Seth Abramson's poems have appeared in the Mississippi Review, CrossConnect, the Melic Review, and elsewhere. A 1998 graduate of Dartmouth College and a life-long resident of the Boston area, Seth currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he is pursuing a J.D. at Harvard Law School. Chris Agee's first collection of poems, In the New Hampshire Woods (The Dedalus Press, Dublin, 1992), was among the finalists for the 1994 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Prize. His new collection, First Light was among the finalists for this year's National Poetry Series in the U.S. A selection of his poetry is included in the anthology The Book of Irish American Poetry, edited by Daniel Tobin. His collection of Balkan essays, Journey to Bosina will be published next year. Sandra Alcosser's Except by Nature received numerous awards, including the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. James Tate selected A Fish to Feed All Hunger to be the Associated Writing Programs Award Series winner in Poetry. Alcosser co-directs the graduate writing program at San Diego State University and is currently the Richard Hugo Professor at the University of Montana. Ned Balbo's first collection, Galileo's Banquet, was awarded the 1998 Towson University Prize for Literature in honor of a Maryland writer under 40. A recently completed manuscript, House of Song, has been a finalist for the 2000 Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry and for the 1999 Richard Wilbur Award. He has reviewed poetry for Antioch Review, Parabola, and Verse, and teaches at Loyola College in Baltimore. Tama Baldwin's poems have previously appeared in journals such as Poetry, Georgia Review, Ms. Magazine, Antioch Review, and the Ohio Review. Work is forthcoming from Spillway, Mid-America Poetry Review, Writer's Forum, and others. Adam Berlin's first novel Headlock was published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. His stories and poetry have appeared in numerous journals including Other Voices, The Santa Barbara Review, Aethlon, Puerto del Sol, The Bilingual Review, and The Northwestern Review. He has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes. John Breedlove co-edits Lx9. He is completing the Ph.D. in the University of Illinois at Chicago's Program for Writers. Frances Padorr Brent's poems have appeared recently in the Yale Review, the Denver Quarterly, and The New Yorker. Christopher Brisson was born and raised on Buzzards Bay in Massachusetts. He is a graduate of Tufts University and Sarah Lawrence College. A writer and actor, he divides his time between architectural history, literature, theater and film work. Richard Cecil's third collection of poems, In Search of the Great Dead, was published by Southern Illinois University Press in 1999. He teaches in the Honors College at Indiana University, Bloomington. Christopher Chambers lives in New Orleans where he teaches at Loyola University. His work has appeared recently or is forthcoming in Quarterly West, Quarter After Eight, Hayden's Ferry Review, Exquisite Corpse, and BOMB Magazine. Philip Dacey is the author of seven books of poems, most recently The Deathbed Playboy (Eastern Washington U. Press, 1999) and The Paramour of the Moving Air (Quarterly Review of Literature, 1999). His latest chapbook is What's Empty Weighs the Most: 24 Sonnets (Black Dirt Press, 1997). Alice Elman is coordinator of Women's Studies and Humanities at Suffolk County Community College, in Long Island, NY. "What We Were Afraid Of" is part of a work-in-progress, Memoirs of a Good Girl. She would like to thank the members of Dani Shapiro's writing workshop, Ellen Schutz, her sister colonists at The Millay Colony for the Arts, and Vermont Studio Center for their help. For a complete bibliography of the work of her late husband Richard Elman, poet, novelist, and journalist, see www.literati.net/Elman. Joan Frank's recent short fiction appears in Salmagundi, The Antioch Review, Bellingham Review, Ohio Review, Western Humanities Review, South Carolina Review, and similar journals; her literary nonfiction has appeared in The Iowa Review, the American Literary Review, American Book Review, and Confrontations. A MacDowell Colony fellow and Pushcart Prize nominee, she is in negotiations for a book of collected short stories called Boys Keep Being Born. Martin Galvin has had poems recently in Poetry, Flyway, Orion, New Republic, and Atlantic Monthly. Best American Poetry 1997 selected a previous poem also in Poetry. A chapbook will be published this summer by Bogg Publications, an American-British operation. Barry Goldensohn teaches at Skidmore College. He is the author of St. Venus Eve, Uncarving the Block, The Marrano, Dance Music, and (with his wife Lorrie) East Long Pond. Feebe Greco received her degree in creative writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Flyway, Spindrift, Owen Wister Review, Green Hills Literary Lantern, and The Sulfur River Literary Review. Jeffrey Greene is the author of American Spirituals (Northeastern UP, 1998), To the Left of the Worshiper (Alice James Books, 1991), and a chapbook Glimpses of the Invisible World in New Haven (1995). Janet Holmes teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Boise State University. These poems are from Humanophone, forthcoming from University of Notre Dame Press; she is also the author of The Green Tuxedo and The Physicist at the Mall. Brian Henry's first book of poetry, Astronaut, has appeared in the U.S. (Carnegie Mellon University Press), England (Arc Publications), and Slovenia in translation (Mondena Publishing). He is an editor of Verse and has published criticism in places such as the New York Times Book Review, The Yale Review, Boston Review, The Kenyon Review, and the Times Literary Supplement. He teaches at the University of Georgia. Roald Hoffman is a theoretical chemist as well as a writer of poems, plays and nonfiction. His latest poetry collection Memory Effects, was published by Calhoun Press in 1999. Karen I. Jaquish has an MFA from Vermont College. She teaches at Indiana-Purdue University—Fort Wayne. Recent publications are Denver Quarterly and Prairie Schooner. Richard Kenefic works for a small electronics company in Fort Wayne, Indiana. His poems have recently been published in New Orleans Review and are forthcoming in Yankee. John Kinsella's many books include Poems 1980-1994 and Visitants (1999), both from Blooodaxe/Dufours. He is co-editor of Stand, International Editor of The Kenyon Review, and a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. He has just been appointed Richard L. Thomas Professor of Creative Writing at Kenyon College for 2001. Sandra Kohler's first book of poems, The Country of Women, was published by Calyx Books in 1995. