Drunken Boat #11 - Masthead
Ravi Shankar, Founding Editor
Ravi Shankar is Associate Professor and Poet-in-Residence at Central Connecticut State University. He has published a book of poems, Instrumentality (Cherry Grove), named a finalist for the 2005 Connecticut Book Awards, and with Reb Livingston, a collaborative chapbook, Wanton Textiles (No Tell Books, 2006). He currently serves on the Advisory Council for the Connecticut Center for the Book, reviews poetry for the Contemporary Poetry Review and along with Tina Chang and Nathalie Handal, he edited Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from Asia, the Middle East & Beyond (W.W Norton & Co.). He is a recipient of a Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism (CCT) FY09 fellowship in Poetry, has received fellowships from Breadloaf, the MacDowell Colony, the Blue Mountain Center, serves as a commentator on National Public Radio and will have two chapbooks of poetry coming out in 2010, including a collaboration With late American artist Sol LeWitt. He is currently on the faculty of the Wesleyan Writers Conference, Stonecoast Writers Conference and the first international MFA program in Creative Writing at City University of Hong Kong and has performed his work around the world, including at the Asia Society, PEN India, St. Mark’s Poetry Project and the National Arts Club.
He has been interviewed by Jacket and UpRightDown. You can Listen / Read /
Argue / Reflect / Explore.
Leslie McGrath, Managing Editor
Leslie McGrath’s poems have appeared in Agni online,
Beloit Poetry Journal
Black Warrior Review, DIAGRAM, Poetry Ireland, and Alimentum, and have been anthologized both in the US and India.
You can read some of her work at From the Fishouse.
Her literary interviews have appeared in the Writers Chronicle and on public radio. She was the winner of the Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry (2004). Her chapbook, Toward Anguish, won the Philbrick Poetry Award and was published by The Providence Athenaeum (2007). McGrath was awarded a 2007 Artist Fellowship from the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism and has served on the judges’ panels for the Connecticut Book Award in Poetry and both the Maine and Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. McGrath received her MFA in literature and poetry from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Together with Ravi Shankar, McGrath has edited and published the posthumous poetry collection of Reetika Vazirani, Radha Says (Drunken Boat Press, 2010.) McGrath’s first collection of poetry, Opulent Hunger, Opulent Rage, won the 2009 Main Street Rag Poetry Book award. In her free time she bakes Matryoshka dolls from spelt flour and peddles them on eBay as a cure-all for gout.
Sarah Clark, Assistant Managing Editor
Sarah Clark has half of a Master’s degree in literature, and a BA in English and Global Art from Virginia Commonwealth University. She has worked with a number of literary publications, including Open City, The Paris Review, The Del Sol Review, and Blackbird. She is currently held over in New York and will finish her MA in modernist literature this fall at Queen Mary, University of London, or expat trying. Sarah edited this issue’s sound art folio.
Deborah Poe, Fiction Editor
Deborah Poe is assistant professor of English at Pace University. She is the author of the poetry collections Elements (Stockport Flats Press 2010) and Our Parenthetical Ontology (CustomWords 2008), as well as chapbooks from Furniture_Press and Stockport Flats Press. She has received several literary awards including three Pushcart Prize nominations for her poetry and the Thayer Fellowship of the Arts (2008) for her poetry and fiction.
Deborah’s writing is forthcoming or has appeared in Sidebrow, Ploughshares, Filter Literary Journal, Denver Quarterly, Copper Nickel, and other journals as well as in the anthologies Fingernails Across the Chalkboard: Poetry and Prose on HIV/AIDS From the Black Diaspora (Third World Press 2007), A Generation Defining Itself: In Our Own Words (MWE 2010), and A Sing Economy (Flim Forum 2008). Deborah is also co-editor of the short fiction anthology, provisionally entitled Between Worlds, with her colleague Ama Wattley.
Deborah was born a military brat in Del Rio, Texas and has lived throughout the United States and abroad. After her undergraduate studies, she worked in various positions including hostel clerk and bartender in Paris, environmental activist in Austin, a waitress in Taos, engineering assistant at Oregon Steel Mill in Portland, editor and international program manager in Seattle and educator in Washington and New York.
