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The Green Room, Summer 1998


ISSUE:  Summer 1998

In his examination of “the mystery of modern art,” Paul Barolsky concludes that this mystery “ever eludes us” and that “our obsessive detective investigation of it . . . will never be finished.” It is also an investigation which Mr. Barolsky has pursued throughout his long and distinguished career as an art historian.

Mr. Barolsky is Commonwealth Professor of Art History, Director of Graduate Studies, and former Chair of the McIntire Department of Art at the University of Virginia, where he has taught for nearly 30 years. Mr. Barolsky is the author of several books. His first book, Infinite jest (1978) explored the wit and humor in Italian Renaissance culture, a theme he subsequently continued in his trilogy on Vasari’s great Lives of the artists: Michelangelo’s Nose (1990, paperback edition 1997), Why Mona Lisa Smiles (1991), and Giotto’s Father (1992). Mr. Barolsky’s literary interests are also reflected in his book on Walter Pater (Walter Pater’s Renaissance, 1987). He is a member of the VQR Advisory Board. As a recipient of Fulbright, Guggenheim, and National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships, he has been on several occasions a visiting professor at the Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance studies at the Villa I Tatti, Florence. His most recent book is The Faun in the Garden (1994), a playful discussion of Michelangelo and the poetic imagination of the Italian Renaissance.

Kimberly Grob teaches fiction at the University of Arizona, where she is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing. She is the recipient of the 1997 Jimmie Hayes Award for Fiction, a 1997 Dean’s Award for Fiction, a 1996 Minnie Torrance Prize for Fiction and a 1996 AWP Intro Award for Creative Nonfiction. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in Hoyden’s Ferry Review, and her magazine articles have appeared in numerous publications, including Bicycling, Backpacker and Women’s Sports and Fitness. She is also author of The Best Bike Rides in California, published in 1995 by Globe Pequot Press. She has recently completed a collection of short stories and is beginning work on her first novel.

While Sanford Pinsker is a professor of English at Franklin & Marshall College, he has also long been concerned about the role of black intellectuals in contemporary U.S. culture. Indeed, his most recent book is Worrying About Race, 1985—95: Reflections During a Troubled Time published by Whitston in 1996. The prolific Mr. Pinsker is a regular contributor to this journal and others and his books include The Languages of Joseph Conrad, Still Life and Other Poems, Philip Roth: Critical Essays and Memory Breaks and Other Poems.

A resident of Spartanburg, South Carolina, Rosa Shand has published some 25 stories in recent years—in such journals as Massachusetts Review, Southern Review, Shenandoah, Chelsea, and American Fiction. One of her stories won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize and three more stories have been selected for National Public Radio’s Sound of Writing (PEN Fiction Project). Ms.Shand has had fellowships from Yaddo and MacDowell, and was named the South Carolina Fellow in Fiction. Her book, New Southern Harmonies: Four Emerging Fiction Writers was published in 1998.

Jeffrey Meyers has devoted much of his career to examining and writing about the lives of American and British literary figures. He has published biographies of Katherine Mansfield, Wyndam Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, Robert Lowell, D.H. Lawrence, and Joseph Conrad, as well as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edgar Allan Poe. Recently he has turned his eye to Hollywood where he first wrote about Humphrey Bogart and most recently about Gary Cooper. Mr. Meyers is currently working on a screenplay of Thomas Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain.

Victor Lodato is a poet and playwright. He has been the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and Art Matters. Recently his work appeared in the Beloit Poetry Journal. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.

Marjorie Woodbury, a 1987 graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, lived and worked in Charlottesville until her death from leukemia in 1993. Her poems have appeared in Poetry East, Zone 3, Iris, and other magazines.

Dana Roeser lives in Georgia with her husband and two daughters and is completing her doctorate in creative writing at the University of Utah. Her poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, Mudfish, Iris, and other magazines.

A resident of Tampa, Florida, Kelly Rowe has previously published in VQR and also in Poetry Northwest, Iowa Review, and Seneca Review.

