The Green Room, Autumn 2003

George Garrett was a good friend of Staige Blackford’s for many years and for many issues published, as he often lent his help with proofing, editing, reading, as well as contributing many times. He is the Hoyns Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia and the author of 33 books and the editor of 19 others. He is now serving as Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia. He is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.

When David L. Holmes was a young assistant professor at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, he taught the younger undergraduate Michael Nelson. Both are now featured as the authors of the lead articles in this issue, concerning religious issues of two of America’s presidents. The first article by Mr. Holmes is taken from his forthcoming book James Monroe and the Religion of the Founding Fathers, which is being published by Monroe’s home, Ash Lawn-Highland, located here in Charlottesville, Virginia. Mr. Holmes received degrees from Michigan State (B.A.), Columbia (M.A.), and Princeton (M.A. and Ph. D.) and has published four books and more than 70 articles. A church historian whose book on the Episcopal Church is a standard history, he continues to teach religion at William & Mary.

Michael Nelson is best known to readers of VQR for his articles on Robert Caro, Garrison Keillor, Frank Sinatra, Ward Just, C.S. Lewis and most recently, Stephen Carter. He is known in the political science community for his books published on the American presidency, national elections, and higher education for publishers such as Johns Hopkins, Duke, and the Brookings Institution. He is a professor of political science at Rhodes College in Memphis, and his most recent book is Governing Gambling: Politics and Policy in State, Tribe, and Nation.

Alexander Burnham, a former staff writer for The New York Times, is an independent writer and editor. He is the editor of the anthology We Write for Our Own Time: Selected Essays from 75 Years of The Virginia Quarterly Review, published by the University of Virginia Press and The Virginia Quarterly Review, in conjunction with the 75th anniversary of the VQR and with Staige Blackford, former editor.

Philip Gould’s work has appeared a number of times in VQR. He is the author of two novels published by Algonquin, and in the past few years, his short fiction was also published in The Missouri Review and The Texas Review and a memoir in the Richmond publication 64. A retired U.S.I.A. officer, he and his wife make their home in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Max M. Mintz is Professor Emeritus of history at Southern Connecticut State University. He has published Gouverneur Morris and the American Revolution, The Generals of Saratoga: John Burgoyne and Horatio Gates, and Seeds of Empire: The American Revolutionary Conquest of the Iroquois.

John Clayton taught literature and fiction writing at the University of Massachusetts for over 30 years and now teaches at Mount Holyoke. His stories have won prizes from O. Henry, Best American, and Pushcart. His second collection, Radiance, was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in 1998 and the title story was aired on NPR as part of its Selected Shorts series. He has published two novels as well as critical books on Saul Bellow and on the modern novel.

Flannery O’Connor Professor of Letters at the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa and the state of Iowa’s first Poet Laureat, Marvin Bell also leads an annual Urban Teachers Workshop for America SCORES, collaborates with composers, musicians and dancers, and teaches a master class for the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA at PLU. He is the author of what is known as the “Dead Man” poems and the “Dead Man Resurrected” poems. His current book is Nightworks: Poems 1962—2000 and Copper Canyon will publish a new collection, Rampant, in the spring.

Anna George Meek lives in Minneapolis, where she teaches violin and plays professionally, and she teaches poetry at the Loft Literary Center. The poems in this issue are from a manuscript, The Genome Rhapsodies, which was a finalist for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Seneca Review, Crazyhorse, The Massachusetts Review, Missouri Review, and other journals. Her latest manuscript, Acts of Contortion, won the Brittingham Prize from the University of Wisconsin Press and was published by them in 2002.

Jeffrey Levine recently published his first collection, Mortal, Everlasting, which was the winner of the Transcontinental Poetry Award and was published by Pavement Saw Press. His second collection, Sanctuaries, will be published by Red Hen Press. He is founder and editor in-chief of Tupelo Press.

Floyd Skloot is a frequent contributor to VQR. He won the 2001 Oregon Book Award for his Evening Light. His extraordinary collection of essays, In the Shadow of Memory, was recently published by the University of Nebraska Press and has been chosen by Barnes & Noble as one of its “Discover Great Writers” books.

Angie Hogan is a native of Parrottsville, Tennessee. She received her B.A. from Vanderbilt and her M.F.A. from the University of Virginia. Her poems have appeared in Third Coast, Greensboro Review, Ploughshares, and New Orleans Review. Currently, she edits a humanities database for InteLex Corporation.

