Contributor's Notes - Eclectica Magazine, v5n3, Jul/Aug 2001

Jul/Aug 2001

Tom Dooley co-founded Eclectica in 1996 and serves as its Managing Editor. He has opted for "early retirement" from teaching high school English, and this fall will join 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.

Nick Barrows graduated from Wittenberg University (Springfield, OH) in 2000 with a BA in Biology. Currently, he spends his weekdays at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he is employed as a Research Assistant, while his weekends are full up working at a local running store. During Nick's free time, he trains for his first marathon and continues his education—writing often and reading everything affordable. He does not sleep. This is his first on-line publication.

Richard Beard has published three novels, X 20(1996), Damascus (1998) (both Flamingo), and The Cartoonist (2000)(Bloomsbury), and is featured in The Oulipo Compendium (ed Mathews and Brotchie).

Daniel Brenner was born near Harrisburg, PA, and graduated from Bard College in 1998. Since 2000 he has been living in Jersey City, NJ, where he has worked as an English teacher and an accountant.

Craig Butler lives in Bronxville, NY with his wife Cathy and daughter Ivory Clare. His humorous pieces have appeared in five previous issues of Eclectia. His fiction has appeared in numerous print and online magazines, including TROIKA MAGAZINE ONLINE, HAPPY, MANY MOUNTAINS MOVING, MOBIUS, EWG PRESENTS, BLUE REVIEW, PAUMANOK REVIEW, WRITER'S QUILL, ROCKFORD REVIEW, SATIRE, INDITER and ARMCHAIR AESTHETE. He has also written for THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, NEW YORK JOURNAL NEWS, INDIANAPOLIS STAR, IN THESE TIMES, IMPACT PRESS, and CLAMOR MAGAZINE.

Ron Currie, Jr. lives and, consequently, writes, in Waterville, Maine. He does not hold a Ph.D., an MFA, an MA, or even a BA, but considers himself a BMF and is, according to some, an SOB. He spends most of his free time walking his dog and not drinking. His story "Killing Scottish Elvis" will appear in the September 2001 issue of Carve Magazine at the University of Washington, website www.carvezine.com. He says, "'The Marlboro Man Died of Heartache' did not want to be written. It went through countless rewrites and at least two major, scissor-wielding overhauls before I hit on the idea of writing it from the father's point of view instead of the son's. After that, it seemed almost to write itself. Although fiction, it is true in a way that the pure facts rarely are. It is dedicated to my father, Ron Sr., a quiet man who saves lives for a living, and who has saved mine on more than one occasion."

Timothy Davis is 29 and lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he is a staff writer at the alternative weekly Creative Loafing. He reports that he is currently working on a series of new stories best described as a slightly drunken "Ryan Adams meets Harry Mulisch."

Erin Elizabeth is a Southern girl who grew up in a rural community outside of Columbia, SC and now makes her home in the voluptuous hills of Binghamton, NY. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Stirring, a monthly literary collection, and a cofounder of Sundress Publications. Some recent publications include Pif, 2River View, Gravity, Terrain, The Caffeine Addict, New Works Review, Solimiquy, Disquieting Muses, Agneiska's Dowry, and Samsara. Awards include third place and platinum honorable mention from the Amazing Instant Novelist, and Favorite Featured Poet of 1999 by Poetry Superhighway; Erin is also a five-time winner of the now-defunct Anima's Poetry Slam.

Jürgen Fauth is a writer, translator, editor, and film critic from Wiesbaden, Germany. His fiction has appeared in Berkely Fiction Journal, Chiron Review, Potatoeaters Quarterly, Vestal Review, Georgetown Review, and The Blue Moon Review. He is an associate editor for fiction at the Mississippi Review Web, where he recently guest-edited an issue of short shorts. He lives in New York City, where his neighbors yell at each other with reckless abandon.

Jennifer Finstrom lives in Chicago, IL. She has appeared in Eclectica before.

J.C. Frampton , a former Baltimorean, now resides in Southern California, as close to the beach as is financially possible. Serious work—journalism, verse, humor and fiction—has appeared in West Coast print publications and online. "Joan Beverly" is one of several stories by J. C. largely set in the World War II era. The battle of angels in everyday life is a venerated topic. Peter Frampton is not a relative.

