Issue 7

Contributors

Doris Betts ' s most recent novel, Souls Raised from the Dead , was published by Knopf in 1994. She has also published the novel Heading West, as well as several story collections, including Beasts of the Southern Wild and Other Stories . An award-winning professor at the University of North Carolina, she is active as an elder in the Presbyterian church. Her essay in this issue is based on an address she delivered on April 22 at the “Christian Writers and Their Communities” symposium at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Todd Dorman 's short stories have won two annual writing contests at California Polytechnic State University. After three years of songwriting and playing with a rock band, he recently began working toward an M.F.A. in fiction writing at Columbia University.

Ted L. Estess is a member of the English faculty and dean of the Honors College at the University of Houston. He has published a book on the writings of Elie Wiesel, as well as many scholarly articles dealing mainly with twentieth century writers.

Patricia Hanlon 's fiction has been published in literary journals and collections including Spectrum and the Northcote Anthology . She also authored a chapter in the book Seeing for Ourselves: Writing Teachers as Researchers .

Barbara Jordan 's first book of poems, Channel, won the Barnard New Women Poets Prize after its 1990 publication. Her poems have appeared i n The Atlantic , Agni Review , Paris Review , The Harvard Review and elsewhere. The recipient of a 1992 NEA grant, Jordan is an assistant professor of English at the University of Rochester in New York state.

Paul Mariani is one of America's leading poets and literary biographers. His most recent book, Lost Puritan: A Life of Robert Lowell , has recently been released by W.W. Norton & Company. He has just completed a fifth book of poems, Shadow Portraits , and is working on a biography of the poet Hart Crane. Mariani is Distinguished University Professor at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

Les Murray is often called Australia's best poet, according to The Economist , and “has established himself as one of the best poets in the English language,” according to the English magazine The Spectator . He has published fourteen books of poetry, five of prose, and is editor of an anthology of Australian religious poetry. His books include the verse-novel The Boys Who Stole the Funeral (whose madcap plot celebrates the Christian Eucharist and Aboriginal rites), Collected Poems , and The Paperbark Tree: Selected Prose .

Gunilla Norris 's Journeying in Place: Reflections from a Country Garden , excerpted in this issue, is her fourth book in a series on the sacredness of daily living. A psychotherapist, she has also written eleven children's books and one book of poems, Learning from the Angel .

Karen Halvorsen Schreck is currently working on a collection of short stories and completing her Ph.D. in English and Creative Writing at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is also collaborating with her husband, Gregory Halvorsen Schreck, on a series of projects which incorporate text and photographs.

Robert Siegel has published two books of poetry: In a Pig's Eye and The Beasts & the Elders. His poems have earned Poetry's Glatstein Memorial Prize, Prairie Schooner's Poetry Prize, and grants from Bread Loaf, the NEA, and the Ingram Merrill Foundation. Siegel teaches English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he directs the graduate creative writing program.

John Terpstra has published four books of poetry, including Forty Days and Forty Nights and Naked Trees . The poem in this issue will be part of a fifth book, The Church Not Made with Hands . His work has won national poetry awards and arts council grants in his native Canada. Terpstra wrote the poem in this issue to be read, with a pianist's accompaniment, at his church's Ascension Day service

Walter Wangerin 's first novel, The Book of the Dun Cow , won the National Book Award in 1980 and the New York Times named it the best children's book of the year. Wangerin has published two other novels— The Book of Sorrows and the new novel excerpted in this issue—as well as four collections of short stories, two books of poetry, thirteen children's books, and five books of practical theology. He is a professor of creative writing and writer-in-residence at Valparaiso University in Indiana.