Bios A - F

   

Joe Ahearn is the author of Five Fictions (poetry, Sulphur River Review Press) and sin-thét-ik (poetry, Firewheel Editions Press). He has recently published poetry and essays in Sentence, Flashpoint and the Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poetry. Fiction is forthcoming in the Sonora Review. His poetry has been included in a number of anthologies, including CrossConnect: Writers of the Information Age (CrossConnect Press), Best Texas Writing (Firewheel Editions Press) and the forthcoming An Introduction to the Prose Poem (Firewheel Editions). Ahearn currently holds a James A. Michener Fellowship in poetry and fiction at the University of Texas at Austin.
   

Rob Amberg’s photographs and writing from the rural south have been published and exhibited internationally. He has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Center for Documentary Studies, Alternate Roots, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His books include: Sodom Laurel Album, 2002, which received the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award from the Western North Carolina Historical Association; Quartet: Four North Carolina Photographers, 2007; The Living Tradition: North Carolina Potters Speak, 2009; and The New Road: I-26 and the Footprints of Progress, 2009. Amberg lives in Madison County, North Carolina, with his wife, Leslie Stilwell, their daughter Kate, and an assortment of animals.
   

Kostas Anagnopoulos was born and raised in Chicago. He is the editor and co-founder of Insurance Magazine and Insurance Editions. His chapbooks include Daydream, Irritant and Various Sex Acts. He lives in Queens, NY.
   

Alicia Askenase is the author of the chapbooks Cover, Suspect, The Luxury of Pathos and Shirley Shirley. She is currently at work on a full-length manuscript entitled Perverse Incentives. Her work has appeared in lit journals and anthologies that include 5_trope, sonaweb, texture, Chain, aerial and 100 Days. She was a founding co-editor of the journal 6ix and Literary Program Director at the Walt Whitman Center for many years.
   
Wendy Babiak Wendy Babiak is the author of *Conspiracy of Leaves* (Plain View Press).
Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in The Louisiana Review, Tampa Review, Barrelhouse, Free Inquiry, Poems Against War, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and No Tell Motel, among others. Born and raised in Florida in the Daytona Beach area, she's lived in Valencia, Spain; Andros Island, Bahamas; Chicago; Washington, D.C.; New Orleans and Shreveport, Louisiana; and Oswego and Sackets Harbor, New York. Somewhere along the line she received her BA in Creative Writing at Eckerd College. She's recently relocated with her family to Ithaca, where they hope to put down permanent roots.
   

Anny Ballardini lives in Bolzano, Italy.  She grew up in New York, has lived in New Orleans, Buenos Aires, Florence.  A poet, translator and interpreter (simultaneous interpreter for English, French, Italian), she teaches high school; edits Poets’ Corner - Fieralingue, an online poetry site; and writes a blog: Narcissus Works. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from UNO, University of New Orleans, Chair and Director Bill Lavender. Besides various full-length publications of translations, to be mentioned is her collection of poems, Opening and Closing Numbers published by Moria Editions in 2005. Forthcoming with Otoliths Press, Editor Mark Young, her thesis: Ghost Dance in 33 Movements. For a detailed CV see here.
   

Poet & musician Zach Barocas lives in Brooklyn, NY with his wife Kimberley Yurkiewicz. He is the author of one book of poems, Among Other Things,  and edits The Cultural Society (http://culturalsociety.org).
   
Art Beck Art Beck is a San Francisco poet and translator who has published three books of original poetry - most recently Summer With All It’s Clothes Off  (Gravida, 2005). And  selected poems of Luxorius and Rilke in two translation volumes.

His work has appeared in a number of anthologies and journals, including Translation Review, Two Lines, Artful Dodge, Alaska Quarterly, Sequoia, OR, and the 2004 Heyday Books anthology, California Poetry from the Gold Rush to the Present.

Recent articles on translating Horace and Rilke can be accessed in the Australian online journal Jacket and in Rattle e-issues.

His Poets & Writers site also has several links:  http://www.pw.org/content/art_beck_1
   
Eric Beeny’s Poultry (chicken-shit scribblings) has appeared in 5AM, 32 Poems, Main Street Rag, Nuthouse, Quercus Review, and others. He is the author of two unpublished novels, “Lepers and Mannequins” and “Broken Antennas,” and a novel of stories, “The Immortals Act Their Age,” a chapter of which was awarded Distinguished Achievement in Paradoxism. He lives and works in Buffalo, NY in the field of direct care. He is 27.
   
Michele A. Belluomini is a poet, storyteller, and librarian. Her work has been published in many journals, such as Philadelphia Poets and The FoxChase Review, as well as in several anthologies, including most recently Commonwealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania. She has read in many places throughout the area for the NJ Council on the Arts, and in New York. She has two books of poetry published: Crazy Mary & Others and Translations from the Dark. At the National Storytelling Conference in July 2006 she presented a one-hour solo performance on the “Fringe Stage,” entitled “Stories to Heal the Earth.” For the last 15 years she has helped to coordinate the Monday Poets series at the Free Library of Philadelphia.
   