Suzanne Frischkorn appears or is forthcoming in numerous journals and anthologies including: Pif Magazine, Exquisite Corpse, Wisconsin Review, Paterson Literary Review, JAMA, In Posse Review, Peshekee Review, Owen Wister Review, Isle Review, and Salt River Review. Author of "The Tactile Sense," (Alpha Beat Press, 1996) and "Exhale," (Scandinavian Obliterati Press, 2000) she has read her work in a variety of venues throughout the tri-state area, most recently at The Cornelia Street Café, and on WPKN's radio broadcast. Frischkorn is also associate editor of the online literary journal, Samsära Quarterly.

Jack Goodstein

Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada. Her poems appear in The Chattahoochee Review, The Iowa Review, Poetry International and elsewhere; online, she was featured in the May issue of Poetry Magazine. Her latest collection, "An Hour in the Cougar's Grace," received a Pipistrelle Best of the Small Press Award.

Christopher Harne is a Research & Monitoring Specialist with Orange County's Health & Family Services Department in Orlando, Florida. He graduated from Emory University in Atlanta in 1993, earning a Bachelor of Arts in English, and will be attending the Mercer University School of Law in Macon, Georgia in the fall. His short fiction has been published in Apalachee Quarterly and Implosion, his poetry in Revelry, and his non-fiction in Orlando Magazine, Magic Magazine and The Orlando Sentinel. He plays the bass guitar and his favorite food is fried chicken. He believes big ears are a sign of wisdom (his are small). His family survived a tornado, which destroyed their house with all of them inside, when he was nine years old.

Tim Hashaw is an award-winning journalist living in Texas. He has authored two books: Birth of Black America (2007) and Children of Perdition (2006). In addition he has written feature articles for US News & World Report, Appalachian Quarterly, and Family Chronicle magazines. Recipient of the national Radio & Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) for investigative journalism, he is currently researching books about early African American cattle ranchers and the history of climate and weather modification.

Larry Hirshberg is a songwriter, guitarist-bassist and writer living in Missoula, MT. He's had poems published in Zygote, Portable Wall and the White Sands Poetry Review. This is his second appearance in Eclectica.

Wendy Howe , formally trained as a high school English teacher, now manages a small, home-based computer/consulting service in The Hudson Valley Region of New York State. Her publication credits include 3rd Muse Poetry, Panda Poetry, Literary Espresso, Mi Poesias, Breathe Magazine, Southern Ocean Review, Stirring Literary Magazine, and Poetry Magazine.

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.

Hamish Keith was born in London in 1966. He has lived in Thailand for ten years, working as a restaraunteur, tour operator and travel consultant before being born again as a freelance writer. His articles, essays and short stories have appeared in Traveller Magazine, Journeys in Asia, World Wide Writers, Dimsum Literary Journal and numerous other publications circulated from Southeast Asia. He has also authored a series of three guidebooks for Asia Horizons Books out of Bangkok.

Ward Kelley is a Pushcart Prize nominee, with more than 1000 of his poems appearing in journals world-wide since he began publishing in 1996. Kelley's publication credits include: ACM Another Chicago Magazine, Rattle, Ginger Hill, Sunstone, Spillway, Porcupine Literary Magazine, Pif, 2River View, Melic Review, Thunder Sandwich, The Animist, Offcourse, Potpourri and Skylark. He has been honored as featured poet for Seeker Magazine, Physik Garden, Poetry Life & Times, and Pyrowords. Recently he was the recipient of the Nassau Review Poetry Award for 2001.

Dan Lewis resides in Worcester, Massachusetts where he earns his living as a technical writer and lives his earning writing and reading poetry. He has recently read the part of Adam in a dramatic reading of Book IX of Milton's Paradise Lost at the New England Modern Language Association Conference and other sites. Previous publication credits include The Worcester Review, Sahara, and Worcester Magazine.

Barbara Lefcowitz is in China doing a brief teaching stint in Shanghai. She writes, "...quite a place; despite the thick haze, it makes even New York seem like a prairie village." Her seventh poetry collection, "The Politics of Snow," will be published this summer, as will an e-book consisting of several essays: tentative title of the latter is "Swans, Ladders, Houdini." She has published poems, stories, and essays in about 400 journals and won writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation.

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).

Svetlana Matic writes: "i am a serb and the reason that i wrote the poem is because i have friends and loved ones that lost parents and other loved ones during the terrible war in yugoslavia. during my stays on my visits back there, i saw the aftermath and heard the pain. the poem that i wrote is partly true. a friedn of mine did lose her father in the war, became homeless, was a refugee, walked 6 days with her family to beograd, and so on. therefore, this poem describes the reality of others' every day lives."

