syracuse. She is 18 years old and the proud mother of five-month-old
Aidan. She would like to attend St. Louis University to study physical
therapy. She is a music enthusiast and loves to listen to different genres
of music including country, R&B, and classic R&B, depending on
how she feels on any given day.
Hugh Jones is a lifelong resident of Central New York.
His art and education background includes undergraduate study at Colgate
University, an M.Ed. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst,
sculpture and architectural study at Syracuse University, and an apprenticeship
in furniture and antiques restoration. His sculpture has been in the Cooperstown
National Exhibition, where he received the Art News award and in the Ithaca
"Art
in the Heart of the City" show.
Christopher
Kennedy is the director of the M.F.A. program in creative
writing at Syracuse University and the author of full-length collections
of poetry. His latest collection will be published by BOA Editions in
2007. He has received grants from the New
York Foundation for the Arts and the Constance
Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. (more)
Robin
Wall Kimmerer is the author of Gathering Moss: A
natural and cultural history of mosses, which won the prestigious John Burroughs Medal for Nature Writing. She is currently working
on a second book of essays on the subject of living in reciprocity with
the land, which combines traditional indigenous knowledge with scientific
perspectives. Kimmerer is professor of environmental and forest biology
at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse,
director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment, and an
enrolled member of the Citizen
Potawatomi Nation. She is the author of numerous scientific papers
on the ecology of mosses, and has an active research program in the ecology
and restoration of plants of cultural and medicinal significance to Native
people. With the support of the National
Science Foundation, she and her students are developing culturally-based
environmental education programs that emphasize the significance of indigenous
wisdom in addressing modern environmental problems. (more)
JoEllen
Kwiatek has a B.A. from Syracuse University and an M.A. from Johns
Hopkins University. She has been published in magazines such as the Antioch
Review and the Indiana Review, and was the featured poet
on the cover of the American Poetry Review. She has been awarded
the Pushcart Prize and the
Constance Saltonstall Award. Her book, Eleven Days Before Spring,
was published by HarperCollins. She teaches at SUNY
Oswego's Writing Institute. (more)
Jhumpa
Lahiri received the Pultizer Prize in 2000 for Interpreter of
Maladies, her debut story collection that explores issues of love
and identity among immigrants and cultural transplants. She was the first
Indian woman to receive that award. Her novel, The Namesake,
published in 2003 to great acclaim, expands on the perplexities of the
immigrant experience and the search for identity. She has won the PEN/Hemingway
Award, the O. Henry Award, and the Addison Metcalfe Award from the American
Academy of Arts. A film version of The Namesake will be released
in spring 2007. She is currently working on a new book of short stories,
to be published in 2008. Lahiri was a speaker for the Rosamond
Gifford Lecture Series in Syracuse in April 2006. (more)
Carly June L'Ecuyer is a 16-year-old fiction writer and
student at Ichabod Crane High School in Columbia County, New York. She
was a participant in the summer 2006 New York State Young Writer's Conference at Silver Bay, New York.
She thanks Jenny Marion, whose life was the inspiration for her story.
David
Lloyd is a professor of English and director of the creative
writing program at LeMoyne College. He holds a B.A. from St. Lawrence
University, an M.A. from the University of Vermont, and an M.A. and a
Ph.D. from Brown University. His primary teaching interests are in creative
writing, modern poetry and fiction, and Irish/Welsh studies. His anthology, The Urgency of Identity: Contemporary English-language Poetry from
Wales, was published in 1994. He publishes poetry, fiction, critical
studies, and interviews in journals and anthologies in the U.S., Canada,
and Europe. (more)
Charles Martin is a poet, translator, and three-time nominee for the Pulitzer Prize.
His verse translation of the Metamorphoses of Ovid, published
in 2003 by W.W. Norton, received the Harold Morton Landon Award from the
Academy of American Poets. His most recent book of poems, Starting
from Sleep: New and Selected Poems, was a finalist for the Lenore
Marshall Award of the Academy of American Poets. He is the recipient of
a Bess Hokin Award from Poetry, a 2001 Pushcart
Prize, and fellowships from the Ingram Merrill Foundation and the
National Endowment for the Arts. In 2005, he received an Award for Literature
from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Currently teaching in the
English department at Syracuse University, he is Poet in Residence at The
Poets' Corner of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York
City. (more)
Bryan
McGrath is a professor of art and head of the ceramics department
of Pratt at Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, New York.
He has an M.F.A. from Syracuse University, where he was a graduate fellow.
