Rio
Issue Five
Author Biographies
Michael
Anania's most recent books are Selected Poems (Moyer Bell) and
In Plain Sight--essays (Moyer Bell). A new collection of poems, In
Natural Light, will be published this year. Anania teaches at the University
of Illinois at Chicago and lives just outside the city.
Tim Bellows, with a graduate degree from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, teaches writing at Sierra College in Northern California. In November, 1997, his "Huts Under Smooth Hills" was nominated for the 23rd Annual Pushcart Prize. He has published in around 70 journals and is gathering a collection of poems, Dreams of Long Grasses--Poems in and out of the Body) and a collection of essays on poetry and perception, Toolroom for Dreamers. (E-mail him here)
James
Roderick Burns is 25 years old, is from Stockton-on-Tees, England, has
a BA in English Language and Literature from Oxford University, and is a
doctoral candidate at SUNY Stony Brook. He co-founded and edits Stony Brook's
fledgling literary journal, SNARK.
Eleni
Fourtourni was educated in Sparta and Athens, Greece, and has an MS
degree in criminology from the University of New Haven, Connecticut. She
is a critically-acclaimed and award-winning novelist, playwright, and poet.
Her work appears in Greek Women Poets (1978), Monovasia (1979),
Watch the Flame (1983), and a historical work, Greek Women in
Resistance (1985), all by Thelphini Press. She received a $5000 grant
from the Connecticut Commision of the Arts for "The Return."
Cynthia
Frazier is a journalist for a weekly newspaper in Marina del Rey, California.
In a previous life, she was a poet and student of writing at Bennington
College, where she studied fiction with Bernard Malamud and poetry and prose
writing with Michael Dennis Browne. She now writes novels and plays, and
draws cartoons, in addition to writing poetry and short fiction. This is
her first published short story. More of her work can be seen on her web
page http://www.2cowherd.net/members/cefraz.
Kathleen Sullivan Isaacson was born in Chicago, where she continues to live. She is a painter and mixed media artist who often uses poetry as an important element in her visual art. Her poetry has appeared online in Agnieska's Dowry, Poetic Express, Snakeskin, Zuzu's Petals, Pif, Free Cuisenart, Demi-Monde, Conspire and Pyrowords. Her writing will appear shortly in The Red Rock Review and Recursive Angel. Kathleen is also the creator and staff (read: lunatic) of the online 'zine Oracle Quarterly.. More of her work can be seen at A Product of Kathleen Sullivan Isaacson's Psychosis.
Robert
Lietz is professor of English and Creative Writing at Ohio Northern
University. His poems have appeared in over 100 journals in the U.S. and
Canada, including Agni Review, Georgia Review, Poetry, and Shenandoah.
He has published seven collections of poems, most recently Storm Service
(1994) and After Business in the West: New and Selected Poems (1996)
with Basfal Books.
Thomas
David Lisk's poems and prose poems have appeared in many little magazines
and newspapers. His work is forthcoming in Apalachee Quarterly, Painted
Bride Quarterly, Salt Hill Journal and others. The editors of Apalachee
Quarterly have twice nominated his poems for Pushcart Prizes. A collection
of his poems, A Short History of Pens Since the French Revolution,
was published by Apalachee Press in 1991. He serves as Head of the Department
of English at North Carolina State University.
Ralph
J. Mills, Jr.'s most recent books of poetry are A Window in Air
(1993) and In Wind's Edge (1997), both with Moyer Bell. A selected
poems is in preparation. He is the editor of Theodore Roethke's prose and
letters and David Ignatow's prose, and the author of critical monographs
and two books of essays. He is professor emeritus of English at the University
of Illinois at Chicago.
Lilan
Patri is a twentysomething Bay Area native who graduated from UC Berkeley
with an English degree who has left expository prose in the dust, and is
now forging her way in literary forms that lie closer to her heart. She
proofreads for a local paper and writes free-lance articles.
