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 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. Outgoing associate production editors are Meghan Rosatelli and Melinda White.

	Previous associate editors
	Matthew Baker	2008–2009
	Tarfia Faizullah	2007–2008
	Kate Beles	2006–2007
	Anna Journey	2005–2006
	Steven Collis	2004–2005
	Maria Hagan	2003–2004
	Tara Moyle	2002–2003
	Jamye Shelleby	2001–2002

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 associate editor position is held this year by Grant White who will continue with us through August 2010.

Gregory Donovan, senior literary 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 for Poetry from University of Missouri Press. His work has been published and anthologized widely, recently appearing in Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets of Virginia from University of Virginia Press (2003). Donovan 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 literary 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 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 courses in 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 English 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.com.

Grant White, associate editor, is a second-year MFA student in poetry 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, he served as bio editor for Blackbird. His review of The Learners by Chip Kidd appears in the v8n1 issue of the magazine. He earned a BA in English and art history from Bowdoin College in 2004.

Susan Settlemyre Williams, book review editor and associate literary editor, is the author of a chapbook, Possession (Finishing Line Press, 2007), and the collection of poems Ashes in Midair (2008), winner of the 2007 Many Mountains Moving Press Poetry Contest judged by Yusef Komunyakaa. 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 Press, 2006). She is a member of the National Book Critics Circle.

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. He, 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 New Virginia Review to promote Poetic Principles (an ongoing reading/lecture series that has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts). Selections of his poetry were finalists in the Frank O’Hara Award Chapbook Competitions for 2004 and 2005.

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 a writing instructor in the Focused Inquiry program at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Gregory Kimbrell, intern and manuscript wrangler, is a second-year MFA student in poetry at Virginia Commonwealth University. He received his BA in philosophy in 2004 from the College of Charleston. In 2008, he participated in the Crazyhorse/Tupelo Press Publishing Institute, also at the College of Charleston.

María Lourdes De Panbehchi (Lulú), associate production editor and lead pagebuilder, is a PhD student in the Media, Art, and Text program at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her interests include foreign languages, animation theory, computers, literature, and paleography. She earned her BA in Spanish literature from the University of Chihuahua, Mexico, and her MA in Spanish from New Mexico State University.

Neal Wyatt, associate production editor and audio wrangler, 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 work focuses on mapping remediation with particular interest in narrative, textuality, and the role of the reader.

Vera Kononova Brown, special project coordinator for the Blackbird index, is a PhD student in the Media, Art, and Text program at Virginia Commonwealth University. A native of Russia, she has a BA in English with an emphasis on technical/professional writing from Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas, and an MA in English with an emphasis on writing and rhetoric from VCU. Her interests include the use of new media in language instruction, iconography, and stereographic imaging.

Katie Lynch, associate production editor, 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 at 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.

Bri Spicer, intern and photo editor, is a second-year MFA student in fiction at Virginia Commonwealth University. She received her BA in writing from the University of Central Arkansas in 2008, with a double minor in history and honors interdisciplinary studies.

Nathan Cushing, intern, bio editor, and associate public relations coordinator, is a first-year student in the MA English writing and rhetoric program at Virginia Commonwealth University. He earned a BA in English from VCU in 2007.

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. Her book reviews appear frequently in Blackbird.

Travis Coghill, intern and pagebuilder, is a first-year student in the MA English writing and rhetoric program at Virginia Commonwealth University. He received his BA in English from VCU in 2007.

Denise Dicks, special project intern for the Blackbird index, is a first-year MFA student in poetry at Virginia Commonwealth University. She received her BA in Spanish from Santa Clara University. While in the MA English program at the College of Charleston, she served as editor of the Miscellany Literary and Art Journal.

Timothy Doerr, intern and audio editor, is a senior at Virginia Commonwealth University and will be graduating in December of 2009 with a BA in English.

Modu L. Fofana-Kamara, intern and pagebuilder, is a second-year student in the MA writing and rhetoric program at Virginia Commonwealth University. She received a BA in broadcast journalism from High Point University, North Carolina.

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 the 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?

Leejin Kim, page builder, is a PhD student in the Media, Art, and Text program at Virginia Commonwealth University. She earned her MFA in Sculpture and New Media, as well as a certificate in interactive and time-based media from the University of Pennsylvania. She has a BFA in sculpture from Seoul National University, Korea.

Julia Leuthardt, intern and photo editor, is a first-year student in the MA English literature program at Virginia Commonwealth University. She earned her BA in American studies with a minor in German as a second language from the University of Greifswald, Germany, in 2007.

Alvin Malpaya, intern and associate manuscript wrangler, is a second-year student in the MA English writing and rhetoric program at Virginia Commonwealth University. He earned a BA in English from George Mason University in 2006.

Jim Metz, volunteer manuscript reader, has a BA in English from Duke University and an MS in information systems from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Catherine Moore, assistant production editor and audio editor, is a first-year PhD student in the Media, Art, and Text program at Virginia Commonwealth University. She earned an MFA in poetry from the University of Montana and studied comparative literature at Harvard University.

Emilia Phillips, intern and audio editor, is a first-year MFA poetry student at Virginia Commonwealth University. She received a BA in English at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where she served on the staff of the Sequoya Review, an undergraduate literary publication. Her poetry has appeared in 42opus, Asheville Poetry Review, Cutthroat, The Pedestal Magazine, Poetry Miscellany, Unsaid Magazine, and elsewhere. She was named the 2009 Discovery Poet by Cutthroat.

R. Dale Smith, pagebuilder, is a graduate of James Madison University and Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education, and a second-year MFA in fiction student at Virginia Commonwealth University. A writer, teacher, and performer, Dale tours regularly with his one-man show Jesus Phreak. He was appointed to the Cabell Fellowship for the 2009–2010 academic year.

Heather Vaughn, intern, public relations coordinator, and bio editor, is a senior at Virginia Commonwealth University and will be graduating in December of 2009 with a BA in English and a minor in creative writing.

 

& Many Thanks

to all the editors, staff members, and interns who made Blackbird volume 8, number 2, possible.

We can’t say enough about our Media, Art, and Text TAs and interns and their help on everything from the core issue to projects yet to be published on our site. Particular thanks to Lulú De Panbehchi, and Neal Wyatt, respectively, for yeoman’s service as chief pagebuilder and audio wrangler. Thanks also to Vera Kononova Brown for her creation of the Blackbird index, which will appear shortly.

Returning interns Gregory Kimbrel, manuscript wrangler, Bri Spicer, photo editor, and Dale Smith, assistant pagebuilder and play editor have certainly earned our gratitude. Julia Leuthardt’s special design work and German skills also need recognition.

Continuing thanks to Katherine Lynch for her work in recoding the journal and her ongoing support (as a Blackbird volunteer) to the editors and staff in this transition.

And to all others—manuscript readers, content converters, pagebuilders, audio editors, transcribers, and copyeditors all, our sincere thanks.  

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