In Memoriam

For seven years Reetika Vazirani's work appeared regularly in Prairie Schooner beginning with two poems in our spring 1995 issue, seven poems in spring 1996, three poems in winter 1998 including "Daughter-Mother-Maya-Seeta," reprinted in Pushcart Prize XXIV, and a poem and her essay, "The Art of Breathing," published in our Fall 2001 issue for which she received the first Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award. In 1997 she received the Virginia Faulkner Award—her thank you note said, "Thanks a million! I think I may finally buy a computer"—and our Readers' Choice Award in 1996. She died on July 16, 2003, shortly after the publication of her second book, World Hotel, by Copper Canyon Press, which received an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.

Among Reetika's many prizes are a "Discovery"/The Nation Award, a Barnard New Women Poets Prize, and the Poets & Writers Exchange Program Award. She served as a Contributing and Advisory Editor for Shenandoah and was a book review editor for Callaloo and a Senior Poetry Editor of Catamaran, a journal featuring work by artists from South Asia. Her superb reading at the Prairie Schooner 75th Anniversary Celebration and Conference was a gift to us. Reetika Vazirani was a writer of uncommon promise and achievement. We are proud to have been a part of her life and we will miss her vivid and uncompromising voice.

—Hilda Raz

Christina Adam, author of the novel Love and Country and the short story collection Any Small Thing Can Save You, died July 6, 2003. Christina's work appeared in Prairie Schooner, Crazyhorse, and the Atlantic Monthly, among other magazines. Love and Country was published by Little Brown on September 22, 2003, four days before what would have been her 56th birthday. A starred review in the July 15, 2003 issue of the Kirkus review said: "A quietly haunting first novel set in a small ranching town ... The strength here lies in the power of her language and reticent yet fully realized characters. A classic novel of the West, written with quiet muscle and confidence. "William Kittredge wrote,"Christina Adam has caught life in the dead-broke backlands of the American West in perfect focus. Love and Country is honest, compelling, and vivid."

A memorial celebration in honor of her life and work was held on her birthday, Sept. 26, 2003, at the Creative Kids Education Foundation in Los Angeles. An endowment is being established to preserve the legacy of Christina's work and to support young women writers.

—Judith Slater