John M. Bennett has published over 300 books and chapbooks of poetry and other materials. Among the most recent are rOlling COMBers (Potes & Poets Press), MAILER LEAVES HAM (Pantograph Press), LOOSE WATCH (Invisible Press), CHAC PROSTIBULARIO (with Ivan Arguelles; Pavement Saw Press), HISTORIETAS ALFABETICAS (Luna Bisonte Prods), PUBLIC CUBE (Luna Bisonte Prods), THE PEEL (Anabasis Press), GLUE (xPress(ed)), LAP GUN CUT (with F. A. Nettelbeck; Luna Bisonte Prods), INSTRUCTION BOOK (Luna Bisonte Prods), la M al (Blue Lion Books), CANTAR DEL HUFF (Luna Bisonte Prods), SOUND DIRT (with Jim Leftwich; Luna Bisonte Prods), and BACKWORDS (Blue Lion Books), NOS (Redfox Press), D RAIN B LOOM (with Scott Helmes; xPress(ed)), and CHANGDENTS (Offerta Speciale). He has published, exhibited and performed his word art worldwide in thousands of publications and venues. He was editor and publisher of LOST AND FOUND TIMES (1975-2005), and is Curator of the Avant Writing Collection at The Ohio State University Libraries. Richard Kostelanetz has called him “the seminal American poet of my generation.” His work, publications, and papers are collected in several major institutions, including Washington University (St. Louis), SUNY Buffalo, The Ohio State University, The Museum of Modern Art, and other major libraries. His PhD (UCLA 1970) is in Latin American Literature. Ars Poetica: “Be Blank”
   

Carmen Gloria Berríos Niño de Zepeda was born in Santiago, Chile where she still lives today. She holds a degre in Occupational Thearapy from the University of Chile. She is a writer and works in Cultural Projects management. Her book of poetry include: La Mujer Deshabitada, Editorial Mosquito, Santiago,1990, Esa Urgencia de Vivir, Editorial La Trastienda, Santiago, 1992; 2º Edición, CGB Producciones, Santiago, 2000, Razones Personales, Editorial La Trastienda, Santiago, Prójimo de Nadie, Editorial La Trastienda, Santiago, 2000, Prontuario 1990-2000, CGB Producciones, Santiago, 2000 She has been anthologized in, “Veinticinco años de Poesía Chilena (1970-1995)”, Teresa Calderón, Tomás Harris, Lila Calderón. Editorial Fondo de Cultura Económica, Santiago, 1996 “El discurso lírico de la mujer en Chile: 1975-1990” (Essay), JuanVillegas, Editorial Mosquito, Santiago, 1990 “Antología del poema breve en Chile”, Floridor Pérez, Editorial Grijalbo, Santiago, 1998, “Mujeres poetas de Chile: Muestra antológica1980-1995”, LindaKoski, Editorial Cuarto Propio, Santiago, 1998. “Poesía Chilena del deporte y los juegos:Siglos XVI al XXI”,Floridor Pérez, Editorial Zig-Zag,Santiago, 2003, “Trilogía Poética de las Mujeres en Hispanoamérica”, Marya Aurora Saavedra, Universidad Autónoma de México, México, 2004, “El Lugar de la Memoria”, Colectivo escritores Luís Enrique Délano, Santiago, 2008; “El árbol de los libres. Poetas de la Generación NN de Chile” Ediciones Arlequín, Ciudad de México, Distrito Federal, 2008, among others. Her cultural projects include, Creation of the Social Cultural Project “Lectura en Tránsito” utilizing public spaces to foster reading habits in Chile.-“Lectura en Tránsito I”: Instalation of poems on the interior and exteriosr of buses in metropolitan region of Chile. Winner of Project Competions of the National Council of Books and Reading, 2002. -“Lectura en Tránsito II”: Instalation of digitzed paintings in 11 Public Hospitals. Winner of Project Competions of the National Council of Books and Reading, 2004. “Lectura en Tránsito III”: Instalation of digitzed paintings in 20 Public Hospitals in the Metropolitan Region. Winner of Project Competions of the National Council of Books and Reading and the Bank of Development, 2005. -“Lectura en Tránsito IV”: Instalation of digitzed paintings in Hospitals and Surgery Centers of the Metroploitan Region. Bank of Development, 2006
 
Robert J. Bertolf is retired from The Poetry Collection SUNY at Buffalo as the Charles D. Abbott of Poetry and the Arts and now lies in Austin, TX. He is the author of The Descriptive Bibliography of Robert Duncan and editor of several editions of Duncan's work, as well author of a book on Joel Oppenheimer and editor of Oppenheimer's later poetry as well as his Village Voice articles. He has written essays on a variety of subjects and is now writing on the serial poem in contemporary American poetry.
   

