Per Contra Contributors Winter 2009

Contributors, Winter 2009

Charles Cantalupo is the co-translator and co-editor of Who Needs a Story? Contemporary Eritrean Poetry in Tigrinya, Tigre and Arabic (Hdri Publishers: Asmara, 2006) and the writer and director of the new documentary, Against All Odds: African Languages and Literatures into the 21st Century (Michigan State University Press & African Books Collective: East Lansing & London, 2007). He also published two other books of Eritrean poetry translations, scholarly studies on Thomas Hobbes and Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and two books of poetry.

Elaine Chiew lives in London, England with her husband and two children. She was a corporate securities lawyer before becoming a full-time mother and writer. Her work has appeared in Night Train, Juked, Storyglossia, Edifice Wrecked, The Summerset Review and In Posse Review, among others. She has work forthcoming in Better Non Sequitur's anthology, See You Next Tuesday 2, Dzanc Books' Best of the Web 2007 anthology (edited by Steve Almond and Nathan Leslie), Hobart (print) and Alimentum.

Maritza Cino (Guayaquil, 1957). Cino´s primary concern is freedom. In her poetry, she struggles against traditional assumptions and modes of expression. This struggle is reflected in stylistic challenges to the norms of grammar and syntax, as well as in her personal questioning of accepted social paradigms. Her poetry can be seen as an act of defiance against the given in the two realms that concern her most, the sexual and the linguistic. This is her second appearance in Per Contra. Her publications are: Poetry: Algo parecido al juego (Guayaquil, 1983), A cinco minutos de la bruma (Guayaquil, 1987), Invenciones del retorno (Guayaquil,1992), Entre el juego y la bruma (Guayaquil, 1995), Infiel a la sombra (Quito, 2000). Anthologies: La palabra perdurable (Quito, 1991), Between the Silence of Voices: An Anthology of Contemporary Ecuadorean Women Poets (Quito, 1997), Poesía y cuento ecuatorianos (Cuenca, 1998), Poesía erótica de mujeres: Antología del Ecuador (Quito, 2001).

David Curzon is a poet, essayist and translator. He is a contributing editor of the Forward newspaper and a contributing editor of The Jerusalem Review He retired from the United Nations in September 2001, having served as Chief of the Central Evaluation Unit, and, earlier as its Chief of the Program Planning Unit. His books include: Midrashim (Cross-Cultural Communications, 1991); Modern Poems on the Bible: An Anthology (The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1994); The Gospels in Our Image: An Anthology of Twentieth Century Poetry (Harcourt, Brace, 1995); Dovchik (Penguin Books, Australia, 1995); The View From Jacob's Ladder (The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1996); (with Katharine Washburn) "The Madness of Heracles" in David R. Slavitt and Palmer Bovie (eds) Euripides, 4 (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1999); (translator, with Jeffrey Fiskin) Eustache Deschamps: Selected Poems (Routledge, 2003); Astonishments, Selected Poems of Anna Kamienska, Edited and translated by Grazyna Drabik and David Curzon, Paraclete Press, 2007. He is represented in two Oxford anthologies and in the twentieth century section of World Poetry (Norton, 1998). Individual poems, short essays, columns, reviews and translations have been published in journals in the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel and Australia and elsewhere. A translated monologue, Goethe's "Persephone," was produced off Broadway in 1998 at the Harold Clurman theatre.

Dr. Eric Denker is the Senior Lecturer at the National Gallery of Art, where he has been since 1978. From 1998 to 2006, Dr. Denker also has served as the Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Corcoran, overseeing the permanent collection and coordinating an active exhibition schedule including historical shows of Sargent drawings, Whistler and his Circle in Venice, Childe Hassam, and contemporary exhibitions focusing on Thiebaud, Lichtenstein, and William T. Wiley.

He attended Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, and received his doctorate from the University of Virginia, writing on James McNeill Whistler. He also serves as an adjunct professor at both Georgetown University and at Cornell University’s Washington Semester. He frequently lectures in Italy for the Smithsonian Institution and for the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, and in Washington on Venice, Italian art, Dutch painting, French 19th-century art, and printmaking.

David Evanier has published eight books, including The Great Kisser, The One-Star Jew, The Swinging Headhunter, and Red Love. He received the Aga Khan Fiction Prize and has appeared in Best American Short Stories. He has had fiction published in The Paris Review, The Antioch Review, Southwest Review, TriQuarterly, Pequod, Witness, Ninth Letter, Confrontation, Saint Ann’s Review, and in the anthologies On Being Jewish and Congregation: Writers Read the Jewish Bible.

