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  • Contributors

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TBA

Prose

Dorothy Barresi is the author of four books of poetry: American Fanatics (forthcoming, U of Pittsburgh P); Rouge Pulp (U of Pittsburgh P); The Post-Rapture Diner (U of Pittsburgh P), winner of an American Book Award; and All of the Above (Beacon P). Her essays and poems have been published widely. She is the recipient of two Pushcart Prizes, the Emily Clark Balch Prize, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

“Looking back at my own experiences as a Baby Boom poet, I automatically think of the tremendous impact Denis Johnson’s poems had on me when I first encountered them. Reading The Incognito Lounge and The Veil changed everything I had understood, up until that moment, about what contemporary poetic language could be or do. For me, he’ll always be the voice of Baby Boom poetry.”

Marianne Boruch’s six poetry collections include the recent Grace, Fallen from, (Wesleyan). Her two books of essays on poetry are Poetry’s Old Air (Michigan) and In the Blue Pharmacy (Trinity). “The Lincoln Boys” in this issue is an excerpt from an unpublished memoir, “The Glimpse Traveler.”

Paul Lisicky is the author of Lawnboy and Famous Builder, both published by Graywolf Press. His recent work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Five Points, Subtropics, Seattle Review, Hotel Amerika, and elsewhere.

“I don’t usually define myself in terms of the traits of a particular era. In other words, ‘isn’t my whole life still ahead of me?’ Which might suggest that I’m more of a Baby Boomer than I’m ready to admit.”

Martin Ott has published stories in more than a dozen magazines and has optioned three screenplays. His poetry has appeared in over fifty magazines and anthologies, including The Anthology of Monterey Bay Poets, For-Poetry.com, Hotel Amerika, Poetry East, Tampa Review, and Third Coast.

“A former Russian linguist and U.S. Army interrogator, I currently live in Los Angeles with my wife and two children, and still find myself asking a lot of questions. The Cold War made a big impression on my childhood, and the surreal details intensified when I joined the Army at seventeen. I once received training on what to do in case I saw the flash of a nuclear explosion—you are supposed to take one large step (no more, no less) and look for a hole to dive into. I have often wondered what taking that step would mean for me, and the world.”

Marly Swick has published two story collections and two novels: A Hole in the Language, The Summer Before the Summer of Love, Paper Wings, and Evening News. Her short fiction has appeared in O’Henry Prize Stories, Atlantic Monthly, Best of the Best of the South, and other magazines. [End Page 209]

“As a Baby Boomer and writer, I have seen American culture change radically. My story ‘Elba’ deals with the disgrace a pregnant high school girl suffers in the early 60’s when she becomes pregnant. Later on in the story her mother—who saves her by whisking her off to Florida from the Midwest—says, ‘Nowadays you’d be hard-pressed to think what you could do to disgrace yourself.’ Coming of age—going off to college in the Bay Area in the late 60’s when everything was so free and idealistic—in contrast to a much more buttoned-down Ozzie and Harriet childhood, provides an insight into that classic tension between freedom and security that most human beings experience, in one form or another, throughout their lives.”

Poetry

Ai is the author of seven books of poetry, including Vice, winner of the 1999 National Book Award, and Dread, published by Norton. She’s proud to be a Boomer.

Kim Addonizio’s latest books are Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within and Lucifer at the Starlite, both from W. W. Norton. She has authored several other books, including two novels, Little Beauties and My Dreams Out in the Streets.

“My formative years as a person and therefore writer: boys going to and coming back from Vietnam, antiwar protests in dc, JFK shot by Oswald and...

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