His work has been featured in several ceramics publications, and is included
in many public and private collections in the United States, Australia,
Ireland, and Japan. He has exhibited nationally and internationally. (more)
Philip Memmer is the author of three collections of poetry, including Sweetheart,
Baby Darling (Word Press, 2004). A fourth, Threat of Pleasure,
is expected in late 2007. His poetry has appeared in Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Southern Poetry Review, and Mid-American
Poetry Reveiw, and has been included in several anthologies. Phil
lives in Central New York with his wife, son, and daughter, where he edits
the literary journal Two Rivers Review. He is director of the Arts Branch of
the YMCA
of Greater Syracuse, and founder of the Downtown Writer's Center, the Syracuse affiliate of the YMCA National
Writer's program. (more)
Wendy Moleski has lived in Syracuse since she was six. After attending Syracuse public
schools, she worked for a trucking company, married, and spent many years
raising six beautiful children. She has volunteered for the Red
Cross and has worked with handicapped youth at the Syracuse Development
Center. She has also taught swimming at the YMCA and has tutored GED math students. After retirement, she joined the Syracuse
Camera Club to pursue her interest in photography. (more)
William Neumire teaches at Fabius-Pompey High School
and lives in Fayetteville with his fiancée. His poems have appeared
or are forthcoming in Main Street Rag, Rattle, Cranky Poetry Journal and Borderland: Texas Poetry Review.
Anne Novado Cappuccilli has a B.A. and an M.F.A. from Syracuse University,
where she is an adjunct professor in the School of Art foundation program.
Her work has been exhibited in the Arnot Art Museum (Elmira), the Essex Art Center (Lawrence, Massachusetts),
the Schweinfurth
Memorial Art Gallery (Auburn), Fisher Weisman (San Francisco), Sikkema
Jenkins and Co. (New York), and the Tiskale Studio (Syracuse). She
is a board member and past president of ThiNC, a Syracuse-based art organization,
and maintains an active studio in downtown Syracuse.
Victor Oshel has been a factory worker, truck driver,
newspaper writer, white water river guide, substance abuse counselor,
and teacher. He has a degree in English from Utica College, and works
as a substitute teacher in Blossvale, New York.
E.C. Osondu was born in Nigeria. He is in the Syracuse
Univeristy M.F.A. program and is a University Fellow. His work has appeared
in Agni and Salt Hill. He lives in Syracuse with his
wife and three children. One of the reasons he came to Syracuse was because
as a child growing up in Nigeria he loved a picture of snow he saw on
a postcard. He is the 2007 winner of the Allen and Nirelle Galson Prize
for Fiction.
Elena Peteva is a figurative painter originally from
Sofia, Bulgaria, who came to the United States at age 17 to study at the
Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine
Arts. She is a third-year M.F.A. student in painting and a Dedalus Foundation
Fellow at Syracuse University's College of Visual and Performing Arts.
Recently she was included in the Arnot
Museum 71st Annual Juried Exhibitions, and had a solo
exhibition at the Artist's House Gallery in Philadelphia. Her work
is in several permanent collections, including the Graphic Arts Collection
at Princeton University. She was awarded the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation
grant last fall for international representational art.
Michael Petrosillo owns a coffee house in Syracuse and
markets a sports company in California. He lives in Fayetteville with
his wife, Susan, and two small children. This is his first published story.
Robert
Phillips earned a B.A. and M.A. from Syracuse University
in 1960 and 1962, respectively. He is the author or editor of 30 volumes
of poetry, fiction, criticism, and belle lettres, and is currently
a Cullen Distinguished Professor at the University of Houston. His honors
and awards include the Syracuse University Arents Pioneer Medal, a Pushcart
Prize, and American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award
in Literature, MacDowell
Colony and Yaddo fellowships, and a Texas Institute of Letters membership. Icehouse
Poems, excerpted in this issue of Stone Canoe, is a work
in progress. (more)
Georgia
Popoff is a community poet, performer, educator, spoken word producer,
and senior editior of The
Comstock Review. A teaching poet in schools and community settings,
her work has appeared in numerous journals, anthologies, and web publications.
Her first collection is Coaxing Nectar from Longing. She is the
Central New York Community Coordinator for Partners
for Arts Education and a board member of the Association
of Teaching Artists. (more)
Minnie
Bruce Pratt is completing The Only Danger, poems
about living under capitalism. Her most recent book of poetry, The
Dirt She Ate: Selected and New Poems, (University of Pittsburgh Press)
received a Lambda Literary Award. Her previous book, Walking Back
Up Depot Street, also from Pitt, was named Best Lesbian/Gay Book
of the Year by ForeWord: The Magazine of Independent Bookstores and
Booksellers. Her work, Crime Against Nature, was chosen
as the Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets. She is
professor of writing and women's studies at Syracuse University. (more)
Paul B. Roth is editor and publisher of The
Bitter Oleander Press, recognized in 2005 as Best Literary Journal
by National Public Radio's "Excellence in Print" Award. His
forthcoming collection of poetry, Cadenzas by Needlelight, will
be published by Cypress Books in 2008. He lives in Fayetteville.