Clifford Garstang holds an M.F.A. from Queens University of Charlotte, N.C., as well as a B.A. in Philosophy from Northwestern University, an M.A. in English and a J.D. from Indiana University, and an M.P.A. from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He was a Peace Corps Volunteer in South Korea, and during his career in international law he practiced for many years in Singapore, Chicago and Los Angeles with one of the largest U.S. law firms. While serving with the World Bank in Washington, D.C., he worked extensively in China, Vietnam and Indonesia.

Garstang’s fiction has appeared in Shenandoah, The Baltimore Review, Potomac Review, and elsewhere. He currently lives in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.

Reesom Haile is Eritrea’s best known poet, especially internationally. A poet and scholar with a Ph.D. in Media & Communications from NYU, Haile returned to Eritrea in 1994 after exile that included teaching and lecturing in western universities and working for international NGOs. His first collection of Tigrinya poetry, Waza ms Qum Neger nTensae Hager (Asmara: Francescana Printing, 1997), won the 1998 Raimok prize, Eritrea’s highest prize for literature. His other books of poetry include We Have Our Voice (Trenton and Asmara: Red Sea Press, 2000; translations by Charles Cantalupo) and We Invented the Wheel (Trenton and Asmara: Red Sea Press; translations by Charles Cantalupo). He died in 2003.

Alexis Levitin - Click Here

Sonia Manzano, born in Guayaquil in 1947, is one of the strongest female voices in Ecuadorian literature, Sonia Manzano, in both her fiction and poetry, examines with an aggressive irony the limits of machismo, and elaborates on the condition of women, with a combination of forceful self-affirmation and feminist solidarity. Her poetry draws on tradition and the past in its imaginative deconstruction of fundamental Western myths, including the biblical foundational stories behind our modern culture. Her books of poetry are: El nudo y el trino (Guayaquil,1972), Casi siempre las tardes (Guayaquil, 1974), La gota en el cráneo (Guayaquil, 1976), La semana que no tiene jueves (Guayaquil, 1978), El ave que todo lo atropella (Guayaquil, 1980), Caja musical con bailarina incluida (Guayaquil, 1984), Carcoma con forma de paloma (Quito, 1986), Full de reinas (Quito, 1991), Patente de corza (Quito, 1997), Ultimo regreso al Edén (Quito, 2006). Her books of fiction are: Y no abras la ventana todavía -zarzuela ligera sin divisiones aparentes (Quito, 1994), Que se quede el infinito sin estrellas (Quito, 2001), Eses fatales (Quito, 2005), El flujo escarlata (Quito, 1999). Her work has been accepted by World Literature Today, as well as Per Contra. She is Undersecretary of Culture for the Region of the Litorial and the Galapagos.

Chris Myers is an artist and teacher in Philadelphia. He currently lives in Philadelphia. Like Frank Moore, he has lived in Cincinnati, Philadelphia, but also in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, another end of the world.

Mary Lynn Reed lives and writes in suburban Maryland. Her fiction has appeared in The MacGuffin, Happy, Karamu, Temenos, The Summerset Review, Smokelong Quarterly, and See You Next Tuesday, Volume 2, an anthology of short-shorts published by Better Non Sequitur.

Margaret A. Robinson has published her poetry in Prairie Schooner, Margie and The Atlanta Review. She has a chapbook, “Sparks,” at Pudding House Publications and another chapbook, “Arrangements” to be published by Finishing Line Press (Spring 2009). Robinson teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Widener University and lives in Swarthmore, PA.

Bruce Holland Rogers teaches fiction writing in the Whidbey Writers Workshop, a low-residency MFA program of the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts. His most recent collection, The Keyhole Opera, won the World Fantasy Award. He is the author of Word Work: Surviving and Thriving as a Writer. More of his stories are available at www.shortshortshort.com.

Laurie Rosenblatt is a practicing physician at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. Her poems have appeared in Fulcrum, The Bellevue Literary Review, Salamander, Per Contra, and Harvard Review among others.

Mark Rudman is the author of eight books of poetry including The Rider Quintet for which the title volume received the National Book Critics Circle Award. A section of the fifth volume Sundays on the Phone can be heard as a radio play on drunkenboat.com with the actress Martha Plimpton in the role of the poet's mother. Sections from works in progress have appeared in recent issues of The New York Review of Books Classics, Raritan, The American Poetry Review, TLS, and the London Review of Books. The Book of Samuel: Essays on Poetry and Poetics will appear in 2009 (Northwestern), along with The Motel En Route To Life Out There: Selections From the Rider Quintet (SALT). A revised twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Robert Lowell and the Poetic Act will appear in 2007 with Parlor Press, www.parlorpress.com. He is completing Identification of a Woman, and Tropic Winter, from which this poem is taken.

