Contributors Biographies

Kathryn Stripling Byer: she grew up in southwest Georgia, graduated from Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia, and earned her Master of Fine Arts from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her books of poetry include Catching Light (Louisiana State University Press, 2002); Black Shawl (1998); Wildwood Flower (1992), which was the 1992 Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets; and The Girl in the Midst of the Harvest (1986), which was published in the Associated Writing Programs award series. Her poems have appeared in Arts Journal, Carolina Quarterly, Georgia Review, Hudson Review, Iowa Review, Nimrod, Poetry, and Southern Review, as well as numerous anthologies. She is poet-in-residence at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina. Visit her blog at: http://kathrynstriplingbyer.blogspot.com

Elisha Porat: he was born in 1938 to a "pioneer" family in Palestine-Eretz Yisrael (pre Israel); his parents were among the founders of kibbutz Ein Hahoresh, a kibbutz on the Sharon plain, near the city of Hadera. In 1956 he was drafted into the IDF (the Israeli army) and fought in three wars: the Six Day War in 1967, the Yom Kippur War in 1973, and the War of South Lebanon in 1982. .He was the 1996 winner of Israel's Prime Minister's Prize for Literature has published 17 volumes of fiction and poetry, in Hebrew, since 1973. His works have appeared in translation in Israel, the United States, Canada and England. The English translation of his short story collection " The Messiah of LaGuardia ", was released in 1997. His latest work, a book of Hebpoetry, "The Dinosaurs of the Language", was recently published in Israel. He still makes his home near the original tent erected by his parents back in the early 30s. Visit his website at: www.artvilla.com/porat.

Grace Cavalieri: she is the author of eleven books of poetry and numerous produced plays. Her most recent books are Sit Down, Says Love (Argonne Hotel Press) and Pine Crest Rest Haven (The Word Works). She's written texts and lyrics performed for opera, stage, and film. She teaches poetry workshops throughout the country and at the Tuscany Arts Retreat in Italy, sponsored by The Word Works. She is on the poetry faculty of St. Mary's College of Southern Maryland and has received the Pen-Fiction Award, the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Silver Medal, and awards from the National Commission on Working Women, the WV Commisson on Women, The American Association of University Women, plus others. She lives in Washington D.C. with her husband, sculptor Kenneth Flynn. Visit her website: http://www.gracecavalieri.com/

Andrew Grace: he is a 2006-8 Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford. Sections of his manuscript Sancta and have been published or are forthcoming in Washington Square, LIT, Gulf Stream, Mid-American Review, The Boston Review, The Iowa Review and H_NGM_N, among others. His second book, Shadeland, recently won the Ohio State University/The Journal prize for poetry. Born in 1978, he was raised on a farm in east-central Illinois. He did his undergraduate work at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio and holds an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis. He currently resides in Palo Alto, California. He has no website.

Michal Giedrojc: he was born in 1980 and has been taking pictures seriously for the past several years now. His main subject material is people with a special interest in portraits. He likes to concentrate on faces, allowing the beauty to stay beautiful and the ugliness to remain ugly. Mood decides the outcome. He resides in Slupsk, Poland and his website can be found at: http://giedrojcmichal.com/

George Kalamaras: he is the author of five books of poetry, three of which are full-length, Even the Java Sparrows Call Your Hair (Quale Press, 2004), Borders My Bent Toward (Pavement Saw Press, 2003), and The Theory and Function of Mangoes (Four Way Books, 2000). He worked has been published in numerous journals and anthologies in the USA, Canada, Greece, India, Japan, Thailand, and the U K, including Sulfur, Boulevard, Hambone, The Iowa Review, New American Writing, New Letters, and others. He has received Creative Writing Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1993) and the Indiana Arts Commission (2001), and first prize in the 1998 Abiko Quarterly International Poetry Prize (Japan). He is Professor of English at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, where he lives and has taught since 1990. Visit his blog at: http://herecomeseverybody.blogspot.com/

Heidi Lynn Staples: her poetry and reviews have appeared in Best American Poetry 2004, Castagraf, Denver Quarterly, Electronic Poetry Review, HOW2, La Petite Zine, LIT, 3rd bed, Skein, Slope, Tarpaulin Sky, The Georgia Review, Unpleasant Event Schedule, Verse and elsewhere. A founding and acting editor of the literary magazine Parakeet, she has served as an assistant editor on Salt Hill and Verse, and worked as an editorial assistant at The Georgia Review. Her poetry collections are Dog Girl (Ahsahta Press, 2007) and Guess Can Gallop (New Press, 2004). She is American-born but lives with her husband and daughter in Dublin, Ireland. Visit her blog at: http://mildredsumbrella.blogspot.com/

Marcia Freedman: she has had exhibitions all over the Mid-West and Mid-Atlantic states including the A.I.R. Gallery in NYC. She says her work uses nature as a vehicle to describe the human life cycle and often uses organic forms as a metaphor for internal and external perceptions. She lives in Bloomfield Hills, MI. You can find more of her abstract oil paintings at her website: http://www.marciafreedman.com/

David E. Patton: he is a 54 year-old gay African-American poet who like listening to music by artists like Nancy Wilson, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan and Harmonica Phil. His second self-published collection is called “The Trinity” and his astrological sign is Aries. He resides in St. Louis, MO. More of his poetry can be found at his main blog, “Uncle David” at: http://davidepatton.blogspot.com/

Joyelle McSweeny: her books include Nylund, the Sarcographer (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2007), as well as Flet, The Red Bird, and The Commandrine and Other Poems, the latter three published by Fence Books. Her reviews appear at The Constant Critic and elsewhere, and her poetry has appeared in the Boston Review, Poetry Magazine, Octopus Magazine, GultCult, and Tarpaulin Sky among other places. She is the co-founder of Action Books. She teaches in the MFA Program at Notre Dame and lives in South Bend, Indiana. Find out more at: http://english.nd.edu/faculty/profiles/joyelle-mcsweeney/index.shtml


Closing Notes: The editor would like to thank the contributors for the use of their work. Each contributor reserves their original rights. Look for the next issue of CSR online on May 1st. Copyright 2009 by Maurice Oliver. All Rights Reserved.

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