About the Contributors

Jocelyn Bartkevicius teaches at the University of Central Florida. Her essays have appeared in such journals as The Missouri Review,The Hudson Review, and The Bellingham Review. She is working on a memoir, An Erotic Education.

Ben Brooks has received numerous awards for his fiction and nonfiction, including an O. Henry Award and a Nelson Algren Award. He has published one novel (The Icebox) and over seventy short stories and essays in literary journals. He teaches creative writing in the MFA program at Emerson College in Boston.

Penny Dugan teaches writing, women's studies, and African American studies at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. Sections of her memoir have appeared in Puerto del Sol.

Beth Ann Fennelly is an assistant professor of English at the University of Mississippi and the recipient of a 2003 National Endowment for the Arts Award. Her first book of poems, Open House, published by Zoo Press, won the 2001 Kenyon Review Prize for a First Book and has been nominated for an L.A. Times Book Award. Her new book, Tender Hooks, will be published by W. W. Norton in April 2004.

Ronnie Gilbert is writing a memoir of her working life as a singer, actor, and playwright. She was the female member of the Weavers quartet, and has published a play and several essays and opinionpieces.

Priscilla Hodgkins's fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Agni, Creative Nonfiction, the Milwaukee Sentinel, and Confrontation. Her essay "Einstein Didn't Dream of My Mother" was recognized in Best American Essays, and her story "Bread and War" has been nominated for next year's Pushcart Prize. She is associate director of the Bennington Writing Seminars, a graduate program in writing at Bennington College in Vermont. Current projects include a novel and a collection of essays, and singing with the Battenkill Chorale and the monastic choir at New Skete.

Peter Ives lives in Winter Park, Florida, where he writes and teaches writing at Trinity Preparatory School and Rollins College. His essays, reviews, and criticism have been published in numerous journals and anthologies.

Naton Leslie's essays have appeared in The North American Review,High Plains Literary Review, The Northwest Review,Best American Essays, and other magazines and anthologies. A collection of his short fiction, Marconi's Dream and Other Stories, won the George Garrett Fiction Award last year and was published by the Texas Review Press.

Daniel Meltzer is a journalist, playwright, fiction writer, and newspaper columnist in New York City. He has received O. Henry, Pushcart, and other prizes for his writing and has taught and lectured at several colleges and universities in the Northeast.

Patricia Monaghan teaches literature and environment at DePaul University in Chicago. She is the author of two recent books: Dancing with Chaos (Salmon Poetry) and The Red-Haired Girl from the Bog: The Landscape of Celtic Myth and Spirit (New World Library).

Dinty W. Moore is the author of three books, including The Accidental Buddhist: Mindfulness, Enlightenment, and Sitting Still (Algonquin, 1997) and Toothpick Men (Mammoth, 2000). He has written essays for the New York Times Sunday Magazine,Utne Reader,Salon, and numerous other venues. He teaches at Penn State Altoona.

Lia Purpura is the author of a collection of essays, Increase (University of Georgia Press), winner of the Associated Writing Programs' Award in Creative Nonfiction, and Stone Sky Lifting, winner of the Ohio State University Press Award in Poetry. She is Writer-in-Residence at Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland.

Robert Root is the author of a memoir, Recovering Ruth: A Biographer's Tale. His books on nonfiction include E. B. White: The Emergence of an Essayist; Working at Writing: Columnists and Critics Composing;Wordsmithery; and, with Michael Steinberg, The Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writers of/on Creative Nonfiction. He is the interviews editor of Fourth Genre and teaches composition and creative nonfiction at Central Michigan University.

Martin Scott teaches at Eastern Illinois University and has published poems in publications such as Missouri Review, Drunken Boat, Rhino, and...