EDITORIAL STAFF

Blackbird joins individuals from its publishing partners—Virginia Commonwealth University and New Virginia Review, Inc.—with members of the Richmond, Virginia, and Doha, Qatar communities. To the best of our knowledge, this is the only venture at VCU that joins together local and international faculty editors, undergraduate students, MA and MFA students, PhD students, alumni and community volunteers, and a regional non-profit.

In the last three years, Blackbird has benefited from the expertise of graduate assistants in the VCU doctoral program in Media, Art, and Text (MATX). We are grateful for the evolving partnership between the journal and MATX. MATX TAs serve as Assistant Production Editors, but have the opportunity to advance to Associate Production Editors with increased responsibilities. This year's Associate Production Editors are Meghan Rosatelli and Melinda White.

Each year, Blackbird awards the coveted associate editor position to a second-year VCU graduate student; to qualify, the student must already have been awarded a graduate fellowship and must have worked as an intern for the journal. The associate editor staffs the Blackbird office and is at the center of all the journal’s activities, working to coordinate communication between literary and production editors, as well as between the editors and contributors. The position is held this year by Matt Baker.

Gregory Donovan, senior editor, is a faculty member in Virginia Commonwealth University's creative writing program. He 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. His work has been published and anthologized widely, recently appearing in Commonwealth: Contemporary Poetry of Virginia from the University of Virginia Press. Donovan also has been writer-in-residence for the Chautauqua Institution, the VCU Glasgow Artists and Writers Workshop in Scotland, and currently for Literary and Visual Arts in the Highlands, a VCU summer program which takes writers and visual artists 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 (University of Virginia Press, 1992). She facilitated the editing of The Gazer Within by Larry Levis (University of Michigan Press, 2001), and has served as the poetry and fiction editor of 64 Magazine and as editor of New Virginia Review. Flinn 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, senior online editor, is a technologist and writing instructor for Virginia Commonwealth University’s Department of English. He took an MFA in creative writing from VCU in 1989. His poetry has appeared in The Southern Review, New Virginia Review, Runes, and other publications. He has taught advanced writing, poetry workshops, and courses in hypertext and new media writing. His work currently centers on electronic writing and electronic publication, issues of materiality and multimodal writing, and the question of defining, supporting, and teaching online publishing and new media.

Patrick Scott Vickers, online editor, is a technologist and instructor for Virginia Commonwealth University's Engish Department and a PhD student in the Media, Art, and Text program. He graduated in spring 2006 with an MFA in poetry from the University of Alabama. His short story “The Featherless Chicken” was published in the online journal Strange Horizons and his poems have appeared in Mid-American Review and Touchstone. Most recently, his Flash art has appeared in the online journal Failbetter.

Matthew Baker, associate editor, is a second-year MFA student in fiction at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is responsible for all correspondence with contributors and submitters and tracks all content for the journal into publication. Before serving as associate editor, Baker worked as a Blackbird intern and edited the Blackbird Style Manual. He received his BA in history from Mary Washington College.

Susan Settlemyre Williams, book review editor and associate literary editor, is the author of a chapbook, Possession (Finishing Line, 2007), and the collection of poems Ashes in Midair, which was selected by Yusef Komunyakaa as the winner of the 2007 Many Mountains Moving Press poetry contest and published in 2008. Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in the Mississippi Review, Shenandoah, 42opus, Sycamore Review, the Marlboro Review, and other journals. One of her poems won the 2006 Diner poetry contest and was selected for Best New Poets 2006 (Samovar, 2006). She is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. Multiple reviews by Williams appear in this issue of Blackbird.

Jeff Lodge, founding and contributing editor, is the author of Where This Lake Is (White Pines Press, 1997) and, with John A. Brown, A Prayer for Foxes and Hens (forthcoming). He has published fiction, poetry, and essays in GSU Review, Persona, Pleiades, Squib, and other publications, and has written dozens of book reviews for the Richmond Times-Dispatch and Style Weekly. He is an assistant professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Doha, Qatar, where he teaches writing and literature. Lodge provided materials from the exhibition catalog Self-Representation in the Arabian Gulf for a Gallery suite of the same name in this issue of Blackbird.

Randy Marshall, associate literary editor, earned his MFA in poetry from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1997. His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in the Richmond Arts Magazine, GSU Review, Cream City Review and Blackbird. Marshall, with Mary Flinn, Andrew Miller and John Venable, edited Larry Levis: The Gazer Within, which was published in 2001 by the University of Michigan Press as part of its Poets on Poetry series. Since 1999 he has been a featured contributor to Platform, a broadside published by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and New Virginia Review to promote Poetic Principles (an ongoing reading/lecture series that has received support from the National Endowment for the Humanities). Selections of his poetry were finalists in the Frank O’Hara Chapbook Competitions for 2004 and 2005. Multiple reviews by Marhsall appear in this issue of Blackbird

Meghan Rosatelli, associate production editor and audio wrangler, is currently a PhD student in the Media, Art, and Text program at Virginia Commonwealth University where she teaches courses in popular culture, counterculture, and writing and rhetoric. She has an MA in English writing and rhetoric from VCU and a BA in English creative writing from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Melinda White, associate production editor and manuscript wrangler, is currently a PhD student in the Media, Art, and Text program at Virginia Commonwealth University. She has a BS in professional and technical writing and an MA in English literature and writing from Utah State University. Her focus is on new media literature, with interests in postmodern print literature, hypertext, and string theory.