Rajee Seth b. 1935, Nowshehra, Cantt. (Northwest Frontier, now in Pakistan) She received her MA in English Lit. Studied Comparative Religion and Indian Philosophy at Gujarat Jnanpith. Although her first poem was published in the daily Milap in Lahore when she was just nine years old, she came to writing as a serious pursuit late in life. Although not known primarily as a poet, in addition to her two published novels Tatsam, 1983 and Nishkavach [Defenseless] 1995, four short story collections, and two essay collections are in press; as well as her forays into translation, criticism, children’s literature, etc. , she has had published individually in journals, anthologies and periodicals, ca. 50 poems over the years. She is in the process of bringing out two poetry collections in the near future , collected from the large number of poetry manuscripts she has written over the last twenty-five years.

A life-member of P.E.N., she serves on the boards of Bharatiya Bhasha Parishad, Rachna Puraskar, and the Hindi academy. She has been co-editing Yugsakshi (Lucknow) for the last eight years and is renowned and respected for her first-rate literary work.

Aruna Sitesh (1945 – 2007) was a scholar, writer and translator. She was the Principal of Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi, (1997-2007). Her short story collection Chhalaang, received the award for The Outstanding Book of the year Award (1997-98) and the Mahadevi Verma Puraskar by the U.P. Hindi Sansthan, Lucknow, 2000. Her many awards and honors included a Senior Fulbright 1991-92, University of Chicago; Visiting Scholar, Rockefeller Foundation Study Centre, Bellagio, Italy, 1993; and an Australia-India Council Grant in Aid (2005) for interaction with Australian women writers. She was Co-editor, of Pratibha India, Quarterly of Indian Art, Culture and Literature (1981-2007).

David R. Slavitt - Click Here

Jane Stuppin is the author of Perfect Pitch, a book of poetry. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in literary journals. She is also the author of a collection of short stories: A Toast to Reason. Jane has presented her works at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts, Zebulon, KRCB radio and KOWS radio, Healdsburg’s Third Sunday Salon, Occidental Performing Arts and Copperfields bookstore. A native of San Francisco, she lives one hour north of the city among the redwood trees with her husband, Jack Stuppin, an artist.

She has a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley and an M.F.A from Spalding University, Louisville, Kentucky.

Alice Teeter writes poetry. Her chapbook String Theory won the Georgia Poetry Society’s 2008 Charles B. Dickson chapbook competition, judged by Lewis Turco. A new collection of poems entitled When it happens to you… is scheduled for publication by the Star Cloud Press in January 2009.

Molara Wood won the inaugural John La Rose Memorial Short Story Competition (2008); and received a Highly Commended Story Award from the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association in 2007. A former arts columnist for The Lagos Guardian, her essays, reviews and short fiction have appeared in publications including: Sable Litmag, In Posse Review, Drumvoices Revue, Humanitas, Chimurenga, Farafina, Per Contra and in the book series, African Literature Today (ALT). Work is forthcoming in several anthologies. She lives and works in Lagos, Nigeria.

Robert Zaller, poet, critic, and historian, is Professor of History at Drexel University. His most recent books are Islands: Poems (Somerset Hall Press) and The Discourse of Legitimacy in Early Modern England (Stanford University Press).

Arlene Zide b. 1940, NYC. Poet, linguist and translator, her work has appeared in journals and anthologies in the US, Canada and in India such as: 13th Moon, The Alembic, Meridians (Smith College), Xanadu, Rattapallax, Primavera, Colorado Review, California Quarterly, Women’s Review of Books, A Room of HerOwn, Oyez, Earth’ Daughters, Rhino, and in anthologies such as In Love United, Kiss Me Goodnight, and Rough Places Plain; and online in e.g., Anderbo, Chicago Poetry, Red River Review, The Pedestal Magazine, etc. She has lived in India nine times over the last 39 years, most recently involved in translation from Hindi. (An anthology of contemporary Indian women poets out from Penguin India (1993) contained a number of her own translations.) Translations from Hindi and other Indian languages have appeared in places as diverse as Exquisite Corpse, The Bitter Oleander, Faultline, Salt Hill, Paintbrush, Smartish Pace, Modern Poetry in Translation (UK), Blue Unicorn, Indian Literature, Rhino, International Poetry Review, The Malahat Review, International Quarterly, Chicago Review, and in the Everyman series: Indian Love Poems. A volume of translation of Contemporary Indian Women Poets (edited and translated with Aruna Sitesh is currently in press [Sahitya Akademi (India's national literary 'academy'), New Delhi.]