She has taught at Western Washington University, where she received her Master of Arts, and at Binghamton University, SUNY, where she received her doctoral degree. She has also taught as afternoon faculty at the Port Townsend Writer’s Workshop in Washington.
More information can be found at DeborahPoe.com, including upcoming readings and audio/video of past performances.
Stephanie King, Assistant Fiction Editor
Stephanie received her MFA in Writing & Literature from Bennington College, where she was the editor of the Bennington Review. Her novella Ghost Bite was the winner of the 2005-06 Quarterly West Novella Prize. She currently lives in Philadelphia and on the web at StephanieKing.net.
Holly Wendt, Assistant Fiction Editor
Holly Wendt is an English Instructor at Casper College in Casper, Wyoming. She teaches and has taught creative writing, composition, and medieval literature at Casper College, at Binghamton University, where she received her doctoral degree, and at Ohio University, where she received her Master of Arts degree.
Previously, she has served as the book review editor and as a reader for Quarter After Eight and as managing editor for Harpur Palate. Her short fiction has appeared in Gray’s Sporting Journal, and she is currently at work on several novel projects.
Heather Bryant, Nonfiction Editor
Heather Bryant is the Spring 2010 Emerging Writer-in-Residence at Randolph College. She won the 2009 Southeast Review Narrative Nonfiction Contest. A fellow of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and a Visiting Artist in writing at the American Academy in Rome in 2009, she has taught writing at the Youth Action Coalition and the Girl Scout Scholars Program. Her fiction and non-fiction have appeared or are forthcoming with The Southeast Review, Women Writers, and Seal Press.
Elizabeth Edmonson, Assistant Nonfiction Editor
Elizabeth Edmonson is a graduate of Wellesley College and received her MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars in 2007. She was awarded the Charlotte Paul Reiss ‘38 Memorial Prize for Creativity in Writing in 2004 and the Lucy Grealy Scholarship in 2005. She is finishing a memoir about growing up in a high-demand Christian community on Cape Cod, and hopes to find a publisher in the not-too-distant future. She lives in an apartment filled with sun and books twenty minutes outside of Boston.
Tamiko Beyer, Poetry Editor
Tamiko Beyer’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in little red leaves, diode, Sonora Review, OCHO, Copper Nickel, The Progressive, and other journals and anthologies. She has received several fellowships and grants, including a Kundiman fellowship, a grant from the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund, and a Chancellor’s Fellowship from Washington University in St. Louis where she is currently an M.F.A. candidate. She the poetry co-editor of Arch Literary Journal, and a founding member of Agent 409: a queer, multi-racial writing collective in New York City. Tamiko has lead creative writing workshop through the New York Writers’ Coalition where she worked with homeless LGBT youth and other communities whose voices have been historically silenced.
Michelle Brown, Assistant Poetry Editor
Michelle Chan Brown’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Missouri Review, Prism Review, Tampa Review, KNOCK, Gertrude, Broken Bridge Review, The Concher, Yemassee, and textsound. She earned her MFA at the University of Michigan, where she received the Michael R. Gutterman prize. She lives in Pomfret, Connecticut, where she is the Writer-in-Residence at Pomfret School.
Jane Collins, Contributing Editor
Jane Collins is the director of the Poets at Pace reading series at Pace University in Pleasantville, NY, where she teaches literature, film and creative writing. Her poems have appeared in Puerto Del Sol, The Greensboro Review, Confrontation, and other journals. Her interview of poet Rafael Campo appeared in The Seattle Review. She lives with her son Sam in a small town on the Hudson River.
Catherine Daly, Contributing Editor
Catherine Daly has run several reading series in LA, including one with the Electronic Literature Organization at the UCLA Hammer Museum. Her most recent book is Vauxhall (Shearsman, 2008). Among her forthcoming books is OOD: Object-Oriented Design (on Cracked Slab). She is publisher of i.e. Press. A former technical architect and software developer, she has taught creative writing, literature, critical theory, women’s studies, and history of mathematics. Her website can be found here.
