EDITORIAL STAFF

(Left to right) Front row: Mary Flinn, Anna Journey, Gregory Donovan; Second row: James P. Mason, Sallie Lupton Jennings, Kristy Williford; Third row: Adam Fairbanks, Lenore Gay, Sharon Lutz; Back row: Mary Lee Allen, Kate Beles, Nicholas Reading, Megan Boles, Jeff Lodge. (Not pictured: Elizabeth Bickford, M. A. Keller, Jennifer Merrifield, Susan Settlemyre Williams)

Gregory Donovan, senior editor, has won many awards for his writing, including the Robert Penn Warren Award from New England Writers (judged by Rosanna Warren), as well as grants from the Virginia Commission for the Arts and fellowships from the Ucross Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Donovan’s poetry collection, Calling His Children Home, won the Devins Award from University of Missouri Press, and his work has been published and anthologized widely, recently appearing in Commonwealth: Contemporary Poetry of Virginia from the University of Virgina Press. Donovan also has been writer-in-residence for the Chautauqua Institution and the Glasgow Artists and Writers Workshop in Scotland, and this summer he will join the Viginia Commonwealth University program which takes visual artists and writers to Lima and Cuzco, Peru.

Mary Flinn, senior editor, has been the Director of New Virginia Review, Inc., since 1985 and is the editor, with George Garrett, of Elvis in Oz, New Writing from the Hollins College Creative Writing Program (1992). She also facilitated the editing of The Gazer Within by Larry Levis (2001), and she has served as the Poetry and Fiction editor of 64 Magazine and as editor of New Virginia Review. She has participated on editors’ panels, as a literature fellowship judge for numerous art councils, and as a review panelist for the National Endowment and the Virginia Commission for the Arts. She was the first recipient of the Theresa Pollack Award for Words presented by Richmond Magazine.

M. A. Keller, online editor, is a technologist and writing instructor for Virginia Commonwealth University’s Department of English. His poetry has appeared in The Southern Review, New Virginia Review, Runes, and other publications. He has presented in the computers and writing community on issues of technology and writing pedagogy, creative and informational hypertext, and New Media.

Jeff Lodge, online editor, is the author of the novel Where This Lake Is (1997) and fiction, poetry, and essays in GSU Review, Persona, Pleiades, Squib, and other publications. He coordinates the graduate programs in the Virginia Commonwealth University Department of English, where he teaches writing and literature. He also reviews fiction and nonfiction for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Anna Journey, associate editor, is a second-year MFA student in poetry at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is the recipient of the 2005 Sycamore Review Wabash Prize for Poetry, judged by Tony Hoagland, and the Catherine and Joan Byrne Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, judged by Ron Smith. Her poetry is forthcoming in Cimarron Review and Sycamore Review. Her critical work appears in Blackbird.

Susan Settlemyre Williams, associate literary editor and book review editor, holds an MFA in poetry from VCU. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in River City, Shenandoah, Barrow Street, The Cream City Review, DIAGRAM, storySouth, and other journals. She has also published book reviews, both in Review Revue and regularly in Blackbird. Her book-length manuscript Ashes in Midair has been a finalist in several recent competitions. She is retired from the practice of real estate law.

Kate Beles, intern, is a first-year MFA student in poetry at Virginia Commonwealth University. She completed her MA in English Studies at Western Washington University, and while there, served as the poetry editor of the Bellingham Review in 2004-05. She has published her poetry in Harpur Palate, Touchstone, and Jeopardy Magazine, among other literary journals.

Elizabeth Bickford, intern, is a first-year MA student in writing & rhetoric at Virginia Commonwealth University. She received her BA in English from the University of Richmond.

Adam Fairbanks, intern, is a first-year MFA student n poetry at Virginia Commonwealth University.

James P. Mason, intern, is a second-year MA student in writing & rhetoric at Virginia Commonwealth University. He received his BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Virginia in 1999.

Jennifer Merrifield, intern, is a second-year MFA student in poetry at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her poetry has appeared in Controlled Burn, Terminus, and elsewhere. New work is forthcoming in Sycamore Review, Minima, Redactions, Review Revue, and the anthology Wild Sweet Notes II: More West Virginia Poetry. Her interview with Allison Joseph is an upcoming Blackbird feature.

Nicholas Reading, intern, is a second-year MFA student in poetry at Virginia Commonwealth University. His poetry is forthcoming in New Orleans Review.

Kristy Williford, intern, will receive her BS in Mass Communication from Virginia Commonwealth University in December, 2006.

Mary Lee Allen, volunteer, is Secretary for the Center for Palladian Studies in America. She holds a Master of Humanities degree from the University of Richmond and an MA in Art History from Virginia Commonwealth University and is retired from the Assistant Directorship of Gunston Hall, a historic house museum. She studies poetry writing.

Megan Boles, volunteer, is a second-year MA student in writing & rhetoric at Virginia Commonwealth University. She received her BS in Mass Communications from VCU in 2003.

Lenore Gay, volunteer, holds an MS in Sociology and an MS in Rehabilitation Counseling from Virginia Commonwealth University. She is an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Rehabilitation Counseling at VCU. The Virginia Center for Creative Arts has awarded her two writing fellowships. In 2003 Beacon Press published her essay “Mistresses of Magic” in the anthology In Praise of Our Teachers. In 2005 her story “The Hobo” won first prize in Style Weekly’s annual fiction contest.

Sallie Lupton Jennings, volunteer, studied literature at Antioch College and has an MA in Psychology from New School for Social Research. Retired from vocational rehabilitation counseling and photography, she studied playwriting with William Packard at HB Studios in New York and won a one-act play contest with a staged reading at the Barksdale Theater in Richmond, Virginia, in 2002. She recently published her first poems in the Quaker journal, What Canst Thou Say?

Sharon Lutz, volunteer, is a senior at Virginia Commonwealth University. She will graduate in May 2006 with a BA in International Studies.