learn a bit more about the Passager contributors featured on this site

Gertrude Maynard was born in a Jewish ghetto in Poland in 1905 and immigrated to America in 1921. When we published her work in 1996, she was living in Berkeley and taking care of her great granddaughter.

Fragments

I just heard the majestic voice
of an astronomer tell us
that fragments of dead comets
will be floating around the earth
for the next thousand years.

This news made me rejoice,
that there are people of good faith
who believe that our planet earth,
our beloved world, will still be
here a thousand years from now.

And so, as my little world
recedes farther and farther
leaving no trace,
I brace myself against the elements
and run wild and breathless
trying to stop it!
Begging for at least a fragment.

Gertrude Maynard
Issue 22

Leonardo Alishan, born of Armenian parents in Tehran, Iran, taught Persian literature and comparative literature for twenty years at the University of Utah. Read his poem "The Game" from Issue 36.

Penny Altman owns and runs a B&B and Gallery, The Mermaid's Purse Farm, on the sea in Prospect Harbor, Maine, with her husband. She won Honorable Mention in the 2006 Passager Poetry Contest (Issue 42).

Tim Amsden worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for 25 years. His work has appeared in two anthologies—Lasting: Poems on Aging and Hunger Enough: Living Spiritually in a Consumer Society—and in many journals, including Arabesques Review, an Algerian literary journal. Tim says, "As I grow older, my poetry and I seem to be growing smaller together." Read his poem "Two Stars" from Issue 42.

Catherine Anderson assists newcomer communities from Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia in becoming medical interpreters. She has two collections of poems, In the Mother Tongue (Alice James) and The Work of Hands (Perugia). She was recently published in Passager's Issue 42. She also has had work appear in Working Classics: Poems on Industrial Life (University of Illinois Press), edited by Peter Oresick and Nicholas Coles.

Colleen Anderson has had stories and poems in Redbook, Embers, Kestrel, Carolina Quarterly, The Sun, and many other periodicals. Her songs have been featured on Public Radio International's "Mountain Stage" and "The Folk Sampler." Her writing has earned two Individual Artist Fellowships from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts. You can learn more about Colleen on her website: www.motherwitdesign.com.
Read her poem "On Getting a Late Start" from Issue 34.

Lucille Lang Day has published five books of poetry, a children's book, Chain Letter (Heyday, 2005), a chapbook as part of Pudding House's "Greatest Hits" series, and has had poems in several journals and anthologies, including September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond. She is the founding director of Scarlet Tanager Books (www.scarlettanager.com), and director of the Hall of Health, a hands-on children's museum in Berkeley. Read her poem "Aunt Ethel, Please " from Issue 42.

Jessica G. de Koninck, a former member of the Montclair city council, is now the Director of Legislative Services for the New Jersey Department of Education. She says that she returned to writing poetry twenty years ago after a hiatus of twenty years. The impetus was an internal need to respond to a shooting at her local post office and the impact it had on lives in the community. Her work has appeared in Passager, PoetryMagazine.com, and elsewhere.

Christine Higgins writes both poetry and non-fiction. She has been a McDowell Colony fellow and the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award. A graduate of the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, she teaches writing for the Advanced Academic Programs at Johns Hopkins University. Read her poem "The Fortune" from Issue 38.

Sandra L. Jones was a Clinical Nurse for 30 years before pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts from the University of Baltimore. She maintains her own Web site: (www.prosenverse.com).
LISTEN to Sandra read her poem "Breathe" from Issue 42.

Adrianne Marcus This is what Adrianne had to say about forgetting, for our Forgetting Issue: "I'm not so sure I forget things as the house takes them away and eventually returns them. Keys, small purses, glasses, all have to be replaced at one time or another, and whether or not it's due to forgetting or as Jung believed, supernatural forces whisking objects away, eventually you forget them until they reappear." Read her poem "La Legende des Siecles" from Issue 33.