John Witte lives and teaches in Eugene, Oregon. He has new work in Ohio Review, Massachusetts Review, and Kenyon Review.

The Corse Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Vermont, T.Alan Broughton is the author of five books of poetry, two limited editions of poetry, and one limited edition of short stories. His novels include Hobb’s Daughter, The Horsemaster, and The Family Gathering. Among his books of poetry are In the Country of Elegies, Preparing to be Happy, and Dreams Before Sleep.

Richard Cecil’s third collection of poems, In Search of the Great Dead, will be published by Southern Illinois University Press in spring, 1999. He teaches in the English Department and the Honors Division of Indiana University, Bloomington.

Michael McFee teaches poetry writing and literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His fifth book of poems, Colander, whose title poem appeared earlier in VQR, was published by Carnegie Mellon University Press in 1996. He has work in recent issues of Kenyon Review, Triquarterly, Prairie Schooner, and Poetry.

A native of Mississippi, Charles East is a former director of LSU Press and former editor at the University of Georgia Press. He has served as editor of the Flannery O’Connor Award since it was established. Mr. East is the author of two collections of short stories, Where the Music Was and Distant Friends and Intimate Strangers. He lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Ann Harleman is the author of Happiness (1994) which won the Iowa Short Fiction Award, and Bitter Lake (1996), a novel. Her awards include Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships, two Rhode Island State Arts Council grants, and the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award. She is on the faculties of Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design.

A writer who lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, Robert Erwin is the author of The Great Language Panic. For many years he was also a publisher of books in the humanities and social sciences, including the highly regarded University of Pennsylvania edition of Sister Carrie. His essay “Injuns” appeared in the summer 1996 issue of VQR.

Mark Saunders received his B. A. degree from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.F.A. degree in fiction from the University of Virginia, where he was a Henry Hoyns Fellow. He has completed a novel set in Communist China and is seeking a publisher. He lives in Charlottesville with his wife and two children.

June Beisch lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts and teaches literature at Emerson College in Boston. Her poems have appeared in various literary journals, including the Radcliffe Quarterly and her journalism has appeared in newspapers throughout the country, including the Boston Globe. She has interviewed authors for WGBH radio and her interviews with Seamus Heaney and John Cheever are published in books on those authors.

Andrew Burstein is the author of the Inner Jefferson: Portrait of a Grieving Optimist (1995) and the forthcoming Sentimental Democracy: The Evolution of America’s Romantic Self-image. He received his undergraduate degree from Columbia University and subsequently headed a consulting firm, active in China and Japan. But he decided on an academic career, and earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of Virginia. He now teaches history at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls.

Jack Fischel is chairman of the department of history at Millersville University in Millersville, Pennsylvania. He was co-editor of Jewish American History and Culture: An Encyclopedia published in 1992 by Garland and serves as co-editor of Holocaust Studies Annual. His book, The Holocaust, was published by Greenwood Press in April.

John Portmann studied philosophy at Yale where he received his B.A. degree and at Cambridge University in England where he received the M. Phil. He holds a Ph. D. degree in philosophical and religious ethics from the University of Virginia.

Brian Henry is editor of Verse and the poetry reviewer for the Richmond Times Dispatch. His poetry has appeared in numerous magazines including American Poetry Review, The Paris Review, and Shenandoah. He is currently in Australia on a Fulbright.

James Sweeney is a professor of history at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, and he is a specialist in Virginia history.

THE VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW Staige D.BlackfordEditor GregoryOrrPoetry Consultant

Advisory Editors Edward L. Ayers G. Edward White Lorna Martens J. C. Levenson Kenneth W. Thompson Patricia Meyer Spacks Paul Barolsky Robert H. Kretsinger

Janna Olson Gies, Managing Editor Candace Pugh, Circulation Director

A National Journal of Literature and Discussion published since 1925 in January, April, July, and October. Individual subscriptions $18.00 one year, $25.00 two years, $33.00 three years; Institutions $22.00 one year, $30.00 two years, $50.00 three years. Outside U.S. (individual and institution) add $6.00 per year. Single copies $5.00 each. Title page and annual index available in November.

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