CONTRIBUTORS

Poetry

John Haines, poet, essayist, and teacher, was born in 1924 in Norfolk, Virginia. After studying painting in Washington, D.C. and New York City, he homesteaded, from 1954 to 1969, in Alaska, at Mile 68, Richardson Highway, southeast of Fairbanks. Mr. Haines is the author of numerous collections of poems and critical essays, among which the most recent are Fables and Distances, New and Selected Essays; A Guide to the Four-Chambered Heart (1996); The Owl in the Mask of the Dreamer; Collected Poems (1993, expanded paperback edition 1996); and a memoir, The Stars, The Snow, the Fire (1989). A collection of early poems, At the End of This Summer: Poems 1948-54, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 1997. In addition to two Guggenheim Foundation Fellowships for poetry and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship previously granted, Mr. Haines received a Literary Award in 1995 from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, and in 1996 he was guest lecturer at the Annual Summer Wordsworth Conference in Grasmere, England. Recent academic appointments include those at Ohio University, George Washington University, and the University of Cincinnati. He occupied the Chair in Creative Arts at Austin Peay State University in Tennessee in 1993, and in 1997 was awarded the Annual Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets. Mr. Haines lives in Helena, Montana, with his wife, Joy.
On writers: "I return often to the German writers, Hermann Broch and Robert Musil; their thought, their inclusion of modern politics and history, and expansion of the novel, seem to me far in advance of anything being written in English at this time, and I would include with them two of my favorite Austrians, Arthur Schnitzler and Karl Krauss. To what extent these figures have influenced my own work, I am unable to say; they stand for me as models, representatives of a seriousness in the art of letters I find largely missing today. Recently I was guest speaker at the annual Robinson Jeffers Conference in Carmel, California. It was an honor to be there, to be invited to speak about a poet I have admired since I first read him while still in my twenties. But there are many writers, poets as well as novelists, whose example has sustained me in a long writing life."

Jeff Friedman has published two volumes of poetry: The Record-Breaking Heat Wave (BkMk Press), and Scattering the Ashes (Carnegie-Mellon University Press). A new book, Taking Down the Angel (Carnegie-Mellon University Press) will appear in 2002. His work has appeared in such journals as Poetry, The American Poetry Review, The Antioch Review, The Missouri Review, Indiana Review, and New England Review. A recipient of an Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Hampshire State Arts Council, he has won the Editor's Prize from The Missouri Review and has had residencies at The MacDowell Colony, The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Yaddo. He lives in Hanover, New Hampshire, and teaches creative writing at Keene State College.

Kathleen McGookey's poems have appeared in such journals as Cimarron Review, Epoch, Field, The Journal, The Missouri Review, Quarterly West, and Seneca Review, and are forthcoming in Luna, Passages North, and Verse. White Pine Press will publish her first collection of poems, Whatever Shines, in fall 2001. Ms. McGookey lives in Wayland, Michigan.
On writers: "I have been reading Rimbaud's Illuminations, Charles Simic's The Book of Gods and Devils, and lots of novels: Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone, Janet Fitch's White Oleander, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. Also I am reading Paul Mariani's biography of Hart Crane, The Broken Tower."

Barry Seiler's most recent book is Black Leaf, published by the University of Akron Press in 1997. He divides his time between urban New Jersey and rural upstate New York.
On writers: "I've recently entered the world of Lynn Emanuel--the double volume of The Dig and Hotel Fiesta. I love the voice: sassy, risky, wise. The poems are wonderful performances in language. They strut across the stage, tip their hats."

Tom Moore comments that he teaches the history of ideas at Western WA University, is married with two kids, has a dog, a cat and a house overlooking Bellingham Bay.
On writers: "I've been re-reading Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard and Eliot's "The Waste Land."

Jeri Lloyd's poetry has appeared in several literary journals, including Onthebus, Spillway, and Rattle. She lives in Los Angeles and works as a producer for an Internet company. Ms. Lloyd comments that as a child, she "rattled through the woods of Mississippi and Florida, and later enjoyed friendships and family homes in Texas and Saudi Arabia."
On writers: "I am most inspired by the work of Dorianne Laux, Mary Oliver, Philip Levine, and Sharon Olds."