James Bertolino's work has appeared in Ploughshares, Poetry, Notre Dame Review, Prairie Schooner, Seattle Review, Indiana Review, Paris Review and many other magazines. His poetry has been reprinted internationally in anthologies from India, Italy, Great Britain and the U.S., including Century: 100 Major Modern Poets, published in England. His many awards include the 1970 Book-of-the-Month Club Poetry Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and, most recently, the 2007 Jeanne Lohmann Poetry Prize for Washington State poets. Nine volumes have issued from such publishers as Copper Canyon Press, Carnegie Mellon University Press and the Quarterly Review of Literature Award Series at Princeton University. Egress Studio Press released his Pocket Animals: 60 Poems in 2002, and a book-length interview with him, The Path of Water, was published by Stone Marrow Press in 2008. He received his MFA at Cornell University, has taught creative writing for over 30 years and, for 2005-2006, was Writer in Residence at Willamette University in Oregon. For the month of March 2008 he enjoyed an Espy Foundation residency on the southwest coast of Washington. Now retired, he lives on five acres near Bellingham with his partner, Anita Boyle. [photo: Anita Boyle]
   

Vonani Bila, born 1972 at Shirley Village, Elim, Limpopo, is the son of Daniel Bila and Fokisa N'wa-Mahatlani Maxele. He writes poems, short stories and newspaper articles in Englsih and Xitsonga. His poetry collections include Handsome Jita (University of KwaZulu Natal Press, 2007); Magicstan Fires (Timbila Poetry, 2006); In the name of Amandla (Timbila Poetry, 20040 and No Free Sleeping (Botsotso Publishing, 1998). Bila is the founding editor of Timbila, a multilingual poetry journal.
   

The on-going long poem project of Rachel Blau DuPlessis begun in 1986, is collected in Torques: Drafts 58-76 (Salt Publishing, 2007) as well as in Drafts 1-38, Toll (Wesleyan U.P., 2001) and Drafts 39-57, Pledge, with Draft unnnumbered: Précis (Salt Publishing, 2004). Pitch: Drafts 77-95 is forthcoming. In 2006, two books of her innovative essays were published: Blue Studios: Poetry and Its Cultural Work on gender and poetics, along with reprinting of the ground-breaking The Pink Guitar: Writing as Feminist Practice, both from University of Alabama Press. In 2002 she was also awarded a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, in 2007, a residency for poetry at Bellagio, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, and in 2008-09, an appointment to the National Humanities Center in North Carolina. Her website is http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/duplessis
   

CL Bledsoe has recent poems in Barrow Street, Arkansas Review, Story South, Hamilton Stone Review, and previously in Big Bridge.
   
Stacy Blint became a writer while studying painting at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. She now lives undercover in Muskego, Wisconsin where she makes her three bucks doing graphic design work. She enjoys sharing colors telepathically with her daughter, is fascinated with serial killers, has problems pronouncing words, and thinks something she will write someday will lead to her arrest. In a past life Stacy may have been a witch, but today she likes to chill with her family and friends and write stuff that matters.
   

Mphutlane wa Bofelo lives in Durban and is a poet, essayist, social critic and activist who has self-published two poetry collections, The Hearts Interpreter and Remembrance and Salutations, and a Ramadan memoir booklet, The Journey Within: Reflections in Ramadan. He has been represented in several publications, including Biko Lives: Contesting the Legacies of Steve Biko by Palgrave Macmillan, 5poetry, a five-person poetry anthology by Botsotso Publishing. His collection of essays and poems, Bluesology and Bofelosophy was published by Botsotso in 2008.
   

Ann Bogle's short stories appeared recently in Mad Hatters' Review. Poems from her chapbook, dog barks up a tree at the apple left in it under a deerslim moon (Dusie Kollektiv, 2009) appeared in onedit. The self-published mixed-genre b-l-o-o-k of her weblog, Ana Verse (Blurb, 2009, color, 362 pp.) documents her mother’s garden. She wrote "Mugabe Western," "The Housecoat," and "Work on What Has Been Spoiled" in 1985, 1987, and 1991.
   

Michael Boughn lives in Toronto with his wife, Elizabeth Brown, and their two children, Amelia and Sam. With Victor Coleman, he co-edited Robert Duncan’s The H.D. Book which is forthcoming from the University of California Press in 2010. Book Thug (Toronto) published 22 Skidoo / SubTractions in May, 2009. He recently completed the manuscript of Cosmographia: a post-Lucretian faux micro-epic.
   

John Bradley is the author of "Terrestrial Music" and "War on Words," as well as the forthcoming "You Don't Know What You Don't Know." He is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and two NEA Fellowships in poetry. He teaches at Northern Illinois University.
   
Tom Bradley

Tom Bradley's latest books are Vital Fluid (Crossing Chaos Enigmatic Ink), Even the Dog Won't Touch Me (Ahadada Press), Hemorrhaging Slave of an Obese Eunuch (Dog Horn Publishing), and Put It Down in a Book (The Drill Press), which has been named 3:AM Magazine's Non-Fiction Book of the Year. He is presently collaborating on a graphic ekphrasis in verse and an illustrated novel with artists David Aronson and Nick Patterson respectively, both to be published by Crossing Chaos Enigmatic Ink, and a nonfiction flip book with Deb Hoag for Make It New Media. Further curiosity can be indulged at tombradley.org and Wikipedia.

   

Joseph Bradshaw is the author of The Way Birds Become (Weather Press, 2007) and This Ocean, or Oppen Series (Cannibal Books, 2008). His poetry and prose have appeared in Cultural Society, Denver Quarterly, Jacket, Rain Taxi, and are forthcoming in the fine journals Muthafucka, and Peaches & Bats. He currently lives in Portland where he teaches in the University Studies Department at Portland State University, and co-curates the Spare Room Reading Series.

