Notes on Contributors

John Barton’s fourth book of poems, Great Men, was published by Quarry Press in 1990. A fifth, Notes toward a Family Tree, also from Quarry, is forthcoming. Recent poems have appeared or will soon from Christopher Street, Queen’s Quarterly, NeWest Review, The Malahat Review, Dandelion, and Grain.

Dean Bonney has published stories in Ne West Review and University of Windsor Review as well as in The New Quarterly. He has written numerous reviews for Books in Canada, The Ottawa Citizen, and CBC Radio.

Catherine Burke has had poetry published in Whetstone, Grain, and The Alchemist. The poems appearing here are from a collection entitled My Trip to the Statue of Liberty.

Cyril Dabydeen is a dizzyingly prolific writer, working in a variety of genres. His latest books include Coast/and: Selected Poems and two novels, Dark Swirl and The Wizard Swami, both published by Peepal Tree Press in the UK. He is a man of many incarnations, amongst them poet laureate of Ottawa, and works from both a Canadian and a Caribbean sensibility.

Allison Grayhurst may be better known under the pseudonym Jocelyn  Kain. Her poems have appeared in The Antigonish Review, AlphaBeat Soup, and Carousel, to mention only a few. Having grown up in Montreal and Spain, she now lives in Toronto where she and another poet recently formed a publishing company called Edge Unlimited.

Susan Ioannou is director of Wordwrights Canada. She has published poetry and prose in a number of literary magazines, including The Malahat Review, Poetry Canada, The Antigonish Review, and Descant. A collection, Clarity Between Clouds: Poems of Midlife was published by Fiddlehead Poetry Books/Goose Lane Editions in 1992. A children’s book, Polly’s Punctuation Primer, is forthcoming from Hyperion Press.

Bruce Iserman is a teacher who writes fiction, plays, and poetry. His work has appeared in such journals as Prairie Fire, Cross-Canada Writer’s Magazine, CV II, Prism International, The Antigonish Review, The Fiddlehead, Grain, and The New Quarterly.

Don Kerr’s most recent book of poetry is In the City of Our Fathers (Coteau Books, 1992). The poems published here are from a sequence called Autodidactic.

Shel Krakofsky is a former journalist and English teacher who now practises medicine in London, Ontario. A collection entitled The Reversible Coat was recently published by Moonstone Press. His poetry and short fiction have appeared in a variety of literary magazines and anthologies, including the League of Canadian Poets anthology, Garden Varieties (Connorant Press, 1988) and The Naked Physician (Quarry Press, 1990).

Steve Owadis a Canadian poet currently living in Warsaw, Poland. Michael Penny has been publishing poetry for nearly twenty years in an impressive range of literary magazines across North America. Born in Australia in. 1952 and transported sometime later to Alberta, he now practises law in Edmonton. The Ampersand poems here seem to indicate a new poetic preoccupation that rivals his continuing fascination with Pellagra.

Lorinda Peterson is currently living in Port Bickerton, Nova Scotia, where she hopes to write full time for a year or so. Her work has appeared in The Fiddlehead, Canadian Women’s Studies and Quarry.

Andrew Pyper is presently finishing his master’s degree at McGill University. His first published story appeared in 11ze New Quarterly in spring, 1991. He writes, “I’m still writing, being published with what has become an encouraging frequency, and I am now entertaining the dream of one day publishing a collection of my scribbles.”

Oakland Ross – journalist, turned failed-novelist, turned crazed storyteller – wrote the piece appearing here on making the transition to fiction from non-fiction at our request. a request we made without considering the irony of our forcing him back into the very narrative pose he was trying to escape. In his cover letter, he half-apologized for his consequent stance: “When I write longish non-fiction pieces, I always think of a bit I remember from The Catcher in the Rye, about students giving talks in class and always being told not to digress. H.C. found that wrong. The digressions, he found, were usually the most interesting parts. So, I usually try to put in a few. And I’ve done so here. The one that comes almost right off the bat, about my aunt in Montreal, may strike you as being just too extraneous. It’s put there … for a certain effect. I’m a little uncertain about it myself.” He goes on to give us permission to axe it, but we, like Holden, find the digression here innately interesting; we even think we have a glimmer of the intended or, in keeping with Ross’s own insights, the intuited effect. For an Oakland Ross short story, see our Fall ’92 issue.

Veronica Ross is a Kitchener, Ontario, writer whose work has appeared in many literary magazines across Canada. She has had six books published. The latest one is Hannah B., a novel (Mercury Press, 1991).