Natasha Sajé’s first book of poems, Red under the Skin, was published by Pittsburgh, and her second one, Bend, was published by Tupelo. Her work has been honored by the Campbell Corner Poetry Prize and the Robert Winner Award from the Poetry Society. Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Kenyon Review, New Republic, Shenandoah, and other journals. She teaches at Westminster College in Salt Lake City and in the Vermont College MFA in Writing program.

Jay Parini teaches at Middlebury College. He is a prolific author of novels, poems, and biographies, including ones of John Steinbeck and Robert Frost. His most recent collection of poems, House of Days, appeared in 1998 and his most recent novel, The Apprentice Lover, in 2002

Sarah Gorham’s third collection of poems, The Cure, will be published in late 2003. She has had recent work appear in The American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, Paris Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky, and directs Sarabande Books.

Eve Grubin is the Programs Director of the Poetry Society of America in New York City. She also teaches poetry writing at The New School and is the Poetry Editor of the journal, Lyric. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Barrow Street, The Drunken Boat, LIT, Pool, and Post Road.

Freelance writer Theo Lippman, Jr., was an editorial writer for the Baltimore Sun, 1965—95, and Washington correspondent for the Atlanta Constitution before that. He is author of four political biographies and editor of a collection of ILL. Mencken’s writings on journalism.

Angela Pneuman’s stories have appeared in The New England Review, Iowa Review, Ploughshares, and other literary magazines. She is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow and Marsh McCall Lecturer in fiction at Stanford University. Originally from Kentucky, she now lives in northern California, writing about wines by day and finishing her novel by night.

A native of New York State and a graduate of Harvard, Arnold Frutkin served at sea in World War II. He worked with the National Academy of Sciences in the program of the International Geophysical Year (1957—58) and for nearly 20 years directed NASA’s international space activities program. After almost a decade as a vice president in international marketing with Burroughs/Unisys Corporation, he retired to Charlottesville, Virginia.

J. Douglas Smith received his Ph. D. in American history from the University of Virginia and is currently a visiting assistant professor at Occidental College in Los Angeles. He is the author of Managing White Supremacy: Race, Politics, and Citizenship in Jim Crow Virginia, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2002.

Stephen Cushman is Robert C. Taylor Professor of English at the University of Virginia and most recently the author of Cussing Lessons, a volume of poems published by Louisiana State University, and Bloody Promenade: Reflections on a Civil War Battle, published by UVA Press. He is a member of the Board of Advisors for the VQR.

Woodford McClellan is professor emeritus of history at the University of Virginia. Before coming to UVA, he taught at West Point. He is completing his latest book, entitled Fighting Communism: The Second European Crusade, 1924—1933, and he is relocating from Washington, DC, to northern Arizona.

Peter S. Onuf is the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of history at the University of Virginia. He received his Ph. D. from Johns Hopkins and taught at Columbia, Worcester Polytechnic, and Southern Methodist Universities before coming to UVA. His most recent work is Jefferson’s Empire: The Language of American Nationhood (UVA Press, 2000), and he is working with his brother, Nicholas Onuf, on the second volume of Federal Union, Modern World. He co-authored, with Edward Ayers, All Over the Map: Rethinking American Regions, edited Jeffersonian Legacies, and co-edited Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture, and The Revolution of 1800, the last three published by UVA Press.

Walter Lafeber is the Tisch University Professor of history at Cornell University. His most recent publication, America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945—2002 (9th revised edition), was published by W.W. Norton.

Bernice Grohskopf, a freelance book reviewer, writer, and editor, recently moved from Charlottesville, Virginia to New York City. She has published books, short stories, and essays, as well as reviews. Her book The Treasure of Sutton Hoo has been reprinted.

Jack Fischel has retired as professor and chair of the history department at Millersville University in Pennsylvania. He is the former editor of Congress Monthly and has authored books on the Holocaust and Jewish history and culture as well as hundreds of reviews and articles in many journals. He is a frequent reviewer for the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Weekly Standard.

COVER PICTURE: Compliments of the Unicameral Information Office, Lincoln, NE www.

COVER CREDITS: Thomas McDaniel, Cadmus Professional Communications