Contributor's Notes - Eclectica Magazine, v13n2, Apr/May 2009

Apr/May 2009

Tom Dooley co-founded Eclectica in 1996 and serves as its Managing Editor. In the 12 years between earning a BA in English literature from the University of Chicago and a MPA in municipal management from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, he taught middle and high school English in Alaska, Arizona, and Wisconsin, amassing fond memories, dubious experiences, and debt. Two careers post-teaching later, he now creates spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides for the man by day, edits Eclectica by night, and feels very grateful for the blessings he has received—chief among them being married to the sweetest gal and the best poet he knows. He and said gal reside in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with enough rescued lapdogs to field a diminutive Iditarod racing team and the empty-nest echoes of two amazing Haitian-American children who have flown the coop.

Colleen Mondor is Eclectica's Review Editor. She also reviews for Bookslut, the Voices of NOLA, and Booklist. Short story excerpts from her novel on Alaskan aviation have recently appeared in failbetter and Storyglossia. She maintains a daily blog on all things literary (and sometimes not) at her site, Chasingray.com.

Elizabeth P. Glixman is Eclectica's Interview Editor. Her fiction and poetry have appeared online and in print in Wicked Alice, In Posse Review, 3 A.M. Magazine, Tough Times Companion, a publication of The Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, Her Circle Ezine, Frigg, and Velvet Avalanche, an anthology of erotic poetry. Besides Eclectica, her author interviews, articles, book reviews, and creative non-fiction pieces have appeared in The Pedestal Magazine, Whole Life Times, Spirit of Change, Hadassah Magazine, and the anthologies Chocolate for A Woman's Soul II and Cup of Comfort For Women. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks: A White Girl Lynching (Pudding House Publications, 2008), Cowboy Writes a Letter & Other Love Poems (Pudding House Publications, 2010), and The Wonder of It All (Alternating Current, 2012). Elizabeth's story, "Mother's Bony Behind," was chosen one of the notable online stories of 2006 by the Million Writers Award. Elizabeth is an animal lover, and she has a blog devoted to shelter animals, especially those at kill shelters.

Jennifer Finstrom has been the Poetry Editor of Eclectica since the fall issue of 2005. This is her final issue in that capacity. A former Spotlight Author, she teaches in the First-Year Writing Program, tutors in writing, and facilitates writing groups at DePaul University. Recent publications include Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Escape Into Life, Gingerbread House Literary Magazine, and NEAT. For Silver Birch Press, she has work appearing in The Great Gatsby Anthology, the Alice in Wonderland Anthology, and in Ides: A Collection of Poetry Chapbooks.

Pamela Mackey is Eclectica's Copy Editor. She teaches English at a community college in central New York. Earlier in her career, she wrote feature stories for newspapers, including The New York Times. Even earlier, she was a researcher and editor in the magazine industry, holding staff positions at LOOK and Saturday Review magazines. She writes poetry and is the mother of a gifted young novelist.

Tamara M. Brenno-Uribarri served as the fiction co-editor for this issue. She received her masters in creative writing and literature theory from Hollins University. She lives in Albuquerque with her husband Dominic and teaches English at the University of New Mexico.

Grace Andreacchi is an American-born novelist, poet, and playwright. Her works include the novels Scarabocchio and Poetry and Fear, Music for Glass Orchestra (Serpent's Tail), Give My Heart Ease (New American Writing Award) and the chapbook Elysian Sonnets. Her work appears in Horizon Review, Eclectica, Word Riot, and many other fine places. Grace is also managing editor at Andromache Books and an assistant editor at Sotto Voce Magazine. She lives in London and writes a regular literary blog called Amazing Grace.

Norman Ball is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee who resides in Virginia. His work has appeared in Prairie Home Companion, Light, Bright Lights Film Journal, Raintown Review, Epicenter, Liberty, Rattle, Identity Theory, Berkeley Poetry Review, Main Street Rag, and others. His radio show, The Frantic Force, co-hosted with Leo Gerard, can be heard on WEBR in Fairfax, Virginia. He is also a frequent commentator on the local TV show, Point Taken. An Associate Political Editor for The Potomac Journal, his work has been cited on The Best of the Web and New Pages. A collection of his essays, How Can We Make Your Power More Comfortable? will be coming out from Del Sol Press in 2009.

Tala Bar is a writer and artist living in Israel. She studied Hebrew and English languages and literature and holds an M.Phil. degree in literature from London University. Her main interest is mythology, but she also writes fantasy and science fiction stories, novellas, and books, many of which have been published in print and on the Net, both in Hebrew and English.

