Contributor's Notes - Eclectica Magazine, v9n4, Oct/Nov 2005

Oct/Nov 2005

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.

Paul Sampson is Eclectica's Nonfiction and Miscellany Editor and has been a regular contributor to the Salon. A professional writer and editor for many years, he worked until recently for a mammoth corporation. He has since been downsized, although he remains the same height and weight as formerly. Some of his essays and poems have been published in Image, The Alsop Review, The 2River View, Illya's Honey, The Sulphur River Literary Review, the British publication World Wide Writers II, and the anthology Best Texas Writing (Rancho Loco Press). He lives on the outskirts of a small town east of Dallas, Texas.

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.

Mike Spice is Eclectica's Travel Editor. He is working on a Master's Degree in International Business at the University of Wollongong in Dubai. His poetry and prose have appeared previously in Eclectica and Modern Haiku.

Arlene Ang lives in Venice, Italy where she edits the Italian edition of Niederngasse. Her poetry has recently been published in Persephone's Moon, Stride, Dublin Quarterly, Avatar Review, Tattoo Highway, Envoi, The Pedestal, Smiths Knoll, flashquake, Triplopia, and Ghoti Magazine. Three of her poems have been nominated for the 2006 Pushcart Prize anthology. Her first full collection of poetry, "The Desecration of Doves" is available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Liliana V. Blum lives in Ciudad Madero, Tamaulipas, Mexico. Her stories have appeared in various literary journals and anthologies, including El Cuento and El Aleph. She is the author of the story collection La maldición de Eva (Voces de Barlovento, 2002).

Bob Bradshaw is a programmer living in Redwood City, CA. He is a huge fan of the Rolling Stones. Previous work of his can be found at Paumanok Review, Slow Trains, Red River Review, Poems Niederngasse and flashquake, among other publications.

Jerry Budinski is a retired engineer who now writes non-technical things and as often as he wants. His short fiction has been published in Paumanok Review, Bygone Days, Story Garden, The Blotter, and Deathlings. Inspirations may come from history, travel, weird science or just things that warp out from the daily news. He lives high on a hill in Western New York with his wife of thirty years, in the home of a West Highland Terrier named Hildy.

Powell Burke was born and raised in Tallahassee, Florida, before migrating south to attend school at New College of Florida, in Sarasota. He is a third-year student working toward a liberal arts concentration in sociology. He just returned from a semester abroad in Italy, and is currently the copy editor and a staff writer for his campus newspaper, the Catalyst. This is his first published fiction story, and he is ever grateful to Eclectica for his big break.

Jared Carter lives in Indianapolis. His fourth collection of poems, Cross this Bridge at a Walk, is forthcoming from Wind Publications in Kentucky. Additional work may be found on his web site, Jared Carter Poetry.

David Cazden serves as poetry editor of Miller's Pond, print edition. He has reviews and poems forthcoming in The Louisville Review, The Connecticut Review and Midwest Quarterly. "Sierra Vista, AZ" is from his first full length collection, Moving Picture (Word Press, 2005).

Barbara De Franceschi lives with her husband in Broken Hill (where she was born), a small mining town in outback Australia, where they own and operate an earthmoving business and have a grown-up family of three sons and two daughters. She recently launched her first collection of poems, titled Lavender Blood.In 2002 she was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for service to the community especially in the area of multiculturalism. Barbara joined the Broken Hill Writer's Forum in 2000 when she started to take her writing seriously. Since then she has had her poems and short stories published in literary journals and magazines throughout Australia, including Famous Reporter, Centoria, The Bunyip, Poetrix, The Tablet and Yellow Moon, in which her poem titled "Dust Storm" won first prize in the nature poetry section (to be published in July 2003). She has also read her poetry on radio live to air. She describes her poetry as "immediately accessible."

Robin Evans lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. Her stories can be found in Outercast, Pindeldyboz, Thieves Jargon, Ken*Again, and Skive, among others. Her non-fiction work will appear in the upcoming anthology, "Get on the Bus" produced by San Francisco's CitySpace. If the writing doesn't do it first, Robin has a husband, a teen-age daughter and a small dog who promise to drive her crazy.