Jeremy Spears has published work in such magazines as Green Mountains Review, The Plum Review, and Flyway. He is the recipient of the 1995 David Lindahl Poetry Prize from the James White Review, and his manuscript Only Roses took an Honorable Mention in the 1998 Frank O'Hara National Chapbook Competition. He resides in Seattle, Washington with his partner, the poet Bobby Anderson.
On writers: "I've been reading Scott Bradfield's The History of Luminous Motion out loud to my boyfriend because it's one of my favorite novels. I've read the novel four times since discovering it in the early nineties. I've also been reading Joan Swift's new book of poems, Tiger Iris."

Alexandra van de Kamp is a poet living in New York who has returned to the States after living in Spain for six years. She has been published in such journals as Poetry Northwest, Greensboro Review, Seattle Review, The Lucid Stone, and No Exit. Her poems are forthcoming in Red Rock Review and Small Pond Magazine. She is both a co-founding and contributing editor for Terra Incognita, a bilingual literary magazine distributed in Madrid and New York. Her poetry manuscript, The Photographer’s Interview, was a finalist in the 1999 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook contest.
On writers: "Recently I have read the work of Larry Levis, especially his longer, truly brilliant poems in his posthumously published Elegy. I often return to his work to remind myself of the generous space a poem can make--that anything, if apt and true, can find its place on the page. I also love the work of Susan Mitchell. Her frank yet sensual use of language also leads to a luxurious, open feeling in her poems. She is a wonderful mix of linguistic experimentation and intuitive penetration. Mitchell reminds me to read the classics as well--her poems seem informed by a deep, serious dedication to study and reading. There’s also Rilke, of course--his Letters to Cezanne are poetry in prose form and have so much to say about our spiritual relationship to the physical world."

Michael Vaughn is the author of Gabriella's Voice, an opera novel from Dead End Street Publications (deadendstreet.com), and Courting the Seventh Sister, a novel forthcoming from England's Online Originals (onlineoriginals.com). He lives in San Jose, California.
On writers: "Spending so much time in the fields of prose, I am highly influenced by novelists, and one who comes to mind these days is David Guterson, author of Snow Falling on Cedars and East of the Mountains. Reason one is his clean, subdued use of language; reason two would be his loving descriptions of the Northwest landscapes, which have been the setting for my last two novels, as well. As for poetry, I would like to acknowledge Robert S. Pesich, who also happens to be my best friend. I have come to realize that his feel for the bright, sudden image, his careful touch with language and his playful love of surrealism have had a tremendous impact on me--as have his innumerable late nights of listening to me rant on and on about aesthetics."

Twyla Hansen's books of poetry are In Our Very Bones (A Slow Tempo Press, 1997) and How to Live in the Heartland (Flatwater Editions, 1992). Her writing has been published in such journals as Crab Orchard Review, The Laurel Review, Poetry Desk Calendar 2000, Prairie Schooner, and is forthcoming in The MacGuffin, Midwest Quarterly and Sistersong. Her writing has appeared in the anthologies Leaning Into the Wind (Houghton Mifflin, 1997); A Contemporary Reader for Creative Writing (Harcourt Brace, 1994); Inheriting the Land: Contemporary Voices from the Midwest (University of Minnesota Press, 1993) and others. Her B.S. is from the University of Nebraska; she was employed as a horticulturist for twenty-five years. She is a scholar-in-residence presenter for the Nebraska Humanities Council. Twyla grew up in rural Burt County, Nebraska, on land her grandparents farmed as immigrants from Denmark in the late 1800's.
On writers: "Mary Oliver's poetry of nature is my favorite. Other writers important to me, in a more general way, include Theodore Roethke and James Wright. My early influences were those who wrote about this region such as Willa Cather and Mari Sandoz; Nebraska's State Poet William Kloefkorn was my first writing teacher and continues, along with other contemporary writers, to influence my work."

