Contributor's Notes - Eclectica Magazine, v4n3, Jul/Aug 2000

Jul/Aug 2000

Tom Dooley recently moved to Racine, Wisconsin, where he co-edits Eclectica with his lovely new bride. In his spare time, he looks for work.

Julie King has an MA in creative writing and teaches at the University of Wisconsin, Parkside. Her work has been extensively anthologized, most recently appearing in Iowa Press's Boomer Girls. A former contributor, Julie now co-edits Eclectica with her dashingly handsome new husband.

Laird Barron was born in Palmer, Alaska and raised on a remote wilderness parcel. He is a full-time writer with poetry appearing in the Melic Review, Stirring, Vowel Movement, and the fall issues of Undressed and Ixion. He has recently completed a novel. His interests include research of ancient warfare, medieval diplomacy, Greek Mythology, powerlifting, and combat martial arts. Mr. Barron lives in Seattle, Washington.

Eric Bosse, the current Spotlight Author, is a fiction writer, actor and filmmaker. Following a scandalous failure to open an art house cinema a couple years ago, he turned to fiction writing and film making. He lives with his wife, writes daily, aspires to travel often, and cares for two feature film projects in various states of undress. He also acts in films and stage plays, including a recent turn as Jesus Christ in a regional production of The Mystery Plays. His stories appear in Linnaean Street and Vestal Review. In the future, stories will appear in Exquisite Corpse and the yet to be titled fiction anthology from Agony Press. Also, "My Mother Received a Wound," his first 16 mm film, is wandering the film festival circuit in a country near you.

Beau Boudreaux is completing his dissertation at the University of Wisconsin (Milwaukee). Other links to his poetry can be found at the Red River Review.

Craig Butler spent many years working as a theatrical director and stage manager before deciding that writing was more fun. His short stories have appeared in numerous print and online publications, including MANY MOUNTAINS MOVING, MOBIUS, DARK MOON RISING, INDITER, SATIRE and ROCKFORD REVIEW. This is his third appearance in ECLECTICA.

John Curl is the author of six volumes of poetry, including Decade, Columbus in the Bay of Pigs, and Tidal News. He has published widely in magazines and periodicals. His new novel, Memories of Drop City, is available on the web.

Reed Fauver currently spreads gravel for money.

Susan Gorgioski is 29, Australian, an average sort of human being, and both a lover and hater of words. Her work has appeared in Snakeskin, Poetry Downunder, Mentress Moon, Drunk Duck, and is forthcoming in Recursive Angel, Mefisto and Conspire.

Sharon Kourous has lived in or near Toledo, Ohio all her life. She teaches English and in her spare time writes, reads, and travels. Although primarily a formalist, she also dabbles in free verse. Her work has appeared in print in journals such as Atlanta Review, Potpourri, The Comstock Review, and many others. Recently she has turned to the web and has appeared in or will soon appear in Terrain, Poet's Canvas, The Melic Review, Octavo, and others. She is a member of the on-line workshop, Zeugma.

Duane Locke, Doctor of Philosophy in Renaissance Literature, Professor Emeritus of the Humanities, Poet in Residence at University of Tampa for over twenty years, he has had over 2,000 of his own poems published in over 500 print magazines such as American Poetry Review, Nation, Literary Quarterly, Black Moon, and Bitter Oleander, and is the author of 14 books of poems, his latest being WATCHING WISTERIA. He now lives alone and isolated in the sunny Tampa slums, estranged and as an alien, not understanding the customs, the costumes, the language (some form of postmodern English) of his surroundings. The egregious ugliness of his neighborhood has been mitigated by the esthetic efforts of the police who put up bright orange and yellow posters on each post to advertise the location is a shopping mall for drugs. His recreational activities are drinking wine, listening to old operas, and reading postmodern philosophy.

Don Mager has published some 250 original poems and translations from Czech and German over the last 30 years, including two books: To Track The Wounded On (1986) and Glosses (1995).

