Contributors
Michele Battiste is the author of Uprising (2014) and Ink for an Odd Cartography (2009), both published by Black Lawrence Press. She is also the author of five chapbooks, the most recent of which is Left: Letters to Strangers (Grey Book Press, 2014). She is proud to say that this is her second appearance in Memorious, and other poems have appeared in American Poetry ReviewWomen’s Studies Quarterly, Rattle, and Mid-American Review, among othersShe lives in Colorado.
Eric Bockstael is a professor of interdisciplinary studies at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. His current research is on the interconnection of literature and society.
Geoffrey Brock’s poems have appeared in Poetry, Paris Review, 32 Poems, Southern Review, Blackbird, Hudson Review, and many other journals. His first book, Weighing Light, will be out in the fall, having recently received the New Criterion Poetry Prize. The recipient of a Stegner Fellowship and an NEA, he has also translated poetry by Cesare Pavese (Copper Canyon), nonfiction by Roberto Calasso (Knopf), and fiction by Umberto Eco (Harcourt).
Stacy Kidd completed an M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the University of Arkansas where she held the Walton Fellowship in Poetry. She is currently a Lecturer at Oklahoma State University and has published work in DMQ Review and Verse Daily.
Gail Mazur, the founding director of the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is author of seven books of poems, including Forbidden City (University of Chicago Press 2016) Figures in a Landscape (University of Chicago 2011); Zeppo’s First Wife: New and Selected Poems (Chicago 2005), winner of the 2006 Massachusetts Book Award, a finalist for the 2005 Los Angeles Times Book Prize and for the 2006 Paterson Poetry Prize; and They Can’t Take That Away from Me (2001), a finalist for the National Book Award. Mazur was a 2009 Fellow in Poetry at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Studies, a 1996 Fellow at the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College, and the 2005 recipient of the St. Botolph Club Foundation’s Distinguished Artist Award. For many years Distinguished Writer in Residence in Emerson College’s MFA program, Mazur’s also been visiting faculty at Boston University, University of Houton, and University of California, Irvine, and continues to teach poetry workshops in the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown’s summer program. Land’s End: New and Selected Poems is forthcoming from University of Chicago Press in 2019.
Robert McNamara’s first book of poetry, Second Messengers, was published by Wesleyan University Press, and he has published poems in the anthologies 15 Seattle Book and New Voices, as well as journals such as Agni, The Antioch Review, Field, The Gettysburg Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Missouri Review, Northwest Review, The Ohio Review, and Poetry Northwest. Three of his poems in a series called “Skeptical Psalms” were set to music by the composer Christopher Shainin and performed in Seattle’s Benaroya Hall. The Cat on the Stairs, a collection of his translations of Bengali poet Sarat Mukhopadhyay, is forthcoming from Eastern Washington University Press.
Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature, was born in Parral, Chile, under the name Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. In his lifetime, Neruda wrote nearly thirty volumes of poetry and prose, among them Veinte poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada (1924), Residencia en la tierra (1933), Canto General (1950), and Odas elementales (1954). Actively political, Neruda spent a number of years abroad as an honorary Consul and served in the Chilean Senate as a member of the Communist Party until his expulsion and exile in 1947. Neruda returned to Chile in 1952 when the political climate relaxed, maintaining his commitment to public service and devotion to poetry until his death of leukemia in Santiago, Chile, days after the Fascist coup of September 1973.
David Rivard’s books include Otherwise Elsewhere, Sugartown, and Wise Poison, winner of the James Laughlin Prize from the Academy of American Poets and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award.  The poems included here are from Standoff, forthcoming from Graywolf in 2016.  Among his awards are fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Civitella Ranieri, and the NEA, as well as the 2006 O. B. Hardison Jr. Poetry Prize from the Folger Shakespeare Library, in recognition of both his writing and teaching.  He directs the MFA in Writing program at the University of New Hampshire.
Tim Ross is a second-year fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. He received an MFA from the University of Alabama, where he worked as assistant poetry editor for Black Warrior Review. His poems have been published in The North American Review, FIELD, Gulf Coast, The Carolina Quarterly, Spinning Jenny, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Sycamore Review, Sonora Review, and others. He has also received two Academy of American Poets Prizes.
Peter Jay Shippy is the author of Thieves’ Latin (Univ. of Iowa Press). He has new work forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, The Canary, Denver Quarterly, Harvard Review, The Iowa Review, McSweeeney’s Web and Verse, among others. His abecedarian suite Alphaville is online at 42opus, eratio, Tarpaulin Sky and Word for / Word. He teaches at Emerson College.
Ricco Villanueva Siasoco has published fiction in The North American Review, Drunken Boat, and the anthologies Screaming Monkeys (Coffeehouse Press, 2004) and Take Out (Asian Am. Writers’ Workshop, 2001). He received his MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars, and teaches creative writing at Boston College. He is completing his first novel.
Jennifer Tseng is the author of two award-winning poetry books, The Man With My Face (AAWW 2005) and Red Flower, White Flower (Marick Press 2013). Her chapbook, Not so dear Jenny, featuring poems made with her Chinese father’s English letters, won the Bateau Press Boom Chapbook Contest and is forthcoming in 2017. Tseng’s debut novel, Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness (Europa Editions 2015) was a finalist for the New England Book Award, shortlisted for the PEN Robert Bingham Award for Debut Fiction, and has been featured in the Boston Globe, LA Times, Huffington Post, Elle, Financial Times, and elsewhere. She currently teaches for the Fine Arts Work Center’s summer program, FAWC’s online writing program 24PearlSt, and for the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing.
Brian Van Horne is a photographer and software developer living in Seattle, Washington.
Ted Weesner, Jr. has published work in Ploughshares, The Cincinnati Review, The Boston Globe, Scribner’s American Writer, National Public Radio, and elsewhere. The recipient of a PEN/New England Discovery Award and grants from the St. Botolph Club and Somerville Arts Council, he teaches writing at Tufts University. He lives in Somerville, MA, and is completing a novel.
Caroline Wilkinson has published poetry and prose in several literary journals, including can we have our ball back?, Diagram and Square Lake. She lives in upstate New York.
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