Bob Barber has never stolen a box of beef.

Jeffrey Calhoun is a graduate student at the University of Michigan.

Michael Caylo-Baradi works in California. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tertulia Magazine, elimae, Kartika Review, Zygote in My Coffee, XCP:Streetnotes, Galatea Resurrects, Underground Voices, Prick of the Spindle, Mannequin Envy, and PopMatters. He says, "In 'Night Swimming,' the notion of setting suns evolved as the poem's initial and critical center. But something else happened; the old man drinking the setting sun surprised me, which, I thought, intensified the piece. This makes sense; relationships intensify things, into chaos and/or harmony. The relationship between the old man and the setting sun, in many ways, is a compatible marriage; their bond is hinged on the idea of the passage of time. But after I finished writing this poem, the idea of setting suns was still fresh, and I began to draft 'Portrait of A Soldier.' Unconsciously, this idea somehow bonded with the idea of war, because, in our heavily-mediatized environment, we cannot escape countless news, images, talk, and fictions of war; we can almost hear sounds of war, through these. Information we ingest is almost always war-saturated, and coated, like chocolate, with fossil fuel. Some of us wonder about a soldier's imagination, the over-intensified activation of their senses, especially what he or she hears and don't hear that impact warfare survival. Again, a relationship is created in this second piece: the sound of bullets and the setting-sun's (imagined) scratching, sounds that lead to worlds of darkness. After writing this soldier poem, I took some rest before writing another poem; the other poems that followed somehow stopped thinking about setting suns. But what I realized is that, for me, in the creative process of writing poems, some poems crave for other poems to bleed into, or long for other poems to be written they can somehow relate to and bond with."

C.E. Chaffin edited The Melic Review for eight years prior to its hiatus. Widely published, he has written literary criticism, fiction, personal essays, and has been the featured poet in over twenty magazines. Credits include The Alaska Quarterly Review, The Pedestal, The Philadelphia Inquirer Book Review, and Rattle. His new volume, Unexpected Light: Selected Poems and Love Poems 1998-2008 is now available through Diminuendo Press.

Geordie de Boer writes short fiction, novels, and poetry and carries his MCP from the University of Oregon like a key, using it only when needed to open a door. More of his poetry can be sampled at Frostwriting and Jerry Jazz Musician; fiction at SNReview, r.kv.r.y., and Side of Grits.

Barbara De Franceschi is an Australian poet who lives in Broken Hill, a small mining town in outback New South Wales. Her poetry has appeared in literary journals Australia-wide and also in Ireland, Wales, New Zealand, on line USA, and Switzerland. Her first collection, Lavender Blood, was published in 2004, and a second collection, Strands, will be launched in May 2009. When not writing poetry or committed to family and business, Barbara involves herself in community work. She was awarded the Order of Australia Medal in 2002 for her achievements in the area of multiculturalism. Barbara is a member of the performance group "The Silver Tongued Ferals" and performs at caravan parks, arts festivals, etc., and has read her poetry live to air on ABC Radio on a number of occasions.

Ann Rosenquist Fee has published her fiction in Frenzy and Never Have the Same Sex Twice (Cleis Press 2008), The Blueroad Reader (Blueroad Press 2007), and Desdmona.com. She edits fiction and poetry for New Rivers Press and Blueroad Press, and she teaches a sex writing workshop at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. She holds an MFA in fiction from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine. More at her website.

Brent A. Fisk has appeared in over 150 magazines in the last four years, including Prairie Schooner, Rattle, and Southern Poetry Review. Last year he won the Willow Award from Willow Review, the Sam Ragan Prize from Crucible, and he received one of two honorable mentions in Boulevard's Emerging Poets Contest.

Charles Frisbie lives, works, and sleeps in Chicago, Illinois. His favorite body of water is Lake Michigan, and he enjoys watching sports and napping.

Taylor Graham has appeared many times in Eclectica and also in International Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, The New York Quarterly, Poetry International, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere, and she's included in the anthology, California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara University, 2004). Her book, The Downstairs Dance Floor (Texas Review Press, 2006), was awarded the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize. Her current project is Walking with Elihu, poems on the American peace activist Elihu Burritt, the Learned Blacksmith.