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Countermeasures, Flyway, The Gettysburg Review, and The New Republic. David Kroll's paintings were recently gathered for a retrospective exhibition at the Gallery of Contemporary Art, Lewis & Clark College. He lives in Chicago. Lorene Lamothe's poems have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, Oxford Magazine, Wisconsin Review and other journals. Richard Lyons teaches at Mississippi State University. He has published two collections of poems These Modern Nights (U Missouri P) and Hours of the Cardinal (U of South Carolina P). His recent work has appeared in The North American Review, The Gettysburg Review, and The Nebraska Review. James Magorian has had poems in the Atlantic Review, The Baltimore Review, California Quarterly, and the Wisconsin Review. His latest book of poetry is Haymarket Square (1998). Linda Mannheim has lived in Miami since 1999, but she's really a New Yorker. Her fiction has appeared in Nimrod, the Gettysburg Review, New York Stories, and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. She ís the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in prose writing. Michelle Margolis works as a freelance writer in Newport Beach, California. She has had poems published in The Carolina Quarterly, Cimarron Review, The Journal, Poet Lore, The Cape Rock, The Comstock Review and others. Diane Mehta is a New York- based poet and critic. Her poems and reviews have appeared in Agni, the Gettysburg Review, the Antioch Review, Bomb, and Open City. Gary Pacernick has published several poetry volumes and critical texts and edited the letters of David Ignatow. He has also had several plays performed on various stages. His interviews with 14 distinguished Jewish poets is forthcoming fromOhio State University Press. For many years he edited the poetry magazine Images. He is professor of English at Wright State University. Donald Platt's chapbook Leap Second at the Turn of the Millennium was published in the spring of 2000 by the Center for Book Arts. His first book, Fresh Peaches, Fireworks, & Guns, was published by Purdue University Press in 1994. He received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1996. His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in The Paris Review, The New Republic, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, Quarterly West, Nimrod, Shenandoah, and The Southern Review. He is an associate professor of English at Purdue University. Kevin Prufer's second book, The Finger Bone, will appear from Carnegie Mellon University Press next year. He's also editor of The New Young American Poets (Southern Illinois, 2000) and Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing and has poems in Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, Boulevard, and past issues of the Notre Dame Review. Michael J. Rosen is the author or editor of many books for both adults and children, including three collections of his poetry. He edits Mirth of a Nation, a biennial humor anthology and acts as literary advisor to the Thurber House in Columbus, Ohio. Jane Satterfield's First book, Shepherdess with an Automatic (Washington Writers' Publishing House, 2000) won the Towson University Prize for Literature. She reviews poetry for Antioch Review and teaches at Loyola College in Maryland. Jason Schossler is an Ohio native and works as a freelance writer in Bethlehem, PA. He is a graduate of the MA Program in Creative Writing at Temple University and has published fiction and non-fiction in Event and The MacGuffin and the Indiana Review. Scott Silsbe was born in Detroit. He completed his undergraduate studies at Western Michigan University in 2000 and will attend the University of Pittsburgh in 2001. He is a proud disciple of Rybicki Markus. R.D. Skillings's novella Obsidian is forthcoming from Arts End Press; his novel How Many Die will be published by the University Press of New England. He has been associated with the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown since 1969. J. David Stevens teaches creative writing at Seton Hall University. He would like to dedicate his stories in this issue to Tom, Gerrie, and Alex—his favorite Irish connection. Virgil Suarez is the author of over fifteen books of prose and poetry, most recently he has published a collection of poems titled In the Republic of Longing. He divides his time between Miami and Tallahassee where he lives with his family. Susan Terris's book Curved Space was published in 1998 (La Jolla Poets Press). In 1999, she had two books published: Eye of the Holocaust (Arctos Press) and Angels of Bataan (Pudding House Publications). Other recent books are: Killing in the Comfort Zone (Pudding House Publications) and Nell's Quilt (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). Her journal publications include The Antioch Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Missouri Review, and others. Dennis Trudell has published other short-short stories in the Ohio Review. His fiction has been included in the O.Henry Prize anthology. His poetry collection Fragments in Us: Recent & Earlier Poems was published by the University of Wisconsin Press. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin and teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. Brian Teare received a Stegner Fellowship for 2000-02. He received his MFA from Indiana University, where he held the Lilly Fellowship in Poetry. A former poetry editor for Indiana Review, his poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Crazyhorse, Crab Orchard Review, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, Quarterly West, and Third Coast, among other journals.