Contributor's Notes - Eclectica Magazine, v5n2, Apr/May 2001

Apr/May 2001

Tom Dooley just turned thirty-one. A high school English teacher, he has finally decided to "graduate" and is joining the Air Force.

Julie King shares a birthday with Eminem. She has a Master's in creative writing, which she teaches along with film studies at the University of Wisconsin, Parkside. Her work appears in the Iowa Press anthologies Boomer Girls and are you experienced? and she has published in Fiction International, Sundog, Puerto del Sol, Quarterly West, Gulf Coast, and others. She wrote, directed, and produced the short film Worlds, sometimes stars in B-horror movies, and is a mother to four personality-rich cats. She first appeared in the magazine back in 1996 and has been a member of the staff since 1999.

Tara M. Gilbert-Brever has appeared in Primavera and previous issues of Eclectica, where she now serves as an assistant editor. She loves her husband and her cats (Ponyboy and Willow) so much she could eat them like chocolate covered cherries. She would like someday to be the person who names lipstick colors and spends her free time making bad on her promises not to write about the personal lives of her friends.

Carolyn Steele Agosta wrote "The Warm Curve of the Throat" after attending a family reunion and wishing the event had been livened up with the presence of at least ONE black sheep (instead of the disappointing selection of ecru, beige and mauve). Her short stories have been published in City Primeval, Independence Boulevard, Lonzie's Fried Chicken, and online at www.HotRead.com. Aunt Jody, Grandma, and the rest of the family appear in two more stories, and Ms. Agosta is currently at work on a fourth. A former damn yankee, she now lives in North Carolina.

Eric Bosse is a writer, filmmaker and teacher living in Colorado. He was recently nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His stories have appeared in numerous journals including Mississippi Review, Exquisite Corpse, Zoetrope All-Story Extra, Linnaean Street, Vestal Review, In Posse Review and Eclectica, where he is a former Spotlight Author. He also has another story forthcoming in the Web Del Sol Editor's Picks. Five of his fictions will be published in the Agony Press anthology scheduled for release in late Spring 2001. Eric has three feature screenplays and a novel in progress, and he recently completed a book-length collection of short stories. "Everybody Must Get Stoned" originally appeared in Nubrite.

Harold Wayne Bowman is professor of theatre at Ferrum College. He has directed, acted, and written for the stage throughout his career. Look for his short story "Rat Guts" in the May issue of Exquisite Corpse. On "Cutting the Blood" he says, "It's set in Over the Rhine where I lived in the early 50’s. It is a neighborhood that was established by Germans. It became the inner city ghetto destination for displaced Jews before WWII and Appalachians after. Now it is home to African-Americans. Readers will recognize the neighborhood because of the riots that took place in Cincinnati. The story is a fictional account of an incident that could, and still can, happened in that place. The irony is that a multi-million dollar opera and symphony are right across the street from the place depicted in the story. Then the police stood between us and them on performance nights. It is odd to go to the opera now and have the police face in the other direction when they stand between us and them."

Robert Castle makes his living as a history teacher at a small academy outside Trenton, New Jersey. He has had articles and stories appear in Gadfly, Film Comment, The Sun, The MacGuffin, Lite, A Summer's Reading, The Monocacy Valley Review, The Iconoclast, and Timber Creek Review. He has also recently published several articles on movies. Three can be found online at 24 Frames Per Second and another at Bright Lights Film Journal. Also online are two short stories at 3 A.M. and a prose poem in the current issue of 5_trope. Lastly, at UnderCurrent, he has a piece on Don DeLillo.

Jill Chan was born in Manila, Philippines, studied chemistry in university, and migrated to New Zealand in 1994. Her publications include NZ literary magazines Poetry NZ, Takahe, and Spin, and online in Apples and Oranges, Mentress Moon, Niederngasse, Poetry Magazine, Trout, Southern Ocean Review, 3rd Muse, Interweave and forthcoming in Comrades. She edits PoetrySz, an e-zine featuring the work of people with mental illness. She is a big fan of the music of Natalie Merchant, Suzanne Vega, U2 and R.E.M.

Glenda Cooper currently resides in Dallas, Texas. Her poems have appeared in print publications and online journals, including Baker Street Irregular, Disquieting Muses, Eclectica, The Melic Review (forthcoming), Mobius, and Thunder Sandwich.

Alison Daniel is an Australian poet. Her work has been published widely within Australia.

John E. Eddy has a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing. He lives in Jefferson City, Missouri with his wife, who originates from Berlin, Germany. He grew up in a small town south of Jefferson City amidst a majority of farmers and hunters. Much of his poetry is drawn from his childhood and his familiarity with a rural lifestyle. His poetry has previously appeared in Cadence.

Jennifer Finstrom lives in Chicago, IL.

John Hanson holds a Ph.D. in English from SUNY at Buffalo's Center for the Psychological Study of the Arts. He has published articles on Nazi art and the Holocaust and on marketing and psychology. The poems in this issue of Eclectica reflect his interest in dreams, power, and helplessness.

Thurman Hart was born in Texas in 1968 and grew up on the High Plains of West Texas and Southeastern New Mexico. He spent six years in the Navy, eight years in a marriage that was mostly good. He has four children and lives in Central Florida, between the shuttle and the mouse. This summer, he will be completing a bachelors degree in psychology at the University of Central Florida. He works at a juvenile treatment facility trying to turn the kids that everyone else has given up on into somewhat whole and complete individuals. Regarding the story "Cantos de mi Padre," he says, "As I grow older, my lists of regrets grows longer. The top of the list, I'm sure, will always be that I didn't get more time with my old man."