   

John Brandi grew up in California and was introduced to the High Sierras, the Mohave Desert, and the Big Sur by his parents, who encouraged him towards art and writing. After graduating from California State University, Northridge, he worked as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Andes, where he began publishing his poems in hand-sewn, hand-colored mimeo editions. He traveled the Americas from the Chilean archipelago to the Arctic Circle, lived in Alaska, Mexico, and the Sierra Nevada’s, and in 1971 moved to the mountains of New Mexico, built a cabin, raised a family, and founded Tooth of Time Press. As homemaker and ardent world traveler, he has preserved an active record of his life for nearly fifty years — as poet, essayist, haiku writer, and visual artist. He has served as a guide for university students studying in Mexico, Bali, and Java, and continues to lecture in schools, libraries, universities, and museums. Among numerous publications, his latest is Facing High Water, from White Pine Press.
   

Susan Briante is the author of Pioneers in the Study of Motion (Ahsahta Press 2007). Recent poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Court Green, and POOL. A translator and essayist, Briante lived in Mexico City from 1991-1997 working for the magazines Artes de México and Mandorla. Currently, she is translating the work of Uruguayan writer Marosa di Giorgio, as well as writing about industrial ruins and abandoned buildings in American cities. Briante is an assistant professor of literature and creative writing at the University of Texas at Dallas. She lives in East Dallas with the poet Farid Matuk. Susan Briante, MFA, PhD Assistant Professor Aesthetic Studies University of Texas at Dallas 800 W. Campbell Road--JO 31 Richardson, TX 75081-3021 http://www.utdallas.edu/ah/people/faculty_detail.php?faculty_id=91http://ahsahtapress.boisestate.edu/books/briante/briante.htm
   
Julian T. Brolaski is the author of the chapbooks Hellish Death Monsters (Spooky Press, 2001), Letters to Hank Williams (True West Press, 2003), The Daily Usonian (Atticus/Finch, 2004) and Madame Bovary's Diary (Cy Press, 2005) (under the name Tanya Brolaski), Buck in a Corridor (flynpyntar, 2008) and the blog Herm of Warsaw. Brolaski received an MFA from Mills College and is a PhD candidate in English (UC Berkeley). Brolaski lives in Brooklyn where he writes poetry, plays country music in the Low and the Lonesome, serves as a Litmus Press editor and curates Mongrel Vaudeville.
   

David Bromige, born 1933, London England, has published over 35 books of poetry and prose. Winner of the Woodrow Wilson Award, Western States Arts Award and many other distinctions for his writing, he is also the second Poet Laureate of Sonoma County (2001). A dedicated mentor to many in Sonoma County and world-wide, David has recently completed his first draft of Till There Was You, a compilation of memories drawn over the years of adventures, heretofore never before revealed except to close friends and family; a sample of which premieres in this issue of Big Bridge. More to come in future issues.
   
Christopher Brookhouse Christopher Brookhouse is the author of numerous works of fiction and poetry. His early novel Running Out was honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. A Selfish Woman was a National Book Award nominee. In 2005 Fog: The Jeffrey Stories won the biennial New Hampshire fiction award. His most recent novel is Silence. He is founding editor of the film journal Hitchcock Annual. 
 

Christopher Casamassima is the Literary Arts Director at Towson Arts Collective in Baltimore. He is also the author of two collections: Joys: A Catalogue of Disappointments (BlazeVOX) and the Proteus (Moria), both in 2008.
 

Born in New York City on July 28, 1945, Michael Castro began to think of himself as a writer doing "creative paragraph" assignments for his fourth grade teacher at P.S. 98. He did not start writing poetry until he was in his twenties, however, and had moved to St. Louis to do graduate work at Washington University. In the late sixties, Castro became active as a performance artist, before that term was in vogue, often collaborating with experimental musicians, which he still does periodically, recording two albums in recent years with The Fred Tompkins Poetry & Music Ensemble. Along with readings and performances, he gradually began publishing his work in literary magazines and books. He has published six books of poems and his poems, essays, and translations have appeared in more than one hundred magazines and numerous anthologies, including Voices from the Interior: The Missouri Poets; Voices Within the Ark: The Modern Jewish Poets; The Second Set: The Jazz Poetry Anthology, The U.S. Latino Review, Exquisite Corpse, Grist, Urban Nature, Sephardic American Voices: 200 Years of a Literary Legacy, and Seeking St. Louis: Voices of a River City 1670-2000. He is also the author of Interpreting the Indian: Twentieth Century Poets and the Native American, a highly regarded study of Native American cultures' influence on modern American poets. Recent works include the poetry books, The Man Who Looked Into Coltrane's Horn, and Human Rites. His translations of modern Hungarian poetry with Gabor G. Gyukics have resulted in the anthology Swimming in the Ground (2001) and two books forthcoming in 2006: Gypsy Drill: Poetry of Attila Balogh, and A Transparent Lion: Selected Poems of Attila Jozsef. In 1975 Castro co-founded the literary organization River Styx, which has, ever since, continuously sponsored readings and mixed media events, while publishing River Styx Magazine. He has pioneered poetry radio, hosting the River Styx Poets Radio Show 1970-73, the Ars Poetica Show, 1975-77, and Poetry Beat (1989-2003). He was presented with The Guardian Angel of St. Louis Poetry Award in 2000 by River Styx and The Warrior Poet Award in 2005 by Word In Motion, both for lifetime achievement. .His many readings include The Ear Inn, and American Indian Community Center, and St. Marks Poetry Project in New York City; Naropa Institute in Boulder Colorado; the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland, the Poetry Society of India in New Delhi, the Detroit Arts Festival; Trafo, The Fifth Entrance, The Palace of Fine Arts, and the Sandor Petofi National Museum of Literature in Budapest; and the Inauguration Ceremonies of St. Louis Mayor Freeman J. Bosley. Castro has a Ph.D. in American Literature from Washington University, is a Fullbright Scholar, and teaches at Lindenwood University.