Ali Fahmy has appeared online in Pindeldyboz, Exquisite Corpse, Identity Theory, and Hobart. He's lived in Sweden (his birthplace), Egypt, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota. He now lives in Los Angeles with his wife Laurel. He graduated from the University of Minnesota with a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology. He enjoys surfing and Scrabble. "The Caketopper" is inspired by Ali's solitary travels and obsession with music.

Lyn Fox can usually be found in British Columbia or Chiapas, Mexico. The phrase "philosophical adventure" describes his writing and his life as an avid world-trekker with a master's degree in philosophy.

Jim Gourley lives in China and maintains a website of his photographs (see link).

Robert Gray has worked as a bookseller and buyer for the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, VT since 1992. He was named the store's first Master Bookseller in 2000. He is also the author of Fresh Eyes: A Bookseller's Journal,, a publishing industry blog. Gray's written work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Publishers Weekly, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Tin House, and Cimarron Review. He earned an MFA in Writing & Literature from Bennington College in 2003. He is currently working on a book about reading and readers from a bookseller's perspective.

Bradley Earle Hoge lives in Spring, TX with his wife and three children. He teaches natural science at the University of Houston - Downtown. Brad's most recent poetry appears in Tar Wolf Review, The Ephemera, Entelechy, and The Dead Mule.

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.

Ikhide R. Ikheloa came to the United States from Nigeria armed with a blue suitcase and the hopes and blessing of his ancestors. He is still here, taking short breaks from his demons and credit card bills to indulge in romantic hagiographies of his lost youth. He writes for a living, crafting inane memo after inane memo for a thriving bureaucracy in a thriving American village. He says, "I also write to process my personal issues, and so I write virtually non-stop on the Internet and I think that I'll never write that book, because, who cares, the book as we know it is so analog, and it is dying a long slow death. Long live the Internet. The Internet is probably the greatest revolution that has ever afflicted mankind. The World Wide Web will reshape the world in a way that is unimaginable by even the world's greatest thinkers. The best is yet to come. The worst is yet to come. I love it."

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.

Toshiya A. Kamei is an MFA student in translation at the University of Arkansas. Toshiya's translations of Mexican short prose have appeared in Bonfire, Metamorphoses, Literal, and SmokeLong Quarterly.

Kathy Karlson served in the Peace Corps in West Africa and has a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Minnesota. She was awarded an NEA grant for fiction writing in 1998. She has had stories published in Chiron Review, Madison Review, Worldview, Calyx, Stories With Grace, The MacGuffin, SNReview, and 13th Warrior. Her paintings are in more than 30 private collections, and she is a member of A Salon Studio in Takoma Park, Maryland. She and her husband have a 27 year-old son who lives too far away.

Sherri Linn Kline is a transplanted Appalachian who came to Michigan by way of Ohio. She is a gardener/storyteller/woodcarver who lives near Ann Arbor, Michigan, with her husband and four preternatural cats. She has had pieces in the online journals Salt River Review, Amarillo Bay, and Eclectica, and the print publications Cup of Wonder and The Seeker Journal.

Deborah P. Kolodji works in information technology to fund her poetry obsessions and to pay for her children's college tuition. She is the editor and co-founder of Amaze: The Cinquain Journal and the owner and moderator of a yahoogroups e-mail discussion list for cinquain poetry called CinquainPoets. In addition to Electica, her cinquains have appeared in Scrivener's Pen, Wilmington Blues, St. Anthony Messenger Magazine, Autumn Pond, Short Stuff, Brevities, Hummingbird, and many other places.òòòKolodji isòa member of the Haiku Society of America and heròhaiku has appeared in Modern Haiku, Bottle Rockets, The Heron's Nest, Tinywords, and The Red Moon Anthology.

