The Green Room, Autumn 2000

Just as December 7, 1941 goes down in our history as a “day that will live in infamy,” so May 7, 1915 John Milton Cooper, Jr. calls “a shock of recognition” reverberting among the American people. On that spring day, now more than 85 years ago, a German submarine torpedoed the British liner, Lusitania—the largest passenger ship then afloat—and more than 1000 aboard died, including 100 Americans. With that incident came the end of American innocence and isolation and the growing awareness that America might well become involved in the Great War.

John Milton Cooper, Jr. is the E. Gordon Fox Professor of American Institutions at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He has recently finished a book entitled Breaking the Heart of the World on the fight over the League of Nations in America at the end of World War I, and it is now under consideration by a publisher. Mr. Cooper is also involved in the production of a television biography of Woodrow Wilson for the PBS program, “The American Experience.”

As her essay notes, Patricia Foster is a native of Alabama. She is now an associate professor in the NonFiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa. She is the author of the forthcoming memoir, All the Lost Girls, and editor of Minding the Body; Sister to Sister; and The Healing Circle (with Mary Swander).

Madison Smartt Bell, a native of Tennessee, is the author of nine novels including The Washington Square Ensemble (1983), Waiting for the End of the World (1985) and Soldier’s Joy(1989) which received the Lillian Smith Award for the best Southern novel of the year. Mr. Bell has also published two collections of short stories, and his eighth novel, All Soul’s Rising,was a finalist for the 1995 National Book Award and the 1996 PEN/Faulkner Award. It was also the first volume in a trilogy Mr. Bell is writing about the Haitian revolution at the beginning of the 19th century. The second volume, from which his VQR story is taken, is titled Master of the Crossroads and will be published by Pantheon next month. Mr. Bell has taught at Goucher College since 1984, and he is currently director of the Kratz Center for Creative Writing.

A native New Yorker, Abe Kriegel has spent most of his professional career as a historian in the South. He is a professor of history at the University of Memphis and a former department chairman. His academic specialty is the political culture of 19th-century Britain. He has recent essays appearing in The Ohio Review and River City.

With “The Fruits of Misopedy,” Monique De Varennes is making her debut as a published short story writer. A second story will be appearing next summer in CALYX.She received her M.A.from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. She is a resident of Los Angeles, where she is working on a children’s novel.

Barnett Singer is a member of the history faculty at Brock University in Southern Ontario. He previously taught at Niagara, just 25 minutes from Brock, but in the U.S.His books in French history and studies include a collection of essays, Modern France: Mind, Politics, Society published by the University of Washington. He is also the author of Village Notables in 19th- century France (SUNY Press), and his latest research has been in the field of French colonial military history.

Jean Valentine is the author of eight books of poetry, her most recent volume being The Cradle of the Real Life (Wesleyan 2000). She lives and works in New York City.

Craig L. Slingluff, Jr., is professor of surgery and chief of the Division of Surgical Oncology at the University of Virginia Medical Center. He read his VQR poem, “Mastectomy,” at a dinner meeting of the Albemarle County Medical Society this past winter.

Barbara Goldberg is the author of five volumes of poetry, the latest being Marvelous Pursuits, winner of the Violet Reed Haas Award. Her work appears in The Paris Review, Poetry,and The Harvard Review.She is the recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and four from the Maryland State Arts Council. Ms. Goldberg has also received a translation award from the Columbia University Center for Translation.

Nancy White’s work has appeared in Ploughshares, Field, New England Review, Puerto Del Sol, and other publications. Her book, Sun, Moon, Salt won the 1992 Washington Prize for Poetry. She has taught at Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn, at Bennington College, and at Adirondack Community College.

Poems by Debra Bruce have recently appeared in Poetry and The Atlantic Monthly.Her third book, What Wind Will Do was published in 1997 by the Miami University Press of Ohio. She teaches at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago.

Edward Bartók-Baratta is a survivor of childhood abuse and trauma. Following the murder of his brother in New York City, he worked for eight years with homeless people in Boston’s Combat Zone. He has poems in Harvard Review, Massachusetts Review, Southern Poetry Review and Denver Quarterly.

Kyoko Uchida was born in Hiroshima, Japan, and grew up in the U.S.and Canada. Her poems have appeared in The Georgia Review, New Letters, Northwest Review, Phoebe, Quarterly West, Shenandoah, and other journals. She now lives in Washington, D.C.and works as an editor and translator.

C. Dale Young’s first collection of poems, The Day Underneath The Day, will be published by TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern UP in spring 2001.He works as a physician and as poetry editor of New England Review.

Five of Patrick Donnelly’s poems will appear in the Four Way Reader #2, an anthology of poetry and short fiction from Four Way Books. He works with the Whole Foods Project and divides his time between Park Slope, Brooklyn, and a Sufi community in Southern Illinois.