"a fine poet. . . a fresh and strong voice." - David Nelson, founder, The Last Poets

"a pleasure to encounter the very satisfying work by such younger practitioners as Michael Castro . . ." - The Jerusalem Post

"Castro faces the twentieth century's instabilities unflinchingly, with unflagging energy and even humor, infusing our reading with pleasure." - Diane Matza, Jewish American Poetry: Poems, Commentary, and Reflections

"Since taking the oath of poetry, Michael Castro has kept brilliant wordfaith & good company—Eliot, Baraka, Basho, Ginsberg, Black Elk, jazz, spokenwordworld—not bad for a poetic souljourner occupying formidable ritual ground: Ancient, American, Multicultural. A confluence of drums, cantors, trees, griots, cellos, shamans, koras, xylophones & shakers, this bardic scatman's conch/us/nest offers high yields of love; beams in on abuses of art, humankind, & planet--& dreams us toward painful clarifications." - Eugene B. Redmond, poet

"Michael Castro is a legend on the St. Louis poetry scene, as an editor, arts activist, and radio host, and for his poems, which have been widely published. His voice is wide-ranging and versatile. Whether in long lines . . . or in terse measured syllables, his voice is original." - Charles Guenther, The St. Louis Post Dispatch

"Terrifically joyous book Lovely & deeply one of a kind. Deeply engrained spirit w/in wide branches & flowerings." - David Meltzer, author of Selected Poems, Tens

"I loved Human Rites. A terrific book! A lot of variety and heartfelt poetry." - Jerred Metz, author of Drinking the Dipper Dry, The Temperate Volumptuary

"It's like a great meal." - Phil Sultz, visual artist

   

James Cervantes is the author of Temporary Meaning. See http://www.hamiltonstone.org/catalog.html#temporarymeaning
Sophie Chamas, who is Lebanese, is currently a student at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. She is majoring in International Relations and minoring in English. Her work has been featured in the online journals unlikelystories.org and the Juke Jar.
 

David-Baptiste Chirot recently returned from visiting his dear friend Jean-Nicholas Arthur Rimbaud in “Africa.” Essays, stories, reviews, sound poetry, visual poetry, performance scores, RubBEings, mail art published, exhibited, translated, performed in approximately 50 countries in print & ejournals, web sites, print & e anthologies, e & print chapbooks, 5 print books & 2 print forthcoming & solo exhibitions. Creator of new genres & methods, such as, for example “The New Extreme Experimental American Poetry & Arts.” Lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, at present. “I have a profound faith love and life in/with the Found, everywhere to be Found. My work is a Thanks for being alive.”
   

Annie Christain is a fourth-year English PhD student at the University of South Dakota. Her poetry has been published in journals such as The Arabesques Review, The American Drivel Review, Bombay Gin, and Beeswax Magazine.
   

Alex Cigale’s poems have recently appeared in Colorado Review, Green Mountains Review, Hanging Loose, Mcsweeneys and are forthcoming in Many Mountains Moving and Zoland Poetry. A Stranger at Home; Anthology of American Poetry with an Accent is in galleys with four of his poems, as is a chapbook of found poems, A Chronicle of Calamities. He was born in Chernovtsy, Ukraine, and has lived in New York City since 1975, excluding a six-year stint in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he earned an MFA at the University of Michigan and won a Hopwood Award. His translations of contemporary Russian poetry have appeared in the anthology Crossing Centuries: The New Generation in Russian Poetry, and in Modern Poetry in Translation, Poetry New York, and The Manhattan Review.
   

Tom Clark's poems in this issue come from a forthcoming Libellum book, The New World. Other poems from the collection have appeared or are soon to appear in Jacket, Exquisite Corpse, The Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, and The Best American Poetry Blog. Clark's most recent books are Light and Shade: New and Selected Poems (Coffee House Press, 2006), Threnody (effing press, 2006) and Early Warning (Walnut Creek, 2008). He is currently resident guest blogger at the Vanitas blog: http://vanitasmagazine.blogspot.com/ and also has his own poem-blog at: http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/
   
Jan Clausen published two poetry collections in 2007: From a Glass House (IKON) and If You Like Difficulty (Harbor Mountain Press). Her other books include novels, a short story collection, and the memoir Apples and Oranges: My Journey through Sexual Identity. For more information, visit her web site at: www.ablationsite.org.
   
