BRUCE
WEIGL was
born in Lorain, Ohio in 1949. He is the
author of ten collections of poetry, most recently Song of Napalm, (Atlantic
Monthly Press, l988), What Saves Us (TriQuarterly Books, 1992),
Sweet Lorain, (TriQuarterly
Books, 1996), After the Others (TriQuarterly Books, 1999), Archeology of the
Circle: New and Selected Poems (Grove/Atlantic, 1999), and The Unraveling
Strangeness (forthcoming fall, 2002, Grove Atlantic), and the editor or co-editor of three collections of critical essays,
most recently Charles Simic: Essays On The Poetry (University
of Michigan Press, 1996), as well as an anthology (Writing Between The Lines:
Writing From The William Joiner Workshop
(co-edited with Kevin Bowen. University of Massachusetts Press, 1997).
In
1994 The University of Massachusetts Press published Poems From Captured Documents,
poems Weigl co-translated from the Vietnamese with Nguyen Thanh; other works
of translation include Angel Riding A Beast, poems by Liliana Ursu, translated
from the Romanian with the author (Northwestern University Press, 1999) and
Mountain River: Vietnamese Poetry from the Wars, 1948-1993, co-edited and
co-translated with Nguyen Ba Chung and Kevin Bowen, (University of Massachusetts
Press, 1998).
In
the spring of 2000 Grove/Atlantic published his memoir, The Circle of Hanh.
Weigl's poetry, translations, essays, articles, reviews, and interviews
have appeared in such periodicals as The New York Times, The Nation, TriQuarterly,
Field, The New Yorker, The Western Humanities Review, The American Poetry
Review, The Southern Review, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, The Paris Review,
Antaeus, and Harpers. In addition,
his poems have been widely anthologized, most recently in The Best American
Poetry, 1994, edited by A.R. Ammons and David Lehman, The Morrow Anthology
of Younger American Poets, Poets of the '90's, Paul Fussell's Anthology of
Modern War Literature, and in Against Forgetting: 20th-Century Poetry of Witness,
edited by Carolyn Forche.
For
his work Weigl has been awarded a Patterson Poetry Prize, the Pushcart Prize
twice, a prize from the Academy of American Poets, nominations for the Lamont
Poetry Prize and the William Carlos Williams Prize, "The Breadloaf Fellowship
in Poetry," a YADDO Foundation Fellowship and a National Endowment for
the Arts Grant for poetry. Weigl has taught at Case Western Reserve University,
Lorain Country Community College, the University of Arkansas, Old
Dominion University, Warren Wilson College, and in the writing program at
The Pennsylvania State University where he directed the MFA Program in Writing.
He is past president of the Associated Writing Program.
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MARTÍN ESPADA Sandra
Cisneros says, "Martín Espada is the Pablo Neruda of North American
authors."
Espada was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1957. His seventh collection of poems,
Alabanza: New and Selected Poems (1982-2002) was published by Norton in 2003,
received the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement and was named
an American Library Association Notable Book of the year. An earlier collection,
Imagine the Angels of Bread (Norton, 1996), won an American Book Award and
was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Other books of
poetry include A Mayan Astronomer in Hell's Kitchen (Norton, 2000), City of
Coughing and Dead Radiators (Norton, 1993), and Rebellion is the Circle of
a Lover's Hands (Curbstone, 1990). He has received numerous awards, including
the Robert Creeley Award, the Antonia Pantoja Award, an Independent Publisher
Book Award, a Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize,
the Charity Randall Citation, the PEN/Revson Fellowship and two NEA Fellowships.
His poems have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Harper's, The Nation,
and The Best American Poetry. He has also published a collection of essays,
Zapata's Disciple (South End, 1998); edited two anthologies, Poetry Like Bread:
Poets of the Political Imagination from Curbstone Press (Curbstone, 1994)
and El Coro: A Chorus of Latino and Latina Poetry (University of Massachusetts,
1997); and released an Audiobook of poetry called Now the Dead will Dance
the Mambo (Leapfrog, 2004). Much of his writing arises from his Puerto Rican
heritage and his work experiences, ranging from bouncer to tenant lawyer.
