chelsea literary journal

Margo Berdeshevsky has won, in addition to the Chelsea Award for Poetry, Honorable Mention for the Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda award, an award from the Poetry Society of America, & the Borders Books/Honolulu Magazine Grand Prize for Fiction. She has exhibited her photography, collages, & "visual poems." Her poetry has appeared in various journals. She lives in Paris, France, & Hawaii.

Vivian Lawry is Appalachian by birth, a social psychologist by training, a college teacher & vice-president for academic affairs by profession, & a writer by passion. She has written an as-yet-unpublished murder mystery set in academe & is working on a sequel. Short fiction of hers with an Appalachian flavor recently appeared in Lullwater Review. She sails, gardens, travels, & collects cookbooks.

Derek Nikitas earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. His fiction has been published in The Ontario Review & Traffic East. He is currently working on a short-story collection & a novel.

Jack Pendarvis is from Bayou La Batre, Alabama. He wrote the theme song for the Cartoon Network's Popeye Show & the score for the feature film Dropping Out. An excerpt from his recently completed novel, The Big Whitewash, appears in the second volume of the anthology series Stories from the Blue Moon Cafe (MacAdam/Cage, 2003). "Our Spring Catalogue" will appear as part of his book The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure (MacAdam/Cage, 2005).

Alexander Penn is the pseudonym of Vladislav Todorov, who lives in Jersey City, New Jersey. "The Somersault" is an excerpt from his first novel, Vacuum. As Vladislav Todorov he has published various titles, some of them with SUNY Press, & he holds a Ph.D. in Russian studies from the University of Pennsylvania.

Erik Raschke graduated from the City College of New York Creative Writing Program in 2002, & lives with his dog in Manhattan & Oklahoma.

Julia Ridley Smith has published fiction in American Literary Review, Arts and Letters: A Journal of Contemporary Culture, The Carolina Quarterly, & the anthology A Very Southern Christmas (Algonquin, 2003). She lives in Roxobel, North Carolina.

Claudette Bass has had 1,000 publications in over 300 journals across the United States, Canada, Great Britain & Australia. She is the author of five unpublished novels, with no agent & no income from her work. The love & companionship of two dogs & five cats sustain her.

Robin Minietta has worked for 12 years as a reporter, writer, & producer for public television. She is currently working on a collection of essays. She lives in Hong Kong.

Elena Karina Byrne is a teacher, a visual artist, & a poetry moderator & consultant for the LA Times Festival of Books. She has recently published in The Yale Review, Verse, The Paris Review, The American Poetry Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, & Prairie Schooner. Her first book, The Flammable Bird, is available from Zoo Press.

Chris Crittenden lives in Maine. Although he has been writing poetry for only two years, he has had work published in or accepted by Blue Unicorn, Flyway, Atlanta Review, & The Cafe Review, among others. He teaches ethics part-time at the university of Maine.

Michelle Detorie lives in Austin, Texas. This is her first publication.

Malcolm Farley earned an M.A. in English from Harvard University. Poems from his first book manuscript, entitled Common Cold, have appeared in The Antioch Review, The American Scholar, The Denver Quarterly, The Harvard Review, Indiana Review, & The New Republic, among other publications.

Nicole Johnson is interested in the connections between poetry & the visual arts. Her work has appeared in The William and Mary Review, The Crab Orchard Review, Pearl Magazine & other journals.

Mia Leonin's book of poems, Braid, was published by Anhinga Press. She has appeared in many literary journals, including New Letters, Indiana Review, Prairie Schooner, Kalliope, Witness, & River Styx.

Gerard Malanga is the author of books of photography & a dozen books of poetry spanning a 37-year publishing career. His latest volume is No Respect: New & Selected Poems 1964-2000.

Ander Monson's novel-in-stories, Other Electricities, will be published by Sarabande Books in 2005. His poetry collection, Elegies for Descent and Dreams of Weather, won the Editor's Prize in the 2003 Tupelo Press First Book contest & is forthcoming.

G. Michael Palmer lives with his wife & three dogs a short walk from the Trout River in Jacksonville, Florida. Named after a man, not a fish, the Trout River is full of bream, blue crabs, & bass, but, alas, nary a rainbow or speckled trout is to be found there. For his daily bread, he sings folksongs, reads poems, & teaches classics, all to kids who would rather be fishing.

Jillian Weise's work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Can We Have Our Ball Back, Puerto del Sol, & other places. She is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets award.