Joe Clifford Joe Clifford earned his MFA degree from Florida International University in 2008.  His work has appeared in Bathhouse, Bryant Literary Review, the Connecticut Review, Dark Sky, decomP, Dos Passos Review, Fringe, Gloom Cupboard, Hobart, Opium, and Thuglit, among others.  The 2004 recipient of the Connecticut Review’s Leslie Leeds Poetry Prize, Joe was also that year’s representative on the CT Poetry Circuit.  Most recently, Joe served as editor-in-chief of Gulf Stream magazine, and as co-producer of Lip Service, a spoken word event in Miami, which was featured on NPR.
Joe has been to jail but never prison.

   

Poet, Essayist and Painter Ed Coletti graduated from Georgetown University and the Creative Writing Masters Program at San Francisco State University (under Robert Creeley). He has published several books of poetry and recently has had work published in divide (Univ. of Colorado), Lilliput Review, Blueline , The New Verse News, Jerry Jazz Musician, Cherry Blossom Review, Parting Gifts, and the anthology of Italian-American poets (with Ferlighetti, DiPrima, et al) titled Avanti Popolo edited by James Tracy (Manic D Press). He is publisher of Round Barn Press. Ed lives with his wife Joyce in Santa Rosa, California where he operates the respected Bay Area-wide Poetry Azul Reading Series. His Internet presence includes Ed Coletti's P3 and also No Money In Poetry.
   

 Peter Conners (www.peterconners.com) is author of the prose poetry collection Of Whiskey and Winter (White Pine Press, 2007) and the novella Emily Ate the Wind (Marick Press, 2008). His memoir Growing Up Dead: The Hallucinated Confessions of a Teenage Deadhead will be published by Da Capo Press in spring 2009. He is also editor of PP/FF: An Anthology which was published by Starcherone Books in April 2006. The stories published in this issue of Big Bridge are from a manuscript called Screams from a Dying Balloon.
 
David Cope David Cope  b. 1948 Michigan poet.  Allen Ginsberg once described Cope's poetry as "lucid grounded sane objectivism following the visually solid practice of Charles Reznikoff & William Carlos Williams." Six poetry books, the latest Turn the Wheel (2003), Humana Press.  American Academy & Institute of Arts & Letters Award, 1988, for my second book, On the Bridge.  Editor & publisher, Big Scream, Nada Press, 48 issues (1974-present), plus Nada Poems (1988) and Sunflowers & Locomotives: Songs for Allen (1988), poetry in memory of Allen Ginsberg.  Masks of Six Decades chapbook forthcoming this summer.
 

Stephen Cope is the editor of George Oppen: Selected Prose, Daybooks, and Papers (University of California Press, 2007), His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Jacket, Postmodern Culture, The Germ, Sagetrieb, Mirage: A Period(ical), XCP: Cross-Cultural Poetics, and elsewhere. He is currently completing a manuscript of poetry entitled “Bellerophonic Letters” and is at work on Negative Culpability, a critical book on the ethics of ineffability in Modernist literature and Syntagonisms, a critical account of poetic form and/as social antagonism. He lives in Ithaca, New York, and teaches at Ithaca College, University at Buffalo, and Bard College.
 
Clark Coolidge, has acted as a bridge figure between numerous tendencies and movements in 20th Century poetry. It's also interesting to note his practice as a musician, being drummer for Tina and David Meltzer's Serpent Power in the 60s, and their reconstituted group several decades later. For more information, check out his web site.
   

Wayne Crawford lives in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where he edits the online literary journal Lunarosity and is co-managing editor of the annual anthology, Sin Fronteras Journal. He also hosts a monthly open mic. His most recent book of poems is Sugar Trail, and his most recent video poem, “Echo Teaches her Daughter to Sing,” both viewable on Lunarosity (http://www.zianet.com/lunarosity/).
   
Stefani Christova Stefani Christova, born and educated in Bulgaria, now lives in Colorado. Stefani’s short fiction has appeared in Brutarian, CT Review, DFI, Grasslimb and other magazines in the USA and Europe. Her first short story, “The Coffin with the Eleven-Year-Old Myself” has been translated into three languages.
   
Jim Christy Jim Christy is a writer and visual artist who lives in rural Ontario, Canada
   
Jeff Crouch Jeff Crouch is an Internet artist in Grand Prairie, Texas. Google him.
   
Gary Cummiskey is the author of several collections of poems, including When Apolliniare Died, Reigning Gloves, Bog Docks and Today is their Creator. A cut-up prose work, April in the Moon-Sun, was recently made into a short film called Velvet, by Aryan Kaganof. Cummiskey is the founder of Dye Hard Press and is the editor of the annual literary journal Green Dragon. He has published literary and cultural commentaries in South African media, and is a regular writer for the London-based magazine The Bookseller. He lives and works for a daily newspaper in Johannesburg. Visit dyehard-press blogspot
   

John Cunningham is a writer from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He is also a multi-instrumentalist who has performed with African, Middle Eastern, Latin and jazz groups. He reviews poetry in Canada for Malahat Review, Prairie Fire, Arc, Antigonish Review, Fiddlehead and The Danforth Review, and in the U.S. for Rain Taxi and Quarterly Conversations. He writes poetry and is working on a play.
   