Greg McBride recently retired from the Senior Executive Service at the U.S. Department of Transportation, where he last served as Deputy Chief Counsel of the Federal Transit Administration. He served as an Army photographer during the Vietnam War and began writing poetry in his mid-fifties. He is editor of The Innisfree Poetry Journal (innisfreepoetry.org), and maintains a personal poetry Web site. His poetic homage to an influential teacher won Honorable Mention in Issue 42.

James McGrath is also a sculptor and calligrapher, and has served as a poet/artist-in-residence at international schools in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and the Republic of the Congo. Read his poem "Son of the Hunter" from Issue 37.

Elaine Fowler Palenica, a fiction writer for many years, began writing poems in 1991, searching for a way to write about her son Andrew, who has severe mental and physical disabilities. She has published two chapbooks of "Andrew poems"—Taking the Train (1997) and The Dailiness of It (2002) with Grey Press (KY)—and two short story collections, Small Caucasian Woman (1993) and Brier Country (2002) with the University of Missouri Press. She was the 2004 Passager Poet. Read one of her featured poems and excerpts from an interview from Issue 38.

Alan C. Reese is the founding editor of Dancing Shadow Review, as well as an independent publishing company, Abecedarian Books, Inc. He teaches creative writing, tai chi, and a state certified reading course for teachers. My work has appeared in many journals and newspapers, including The Baltimore Sun, Maryland Poetry Review, The Potomac Review, and Passager Issue 42.

Elisavietta Ritchie is the author of seven books of poetry. She teaches workshops for adults and as a poet-in-the-schools. You can read more about Elisavietta on her webpage: www.elisavietta.com. Read her poem "Hokusai in the Chesapeake" from Issue 34.

Davia Rivka is a writer and life coach (http://daviarivka.com), who says of her writing: "I want my words to wake people up, stir their minds and soothe their hearts." Her poem "Luxuries," about her journey with breast cancer, won Honorable mention in Passager's 2006 Poetry Contest (Issue 42).

Mike Schneider is a former a lawyer, and a current science writer at Carnegie Mellon University. He organized a reading in February 2003 in Pittsburgh's Market Square at which 27 poets, in 15-degree weather, expressed opposition to war in Iraq. He is also a member of the Squirrel Hill Poetry Workshop, a group of poets in the Pittsburgh area. His chapbook Rooster was published by Main Street Rag. His poem "Breath Through Bones" appears in Issue 42.

Joanna Catherine Scott is the author of Indochina's Refugees: Oral Histories from Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam and several novels set in South Korea and Vietnam. Her award-winning collections of poetry are Breakfast at the Shangri-La, Birth Mother and Coming Down from Bataan. Read her poem "The Climb" from Issue 38.

Henry Seiden is a psychologist and psychoanalyst. He lives and practices in Forest Hills, New York, where he sees patients and writes poems in the same sunny office on the same tree-lined street. His poems have appeared in many journals and magazines, including Passager (Issue 42) and Poetry.

Jeanne Shannon is a small press editor/publisher with Wildflower Press Books in Albuquerque. Her poetry has appeared in numerous small-press and university publications, such as Passager Issue 42. She is the author of two collections, Angelus (Daniel & Daniel 2006) and Stars Scattered Like Seeds.

Duane Tucker is an actor/screenwriter/poet. As an actor, he has many films and TV shows to his credit. He has written a one-man play about John Muir which he has performed in the U.S. and Canada and recently at a United Nations Conference on the Environment. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario. He was the 2002 Passager Poet. Read his poem "More Than Blood" from Issue 36. Visit Duane Tucker's PoetryoftheSoul.com, a Place to Celebrate Tiny Miracles, as well as read more of his work.

Ronald Vossler grew up hearing stories of the "old country," the passage over the ocean, and the early days of settlement. Read his poem "Ich? Or Me? Or Who?" from Issue 33.

Fredrick Zydek is the author of four collections of poetry: Lights Along the Missouri, Storm Warning, Ending the Fast, and The Conception Abbey Poems. Formerly a professor at the University of Nebraska, he is now a gentleman farmer when he isn't writing. Read his poem "Growing Despite Myself" from Issue 33.

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