Joy Hewitt Mann has appeared in print in such journals as The Malahat Review, Limestone, Queen's Quarterly, Whetstone, Amelia and The Fiddlehead. She has won several awards including the Leacock Award for Poetry (1997) and this year's Acorn-Rukeyser Award. Her first chapbook Voices From the Other Side of the Moon was published by Bard Press Books in 1998, and her first short story collection, Clinging to Water, was published in June by Boheme Press. She has been published on the Web in Poetry Now, Rose & Thorn, Palimpsest, The Paumonok Review, The Melic Review and Images Inscript. When not writing Joy runs a large "junk" store in Spencerville, where she lives with her husband, Wayne, and their three children.

Kevin McGowin is a former Eclectica Spotlight Author. He teaches English and Humanities at N. C. State in Raleigh, where he lives and writes with his wife, Laura. He has been forced to tone down the hell-raising of his teens, 20s, 30s, and early 40s due to the upcoming birth of the couple's first child, expected on Valentine's Day. Dr. McGowin's goal is to become the Episcopal Bishop of North Carolina real, real soon.

Rochelle Hope Mehr was born in Queens, New York and now lives in West Orange, New Jersey. Her poetry has appeared in such print and online journals as Ibbetson Street Press, CER*BER*US, Tourist 2000, Mefisto, and Poems Niederngasse Online.

Kimberly Townsend Palmer was born in Los Angeles in 1960, of Bohemian, English, French, German and Italian ancestry, and grew up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She received a B.S. in Psychology and a J.D. from the University of Florida. Fiction and poetry will appear or has appeared in Cenotaph, Charlotte Poetry Review, Earth's Daughters, Exquisite Corpse, New Laurel Review, The Panhandler, Snakeskin, Snake Nation Review, Stark Raving Sanity, and Xavier Review. Currently, she lives in Gainesville, Florida, with one husband and two daughters.

Lois Peterson spent her childhood in Kirkuk and Basra, Iraq. She has never been back. She dreams of it often.

Paul Sampson labors heroically as a technical writer for a mammoth corporation. He has been a professional writer and editor for many years, but he prefers to do the kind of writing you can't make a living from. Some of his recent essays and poems appear in The Alsop Review, The 2River View, the British publication World Wide Writers II, and the new anthology Best Texas Writing (Rancho Loco Press). He lives on the outskirts of a small town east of Dallas, Texas.

L.A. Schuler feels fortunate to live in North Texas where Friday night readings present a conglomerate of great local poets like Sharon Hudson (the subject of her poem, "Heat"). To experience Sharon's poetry live is to experience some serious Texas temperature. L.A. works as a library media specialist and co-facilitator to kindergarten through twelfth grade students in an experimental constructivist school. Being a techie librarian renders the benefit of keeping her abreast of the ever present changes in information technologies, and as a singing librarian, she finds that story time has never been so much fun. L.A. also acts as Managing Editor for the poetry zine, The Poet's Canvas.

Oren Shafir, a former Eclectica Spotlight Author, lives in Denmark with his wife and two amazing children.

Jeremy Simon couldn't decide whether to detail his actual history (three years as an arts writer at a Colorado Springs newspaper, now in New York and halfway to an MFA in creative nonfiction at Columbia) or playing it for laughs (he once loved horse racing, but lost interest upon realizing he was not a horse). In the end, he split the difference.

Ann Skea lives in Australia and is author of Ted Hughes: The Poetic Quest (UNE Press, Australia). She writes darn good book reviews.

Gerard Varni has appeared in printed journals, including Pleiades and The Baltimore Review, as well as online at Blue Moon, Crossconnect, Web del Sol, etc.

Tim Wenzell teaches writing at Bergen Community College in Paramus, New Jersey. He has published a number of short stories, poems, and essays in various literary magazines, and his first novel, Absent Children, will be published this autumn. To read more of Tim's fiction, poetry, and novel excerpts, visit his web page.