William Reese Hamilton lives in Choroni, a fishing village on the coast of Venezuela, butted up against a mountainous cloud forest, in a region that produces the finest cacao in the world. His stories have appeared in The Paris Review, The North American Review, Puerto del Sol, Night Train Magazine, Eclectica Magazine, Review Americana, In Posse Review, Adirondack Review, Scrivener Creative Review, Steel City Review, Loch Raven Review, Vestal Review, Temenos, The MacGuffin, Taj Mahal Review, Ink Pot/Lit Pot, Smokelong Quarterly, and elsewhere. He has found his paradise and is studying it, warts and all.

Thomas J. Hubschman is a regular contributor to Eclectica's Salon, the author of the novel Billy Boy (Savvy Press), and the publisher of Gowanus, an ezine for authors in and from the so-called Third World. He is also editor of The Best of Gowanus: New Writing from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean (Gowanus Books). His short stories, articles and reviews have appeared in The Blue Moon Review, Morpo Review, New York Press, on the BBC World Service and in numerous other print and online publications.

Rachael Jackson is a Florida-based journalist. She's a staff reporter at the Orlando Sentinel and occasionally freelances for national magazines, including Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel. She grew up in the Chicago area, earned a journalism degree from the University of Maryland, and found her way to Florida after teaching English in Costa Rica and working for a newspaper in Delaware. She loves travel in all its forms and particularly enjoys finding places so different from her own world that they feel surreal. Check out her work at her personal website.

Stanley Jenkins has appeared in Amelia, 32 Pages, The Blue Moon Review, CrossConnect, and the Oyster Boy Review. A former Spotlight Author, Stanley is a regular contributor to Eclectica's Salon and holds the record for greatest number of appearances in our issues. He lives and works in Queens, New York.

Kathleen Kenny is a writer of Irish parentage who lives and works in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. She earns her living as a part-time creative writing tutor at the Centre for Lifelong Learning. Her latest collection of poems, Firesprung, was published recently by Red Squirrel Press.

Julia Braun Kessler has appeared in Eclectica before. She is a journalist and novelist who has published widely over the years in Seventeen, Family Circle, Travel & Leisure, Geo, Modern Maturity, and others. Her novels (under pseudonym Julia Barrett) are Presumption, The Third Sister, and Charlotte. Her latest fiction is entitled Mary Crawford and is forthcoming.

Aditi Machado is this issue's Spotlight Author. She has work published or forthcoming in magazines such as A Cappella Zoo, nthposition, Soundzine, and others. She was awarded the Toto for Creative Writing 2009 for her unpublished manuscript, The Heart Moves as Snake Fangs, which includes poems published in the present issue of Eclectica. She recently joined the masthead of Mimesis, an international journal of poetry, artwork, and opinion. Aditi lives in Bangalore, India, and blogs at Blotting Paper. She loves writing characters in poetry as a way of laying bare their anxieties, especially when they are in particular places, or away from them.

Scott Malby lives and writes from Coos Bay, Oregon.

Aram McLean has wanted to travel for as long as he can remember. When Aram won the coveted �"Paper Boy of the Month" award at age 10 in his small Vancouver Island town, his future plans in the little write-up were listed as "to travel around" and then "university"—the latter almost as an afterthought. He is still working on the first part, having visited around 60 countries so far, which leaves a couple hundred more to go. Aram first started writing his stories up as a form of therapy. Now he does it to avoid having to re-tell the same tale a thousand times.

Darlin' Neal was a 2008 finalist for the New Rivers Press MVP award and a 2007 finalist for the GS Sharat Chandra Prize with her story collection, Rattlesnakes and the Moon. In the last three years, her work has been nominated seven times for the Pushcart Prize, and appears in Per Contra, The Southern Review, Shenandoah, Puerto del Sol, and numerous other magazines. Her nonfiction piece, "The House in Simi Valley," which first appeared in storySouth, has been selected for the forthcoming anthology, Online Writing: The Best of The First Ten Years, and Wigleaf chose her short story, "Red Brick," which appeared first in Smokelong Quarterly as one of the top fifty short shorts on the web in 2008. She has work forthcoming in Eleven Eleven and Dogs: Wet and Dry, A Collection of Canine Flash Fiction, and other magazines. She is assistant professor of creative writing in the University of Central Florida's MFA program and this year's final judge for Wigleaf's Top 50 Flash Fiction.

David Oestreich is a human resources professional living in Ohio with his wife and three children. His work has previously appeared in Red Wheelbarrow and Ruminate.

Jim Parks is a newsman from Houston, a deck hand from the tugs and shrimpers and tuna clippers, a farm hand and truck driving man. Keep him away from the firewater and don't mess with his food or his woman. You can catch his act in The Linnet's Wings, Hackwriters, and Fried Chicken and Coffee. There is a website named after him (see link).

