ISSUE: Summer 2002
The scholarly world was recently shocked by allegations and admonitions of plagiarism from three of the country’s most prominent historians, namely Stephen Ambrose, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Joseph Ellis. At the same time, two other historians, Michael Beschloss and David McCullough, were being honored for their respective accounts of the Kennedy years and the life of John Adams. Now, the versatile Michael Nelson has turned his attention to this mixture of scandal and achievement among the disciples of Clio.
Michael Nelson is best known to readers of VQR for his recent articles on Garrison Keillor, Frank Sinatra, Ward Just, and C.S. Lewis, but he is known in the political science community for books that he has published on the American presidency, national elections and higher education, from publishers such as Johns Hopkins, Duke, the Brookings Institution, and other academic houses. He is a professor of political science at Rhodes College in Memphis, TN.
The Levy family saved Monticello, and they are the subject of a lecture that Melvin I. Urofsky gave at Monticello last summer. Mr. Urofsky is currently director of the doctoral program in public policy and professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. He has also been a member of the History Department at Ohio State University and at SUNY Albany. The author or editor of more than 40 books, he has written most recently, Division and Discord: The Supreme Court under Stone and Vinson and Lethal Judgments: The Supreme Court and Assisted Suicide plus the very latest from which his Levy piece has been taken, The Levy Family and Monticello: Saving Thomas Jefferson’s House.
Matt Freidson lived in Vietnam for two years. He currently works for a Vietnamese refugee center in London and teaches creative writing. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Confrontation, New England Review, Story Quarterly, and Chattahoochee Review.
Vincent Fitzpatrick is the curator of the H.L. Mencken Collection at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore. He is the compiler of the second supplement to H.L.M.: The Mencken Bibliography, author of H.L.Mencken, and now has written a biography of the journalist Gerald W. Johnson recently published by LSU.
Geoffrey D. Witham was born in Connecticut and lives in D.C., but remains a Jersey boy at heart. He holds an MFA in creative writing from American University, and his most recent stories can be seen in The Crab Orchard Review and the Czeck Playboy. He is currently seeking an agent for his novel, All That Matters.
James Conrad McKinley is a native of South Carolina. After living a decade in southern California, he earned graduate degrees in English and creative writing from Hollins University and the University of Virginia. He has completed a novel called All My Pleasures, and this fall will enter the law school at the University of Arkansas.
One of VQR’s most consistent and versatile contributors, Sanford Pinsker is a professor of English at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA, His most recent contribution to this journal was the lead essay in the spring issue called “Henry Adams at Ground Zero,” an examination of Adams’ Education set against the World Trade Center tragedy.
Henry Alley is a professor of literature in the Honors College at the University of Oregon. He has three published novels: Through Glass, The Lattice, and Umbrella of Glass. He is also author of the scholarly study, The Quest for Anonymity: The Novels of George Eliot, from University of Delaware Press. His stories have appeared in such journals as Seattle Review, Cimarron Review, and Kansas Quarterly. He has finished a new comic novel, Second Life, as well as a collection of short fiction, Earth Day and Other Stories, from which “The Facts of Life” is taken.
Alan Williamson is a poet and critic who teaches at the University of California at Davis. His most recent collection of poems was Res Publica from the University of Chicago Press and his most recent collection of criticism, Almost a Girl, appeared last summer from the University of Virginia Press.
John Witte has recently published poems in Kenyon Review, Massachusetts Review, Iowa Review, Ohio Review, Ploughshares, and Southern Review.
Joseph Lease published his first collection, Human Rights, from Zoland Books in 1998. One of his poems was selected to appear in The Best American Poetry, 2002 (Scribners). He teaches at Central Michigan University.
Stephen Margulies received degrees from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Virginia. He is curator of Works on Paper at the University of Virginia Art Museumand is an artist and a performance artist, as well as a writer on books and art.
A recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, James Tate teaches at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His most recent collection is Memoir of the Hawk.
Stephen Dobyns is the author of numerous collections of poetry, novels, and mysteries, and lives outside Boston. His prose poems are from a collection, The Porcupine’s Kisses, to be published this fall by Penguin. His other prose poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Harvard Review, Gettysburg Review, and Poetry.
A frequent contributor to VQR, Mark Halliday teaches at the University of Ohio at Athens. His most recent collection is Selfwolf, published by the University of Chicago in 1999.
Simone Poirier-Bures is the author of three books: Candyman (1994), a novel set in her native Nova Scotia; The Shining Place (1995), an award-winning memoir of Crete; and Nicole (2000), a collection of short fiction and a memoir. She teaches English at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg and is currently working on a travel memoir about Kyrgyzstan.
Sheri Joseph is making her debut as a VQR short story writer. Her story, “Rest Stop” is from a cycle of stories called Bear Me Safely Over recently published by Grove/Atlantic. This fall, she will begin teaching in the creative writing program at Georgia State University.
As indicated in the postscript to her posthumous essay, Emily Couric was a Virginia state senator who died of pancreatic cancer in Charlottesville last October. Her short essay was originally written in 1991, a decade before her death, and discovered by her husband in her posthumous papers.
Ben Brooks won a Nelson Algren Award in 2000 and is a past winner of an O. Henry Prize. He has published more than 65 short stories in literary journals ranging from The Sewanee Review to StoryQuarterly and he has one published novel, The Icebox. He teaches fiction writing at Emerson College and writes for the Museum of Science in Boston.
A former editor-in-chief of The New York Times Book Publishers, Edward T.Chase has published in The Yale Review, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Dissent, The New Republic, and The New York Times Magazine. He was also an editor at such publishing houses as Putnam’s, Scribner’s, and editor-in-chief of New American Library.
A former dean of the college of arts and sciences at the University of Virginia, Raymond Nelson has now rejoined the English department as a professor. His most recent book is Harlem Gallery and Other Poems of Melvin B. Tolson, published by the University of Virginia Press in 1999.
THE VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEWStaige D.BlackfordEditorGregoryOrrPoetry Consultant
Advisory EditorsEdward L. AyersG. Edward WhiteLorna MartensPaul Barolsky, ChairmanKenneth W. ThompsonPatricia Meyer SpacksStephen B. CushmanRobert H. KretsingerJanna Olson Gies, Business ManagerCandace Pugh, Circulation Director
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