“A Fine Romance” is the title story of John Allman’s second collection of short stories, which he has recently completed. Another story in this collection, “Get Up,” was published in Blackbird Spring 2005. Lowcountry, Allman’s seventh collection of poetry, will be published in fall 2007 by New Directions. His first, Walking Four Ways In the Wind, was published in the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets (Princeton University Press 1979). Subsequent poetry books include Clio’s Children (1985), Scenarios For A Mixed Landscape (1986), Curve Away From Stillness (1989) and Loew’s Triboro (2004), all published by New Directions, who also published Allman’s first fiction collection, Descending Fire & Other Stories (1994). The Wallace Stevens Society Press published his Inhabited World: New & Selected Poems 1970-1995 in 1995. An extensive feature representing his poetry can be seen at Caught in the Net, a PK Poetry List site that comes out of Liverpool, England. His prose poems appeared recently in the online journal Innisfree and in the form of a chapbook, Attractions, in the online journal 2River. His prose poems about Croatia appeared recently in the print journal Sentence.

The recipient of a Pushcart Prize in Poetry as well as two fellowships in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Helen Bulls Prize from Poetry Northwest, Allman’s poems, stories, and essays have been widely published in such journals as The American Poetry Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The Antioch Review, The Massachusetts Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, North Dakota Quarterly, The Paris Review, Poetry, Poetry International, The Quarterly, and The Yale Review, as well as the online journals Full Circle, Blackbird, Slope and Enskyment. Allman holds an MA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University and is now retired from teaching. He lives in Katonah, New York, and spends his winters on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.