Leopoldo Attolico, born & living in Rome, Italy, has published essays & poems in literary journals, & in five collections of burlesque/ironic/autoironic verses, which have won several awards.

Michelle Auerbach lives in Berthoud, Colorado. She has published in journals, on web sites, & in anthologies; written stories, poems, novels, & pieces of long projective prose; & done translations from a few languages considered dead.

Caius Valerius Catullus, from Sirmione, Verona, on Lake Garda, is an ancient fellow citizen of the editor of Chelsea.

Luis Cernuda ( 1902-1963) was one of the leading Spanish poets of the 20th century. His Selected Poems, translated by Reginald Gibbons, is available from Sheep Meadow Press. Written in Water, his collected prose poems, from which the selection here is taken, will be published later this year by City Lights.

Emanuel di Pasquale, teacher, translator, & poet, is the Poetry Editor of this journal.

Guy Goffette is the author of six books of poems. Un manteau de fortune, from which these poems are taken, was published by Gallimard in 2001 & received the Grand Prix de Poesie de l' Academie Francaise. Poems of his, in Marilyn Hacker's translations, have appeared in New Letters, The New England Review, The Paris Review, PN Review, & TriQuarterly.

Marilyn Hacker is the author of nine books of poems, most recently Desesperanto (W.W. Norton, 2003), & of three recent books of translations: Claire Malroux's A Long Gone Sun (Sheep Meadow Press, 2000), Here There Was Once a Country by Venus Khoury-Ghata (Oberlin, 2001), & She Says, also by Venus Khoury-Ghata (Graywolf, 2003). She lives in New York & Paris, France.

Oscar Hahn was born in Chile in 1936. Two English translations of his poetry have appeared, the more recent of which is Stolen Verses & Other Poems (Northwestern, 2000).

James Hoggard, poet, novelist, essayist, & translator, has published 16 books, the most recent of which are Patterns of Illusion: Stories and a Novella (2002), Medea in Taos and Other Poems (2000), & Stolen Verses and Other Poems by Oscar Hahn: Translations (2000). A former NEA Fellow, he has won numerous awards. He teaches at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas.

Stephen Kessler's other recent translations include Save Twilight, selected poems of Julio Cortazar (City Lights); Aphorisms, prose by Cesar Vallejo (Green Integer); Machu Picchu by Pablo Neruda (Bulfinch); & a major contribution to the Selected Poems of Jorge Luis Barges (Penguin).

Mario Moroni, a contemporary Etruscan from Tarquinia, teaches at Colby College in Maine. He has published six books of poems, of which the most recent is Le terre di Icaro (Book Editore, 2001), which contains the originals of the poems published here. He has also published one volume of short stories & three of literary criticism.

Lawrence Rogers teaches Japanese language & literature at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. His most recent book is Tokyo Stories: A Literary Stroll (University of California Press, 2002), for which he won the 2004 Translation Award from the Donald Keene Center at Columbia University .

Hiroko Takenishi, born in Hiroshima in 1929, is a well-known essayist, literary critic, short-story writer & novelist, & the recipient of many literary awards in Japan. Much of her fiction is based on her experiences as a survivor of the atomic bombing of her native city. "Camellia Hall" was published in the literary journal Gunzo in 1998.

Heather Duerre Humann teaches in the Department of English at the University of Alabama, where she is working on a Ph.D. Her writing appears, or is forthcoming, in Indiana Review, storySouth, Southern Historian, & Obsidian III.

Craig Morgan Teicher has poems appearing in The Paris Review, American Letters & Commentary, & Pleiades, and was a runner-up for this year's Poetry Society of America New York Chapbook Fellowship.

Penelope Cray earned her MFA from the New School University in 2004. Her poems & reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Columbia: A Journal of Literature & Art, good foot, The Chimera Review, The Green Tricycle, & Pleiades. She does freelance proofreading for Duke University Press & will teach at the University of Rhode Island this fall.

Sasha West's poems and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in The Canary, Campbell Corner, & Third Coast

John Taylor's fifth collection of short stories, Now the Summer Came to Pass, which won the Three Oaks Fiction Prize, will be published later this year by Story Line Press. Also this year, Xenos Press will publish his The Apocalypse Tapestries, a volume combining verse & prose, a generous sampling of which originally appeared in Chelsea. An American writer who has lived in France since 1977, Taylor has also recently published Paths to Contemporary French Literature (Transaction).