Espada is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst,
where he teaches creative writing, Latino poetry, and the work of Pablo Neruda.
.
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LARRY
HEINEMANN was
born and raised in Chicago, and during the Vietnam War served a combat tour
of duty as an ordinary rifle soldier. Black Virgin Mountain, a war memoir and
the third volume of an accidental trilogy about our war in Vietnam, was published
last April. Cooler by the Lake, a Chicago novel, was published in 1992. Paco's
Story (1986) received the National Book Award for fiction, the Carl Sandburg
Literary Award for fiction, and others. Close Quarters, his award-winning first
novel, has been called the seminal work to come out of the Vietnam War. His
fiction and essays have been published world-wide, and translated into Dutch,
German, French, Spanish, and Vietnamese.
Mr. Heinemann's short stories and nonfiction have appeared
in Atlantic Monthly, GRAPHIS, Harper's, Penthouse, Playboy and Tri-Quarterly
magazines, as well as the Vietnam Writers Association Journal of Arts and
Letters (Hanoi), and elsewhere.
In the past, Mr. Heinemann has received literature fellowships
from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and most
recently was granted a Fulbright Scholarship (2003) to research oral literature
at Hue University, Vietnam. His work in progress includes a bilingual collection
of Vietnamese folktales, and a Chicago-based murder mystery.
Mr. Heinemann lives in Chicago with his wife, Edie;
they have two grown children, and a cat named Riley.
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JOHN
F. DEANE
Born Achill Island 1943; founded Poetry Ireland
-the National Poetry Society -and The Poetry Ireland Review, 1979.
Published several collections of poetry and some fiction; poetry includes
Christ, with Urban Fox, a collection translated into several languages.
Won the O'Shaughnessy Award for Irish Poetry 1998 and in 2000 the
Grand International Prize for Poetry from Romania. Novel In the Name of
the Wolf published by Blackstaff Press, 1999, published in German
translation in 2001. A collection of short stories: The Coffin
Master, published
by Blackstaff Press in 2000.
His
latest collection of poetry is Toccata and Fugue, New & Selected Poems,
from Carcanet UK, in 2000 and poetry collections in French and Bulgarian translation
from Luxembourg and Sofia, in Romanian and forthcoming in Italian, and Swedish.
Elected Secretary-General of the European Academy of Poetry in
1996. Forthcoming collection of poems Manhandling the Deity, from Carcanet,
due in July, 2003. In 2000 awarded a bursary in Literature from the Arts Council
of Ireland and in 2001 John F. Deane was given the prestigious Marten Toonder
Award for Literature.
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DOUG
ANDERSON Doug
Anderson has recent work in Poetry, Ploughshares, and the Connecticut Review.
He is the author of three books of poetry and has received fellowships and
grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Massachusetts Cultural
Council, Poets & Writers, Inc., and the MacDowell Colony. The Moon Reflected
Fire won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award in 1995, and Blues for Unemployed
Secret Police a grant from the Eric Matthieu King Fund of the Academy of American
Poets. He is at work on a memoir about the Viet Nam war and the Sixties. He
teaches at the University of Connecticut where he is a PhD candidate in English
Literature.
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MICHAEL
CASEY
a graduate of the Lowell Technological Institute.
Yale University Press published his first book
Obscenities in the Yale Younger Poet Series adjudged by
Stanley Kunitz in 1972. Carnegie Mellon University Press has reprinted
that book in 2002. Adastra Press published his second book Millrat, based on a New England textile mill in 1999. His
most recent book, The Million Dollar Hole, with a setting at an army engineer-training
center at Fort Wood, Missouri, is now in print from Orchises Press.
He
teaches Literature of the Vietnam War at the University of Massachusetts,
Lowell and Creative Writing at Northern Essex Community College. Recently
his work has appeared in The Hiram Poetry Review, The Drexel Online Journal,
The Massachusetts Review, Washington Square,
and Salmagundi. His work is forthcoming in the University of Notre Dame Press
Anthology of Irish American Poetry.