Miriam N. Kotzin teaches creative writing and literature at Drexel University where she directs the Certificate Program in Writing and Publishing. This is her second appearance in Eclectica. In 2004 two of her poems received nominations for a Pushcart Prize. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Boulevard (for which she is a contributing editor), Eclectica, Poems Niederngasse, Shampoo, Three Candles, Flashquake and Carnelian. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Pedestal, Carve, Ghoti Magazine, Fiction Warehouse, Pindeldyboz, Word Riot, Of(f)course, Thieves Jargon, 3711 Atlantic, Nuvein and Slow Trains, among others. She also writes fiction in collaboration with Bill Turner, and their work has appeared in such places as Admit Two, Hobart, Amarillo Bay, Monkey Bicycle and Dogwood Journal. About "No One Can Swim to the Moon," she says, "All the words in the story are either one syllable, or pronounced as one syllable words."

Dorothee Lang is a German writer and net artist. She is author of Masala Moments, a travel novel about India, and editor of the BluePrintReview, an online journal of unintended prose and poetry. Her work has recently appeared in CautionaryTale, juked, Word Riot and Pindeldyboz, among others. To see some of her latest pieces, visit her virtual gallery.

Annie Levin is a writer and native of Park Slope, Brooklyn, residing in Greenpoint. She received her B.A in Humanities from Hampshire College in 2003, and is studying towards an M.A. in Liberal Studies at The New School for Social Research. She is an editor for The New School's graduate student academic and creative writing journal, Canon Magazine. This is her first publication.

Terri Light is a graphic designer and volunteer urban gardener amid the glorious ruins of Detroit. Transplanted to the Motor City from Virginia, she works and teaches at the private school portrayed in "The Virgin Suicides." She has work appearing in an upcoming edition of The Hiss Quarterly.

Pamela Mackey 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 proud mother of a gifted young novelist. She lives with a small flock of blue and white parakeets and a big black chow puppy named Koo.

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

Scott Malby

Kat McElroy was born in Laramie, Wyoming in 1950. She came to in Delta Junction, Alaska in 1986. She is a high school drop-out. She has a minor criminal record. She has been employed in a wide variety of occupations including drug dealing, bull-cook in a gold mine camp, bartender, wood-cutter, waitress, meat-wrapper, barroom floozie, and town drunk. She is a mother and a grandmother. She spent ten years living a subsistence lifestyle in the Interior of Alaska. During all this, she wrote, which she continues to do. She raises MacKenzie River Huskies and likes to play with fire. She has over-corrected in the criminal-behaviors arena and is now known as something of a stick-in-the-mud.

Andie Miller is a writer who lives in Johannesburg, South Africa. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications, including M/C, First Monday, Motionsickness and Gobshite Quarterly.

Susan O'Doherty is a writer and psychologist in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has appeared in Northwest Review, Apalachee Review, Style & Sense, VerbSap, Carve, and Ballyhoo Stories, among other publications. New work has been accepted by Phoebe and the forthcoming anthologies It's a Boy! (Seal Press), About What Was Lost (Chamberlain Brothers), and Familiar (The People's Press).

Eljay Persky grew up in New York City's Greenwich Village, attending the High School of Art and Design. Immediately thereafter, her neighbor, the playwright H.M Koutoukas, cast her as "The World's Most Perfect Teenager" in his play "Grandmother is in the Strawberry Patch" at La Mama E.T.C. She next crossed East 4th St. to co-star with Divine in Tom Eyen's "Women Behind Bars" while working as a founding member, writer and photographer for New York Rocker Magazine. She has since appeared in many plays including Broadway's Steaming, and at L.A.'s Met Theater and LATC. Her film debut was as Robert Duvall's daughter in The Great Santini. Other movie and television credits can be seen on the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB.com) under Lisa Jane Persky. Still a working actress, she has also continued her education at Otis Art Institute and works as a commissioned collage artist creating works that tell personal family stories. She is a freelance writer, photographer, and editorial collage artist for numerous publications, including the recently released book, New York Rocker: My Life In The Blank Generation with Blondie, Iggy Pop and Others, 1975-1981 by Gary Valentine Lachman, which also tells some of her story. Collage and photo credits include The L.A.Times, L.A. Weekly, L.A. Style, Q, and MOJO (London). In addition, she is a recipient of a Print Magazine Award for design excellence. Her first short story was featured in BOMB magazine and her handmade chapbooks can be purchased directly by emailing her. She is working on her first Novel, a story set in Greenwich Village in the 60's and 70's. Her short story "Give Me A Light, God" appeared in an earlier issue of Eclectica and was included in Eclectica Best Fiction Volume One. "hawk nights at the diner," the story in this issue, is her "homage to Richard Brautigan, Edward Hopper and stool-sitters anywhere."