Steve Dalachinsky was born after the last Big War & has managed to survive lots of little wars. His poems have appeared extensively in journals including Big Bridge, Milk, Unlikely Stories, Xpressed, Evergreen Review, Long Shot, Alpha Beat Soup, Xtant, Blue Beat Jacket, Unbearable Assemblage Magazines, NY Arts Magazine, 88, Lost and Found Times, plus such anthologies as Beat Indeed, The Haiku Moment and the esteemed Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. He has written liner notes for the CDs of many artists including Anthony Braxton, James \\Blood\\ Ulmer, Rashied Ali, Roy Campbell, Matthew Shipp, Roscoe Mitchell & many others. His 1999 CD Incomplete Direction (Knitting Factory Records), a collection of his poetry read in collaboration with various musicians, such as William Parker, Matthew Shipp, Daniel Carter, Sabir Mateen, Susie Ibarra, Thurston Moore (SonicYouth), Vernon Reid (Living Colour) has garnered much praise. His most recent chapbooks include Trial and Error in Paris (Loudmouth Collective – 2003), Lautreamont\s Laments (Furniture Press — 2005), In Glorious Black and White (Ugly Duckling Presse — 2005), St. Lucie (King of Mice Press – 2005) Are We Not MEN & Fake Book (2 books of collage - 8 Page Press - 2005). Dream Book (Avantcular Press - 2005). His books include A Superintendent\s Eyes (Hozomeen Press, 2000) and The Final Nite (complete notes from a Charles Gayle Notebook - Ugly Duckling Presse - 2005). His  latest CD is Phenomena of Interference, a collaboration with pianist Matthew Shipp (Hopscotch Records, 2005). He has read his work extensively in the N.Y. area and throughout the U.S. and Europe particularly in Germany and France.
   

Catherine Daly's Catherine Daly’s most recent book is Vauxhall, published by Shearsman Books this year. It contains a great deal of her occasional verse, and its author’s photo is from her wedding. Due to fires, the week before the wedding, she was trapped in Las Vegas, with no way home.
   

Nancy Victoria Davis is a painter, illustrator, book designer, installation artist and co-founder of Big Bridge Press. Born in New York and raised in Ada, Alabama, she took the big bridge to California in 1975, and since then has surrounded herself with art and nature. In addition to operating a tropical plant nursery, she has been inspired by poetry and illustrated the works of Jim Harrison, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Whalen, Michael McClure, Andrei Codrescu, and Joanne Kyger. She has been awarded The Rounce and Coffin Award for her design and illustration of "What The Fish Saw", and her broadside "Elegy For The Dusky Seaside Sparrow" was chosen "Best Broadside of The Year" selection by Fine Print Magazine. Her work has been exhibited at The New York Public Library, The San Francisco Public Library, and The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Rental Gallery. Her illustrations have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Nerve Bundle Review, Mike & Dale's Younger Poets and Cafe Review.
   

Thom Donovan lives in New York City where he is an active participant in The Nonsite Collective, a coeditor of ON: contemporary practice, the editor of Wild Horses of Fire blog, and  the primary organizer of PEACE events series (formerly Peace On A).  His criticism, scholarship and poetry have been published variously. 
   

Some of Kim Dorman's poems are drawn from his life and work in India and his native region of the southwest, Oklahoma as a boy and Texas to this day. His poems have appeared in Indian and American journals and he published two booklets with Longhouse and continues to issue monthly in paper copy circulated by a postal carrier his Gleanings/Fragments of poetry, commentary, and gift.
   

Bill Dunlap,is a visual artist and writer splitting his time between New York City and Western Maryland. To see and read more: http://www.billdunlap.com
   

Janet van Eeden is a freelance journalist, playwright, scriptwriter, producer and poet. She writes features for South African print media as well as a few British magazines. She has written ten screenplays. A screenplay she co-wrote, White Lion, will be released internationally in May 2009. She is currently producing her own film, A Shot at the Big Time and developing a new film script, Running Time. She has written and produced five stage plays and taken them to the Grahamstown Arts Festival. Van Eeden has her Masters in English and lectures part-time in Scriptwriting at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal. Visit http://www.janetvaneeden.com/
   

Christophe Lamiot Enos was born in Beaumont-le-Roger in France, spent over fifteen years in English-speaking countries and now lives in Paris, France. Two literary essays, Eau sur eau, les dictionnaires de Mallarmé, Flaubert, Bataille, Michaux, Leiris et Ponge (Amsterdam : Rodopi, 1997) and Littérature et hôpital, Balzac, Sue, Hugo (Paris : Sciences en Situation, 1999) prefigure several verse narratives of his, among which Des pommes et des oranges, Californie I—Berkeley, Sitôt Elke, illusion, and Albany—des pommes et des oranges, Californie II (Paris : Flammarion, 2000, 2003 and 2006).
   
 
Jim Feast
   

Jéanpaul Ferro, a 6-time Pushcart Prize nominee, has work in Contemporary American Voices, Columbia Review, Connecticut Review, Boston Literary Magazine, Long Island Quarterly, Bryant Literary Review, Portland Monthly, The Providence Journal, Arts & Understanding Magazine, Barrelhouse Magazine, Oregon Literary Review, Cortland Review, Hawaii Review, and others. His work has been featured on NPR’s This I Believe series, WBAR radio in NYC, and The Plaza’s Masterpiece series. He is the author of All The Good Promises (1994, Plowman Press), The Driver (1994, Thunder Mountain Press), and Becoming X (2008, BlazeVox Books). He is also a two-time Best of the Net nominee. He currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island. E-mail at jeanpaulferro@netzero.net.
   