Jean-Jacques Poucel, Contributing Editor at Large
Jean-Jacques Poucel is a poet, translator, and literary critic. Jean-Jacques Poucel teaches French language and literature at Yale University. He is the author Jacques Roubaud and the Invention of Memory (UNC Press, 2006) and has completed studies on several members of the Oulipo, some of which appear in Yale French Studies and Poetics Today, both of which he co-edited. He is a member of the collective Double Change. His is currently working on a study of French lyric poetry from the early nineties to the present.
Sina Queyras, Contributing Editor
Sina Queyras is the author of most recently of Unleashed, a collection of early writing from her blog, as well as Lemon Hound, which won a Lambda Literary Award, and Expressway, both from Coach House Books. She edited Open Field: 30 Contemporary Canadian Poets for Persea Books. When she is not writing, editing, or pawing the latest arts and literary news on Lemon hound, she likes to wear a cape. She now lives in Montreal and teaches creative writing at Concordia University.
Jill Di Donato, Fiction Reader
Jill Di Donato holds an MFA in fiction from Columbia University, where she has also taught writing. Her stories and essays have been published in various journals and magazines. She is an editor at the web journal Sex in the Public Square, and currently teaches writing at the City College of New York. She likes to read about sexual politics, complex morality, and darkly comic nuances of life.
Zachary Watterson, Fiction Reader
Zachary Watterson grew up in New York City and New Jersey and is the recipient of two work/study scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. An associate of the University of Michigan-based Prison Creative Arts Project, Watterson has been a visiting scholar at the Whiteley Center. He is the recipient of a residency from Jentel. He holds a BA in English from The Colorado College and an MFA in Fiction from the University of Washington. His recent literary writing appears in Salt River Review and River Styx. An essay about his prison work is forthcoming in the Massachusetts Review.
Judy Yu, Fiction Reader
Judy Yu has an MFA in writing fiction from Sarah Lawrence College. She has taught writing workshops to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth; domestic violence survivors; and at after school programs. Judy is a member of Agent 409, a multi-racial, queer writing group that has performed and presented workshops in New York City; Washington D.C.; Boston, MA; and Atlanta, GA. She has been a featured reader at the blogger reading and performance showcase, WYSIWYG, at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City in June 2006. She has two essays in Visible: A Femmethology, published in 2009 by Homofactus Press. Judy is currently working on a novel about the first Chinese woman on record to come to the United States who was put on display as a “living curio” in New York City.
Mary-Lou Brockett-Devine, Poetry & Fiction Reader
Mary-Lou Brockett-Devine holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College and currently teaches English at a Connecticut public high school. Her poems and short stories have been published in various literary magazines.
Ann Fine, Poetry Reader
Ann M. Fine’s book of poems, A Nest This Size, was published by Shearsman Books in November of 2009. Her poems have appeared in the journals Diner, Nocturnes Review of Literary Arts, Sonora Review, Cue, on-line at NoTell Motel, La Fovea, and The Drunken Boat, Moria, Action, Yes! and elsewhere. She is an MFA graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars in Vermont, where she studied poetry and architectural history and theory. She has been the director of two community writing centers, Casa Libre en la Solana in Tucson, Arizona (which she also co-founded), and InkTank World Headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio. She currently teaches college English and Poetry courses in Tucson, Az.
Daniel Lin, Poetry Reader
Daniel Lin is a NYC poet with a chapbook, TINDER, from Nightboat Books. He publishes Love Among the Ruins, a small press.
PF Potvin, Poetry Reader
PF Potvin teaches writing, serves as Writing Center faculty
consultant, and chairs the Writing Awards at the University of
Michigan-Dearborn. He is the author of The Attention Lesson by No Tell
Books (2006). His poetry and fiction have appeared in Boston Review,
Born Magazine, MiPOesias, Slope, Sleepingfish, Sentence, No Tell
Motel, An Introduction to the Prose Poem (Firewheel Editions) and
elsewhere. His manuscripts have been finalists for the New Issues
Press Competition and the Poetry Center Prize. He has received
residency scholarships from the Vermont Studio Center and Casa Libre
en la Solana. He has run marathons and ultramarathon races in Iceland,
Germany, New Zealand, and throughout the U.S.A. He currently resides
in Ann Arbor and can be spied at www.pfpotvin.com.