María Lourdes De Panbehchi (Lulú), assistant production editor, is a PhD student in the Media, Art, and Text program at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her main interests are foreign languages, computers, and literature. Lulú earned her BA in Spanish literature from the University of Chihuahua, Mexico, and her MA in Spanish from New Mexico State University. She has taught elementary, intermediate, and advanced Spanish for more than twelve years, almost eight of them at VCU.

Neal Wyatt, assistant production editor, is a PhD student in the Media, Art, and Text program at Virginia Commonwealth University. She has an MA in English from VCU and an MS in Library Science from The Catholic University of America.  Her focus is on hypertext, reading maps, and the role of the reader.

Katie Lynch, web developer and css programmer, is a PhD student in the Media, Art, and Text program at Virginia Commonwealth University. She has a BFA in crafts from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and an MFA from The Ohio State University. Her work focuses on the presence of text in visual art and the relationship between art, science, and technology.

Bridgforth Allen, technology advisor, has a BA in English from Virginia Commonwealth University and an MS in Computational Linguistics from Georgetown. He is an information technologist specializing in digital media productions and has extensive experience in online publishing.

Mary Lee Allen, manuscript reader and proofreader, is secretary for the Center for Palladian Studies in America. She holds an MA in humanities from the University of Richmond and an MA in art history from Virginia Commonwealth University. Allen formerly served as the assistant director of Gunston Hall, a historic house museum in Mason Neck, Virginia. She studies poetry writing.

Lenore Gay, manuscript reader and proofreader, 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 (Beacon Press, 2003). Her story “The Hobo” earned first prize in the 2005 Style Weekly fiction contest.

Sallie Lupton Jennings, manuscript reader and proofreader, studied literature at Antioch College and has an MA in psychology from New School for Social Research. Retired from careers in 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?

Greg Krull, intern and photo editor, is a first year student in the MA English writing and rhetoric program at Virginia Commonwealth University. He received his undergraduate degree in communication arts from VCU in 2008 and plans to pursue a PhD.

Sara Bohannon, intern and assistant gallery editor for David Roby's Arts and Science, is a second-year MFA in poetry at Virginia Commonwealth University. She earned her BA in English from VCU in 2006 with a minor in religious studies.

Sarah Clark, intern, is a first-year MA English student in literature at Virginia Commonwealth University. She also interns with Drunken Boat and is editor-in-chief of Poictesme, the student literary journal at VCU. Sarah has a BA in English and International Studies, with a double minor in Eastern European studies and history.

Justin Greene, intern and pagebuilder, is a third-year MA English student in literature at Vriginia Commonwealth University. He earned a BA in English from VCU in 2004.

Brian Prestwood, intern, is a second-year MA English student in literature at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Jennifer Selman, intern, is a second-year MA English student in writing and rhetoric at Virginia Commonwealth University. She earned a BA in English from James Madison University in 2007 with a minor in secondary education.

Grant White, intern and bio editor, is a first-year MFA in poetry at Virginia Commonwealth University. He earned a BA in English and art history from Bowdoin College in 2004.

Jessica Martin, intern, is a senior at Virginia Commonwealth University and will be graduating in May of 2008 with a BA in English.

Hayley Wozny, intern, is a senior at Virginia Commonwealth University and will be graduating in December of 2008 with a BA in English and a minor in writing.  She previously interned for PostSecret.

Javier Thompson, intern and audio editor, is a first-year MFA student in fiction at Virginia Commonwealth University. He received a BA in creative writing and literature from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Stella Reinhard, intern and former assistant editor with an emphasis on design, is a third-year student in the Media, Art & Text PhD program at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her focus is on the effects of technology on the writing, illustrating and producing of the children’s narrative. An adjunct faculty member and a graduate teaching assistant, she teaches art and design courses for the Communication Arts Department at VCU. Stella received her MA in children’s literature from Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. Reinhard has worked as an art director, illustrator, copywriter, and graphic designer.

Jennifer Woodruff, second-term intern and pagebuilder, is a second-year MA English student in literature at Virginia Commonwealth University. She received a BA in comprehensive communication from the University of Rio Grande.

Special Thanks
    to all the editors, staff, and contributors who made Blackbird v7n2 possible.

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