Norman Finkelstein is a poet and literary critic. His books of poetry include Restless Messengers (Georgia, 1992), the three-volume serial poem Track: Track, Columns, and Powers (Spuyten Duyvil 1999, 2002, 2005), and Passing Over, a volume of poems containing work from the late 1980s through the mid 1990s (Marsh Hawk, 2007). He has written extensively about modern and postmodern poetry, and about Jewish American literature. His books of criticism are The Utopian Moment in Contemporary American Literature (Bucknell, 1988, 1993), The Ritual of New Creation: Jewish Tradition and Contemporary Literature (SUNY, 1992), Not One of Them In Place: Modern Poetry and Jewish American Identity (SUNY, 2002) and Lyrical Interference: Essays on Poetics (Spuyten Duyvil, 2004). His latest critical project is a book called On Mt. Vision: Forms of the Sacred in Contemporary American Poetry. Recent poems, essays and reviews have appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Cincinnati Review, Contemporary Literature, American Literary History, Twentieth Century Literature and on the website of the Cultural Society. Finkelstein was born in New York City in 1954. He received his B.A. from Binghamton University and his Ph.D. from Emory University. He is a Professor of English at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he has taught since 1980.
   

Alan Finlay is a writer who lives in Johannesburg. He has published short collections of poems through independent grassroots publishers such as Dye Hard Press and Botsotso Publishing, and has edited/published different poetry journals and anthologies (including the online journal donga, New Coin, published by the Institute for the Study of English in Africa, and glass jars among trees, co-edited with Arja Salafranca (Jacana, 2005)). He pays the rent by working in the NGO sector on media, ICT for development and e-waste issues.
   

James Finnegan has published poems in Ploughshares, Poetry East, The Southern Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review & other literary magazines. He started an internet discussion list related to contemporary poetry called New-Poetry and he cofounded the web-radio project LitStation.com. He posts aphoristic musings to ursprache, a poetics blog. Recently he was named president of the Friends & Enemies of Wallace Stevens in Hartford, Connecticut.
   

Norman Fischer is a Zen Buddhist priest. A former abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, he is founder and teacher for the Everyday Zen Foundation, a network of zen groups and related projects, with locations in Canada, the US, and Mexico (www.everydayzen.org). His latest poetry collection is I Was Blown Back (Singing Horse, 2005), and his latest prose work is Sailing Home (Simon and Schuster, 2008). Norman is married and the father of grown twin sons, both of whom live in Brooklyn. He lives with his wife Kathie near Green Gulch Farm zen center at Muir Beach.
   

Hugh Fox was born in Chicago in 1932, has a Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, taught for ten years at Loyola-Marymount in L.A., thirty years at Michigan State. Of 105 books published, the latest are Alex, a poetry chapbook from Rubicon Press in Canada, Ghosts from Green Panda Press in Cleveland Heights and The Collected Poetry, a 520-page volume from World Audience in NYC.
   

Richard Fox is the author of many short poems and a few longer ones. He is the owner of the online fashion label, Tshirt Terrorist (www.tshirtterrorist.co.za). His first collection of verse, 876, was published in 2007. He spends his time coming up with cool ideas. It’s a life.
   

Vernon Frazer's poetry and fiction have appeared in Café Review, First Intensity, Jack Magazine, Lost and Found Times, Massacre, Moria, Shampoo, Sidereality and many other literary magazines. He has written six books of poetry. He introduced his longpoem, IMPROVISATIONS (I-XXIV), at The Poetry Project at St. Marks Church in Manhattan. Frazer has produced five recordings of poetry with free jazz accompaniment and appeared on several recordings with the late jazz saxophonist Thomas Chapin, including their duo release, Song of Baobab. Frazers collection of short fiction, finished as a finalist in the 1996 Black Ice/FC2 Fiction Contest. His most recent novel is Relics Reunions. He recently finished editing an anthology of Post-Beat poetry for publication in the Peoples Republic of China. His newest books are Avenue Noir and IMPROVISATIONS
   

Mel Freilicher's fiction/non-fiction hybrid, The Unmaking of Americans: Seven Lives was published by San Diego City Works Press. He has chapbooks out from Standing Stones Press and Obscure publications, and was anthologized in Sun and Moon Press' Contemporary American Fiction. Freilicher has guest edited issues of American Book Review and Fiction International. His fiction and non-fiction have appeared in numerous publications, such as Golden Handcuffs Review; Frame-work: Journal of the LA Center for Photographic Studies; Flue: Magazine of the Franklin Furnace Archive; River Styx; San Diego Reader; San Diego Union-Tribune; poeticinhalation. He's been teaching writing and literature at UCSD and SDSU for several decades.
   

Gloria Frym is a poet, fiction writer, and essayist. Her most recent books include The Lost Sappho Poems (Effing Press) and Solution Simulacra (United Artists Books). A previous collection, Homeless at Home (Creative Arts Book Company), won an American Book Award. She is also the author of two critically acclaimed collections of short stories—Distance No Object (City Lights Books), and How I Learned (Coffee House Press)—as well as several other volumes of poetry. She is Associate Professor of Writing & Literature at California College of the Arts in the Bay Area.

 
 

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