Monk
Rowe is a saxophonist, pianist, and composer and has been the
Joe Williams Director of the Hamilton
College Jazz Archive since its inception in 1995. The Archive currently
holds 260 interviews with jazz personalities that exist on DVD, in transcript,
and electronic format. (more)
George Saunders teaches in the Syracuse University Creative Writing
program. He is the author of a number of critically acclaimed books: CivilWarLand
in Bad Decline, Pastoralia, The Very Persistent Gappers
of Frip, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, and ,
most recently, In Persuasion Nation. He writes regularly for
the New Yorker and GQ. In 2006, Saunders won both a MacArthur
Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship. View
a review of George Saunders work in .pdf format.
Joseph
Scheer is a Constance Saltonstall Fellow, and professor of print media
and codiector/founder of the Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred University's School of Art
and Design. His work spans print media, video, sound, and web-based projects,
using technology to re-examine nature through interpretive collecting
and visual recording. He has exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art (New York), the National
Museum of China (Beijing), the National Museum of Sweden (Stockhom), and the Field
Museum (Chicago). He has published two books about his work: Night
Visions: The Secret Designs of Moths (Prestel), and Night Flyers (Nexus Press). (more)
Luvon
Sheppard is a professor of illustration and painting at the Rochester
Institute of Technology School of Art and Design. He has served as a coordinator
of neighborhood affairs for the University
of Rochester Memorial Art Gallery and director of the Allofus Art
Workshop, and has taught classes at SUNY Brockport and Geneseo. His work
has been represented in many galleries and shows throughout New York State,
and has won numerous awards. Sheppard has always played an active leadership
role in the Rochester arts commmunity, served on many boards, and lectured
on the arts for diverse audiences. (more)
S. Ann Skiold is Fine Arts Librarian at Syracuse University.
She serves as faculty liaison to the College of Visual and Performing
Arts and the the department of fine arts in the College of Arts and Sciences.
She is a native of Sweden, where she studied law and English. She has
a B.A. in English literature from University of California at Santa Barbara,
an M.F.A. in painting from Bradley University, and an M.L.I.S. in library
and information science from San Jose State University . Ann is fluent
in Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, French and Spanish.
W.D.
Snodgrass has had a long and distinguished career as a poet
and teacher. He has written eight books of poetry, including the Pulitzer
Prize-winning Heart's Needle, seven volumes of translations,
and a book of essays, In Radical Pursuit. His most recent book
is Not for Experts: New and Collected Poems (BOA, 2006). One
of the book's poems is featured in this issue of Stone Canoe,
along with an earlier draft, to offer the reader a look at Snodgrass'
revision process. Snodgrass has taught at Syracuse University, Cornell,
the University of Rochester, and several other universities. He retired
from teaching in 1994 and devotes himself full time to his writing. He
and his "fourth, last and best" wife, writer Kathleen Snodgrass
(neé Browne), spend six months of each year at their home in Erieville,
New York, and six months in Mexico. (more)
Laurie
Stone is the author of two nonfiction collections and a novel, Starting with Serge. A long-time writer for the Village Voice and Ms., she has also been theatre critic for the Nation,
and critic-at-large for NPR's
Fresh Air. Laurie has taught at Antioch, Fairleigh Dickinson, Sarah
Lawrence, Ohio State, and the Paris Writer's Workshop. She is on the board
of the National Book Critic's Circle and was a 2006 resident fellow at
the Constance
Saltonstall Institute for the Arts in Ithaca. Laurie lives in New
York. (more)
John
Thompson is a painter, illustrator, and professor of art at Syracuse
University. He has been featured in Communication Arts, Step-by-Step
Graphics, and Art Direction magazines. He has won gold and
silver medals from Society of Illustrators, The New Jersey Art Directors
Club, The Denver Art Directors club, The Society of Illustrators of Los
Angeles, and the CBA Award for Communication Excellence in Black Publishing
and Advertising, as well as awards of excellence from Communication
Art and Print. John is the reicipient of the 2006 Hamilton
King Award for the best illustration of the year, and was recently included
in The Illustrator in America, 1860-2000, by Walt Reed. The paintings
in this issue were inspired by a recent trip to India. (more)
John
von Bergen is the co-founder of Sculpture
Space in Utica. He has degrees from Hamilton College and Pratt Institute,
and has taught sculpture at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute,
Hamilton College, and Colgate University. He maintains studios in Clinton,
New York, and Bayside, Maine. His sculpture has been shown throughout
the Northeast, including the Kouros
Gallery (New York), the Everson
Museum (Syracuse), Stone
Quarry Hill Art Park (Cazenovia), and the Caldbeck Gallery and Farnsworth
Art Museum (Rockland, Maine). (more)
Thom Ward is editor at BOA Editions, based in Rochester, New York. Among his poetry publications
are Small Boat with Oars of Different Size and Various Orbits,
both from Carnegie Mellon University Press. Though he has some facility
in paddling a small boat, it would be exceedingly difficult for him to
keep a stone canoe afloat. Luckily, he can swim.