LeeAnn Pickrell is a former Spotlight Author. She lives in Oakland, California, with her fabulous cat Henry and works as a freelance editor. Originally from Dallas, she received an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College. LeeAnn writes both poetry and prose and has completed two novels. In 2004, one of her poems was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her poem "On the Equinox" won third place in a contest sponsored by Ghost Road Press and appears in its anthology, Open Window III. Her work has appeared in various journals, including the Atlanta Review, SoMa Literary Review, Slant, Red River Review, Pinyon, Driftwood, Birmingham Poetry Review, Full Circle, Red Wheelbarrow, Santa Barbara Review, Northern Contours, Exquisite Reaction, Potpourri: A Journal of the Literary Arts, and Walrus. She has poetry forthcoming in 34th Parallel. For the past couple of years, LeeAnn has focused solely on writing poetry. She says it connects her present moments with the past and the future. A poem "opens time."

Gilbert Wesley Purdy has published poetry, prose and translation in many journals, paper and electronic, including: Jacket Magazine, Poetry International (San Diego State University), The Georgia Review (University of Georgia), Grand Street, SLANT (University of Central Arkansas), Consciousness Literature and the Arts (University of Wales, Aberystwyth), Orbis (UK), Eclectica, and Valparaiso Poetry Review. Links to his work online and to a selected bibliography of his work in paper venues appear at his Hyperlinked Online Bibliography.

Aleah Satois the author of Badlands, Stillborn Wilderness (Pooka Press 2008) and the forthcoming Empire of Moths. Her work has appeared in Nthposition, Adirondack Review, juked, Just West of Athens, Blue Fifth Review, Shadowtrain, BlazeVox, The Furnace Review, The Argotist, and fourw 18 & 19, among others. Her collaboration with photographer Elizabeth Siegfried was exhibited at the G+ Galleries in Toronto. She can be reached through her website.

Anna Sidak is an Arizonian whose interest in earthquakes ("Along the Fault Line") was encouraged by many years in Southern California. Her stories have appeared in beyond baroque (a Pushcart Outstanding Writer), Eclectica (a 2007 Million Writers notable), and other journals.

Paul Silverman has appeared in The South Dakota Review, Tampa Review, Eureka Literary Magazine, Minnetonka Review, Worcester Review, Alimentum, Coe Review, Jabberwock Review, Eclectica, Hobart Online, Pindeldyboz, The King's English, Smokelong Quarterly, Laura Hird, The Pedestal, Adirondack Review, Dogmatika, Summerset Review, VerbSap, Word Riot, Thieves Jargon, and many others. He has three Pushcart nominations, a Best of the Net nomination, and was shortlisted twice for The Million Writers Award.

Rohith Sundararaman is a twenty-four year old poet writing out of Bombay, India. His work has appeared or will appear Elimae, Eclectica, Ghoti Magazine, Word Riot, Gud Magazine, Decomp, Defenestration, Tipton Poetry Journal, Pratilipi, Two Review, Orange Room Review, and other places. Recently, one of his poems was chosen as the best in a poetry contest judged by poet Marvin Bell.

Ray Templeton is a former Spotlight Author. A Scottish writer and musician living in St. Albans, England, his poetry, short fiction, writings on music, etc., have appeared in a wide range of both print and online journals, including Magma, Iota, Eclectica, Poems Niederngasse, Thieves Jargon, The New Verse News, The Argotist, Musical Traditions, and Antithesis Common. He is a member of the editorial board of Blues & Rhythm Magazine.

Lafayette Wattles has been a teacher, a factory worker, a banker, and a jeweler; he's sold women's shoes and has been a production assistant on a film crew. He now has a sweet job working in a golf course pro shop. He has five college degrees, most of which have proven useless, although he's hoping his most recent, an MFA in Creative Writing from Spalding University, will change that once and for all. Lafayette is working on two young adult novels (the second, a novel-in-verse), has won a few regional poetry contests, and has had his work published in several journals, most recently or forthcoming in Blood Lotus, Prick of the Spindle, Shit Creek Review, Runes, and The Louisville Review.

B.P. Whalen is a student in the MFA program in Creative Writing and Environment at Iowa State University, where he is completing his first novel. His flash fiction will appear later this year in The Dream People.

Kajsa Wiberg is a freelance writer, translator, and horse trainer. Her stories have appeared in The River Walk Journal, Long Story Short, Prose Toad, Chick Lit Review, Flash Shot, and Insolent Rudder. She is a script reader for Blue Cat Screenplay. She lives in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California, where she's at work on her second novel.