Christina Rizzo, Poetry Reader
Christina Rizzo was born in Hartford, Connecticut. She is a recent graduate of the MFA program at Bennington College. She also holds a BA in English and Philosophy from Clark University, and is a past winner of the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival’s Fresh Voices Competition and winner of the Prentiss Cheney Hoyt Poetry Award. Her poems have appeared in Caesura and Octaves Magazine. She works as a behavioral consultant in the field of applied behavior analysis serving children with developmental disabilities. She lives and writes in Vermont.
Hayden Saunier, Poetry Reader
Hayden Saunier’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming 5 A.M., Beloit Poetry Journal, Margie, Nimrod, and Rattle. Her first collection of poetry, Tips For Domestic Travel, was just published by Black Lawrence Press. Also an actress, her film and television credits include The Sixth Sense, Philadelphia Diary, The West Wing and Hack and her most recent voice-over adventure finds her as the voice of an aging, burnt-out oven for Ikea. More can be found at her website.
Kendra Tanacea, Poetry Reader
Kendra L. Tanacea, an attorney in San Francisco, holds an MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington College, where she completed her first poetry collection, If You’re Lucky Nobody Gets Hurt, a finalist for the Starrett Prize. Kendra’s poems have appeared in 5AM, Rattle, Pearl and other literary journals and she frequently performs public readings of her work. She has a BA in English from Wellesley College.
Jeff DeLargey, Nonfiction Reader
Jeff DeLargy is a software engineer and writer residing in Austin, Texas. He recently completed an MFA in nonfiction at Bennington College and his work has appeared in Sorin Oak. A long journey on foot—The Roads to Sata, for example—is his current passion.
Christina Saraceno, Nonfiction Reader
Christina Saraceno received her MFA degree from Columbia University. She lives in New York and is at work on a collection of short stories titled From the Same Place.
Brett Haymaker, Editorial Assistant
Brett Haymaker recently graduated from Drexel University. After a short stint in the American Midwest, he is reconnecting with old home-town friends. He is bent on pushing the boundaries of the local imagination and baking rye bread and croissants for his neighbors who were hit harder by the economic recession than his own family. He is currently applying to MFA programs across the nation. Brett rode in the Philly Naked Bike Ride wearing a home-made, cardboard “boat,” shamelessly promoting his love of loves, Drunken Boat. His works have been published or are forthcoming in Maya, The 33rd, Philadelphia’s Citypaper, and Willows Wept Review.
Joseph Pascale, Editorial Assistant
Joseph Patrick Pascale is a fiction writer from New Jersey. His work has been published or is forthcoming in South Jersey Underground, Thaumatrope, 365 Tomorrows, Tweet the Meat, PicFic, Off The Rocks, and Prism literary journal. He is currently studying toward his Master of Arts degree in English Literature at Centenary College where he teaches first year writing courses. More information is available at josephpascale.pyraliss.com.
Prakesha Mathur, Web Editorial Assistant
Prakesha Mathur is a Sociology and Psychology student from Virginia Commonwealth University. She has aspirations to conduct research in Psychology and, at some point, look at the presentation of information through technology with consideration from social and psychological influences.
Joe Ramelo, Social Media Intern
Joseph Ramelo didn’t really know what to do with himself after studying creative writing at San Francisco State University, so he dipped into politics by working as an elections clerk at City Hall. He also volunteered with Filipinos For Obama, Human Rights Campaign, and local organizations such as LitQuake and the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. While his website at www.frogslife.net undergoes an existential crisis, he is writing Baseball 2.0, a love story for which he fancies himself a gay version of Nicholas Sparks. In his spare time, Joe worships at the church of baseball. Go Giants!
Baby Hippo, Muse
is a large, mostly herbivorous mammal from sub-Saharan Africa, and one of only two extant species in the family Hippopotamidae. She can currently be found at the San Diego Zoo, where she enjoys eating, wading, mouth-birds, and reciting Rimbaud.