Carrie
Mae Weems is an artist and photographer who has in the course
of her illustrious career created a rich array of documentary series,
still lives, narrative tableaux, and installation works on themes of family,
race, and gender. The daughter of Mississippi sharecroppers who moved
to Oregon in the 1950's, she studied dance in San Francisco, joined the
labor movemnet as a labor organizer, and came to the visual arts as an
adult, eventually getting dgrees from California Institute of the Arts,
University of California San Diego, and UC Berkley. Her works have been
published and exhibited widely, and she has taught at numerous colleges
throughout the country. She was awarded the Rome
Prize in 2006, and after a year abroad has returned home to Syracuse,
where she teaches at Syracuse University and lives with her husband, Jeffrey
Hoone, also an artist. For additional information on her work, click
here for additional examples. (more)
Jack White is a nontraditional painter, using metals,
fabrics, paper, and wood to create works that draw inspriation from African
cultures. His current work is related to the art and artifacts of the
Kingdom of Benin, formerly know as West Africa's "Slave Coast."
Jack studied painting at Morgan State and Syracuse University, and is
one of the founders of the Community
Folk Art Center in Syracuse. During his long career, he has had 36
solo shows. His work is represented in the permanent collections of Syracuse
University, Colgate University, the Munson-Williams-Proctor
Arts Institute (Utica), the Schomberg
Cultural Center (New York), the Asheville
Art Museum, the Arkansas
Arts Center, and the Tampa
Museum of Art. After many years based in Upstate New York, Jack recently
relocated to Austin, Texas.
Diana Whiting has been photographing since 1994. Her work has appeared in calendars,
on CD covers, in Nature Photographer Magazine, and most recently,
the Best of Photography Annual 2006. She was a 1999 grand prize
winner for Nature Photographer Magazine, and 2000 first place
winner in macro for Rocky Mountain School of Photography. She is an active
member in the Syracuse
Camera Club and works with the Montezuma
Wildlife Refuge, Baltimore
Woods, and Beaver
Lake Nature Center to promote environemntal education. To view more
of her work, go to phase.com/syrcam/whiting.
She owns and operates Headquarters Unisex Hair Design and resides in Skaneateles.
She is the 2007 winner of the Michael Fawcett Prize for Visual Arts. (more)
Errol
Willett is associate professor of art and coordinator of the ceramics
program at Syracuse University's College of Visual and Performing Arts.
He is a Meredith Professor for excellence in teaching at the University.
His work has shown at the Everson
Museum of Art (Syracuse), the Clay
Studio (Philadelphia), the Baltimore
Clayworks Gallery, and the Banff
Centre of the Arts (Canada), and has been included in numerous books
and magazines. (more)
Marion
Wilson has had exhibitions at the New Museum of Contemporary Art (New York), Sculpture Center (New York), Hallwalls
Contemporary Arts Center (Buffalo), SPACES (Cleveland, Ohio), Cheryl
Pelavin Fine Arts (New York), Everson
Museum of Art (Syracuse), scope/Miami/Art
Basel and scopeNewYork.
She has been awarded residencies at the International Studio Program funded
by NYSCA and the Elizabeth Foundation. She has received grants from Gunk
Artists in the Public Realm, NYFA artists in the school, and the Constance
Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. Wilson earned a B.A. from Wesleyan
University, an M.A. from Columbia University, and an M.F.A. from the University
of Cincinnati. She lives and works in Syracuse and New York. Marion's
work for this issue was on display in the Building
Show at Exit Art in New York through early February 2007. (more)
Leah
Zazulyer is a poet, Yiddish translator, and former educator
and school psychologist. She grew up in California but has lived in Rochester
since 1968. Her parents came from Belarus. She has received grants from
the Constance
Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, the New York State Council on
the Arts, the New York
State Foundation for the Arts, and the National
Yiddish Book Center. She has ong been interested in issues regarding
the impact of language and culture upon each other. Her current project,
sponsored by the Spielberg
Foundation, involves creating dramatic monologues from interviews
with Holocaust victims. (more)