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FRED
MARCHANT Fred Marchant is
the author of three books of poetry. His first book, Tipping
Point, won the 1993 Washington Prize from The Word Works, Inc. His second
book, Full Moon Boat, was published in 2,000 by Graywolf Press. His third
book,
House on Water, House in Air: New and Selected Poems was published by Dedalus
Press, Dublin, Ireland, in 2002. He and Nguyen Ba Chung have recently completed
a translation of From a Corner of My Yard, a collection of the earliest poems
of Tran Dang Khoa, and it will be published in a bi-lingual edition by the
Educational Publishing House, Hanoi, with a foreward by Lady Borton. Fred
is a
Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Suffolk
University in Boston, where he is also the founding director of the Suffolk
University Poetry Center. A longtime member of PEN New England's Executive
Board
and head of its Freedom to Write Committee, he has recently stepped down from
those positions, but he remains active in work on behalf of freedom of
expression, especially in regard to the writing workshop he helped establish
at
Norhthampton County House of Correction, a program in which many of the teaching
cadre are drawn from the Joiner Center writing community.
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MARTHA COLLINS
Martha
Collins' book-length poem Blue Front will be published by Graywolf in 2006.
She is also the author of four collections of poems, most recently Some Things
Words Can Do, and a chapbook, Gone So Far (Barnwood, 2005). She has co-translated
two collections of poetry from the Vietnamese, most recently Green Rice by
Lam Thi My Da (Curbstone 2005). She founded the Creative Writing Program at
UMass-Boston, and now teaches at Oberlin College, where she is Pauline Delaney
Professor of Creative Writing and one of the editors of FIELD magazine and
the Oberlin College Press.
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LLOYD
SCHWARTZ Lloyd
Schwartz is Frederick S. Troy Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts
Boston, Classical Music Editor of The Boston Phoenix and a regular commentator
for NPR's Fresh Air. His most recent books of poems are Cairo Traffic (University
of Chicago) and Lloyd Schwartz: The Greatest Hits (a Puddinghouse chapbook).
He is currently co-editing the collected works of Elizabeth Bishop for the
Library of America. His poems, articles, and reviews have appeared in The
New Yorker, The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, The New Republic, The Paris Review,
and The Best American Poetry. In 1994, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for
Criticism and this past April was named Somerville Artist of the Month.
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DEMETRIA
MARTÍNEZ
Demetria
Martinez is an author, activist, lecturer and columnist. Her books include
the widely translated novel, Mother Tongue (Ballantine), winner of a Western
States Book Award for Fiction, and two books of poetry, Breathing Between
the Lines and The Devil's Workshop (Univ. of Arizona Press). Her collected
essays, Confessions of a Berlitz Tape Chicana (Univ. of Oklahoma Press) will
be out in spring 2005. She writes a column for the National Catholic Reporter,
an independent progressive newsweekly.
Mother
Tongue is based in part upon her 1987-1988 federal indictment and trial in
connection with the alleged smuggling of Salvadoran refugees into the United
States as part of the Sanctuary Movement. The charges, including conspiracy
against the U.S. government, carried a 25-year-prison sentence. Prosecutors
tried use her poetry against her during the trial, which drew international
attention. A religion writer at the time covering the movement, Martinez was
acquitted on First Amendment grounds.
Born in Albuquerque, NM in 1960, where she now resides, Martinez earned her
BA from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International
Affairs. Martinez teaches at the annual June writing workshop at the William
Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences at the University
of Mass., Boston.
In New Mexico she is active with Enlace Comunitario, an immigrants' rights
group that serves Spanish-speaking victims of domestic violence. She also
teaches a workshop, "Writing for Social Change: Redream a Just World"
with Anya Achtenberg.
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SABRA
LOOMIS is
a New York poet with strong connections to the West of Ireland. Her book Rosetree
was published by Alice James Books, and two chapbooks have appeared from Firm
Ground Press, New York. This year she participated in readings for Cyphers
magazine at the Strokestown Festival in Ireland, and also in Dublin. She read
for the Scribh series in Sligo. Her new manuscript was a finalist for the
National Poetry Series in 2004, and she has been nominated twice for a Pushcart
award. Poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry Ireland Review,
Cyphers, Salamander, Lumina, and many other journals. She teaches frequently
at the Joiner Center and the Poet's House, Donegal.