Dennis
Saleh 's new collection of poems will be published by Quicksilver
in 1999: Rhymses' Book. Other poetry, prose, and artwork appear widely
in sch magazines as Art/Life, Artword Quarterly, Happy, Pacific Coast
Journal, and Pearl. On-line, his poetry may be seen at AfterNoon,
Rio, and X-Connect.
Sarah
Smith is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Chicago's Program
for Writers. Her recent work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Robert
Schuler has had eight collections of his poems published. His work appears
in two important anthologies of midwestern writing, Inheriting the Earth
and Imagining Home, both published by the University of Minnesota
Press. He is at work on a novel about dancers, musicians, artists, and spiritual-seekers.
Adam
J. Sorkin's collaborative translations of Romanian poets have been printed
in over 125 literary magazines including The New Yorker, American Poetry
Review, Sulfur, Partisan Review, and Poetry. His books of translations
include The Sky Behind the Forest, a selection of Liliana Ursu's
works translated with both Ursu and Tess Gallagher (Bloodaxe Books, 1997)
and Daniela Crasnaru's Sea-Level Zero forthcoming from BOA in 1999.
Liviu
Ioan Stoiciu is the author of numerous volumes of poetry as well as
essays and other writings; his recent books include Aristocratic Poems
in 1991, Collective Solitude in 1996 and The Ruins of the Poem
in 1997. He works as an editor for the long-established literary and cultural
review, Romanian Life, in Bucharest.
Nadia
Swerdlow is a student in UIC's Program for Writers, specializing in
poetry and experimental fiction. She is also a painter and a fashion designer,
and coordinates UIC's Faculty/Student Reading Series.
Magda
Teodorescu is a faculty member at the University of Bucharest. In 1991-92,
she taught at the University of Texas on a Fulbright lectureship. Her translations
of Mihai Ursachi with Adam Sorkin have appeared in Alea, Nimrod, Prism
International, 100 Words, and Artful Dodge, and in the forthcoming
anthology, Speaking the Silence: Sixteen Contemporary Romanian Prose
Poets (Prose Poem Press, 1998).
Scott
Thill is finishing his Master's in English at San Francisco State U, and
is working on his first book. (E-mail him here)
Jack
Turner was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and earned his Ph.D. in English
at the University of South Carolina, where he won the Academy of American Poets
Award in 1989. From 1990 to 1995 he was an editor for the Dictionary of Literary
Biography; then he began working for the Delaware Office of Information
Services, where he is now the manager of Education Services. He is also an adjunct
professor of English at Wesley College in Dover. Turner has published poems
and articles in such journals as Poetry, the Maryland Review,
Crazy River, Literature and Psychology, and Twentieth Century Literature.
(E-mail him here)
Michael
Waters's latest book of poems is Green Ash, Red Maple, Black Gum
(BOA Editions, 1997--reviewed and
excerpted in this issue). He is
Professor of English at Salisbury State University on the Eastern Shore
of Maryland. He is the recipient of two Pushcart Prizes and a Fellowship
in Creative Writing from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Irving
Weiss's recent book is Number Poems (Runaway Spoon Press). Examples
from his visual poetry collection, Visual Voices (1994), can be found
at The Unofficial
Runaway Spoon Press Site (http://members.tripod.com/~sialbach/index.html).
Mason West drives for pleasure in Austin where he is a freelance writer, eternal student, English tutor, poet, occasional novelist, and all-around generalist.This fall he begins the MFA program in creative writing at Southwest Texas State University. Visit his web page.
Eugene
Wildman is the director of the creative writing program at the University
of Illinois at Chicago. He is the author of two experimental novels, Nuclear
Love and Montezuma's Ball, and lots of nonexperimental fiction.
Ben
Wilensky has been a merchant seaman, a crime reporter for the Brooklyn
Eagle, an announcer-producer for WNYC, and has a black belt in Tae Kwon
Do. His books are Definitions of the Enemy (1992) and The Psalms
of a Sailor Jew (1995), both with Mellen Press. His work has appeared
in over 60 magazines.
Brian
Wood (no bio available)