contributors

As an NDSU graduate student in English, Kathy Freise (An introduction, p. 12) wrote her master's thesis on memory in the novels of Larry Woiwode, which, along with her myriad talents, is why she was recruited to introduce his essay on p. 13. She recently completed a doctoral program in American Studies at the University of New Mexico, continues to live in Albuquerque, teaches an honors course, and works at a small Web development company that also sells area rugs. She may be reached at kathy@netchannel.com.

Wayne Gudmundson (An homage, p. 16) teaches courses in beginning and advanced photography. He coordinates the Prairie Documents Photographic Book Series and is acting director of New Rivers Press at Moorhead. His photographs have appeared in seven books, numerous exhibitions and in several permanent collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His cat, Bob, weighs 15 pounds, snores and has failing eyesight.

Cindy Nichols (Poetry, pp. 44-47) grew up in southern California (which, she says, "might be a 'credential' for being nuts"), and has an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writer's Workshop. Her poems have appeared in a variety of journals, including The Kenyon Review, Mid-American Review, and Cimarron Review, and she's the featured writer in the current Carbon World, NDSU's English Club journal. She's been experimenting intensively with mixed genres and new media, or electronic poetry, but says she still loves "regular old paper writing."

Sally Stevens' (D'oh! Re Mi, pp. 20-29) first published photography appears in this magazine. As a member of the "Simpson's" chorus, she took the pictures at the scoring session for the 300th episode of the popular television show. Stevens has an impressive musical career, doing session work, primarily television, commercials and records during the '70s, more film and television in the '80s through the present. She is a lifelong resident of Los Angeles, and has been to North Dakota to visit her grandparents. Her mother was born in Fargo. She and her brother have always wanted to return and walk down the street.

Larry Woiwode's ( letter from an imaginary friend, pp. 13-17) fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, Harpers, Paris Review, Partisan Review, and a variety of other publications, including two dozen stories in The New Yorker. His books include What I'm Going To Do, I Think, Beyond the Bedroom Wall (finalist for the National Book Award and Book Critics' Circle Award; Association of American Publishers Distinguished Book of Five Years for presentation to White House Library), Indian Affairs, Silent Passengers, and the memoir What I Think I Did, his sixth book to be named a "notable book of the year" by the New York Times Book Review.

He is a Guggenheim Fellow, has conducted writing seminars across the U.S., in England and Europe, and for four years was director of the writing program at the State University of New York, Binghamton. In 1995 he received the Award of Merit Medal from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, presented once every six years, for "distinction in the art of the short story." He has received the Aga Khan Prize, the William Faulkner Foundation Award, the John Dos Passos Prize, the Lanan Foundation Literary Fellowship, among others, and in 1995, by a joint resolution of the state House and Legislature, he was named poet laureate of North Dakota. He lives in rural North Dakota where, with his wife and family, he raises registered quarterhorses.