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GRACE
PALEY is a widely acclaimed
short story writer, poet, and activist. In 1980 she was elected to the American
Academy of Arts and Letters. Grace has been awarded the Senior Fellowship
of the Literature Program of the National Endowment for the Arts. Upon receipt
of the Edith Wharton Citation of Merit, she became the first State Author
of New York. Her most recent publication is a collection of essays, Just As
I Thought.
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MACDARA
WOODS was born in 1942 and is married
to Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin; they have a son, Niall. With
Leland Bardwell and Pearse Hutchinson, they are founder editors of the literary
review Cyphers. He has published ten books of poems, translated from a number
of languages and edited The Kilkenny Anthology. He has travelled widely, but
now lives mostly in Dublin. He is a member of Aosdána, the Irish Arts
Council's affiliation recognising outstanding contribution to the arts in
Ireland.
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YUSEF
KOMUNYAKAA is a recipient of the
Pulitzer Prize for poetry. He is a professor of English and African-American
studies at Princeton University. He was the Holloway poet at the University
of California, Berkeley in 1990-91. His collections of poetry include: I Apologize
for the Eyes in My Head, Lost in the Bonewheel Factory, Toys in a Field, Magic
City, Neon Vernacular and Thieves of Paradise. Talking Dirty to the Gods was
published in 2000, followed by Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems in 2001.Blue
Notes: Essays, Interviews, and Commentaries has been issued by the University
of Michigan Press in the Poets on Poetry series. Yusef is a member of the
Board of Chancellors.
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LADY
BORTON
has worked with Viet Nam for thirty-five years.
Her books about Viet Nam include SENSING THE ENEMY: An American Among the
Boat People of Vietnam (Dial/Doubleday, 1984), AFTER SORROW: An American Among
the Vietnamese (Viking/Penguin 1995, Kodansha paperback 1996) and HO CHI MINH:
A Portrait (Thanh Nien [Youth] Publishers in Ha Noi, 2003).
Borton
is also the author of two children's picture books, Fat Chance! and Junk Pile,
both published by Philomel/Putnam. She has translated a number of Vietnamese
folk tales, which Ha Noi's Kim Dong (Children) Publishing House has printed
in four-color, bi-lingual editions.
During
the spring of 2004, The Gioi (World) Publishers in Ha Noi will bring out Borton's
annotated translations of DIEN BIEN PHU: Rendezvous with History by General
Vo Nguyen Giap and THE CENTRAL HIGHLANDS: A North Vietnamese Journal of Life
on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, 1965-1973 by Dr. Le Cao Dao.
Lady
Borton is international affairs representative for the American Friends Service
Committee (Quaker Service) in Ha Noi and adjunct professor at Ohio University's
Center for Southeast Asian Studies. She has received two honorary doctorates
for her work with Viet Nam.
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EVA
BOURKE Eva Bourke has published
five collections of poetry, among them Spring in Henry Street (96), Travels
with Gandolpho (2000) and The Latitude of Naples (2005), two anthologies of
Irish poetry in German translation, most recently Mit grüner Tinte/With
Green Ink (1996), numerous contributions of translations of Irish poets in
German literary journals, i.e. die horen, Akzente, etc. and she has translated
a collection of the German poet Elisabeth Borchers Winter on White Paper/Winter
auf weissem Blatt into English for the Poetry Europe Series (2002). A large
selection of poems by Martin Espada in her translation appeared in 2004 in
the edition machtwort in Bochum, Germany. Eva Bourke was editor of a double
edition of Poetry Ireland Review in 2003 featuring 25 contemporary German
poets in translation by her and the poet Peter Jankowsky. She has been teaching
Creative Writing and Poetry at the National University Ireland Galway for
many years both in the German and English departments. She has received numerous
awards and two Bursaries for Literature from the Arts Council, Ireland, in
1996 and 2004. She was elected to become a member of Aosdana, Ireland's Academy
of the Arts in summer 2005. At the moment she working on a collection of translations
of the German poet Friedrich Hölderlin.
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