Chris O'Carroll is a writer, actor, and comedian. His poetry has appeared in The Melic Review, 3rd Muse, and other journals. In the coming months (September-December, 2001) he will be performing at Festival Theatre, St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin, in a number of roles, including Captain Keller in "The Miracle Worker" and Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol." Chris reports he is often confused himself, and does his best to confuse others, about the distinction between light verse and serious poetry. His website offers ample evidence of this moral defect.

Eric Prochaska currently teaches at the University of Seoul. His online fiction has recently appeared in Comrades, Wilmington Blues, The Morpo Review, Split Shot (forthcoming), and Fictive. This summer he is completing work on his first novel, as well as organizing an anthology of short fiction.

Evan Reminick is a writer living in Oakland, California. A native of the Midwest and a graduate of the masters program in creative writing at NYU, his short stories have also appeared online in Comrades and The Duct Tape Press. "Making a Killing" is a nod to classic American crime fiction a la Jim Thompson and the way the likes of the Cohen brothers have added a redneck twist to this wonderfully ironic genre.

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.

Tom Sheehan is this issue's Spotlight Author. He has three books of poetry; "Ah, Devon Unbowed"; "The Saugus Book," and "Reflections from Vinegar Hill." He is a co-editor of the sold-out 2000-copy issue, "A Gathering of Memories, Saugus 1900 - 2000" a nostalgic and historical look at his hometown just north of Boston. He and committee borrowed $60,000 to get the issue printed and paid off the loan five weeks after receipt of books. They did their own warehousing, packaging and mailing, and have instituted an annual scholarship for Saugus High students with proceeds. They will soon go into a second print run. Sheehan has been retired for ten years and in the last year has met with four comrades he has not seen since 1951 in the Korean War. He continues to celebrate his comrades in poetry.

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

yermiyahu ahron taub is a librarian at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York. His English language poems have appeared/are forthcoming in such publications as Chiron Review, Evergreen Chronicles, Fauquier Poetry Journal, Grasslands Review, James White Review, Kinesis, KotaPress Poetry Journal, Little Brown Poetry, Parnassus Literary Journal, Pearl, Pif Magazine, Prairie Schooner, and Salt River Review. His Yiddish language poems have appeared in Forverts (Yiddish Forward), Jews, Lilliput Review, Tsukunft, and Yugntruf.

David A. Taylor was born in Alexandria, Virginia and lives in Connecticut with his wife Lisa Smith. His stories have appeared or will appear in Blu, Main Street Journal, The Baltimore Review, Fodderwing and The William & Mary Review, and received a Literary Arts Film Award from Web Del Sol. He has also written nonfiction for DoubleTake, International Wildlife, The Nation, Lapis, The Atlantic Unbound and ENN, as well as documentary scripts. He is working on a book involving people of the Federal Writers’ Project because, he says, "they were so cool." Some of his best friends write self-help books.

Teresa White , a former Eclectica Spotlight Author, has been writing since her teenaged years when she kept "poems" instead of diaries. She has had over 150 poems published in online journals over the past three years including Avatar, Blue Moon Review, Conspire, Eye Dialect, Horsethief's Journal, Savoy, Melic Review, and Riding The Meridian. She has been featured poet at Poet's Canvas, Poetry Sz, and in Melic Review's Erotic issue. She has a book of her early poetry published, "In What Furnace" (available through Amazon.com) and is hopeful her second book, "The Stone Pigeon," will see print in the near future. Teresa was nominated for a 1999 Pushcart by the Melic Review.

Bob Wolfkill lives in Texas and no longer owns a bookstore. He admits to spending an inordinate amount of time in the kitchen, where he recently prepared a lovely crawfish etouffe, a roasted garlic aioli potato salad, and a chipotle cream sauce. His knives are very sharp.

Alessio Zanelli was born in 1963 in Cremona, a quiet town in Northern Italy, pretty famous in the world for its secular tradition in the craft of violins. He learned English as an autodidact and has been writing verse in what has then become his second language since 1985. His first collection, entitled "Loose Sheets" and spanning 15 years of his poetry itinerary, was published in July 2000 in the United Kingdom. He has scores of works featured in several British and American magazines, among which the most renowned are Möbius (DE), Little Brown Poetry (NH), Hadrosaur Tales (NM), Poetic Voices (AL), The Journal (UK), Poetry Monthly (UK) and Pulsar Poetry Magazine (UK). This is his second appearance in Eclectica. He works as a sort of investment adviser and his main hobbies, apart from reading and writing poetry, are science (cosmology above all) and all forms of art, having he formerly been a painter.