Staff Contents Contributors Chelsea Award for Poetry Short Stories Essays Poetry Translations Book Reviews		Contributors \| #76 The Chelsea Award for Poetry Margo Berdeshevsky has won, in addition to the Chelsea Award for Poetry, Honorable Mention for the Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda award, an award from the Poetry Society of America, & the Borders Books/Honolulu Magazine Grand Prize for Fiction. She has exhibited her photography, collages, & "visual poems." Her poetry has appeared in various journals. She lives in Paris, France, & Hawaii. Short Stories Vivian Lawry is Appalachian by birth, a social psychologist by training, a college teacher & vice-president for academic affairs by profession, & a writer by passion. She has written an as-yet-unpublished murder mystery set in academe & is working on a sequel. Short fiction of hers with an Appalachian flavor recently appeared in Lullwater Review. She sails, gardens, travels, & collects cookbooks. Derek Nikitas earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. His fiction has been published in The Ontario Review & Traffic East. He is currently working on a short-story collection & a novel. Jack Pendarvis is from Bayou La Batre, Alabama. He wrote the theme song for the Cartoon Network's Popeye Show & the score for the feature film Dropping Out. An excerpt from his recently completed novel, The Big Whitewash, appears in the second volume of the anthology series Stories from the Blue Moon Cafe (MacAdam/Cage, 2003). "Our Spring Catalogue" will appear as part of his book The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure (MacAdam/Cage, 2005). Alexander Penn is the pseudonym of Vladislav Todorov, who lives in Jersey City, New Jersey. "The Somersault" is an excerpt from his first novel, Vacuum. As Vladislav Todorov he has published various titles, some of them with SUNY Press, & he holds a Ph.D. in Russian studies from the University of Pennsylvania. Erik Raschke graduated from the City College of New York Creative Writing Program in 2002, & lives with his dog in Manhattan & Oklahoma. Julia Ridley Smith has published fiction in American Literary Review, Arts and Letters: A Journal of Contemporary Culture, The Carolina Quarterly, & the anthology A Very Southern Christmas (Algonquin, 2003). She lives in Roxobel, North Carolina. Essays Claudette Bass has had 1,000 publications in over 300 journals across the United States, Canada, Great Britain & Australia. She is the author of five unpublished novels, with no agent & no income from her work. The love & companionship of two dogs & five cats sustain her. Robin Minietta has worked for 12 years as a reporter, writer, & producer for public television. She is currently working on a collection of essays. She lives in Hong Kong. Poetry Elena Karina Byrne is a teacher, a visual artist, & a poetry moderator & consultant for the LA Times Festival of Books. She has recently published in The Yale Review, Verse, The Paris Review, The American Poetry Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, & Prairie Schooner. Her first book, The Flammable Bird, is available from Zoo Press. Chris Crittenden lives in Maine. Although he has been writing poetry for only two years, he has had work published in or accepted by Blue Unicorn, Flyway, Atlanta Review, & The Cafe Review, among others. He teaches ethics part-time at the university of Maine. Michelle Detorie lives in Austin, Texas. This is her first publication. Malcolm Farley earned an M.A. in English from Harvard University. Poems from his first book manuscript, entitled Common Cold, have appeared in The Antioch Review, The American Scholar, The Denver Quarterly, The Harvard Review, Indiana Review, & The New Republic, among other publications. Nicole Johnson is interested in the connections between poetry & the visual arts. Her work has appeared in The William and Mary Review, The Crab Orchard Review, Pearl Magazine & other journals. Mia Leonin's book of poems, Braid, was published by Anhinga Press. She has appeared in many literary journals, including New Letters, Indiana Review, Prairie Schooner, Kalliope, Witness, & River Styx. Gerard Malanga is the author of books of photography & a dozen books of poetry spanning a 37-year publishing career. His latest volume is No Respect: New & Selected Poems 1964-2000. Ander Monson's novel-in-stories, Other Electricities, will be published by Sarabande Books in 2005. His poetry collection, Elegies for Descent and Dreams of Weather, won the Editor's Prize in the 2003 Tupelo Press First Book contest & is forthcoming. G. Michael Palmer lives with his wife & three dogs a short walk from the Trout River in Jacksonville, Florida. Named after a man, not a fish, the Trout River is full of bream, blue crabs, & bass, but, alas, nary a rainbow or speckled trout is to be found there. For his daily bread, he sings folksongs, reads poems, & teaches classics, all to kids who would rather be fishing. Jillian Weise's work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Can