About the Contributors

About the Contributors Sue Allison has recent stories in the Harvard Review and Sundog. She lives inWashington, DC, where she is correspondent for Life magazine, with her husband and their adopted daughter,Julia, at whose birth in Los Angeles, in July 1998, four months after their trip to Rome, her parenmts were joyfuUy present. Ken Autrey coordinates the composition program and teaches poetry writing at Francis Marion University in Florence, South CaroUna. His poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Texas Review, Chattahoochee Review, and many other magazines. He often writes about journals, diaries, and other forms of autobiography, and he is currently working on a series of essays about teaching and traveling inJapan. Amy Brown is a writer from ColumbiaviUe, Michigan. She's currently on the editorial staff of Fourth Genre. Sharon Bryan's most recent coUection of poems, Flying Blind, was pubUshed by Sarabande Books in 1996. She is currently at work on a memoir. Carol Cloos's work has appeared in a number ofmagazines, including The Gettysburg Review, The Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, and The North American Review. Her essay "Masked" was cited in The Best American Essays. She is working on a nonfiction coUection. David Cooper teaches writing at Michigan State University. He writes for DoubleTake magazine. 222 Contributors223 Stephen Dunn is the author often books ofpoetry, and two ofprose, the most recent of which is Riffs and Reciprocities (Norton). He teaches at Richard Stockton CoUege in New Jersey. Stuart Dybek is the author ofthree books and his poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. He has been the recipient ofa 1998 Lannan Award, the PEN/Malamud Prize, aWhiting Writers' Award, a Guggenheim FeUowship, and two NEA FeUowships. Currently, he teaches at Western Michigan University. James Ferry was a student in the M.EA. program atVermont CoUege. He wrote fiction and nonfiction. Pete Hausier Uves in Brooklyn, New York, where he is writing a book about bars and drinking. This essay is from that manuscript. Alex Johnson teaches memoir at WeUesley CoUege. She is the author of The Hidden Writer (Doubleday) and the forthcoming Leaving a Trace (Little, Brown). John Lane is an assistant professor ofEnglish atWofford CoUege in South Carolina. He has published two volumes of poems and a book of essays, Weed Time (1993). He has also edited three anthologies of essays, most recently The Woods Stretchedfor Miles: New Southern Nature Writing, available from the University of Georgia Press. Bret Lott is the author offive novels, two story coUections, and a memoir, Fathers, Sons, and Brothers. His essays have appeared in, among other places, The Gettysburg Review, Iowa Review, Antioch Review, Southern Review, and Creative Nonfiction. He lives in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, and teaches at the CoUege of Charleston andVermont CoUege. Rebecca McClanahan is the author of three books of poetry and two books of nonfiction, most recently Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively (Writer's Digest Books). She has received a Pushcart Prize in fiction, the Wood Prize from Poetry magazine, and the Carter prize for the essay from Shenandoah. Her work has appeared in The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, Kenyan Review, Boulevard, The Best American Poetry 1998, and numerous literary magazines around the country. 224Fourth Genre Thylias Moss lives and works in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her most recent book of poetry, Last Chance for the Tarzan Holler, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Mark Olencki has exhibited his work in competitions and shows throughout the Southeast. His photographs are included in the permanent coUection ofthe State of South Carolina, the Spartanburg County Museum, and the private collections ofmany corporations and individuals. Anne-Marie Oomen is a poet, playwright, and essayist who has been published in Uterary magazines and small presses throughout the country. She serves as Chair ofthe CreativeWriting Department at Interlochen Arts Academy, instructs the Apprentice Poetry Workshop for Northwestern Michigan CoUege, and edits Dunes Review. Suzanne Paola is the author ofthree books ofpoetry, most recently Bardo, winner of the 1998 Brittingham Prize and pubUshed by the University of Wisconsin Press. This essay is an excerpt from a manuscript entided Body Toxic: An Environmental Memoir. Dale Rigby's most recent...