Dave Prescott lives in Herefordshire, UK. His stories have appeared in Seventh Quark magazine, Blue Mag and Southern Ocean Review. He writes with Alex Keegan's Boot Camp.

Gilbert Wesley Purdy has published poetry, prose and translation in many journals, paper and electronic, including: The Georgia Review (University of Georgia); Jacket Magazine (Australia); Poetry International (San Diego State University); Grand Street; the Valparaiso Poetry Review (University of Valparaiso); The Pedestal Magazine; SLANT (University of Central Arkansas); Orbis (UK), and Quarterly Literary Review Singapore. His Hyperlinked Online Bibliography appears in the pages of The Catalyzer Journal.

Aleah Sato is a freelance writer and co-owner of Ricksticks Inc, a visual communications firm in Toronto. She is the author of two collections, No Peaceful Sleep and Badlands. Her work has appeared in Poetry Canada, Women Writers, and Wicked Alice, among others, and will be appearing in Nthposition in November.

Raymond Sikes teaches English at Delaware Technical and Community College. His stories, essays, and poems have been published in various print and web publications, and he is the author of Blues for a Dime Store Guitar, a novel.

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

Maryanne Snell

Constance Squires has been nominated for Best New American Voices 2004, the O. Henry Prize Series 2004, and twice for the Pushcart Prize (2003, 2005). Her work has received the Bob Shacochis Award for the Short Story, The Briar Cliff Review 2004 Fiction Award, Honorable Mention in the AWP's Intro Journals Project, and Honorable Mention from the Atlantic Monthly 2003 Fiction Contest. Other short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in The Gingko Tree Review, Bayou, The Briar Cliff Review, The Arkansas Review, and the Chiron Review. She is completing a Ph.D. in English and Creative Writing at Oklahoma State University. She says about "Writ in Water," "This song was the direct result of hearing Suzanne Vega's song 'Honeymoon Suite' and Bob Dylan's 'When I Paint My Masterpiece' together with a trip to Rome that blew my mind."

David Taylor has appeared in reviews and anthologies, including Prairie Schooner, Zone 3, Potomac Review, Wind, Rio Grande Review and Eclectica's Best Fiction. His previous story in Eclectica, "Errand," was named a Notable Online Story of 2004. He has also written for The Washington Post, Smithsonian and Village Voice. His book about ginseng is forthcoming from Algonquin Books.

Steve Wheeler lives in a suburb of Ottawa with his wife, trying, like other writers, to get his novels and short stories read and published. He has work forthcoming on LauraHird.Com, The Journal of Modern Post, and Canadian Stories. The Niagara branch of The Canadian Authors Association included one of his short stories in their anthology in 2003.

Gary Charles Wilkens studies creative writing at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas. His poems have appeared in print and online journals including The Texas Review, The Anemone Sidecar,Obsessed with Pipework, The Adirondack Review, The Cortland Review, Hinge, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Snakeskin, Pemmican, Underground Window, and Prairie Poetry. About "900 Miles," he says, "This poem had three inspirations: my stoner friends in college, The Grapes of Wrath, and the birds outside my window."

Darin Zimpel graduated with a BA in English from The University of Wisconsin-Parkside in 1991 and lives in Wisconsin with his lovely wife Bethany. He enjoys baseball, writing, walking their American Staffordshire Terrier, Lucy, and listening to good music.