We Have Our Ball Back, Puerto del Sol, & other places. She is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets award. Translations Leopoldo Attolico, born & living in Rome, Italy, has published essays & poems in literary journals, & in five collections of burlesque/ironic/autoironic verses, which have won several awards. Michelle Auerbach lives in Berthoud, Colorado. She has published in journals, on web sites, & in anthologies; written stories, poems, novels, & pieces of long projective prose; & done translations from a few languages considered dead. Caius Valerius Catullus, from Sirmione, Verona, on Lake Garda, is an ancient fellow citizen of the editor of Chelsea. Luis Cernuda ( 1902-1963) was one of the leading Spanish poets of the 20th century. His Selected Poems, translated by Reginald Gibbons, is available from Sheep Meadow Press. Written in Water, his collected prose poems, from which the selection here is taken, will be published later this year by City Lights. Emanuel di Pasquale, teacher, translator, & poet, is the Poetry Editor of this journal. Guy Goffette is the author of six books of poems. Un manteau de fortune, from which these poems are taken, was published by Gallimard in 2001 & received the Grand Prix de Poesie de l' Academie Francaise. Poems of his, in Marilyn Hacker's translations, have appeared in New Letters, The New England Review, The Paris Review, PN Review, & TriQuarterly. Marilyn Hacker is the author of nine books of poems, most recently Desesperanto (W.W. Norton, 2003), & of three recent books of translations: Claire Malroux's A Long Gone Sun (Sheep Meadow Press, 2000), Here There Was Once a Country by Venus Khoury-Ghata (Oberlin, 2001), & She Says, also by Venus Khoury-Ghata (Graywolf, 2003). She lives in New York & Paris, France. Oscar Hahn was born in Chile in 1936. Two English translations of his poetry have appeared, the more recent of which is Stolen Verses & Other Poems (Northwestern, 2000). James Hoggard, poet, novelist, essayist, & translator, has published 16 books, the most recent of which are Patterns of Illusion: Stories and a Novella (2002), Medea in Taos and Other Poems (2000), & Stolen Verses and Other Poems by Oscar Hahn: Translations (2000). A former NEA Fellow, he has won numerous awards. He teaches at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas. Stephen Kessler's other recent translations include Save Twilight, selected poems of Julio Cortazar (City Lights); Aphorisms, prose by Cesar Vallejo (Green Integer); Machu Picchu by Pablo Neruda (Bulfinch); & a major contribution to the Selected Poems of Jorge Luis Barges (Penguin). Mario Moroni, a contemporary Etruscan from Tarquinia, teaches at Colby College in Maine. He has published six books of poems, of which the most recent is Le terre di Icaro (Book Editore, 2001), which contains the originals of the poems published here. He has also published one volume of short stories & three of literary criticism. Lawrence Rogers teaches Japanese language & literature at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. His most recent book is Tokyo Stories: A Literary Stroll (University of California Press, 2002), for which he won the 2004 Translation Award from the Donald Keene Center at Columbia University . Hiroko Takenishi, born in Hiroshima in 1929, is a well-known essayist, literary critic, short-story writer & novelist, & the recipient of many literary awards in Japan. Much of her fiction is based on her experiences as a survivor of the atomic bombing of her native city. "Camellia Hall" was published in the literary journal Gunzo in 1998. Book Reviews Heather Duerre Humann teaches in the Department of English at the University of Alabama, where she is working on a Ph.D. Her writing appears, or is forthcoming, in Indiana Review, storySouth, Southern Historian, & Obsidian III. Craig Morgan Teicher has poems appearing in The Paris Review, American Letters & Commentary, & Pleiades, and was a runner-up for this year's Poetry Society of America New York Chapbook Fellowship. Penelope Cray earned her MFA from the New School University in 2004. Her poems & reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Columbia: A Journal of Literature & Art, good foot, The Chimera Review, The Green Tricycle, & Pleiades. She does freelance proofreading for Duke University Press & will teach at the University of Rhode Island this fall. Sasha West's poems and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in The Canary, Campbell Corner, & Third Coast John Taylor's fifth collection of short stories, Now the Summer Came to Pass, which won the Three Oaks Fiction Prize, will be published later this year by Story Line Press. Also this year, Xenos Press will publish his The Apocalypse Tapestries, a volume combining verse & prose, a generous sampling of which originally appeared in Chelsea. An American writer who has lived in France since 1977, Taylor has also recently published Paths to Contemporary French Literature (Transaction).