Amy Holman lives in Brooklyn, New York, and has poetry and prose most recently in The Best American Poetry (Scribner, 1999), The History of Panty Hose in America (Espresso Press, 1999), Poet Lore, Cross Connect, Literal Latte, 4th Street, The Cortland Review, and The Metropolitan Review. She is the Director of the Literary Horizons program at Poets & Writers, Inc., and teaches writers how to get published.
On writers: "I love the language, ideas, and use of information in Mary Jo Bang’s Apology for Want, (Middlebury/University Press of New England, 1998), which helped me to uncover a whole new language in my own poetry. I heard Martha Collins read beautiful new poems about her mother, composed like her failing memory. I need poems to have a wild or inventive use of language and to take me somewhere, which actually allows for a broad range. I still love For the Sleepwalkers, by Edward Hirsch, though his Earthly Measures is another renewable world."

Marilyn Zuckerman has published three books of poetry: Personal Effects (Alice James Books, Cambridge, 1976--which includes the work of two other poets); Monday Morning Movie (Street Editions, N.Y., 1981), and Poems of the Sixth Decade (Garden Street Press, 1993). Her poems have appeared in such magazines as New York Quarterly, The Little Magazine, Nimrod, Pig Iron, and in Ourselves Growing Older (Simon and Schuster, 1994), as well as in Claiming the Spirit Within (Beacon Press, 1996). Ms. Zuckerman has received a PEN Syndicated Fiction Award, an Allen Ginsberg Award, and has a short story in the anthology, The Tribe of Dina (Beacon Press, 1988), as well as a story in Karamu (spring 98). Forthcoming: a chapbook from Pudding House Publications and a new collection of poems, Amerika/America (Cedar Hill Publications).
On writers: "I was fortunate to have teachers who provided me with some of my deepest experiences in literature. Among them were Kenneth Koch and Kay Boyle at the New School in New York City. Later, at Sarah Lawrence College, I studied with Grace Paley and Jane Cooper; at Goddard College I worked with Jean Valentine. Through them I was introduced to and influenced by an amazing range of poets from the Beats to William Carlos Williams, from Lowell, Sexton, and Plath to the French Symbolists."

Alberta Turner's publications include Need (Ashland Poetry Press); Learning To Count (Pitt Poetry Series); Lid and Spoon (Pitt Poetry Series); A Belfrey of Knees (Alabama Poetry Series); Fifty Contemporary Poets (Longman); and many other titles.
On writers: "Bill Stafford and Leonard Trawick, both gentle, laughing, wondering poets, are my joy."

Fiction

Nathan Leslie lives in Columbia, Maryland and teaches writing at Towson University and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. His fiction and poetry have been published in over twenty print and on-line literary magazines, including The Crab Creek Review, Facets, Wascana Review, and Fodderwing. Nathan finished his MFA at the University of Maryland, where he won the 2000 Katherine Anne Porter Prize for fiction. He has written two short story collections and is working on his fourth novel.
On writers: "Every year I read the Best American Short Stories and O Henry Collection with a close friend. We discuss each story and assess the state of contemporary fiction in this manner. This year several posthumous Ray Carver stories were anthologized. The stories rose from the murk of contemporary 'lyrical' and television induced self-consciously ironic fiction like so many Mt. Kilimanjaros from the Serengeti. The 'gritty realists' of Carver's era truthfully captured a certain slice of America in a manner that I still unapologetically aspire to..."

Essay

Elizabeth Gauffreau grew up in New England in the late ’60s and early ’70s. She moved to Norfolk, Virginia as a Navy bride and lived most of her adult life in Virginia. At various times she has been a high school English and Latin teacher, academic advisor for military college students, college administrator, and assistant director for a senior citizens center. Currently, she is an academic advisor with the College for Lifelong Learning in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Elizabeth has published fiction in The Long Story, Soundings East, Ad Hoc Monadnock, Rio Grande Review, and The Brownstone Review, and poetry in The Writing On The Wall. Her work is forthcoming in The Larcom Review and Natural Bridge.
On writers:"The writer who has had the greatest influence on my life, if not my writing, is William Faulkner. Reading "Barn Burning" in ninth grade English opened the world of literature to me."

Cover Art

The cover photograph, "Diggi," by Lisa L. Sears was taken during a trip to Jaipur, India in January 1999. Ms. Sears received her BFA in painting and drawing in 1989. She has recently shown paintings at Harvard University; her photographs, collages, and drawings have appeared in The Harvard Book Review and on the cover of The Chicago Review. She lives in Arlington, Massachusetts and is currently writing and illustrating a children’s book.



Current Issue | Mystic No. 3 Contents |