writers diana anhalt (ga pg. 61) Four years ago I left Mexico after residing there for sixty years, but my poetry dug in its heels, refused to budge. “Memorias” is one more example of how memories of Mexico continue to haunt me, and that, of course, is why I wrote it. I tend to use Spanish in much of my work, generally write in blank verse and depend on my internal metronome for rhythm. Now that I’m living in Atlanta, I’m hoping that, in time, my work will reflect this place where I live.
marguerite bouvard (ma pg. 47) I am the author of eight books of poetry, two of which won awards. My latest book, The Light That Shines Inside Us, came out last year. I have also written twelve books of non-fiction in a number of fields – human rights, living with illness, grief. My most recent book is The Invisible Wounds of War: Coming Home From Iraq and Afghanistan. I am a political scientist as well as a poet and somehow these two fields merge in my poetry. “Opening the Scrolls” was inspired by how, although we live with continual destruction, it is impossible to destroy the soul or hope.
andrew brown (md pg.18) I was lucky to be young before television, in a place where radio reception was poor but books were everywhere. When my grandfather took me into his lap for a story, he read Don Quixote and Bartleby the Scrivener. From my other grandfather I learned the storytelling of the Lakota, where the maps for living always come in narrative form. My house gods include Shelby Foote, who taught me history is not dates, places, and shots fired, but stories of people in personal conflict; Ernie Pyle, Ernest Hemingway, Annie Dillard and Annie Proulx. During my fifty-one-year teaching career, I’ve published personal essays, stories and poems, written plays and TV documentaries. At 76, I’m working on a collection of essays exploring the events that shaped who I've become. “What I Should Have Told My Son” comes from that collection.