Jennifer Hersh has a B.A in creative writing from Ohio State University. Her writing has appeared in The Journal, The Cincinnati Judaica Review, Membrane Gazette, and the Columbus Guardian. She has been a receptionist, a law student, an English teacher, a claims adjuster, a folk singer, a technical editor, a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead, and still has no idea what she wants to do (or what color hair she wants to have) when she grows up. She is a newlywed and lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Richard Hollins works as a consultant and lives with his wife and daughter in London, England, in a nice southwestern suburb on the Thames. His stories have appeared in the English small press and achieved the occasional result in competitions.

Allen Itz lives in San Antonio, Texas. He began writing short stories and poetry in the late 1960's. After a nearly three decade hiatus, when career and family began to take up most of his time and creative energy, he started writing again a couple of years ago and has since published in a number of on-line and print journals, including Alchemy, Neiderngasse, The Melic Review, The Horsethief's Journal, The Green Tricycle, AvantGarde Times, Maelstrom, Dynamic Patterns, The ShallowEnd, and, most recently, The Poet's Canvas and Nectarzine. He tries to write a poem a day, which means lots and lots of bad poems, with a few good ones mixed in. "The two appearing here," he says, "are good ones, I think, and two of my favorites."

Stanley Jenkin's stories and essays have or will appear in Amelia, 32 Pages, The Blue Moon Review, CrossConnectand the Oyster Boy Review. A former Spotlight Author, Stanley now writes a regular column for the Salon. He lives and works in Queens, New York.

Amy Crane Johnson is a former Eclectica Spotlight Author. She lives in Green Bay, WI, where she is an editor for Raven Tree Press.

Natalie Kring is a former Spotlight Author.

Eric Longley is a writer living in Durham, North Carolina. He has published many articles on the web.

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).

Mitchell Metz was an All-Ivy football player in a past life. He still speaks of it to anyone who will listen. Meanwhile, he plays hockey fiercely under the deluded notion that it somehow makes him immortal. His kids think he does it for a living. Which, he believes, is a better guess than writing for a living. His work has appeared or is pending in over forty publications including Slipstream, Crab Creek Review, Thin Air, and Kimera. His wife thinks he should put together a collection right after he fixes the screen door.

Lad Moore is a former corporate vice-president who left the boardroom in 1999 and returned to his roots in 'Deep East Texas'. He lives on a small farm near mysterious Caddo Lake and the historic steamboat town of Jefferson, the fountainhead for much of his writing. He has appeared in The Danforth Review, Adirondack Review, The Paumanok Review, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, The Virginia Adversaria, Carolina Country Magazine, Stirring, and America’s Intercultural Magazine, among others. Many new stories await the release of his memoir/anthology, “Firefly Rides,” coming later in 2001. His winning story “The Firmament of the Third Day” was included in the Univ. of Washington’s Best of Carve Magazine Anthology. “Burger Recollections,” a burger-shop memoir, was published in the Food Encyclopedia, “ABC’s of Food” by Peach Blossom Press. In addition, Mr. Moore was a 2000 winner of The Wordhammer Award and the Silver Quill. His short story “The Day Hunter” has been nominated for a 2001Award at The Texas Institute of Letters.

Julie Nondorf is a creative writing teacher at a Wisconsin high school and was recently anthologized in Creative Communication's upcoming teachers' collection. "Much of my inspiration," she says, "is found in Lake Michigan." The poem "7:00 A.M. on Jefferson St." came as she sat along the beach one night. "It just kind of overpowered me the same way the waves pound the shore. I love what the lake does for me that way," she says.

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.

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

Ann Skea lives in Australia. She is the author of Ted Hughes: The Poetic Quest (UNE Press, Australia).

Gary Sloan retired in 1999 from Louisiana Tech University, in Ruston, where he was George Anding Professor of English. Besides many articles in academic journals, he has written essays on religion, science, and literature for such "popular" magazines as Free Inquiry, Skeptic, American Atheist, The Humanist, The Freethinker, The American Rationalist, Positive Atheism, Impact, and Exquisite Corpse. He has also written commentaries for the Scripps Howard News Service. He states, "In Northeast Louisiana, I am viewed by many Christians as a Beelzebub figure because for ten years I have adversely critiqued Christian dogma and defended atheism in letters and guest columns in the Monroe News-Star and the Shreveport Times, the largest newspapers in the northern half of the state. My wife is the Shakespeare specialist at the University of Lousiana at Monroe. We have three grown children. All five of us are unabashed atheists."

Scott Thouard

David Wilson has appeared in a number of magazines, most recently Doorknobs & BodyPaint, Redsine, Lethogica, The Café Irreal, Driver’s Side Airbag, The Nocturnal Lyric, The Dream Zone, Transcendent Visions and Samsara Quarterly. A chapbook of his stories was published in 2000, and his first full-length book, a collection of forty-four stories called The Kafka Effekt, is due to be published this Fall. Wilson holds two M.A. degrees, one in English Literature (University of Massachusetts-Boston), the other in Science Fiction Studies (University of Liverpool). Currently he is working on his Ph.D. in Twentieth Century American Literature and Theory at Michigan State University. "The Walk" he says, "was inspired by an old friend of mine who recently committed suicide. We grew up together but fell out of touch after graduating from high school. This piece is, in part, intended to reflect how distant I feel towards my friend and the death blow he inflicted upon himself and everybody that has ever been close to him."