Jeffrey A. Hammond is a professor of English at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, specializing in early American literature. He has published three books dealing with Puritan poetry, Sinful Self, Saintly Self: The Puritan Experience of Poetry (Georgia, 1993), and Edward Taylor: Fifty years of Scholarship and Criticism (Camden House, 1993) and The American Puritan Elegy: A Literary and Cultural Study (Cambridge 2000). His essays on early American writers have appeared in such journals as Early American Literature, American Poetry, and New England Quarterly.

Deborah M. Prum is the author of Rats, Butts, and Flying Machines: A History of the Renaissance and Reformation, and co-author (with Helen Khanzina) of Ivan, Ivan, Peter and Catherine, Too, a book discussing the first nine centuries of Russian history. Her short fiction has appeared in Folio, and her articles about writing have appeared in The Writer and The Writers Handbook.

A native of Louisiana and a graduate of the LSU law school, Harold Mcsween is a former member of the local school board and of the Louisiana State Board of Education. He served as a Democratic representative in Congress from 1959 to 1963.He enjoyed a 30-year acquaintance with the subject of his memoir, the eminent historian, T.Harry Williams.

A native of West Virginia, Ann Pancake has published stories in Shenandoah, Massachusetts Review, VQR, Chattahoochee Review and others. She received an NEA grant and her collection of short stories, Given Ground, just won the 2000 Bakeless Prize and will be published next year by the University Press of New England. She teaches at Penn State Erie.

The prolific Catherine Ryan Hyde is the author of a 1997 novel, Funeral for Horses, and a 1998 story collection, Earthquake Weather,both published by the Russian Hill Press. Her novels Pay It Forward and Electric God appeared from Simon and Schuster this year. She has another novel and a short story collection forthcoming from Simon and Schuster. More than 30 of her short stories have appeared in numerous journals and in the anthologies, California Shorts and Santa Barbara Stories.Two of her stories have been honored in the Raymond Carver Short Story Contest and one received second place for the Bellingham Review Tobias Wolff Award. She has received one nomination each for Best American Short Stories and the O’Henry Award, and eight nominations for the Pushcart Prize.

Joan Waugh is an associate professor of history at the University of California at Los Angeles. She researches and writes about the Civil War and Reconstruction. Waugh’s Unsentimental Reformer: The Life of Josephine Shaw Lowell (1998) was published by Harvard. She is currently working on a book about the memorialization of Ulysses S.Grant.

David T. Gies is Commonwealth Professor of Spanish and former chairman of the Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese at the University of Virginia. He is an authority on the literature of Enlightenment and Romantic Spain, and contemporary Spanish film. He is the author of 12 books and critical editions of Spanish literature, including The Cambridge Companion to Modern Spanish Culture (1999). He received the UVA Outstanding Teaching Award in 1992, and he served as chairman of the faculty senate of UVA during the academic year of 1999—2000.

One of VQR’s most loyal contributors, Sanfohd

Pinsker is a professor of English at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania, whose books include The Languages of Joseph Conrad; Still Life and Other Poems; Philip Roth: Critical Essays; and Memory Breaks Off and Other Poems.

A professor emeritus of history at the University of Virginia, Hans A. Schmitt is a native of Germany who emigrated to this country in the 1930’s and served with the U.S.Army during World War II.He is a specialist in European history, and his books include The Path to European Union.

James Smith Allen is professor of history and director of the University Core Curriculum at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. He teaches the history of modern France, 19th-century Europe, and women in the West. His latest book, Poignant Relations: Three Modern French Women (Johns Hopkins, 2000), explores women’s autobiographical writings as expressions of identity, agency, and resistance.

Everett Crosby is professor of history and chairman of the Medieval Studies Program at the University of Virginia. He holds a B. A. degree with honors from Yale University and a Ph. D. from The Johns Hopkins University. His chief field of research is France and England from the 12th to the 18th century, and his publications include The English Episcopate under Henry I; The Past as Prologue; Medieval Studies; The 17th Century Restoration; Bishop and Chapter in 12th-Century England; and Medieval Warfare: A Bibliographical Guide.

Paul Barolsky is Commonwealth Professor of Art History at the University of Virginia. He writes about the relations between art and literature, and is the author of The Faun in the Garden and Michelangelo’s Nose, works that explore the poetic imagination of the Italian Renaissance.

Cover Design: Thomas McDaniel

Cover Research: Heather Burns

Picture Credit: UVA Special Collections Library, Bruccoli Great Wall Collection

Good luck to our good friend, Thomas “Mac” McDaniel at Cadmus and thanks for over 25 years of support and guidance!