Joel Agee is the author of TWELVE YEARS: AN AMERICAN BOYHOOD IN EAST GERMANY (University of Chicago Press, p.b., 2000), a memoir of his life behind the Iron Curtain from ages eight to twenty. His essays and stories have appeared in publications such as Harper’s, The New Yorker, and The Best American Essays. He is also known as a translator of German literary works, among them Rilke’s LETTERS ON CÉZANNE (Fromm International Publishing Corporation, 1985) and Elias Canetti’s THE SECRET HEART OF THE CLOCK (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1989). He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1999 he won the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize for his translation of Heinrich von Kleist’s PENTHESILEA (HarperCollins, 2000; see “Passion” Archipelago, Vol. 3, No. 1.). Joel Agee’s stories “Killing a Turtle” and “German Lessons” appeared in Archipelago, Vol. 7, No. 1, and “The Storm” appeared in Vol. 4, No. 4. “Chao Khun” is from his memoir-novel IN THE HOUSE OF MY FEAR (Washington, D.C.: Shoemaker & Hoard, Publishers), to be published in November.
Elizabeth Alexander grew up in Dallas and (after a long sojourn in New England) lives in Seattle. She is a freelance writer and editor, working mostly in educational publishing. Her creative work has appeared or is forthcoming in several publications named after animals (Snow Monkey, Monkeybicycle, and The Raven Chronicles) as well as Gargoyle, Eating Our Hearts Out (Lesléa Newman, ed.), Pindeldyboz (web), The Circuit Rider, and a few other places.
Steven Barfield is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Westminster, London. He is also director of London theatre studies modules at the University and deputy director of the U.K. Network for Modern Fiction Studies.
Attilio Bertolucci (Parma 1911 - Rome 2000) is regarded as one of Italy’s greatest twentieth-century poets. The author of several volumes of poetry, he was also an influential editor and translator. Often grouped with Mario Luzi and Vittorio Sereni as a late ‘hermetic’ poet, Bertolucci wrote in a lyrical, diaristic manner that is impeccably honest and altogether inimitable. The poems in this issue are from Viaggio d’inverno / Winter Journey (Milan: Garzanti Libri S.p.A., 1971), which is often cited as Bertolucci’s most innovative work. Composed over a twenty-year period, the volume enacts on a syntactic level the poet’s anxiety as he searches for emotional constancy amidst the detritus and detail of a gradually estranged world. Among Bertolucci’s many honors was the 1991 Librex-Guggenheim ‘Eugenio Montale’ prize, considered the highest award in Italian poetry. Nicholas Benson’s poetry and translations have appeared in Downtown Brooklyn, New England Review, Pequod, Poetry International, and other journals.
Charles J. Bussey, received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Kentucky in 1975 and has taught at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky since 1970. His interest in social justice movements, always strong, was particularly stimulated by Leslie Dunbar, retired executive director of The Field Foundation in New York City and Dr. Julius B. Richmond, founding director of Head Start under President Lyndon B. Johnson and Surgeon General/Assistant Secretary of Health under President Jimmy Carter. Dr. Bussey served as a Senior Fulbright Professor at Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark, in 1993, and held a similar position at Agder University College in Kristiansand, Norway, 2003-2004. While in that latter position, he wrote “A Postcard from Norway: How America Looks from Here,” for WHERE WE STAND: VOICES OF SOUTHERN DISSENT, with a Foreword by President Jimmy Carter (Montgomery, Ala.: NewSouth Books , July 2004).
John Haines is the author of fourteen books of poetry and five books of essays. His honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Academy of American Poets; the Alaska Governor’s Board for Excellence in the Arts; the Western States Arts Federation Lifetime Achievement Award; the Lenore Marshall/Nation Award; the Poet’s Prize; and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. He was Resident Poet most recently at the University of Alaska/Fairbanks, for the Honors Program. John Haines lives in Missoula, Montana.
Ruth Massey has traveled widely in Africa, Asia, and Latin America as a writer and photographer for the United Nations. Her work has appeared in The Nation, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, Le Monde, Le Figaro, and Le Nouvel Observateur.
Joan Schatzman was born on the Southside of Chicago, in 1951. Her education: MBA dropout 1989; art student, local community college 1999-present. She owned the Joan Schatzman Construction Company (1989 to 2002), and is a regular volunteer on building trips to Haiti, Guatemala (2), and Nicaragua (2003-present). Her politics: Commonwealth for the common good. She is the mother of a son, Jack, born in 1985.
John Moncure Wetterau was born in Greenwich Village and raised, mostly, in Woodstock, N.Y. He studied at Hamilton College, the University of Hawaii, and in the Vermont College MFA program. He has served in the U.S. Air Force, married twice, and worked in Hawaii and Maine (software design and programming, cab driving, construction, waiting on tables, etc.). He is presently writing fiction and poetry full time. Publications include two novels (JOE BURKE’S LAST STAND; O+F) and two collections of poetry (TO KEEP YOU COMPANY; THE BOOK WITH THE YELLOW COVER). His story “Waiting for Happiness” appeared in Archipelago, Vol. 8, No. 1.
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Katherine McNamara, editor and publisher of Archipelago, has received the Columbus School for Girls Endowment for a residency at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, where she will work on a book of memoirs of three notable persons, now dead, from Alaska and elsewhere. She is the author of NARROW ROAD TO THE DEEP NORTH, A JOURNEY INTO THE INTERIOR OF ALASKA (San Francisco: Mercury House, 2001). Katherine McNamara has also been asked to join the board of the U.K. Network for Modern Fiction Studies.