About the author
EDITORS BROOKE HORVATH is co-editor (with Irving Malin and Paul Ruffin) of A Goyen Companion (University of Texas Press). He is the author, most recently, of Consolation at Ground Zero (Eastern Washington University Press) and an editor with Review of Contemporary Fiction. He teaches American Literature at Kent State University. IRVING MALIN is the co-editor of critical essays on Gass's The Tunnel (1998) and Leslie Fidler and American Culture (due out in 1999). His reviews have appeared widely in journals, newspapers, and magazines.
CONTRIBUTORS RICHARD A. BETTS is assistant professor of English at Penn State University, Delaware County Campus. His interests center on the use of historical materials in contemporary American fiction. He has published articles on Styron, Barth, and Berger. NICHOLAS DELBANCO is Professor of English and Chair of the Hopwood Awards Committee at the University of Michigan. His seventeenth book, the novel Old Scores, was published by Warner Books in the fall of 1997; that year he also served as Chair of the National Book Awards Fiction Panel. JOSEPH DEWEY, Associate Professor of American Literature at the University of Pittsburgh, Johnstown, is the author of In a Dark Time: The Apocalyptic Temper in the American Novel of the Nuclear Age. His essays have appeared in The Mississippi Quarterly, The Hollins Critic, Modern Fiction Studies, and Review of Contemporary Fiction, as well as other publications. He has recently completed Locked in Magic Kingdoms: Spectacle Realism in the Novels of Reagan's America and is co-editing a collection of essays on the short fiction of Henry James. R.H.W. DILLARD is a Professor of English and chair of the creative writing program at Hollins University in Virginia, where he edits the journal, The Hollins Critic. He is also a poet and novelist and was awarded the O.B. Hardinson, Jr. Poetry Prize by the Folger Shakespeare Library. Among his books is the critical monograph Understanding George Garrett, from which the essays in this collection are taken. THOMAS FLEMING is a classical philologist, poet, and editor of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. REGINALD GIBBONS was born in Houston, Texas, and educated at Princeton and Stanford. His most recent book of poems is Sparrow: New and Selected Poems (LSU Press, 1997), and his most recent fiction is Sweetbitter (Penguin, 1996). From 1981 till 1997 he was the editor of TriQuarterly magazine. He teaches at Northwestern University. LAURENCE GOLDSTEIN is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Cold Reading (Copper Beech Press), and three books of literary criticism, most recently The American Poet at the Movies: A Critical History (University of Michigan Press). He is Professor of English at the University of Michigan and editor of Michigan Quarterly Review. STEVEN G. KELLMAN is Ashbel Smith Professor of Comparative Literature at The University of Texas at San Antonio and film critic for The Texas Observer. His recent books include: The Plague: Fiction and Resistance (Twane, 1993); as editor, Perspectives on "Raging Bull" (G.K. Hall, 1994); and as co-editor, with Irving Malin, Into the Tunnel: Essays on William Gass's Novel (University of Delaware, 1998). JOSEPH W. REED is Professor of English and American Studies at Wesleyan University. His books includes Three American Originals (1984) and American Scenarios (1989). He is married to Kit Reed, the novelist. MONROE K. SPEARS retired from his position as Moody Professor of English at Rice University since 1986, lives in Sewanee, Tennessee. Among his books are The Poetry of W.H. Auden (1963), Dionysus and the City (1970), American Ambitions (1987), Countries of the Mind (1922), and The Writer's Reality (1996). WALTER SULLIVAN is a fiction writer and critic. His books include In Praise of Blood Sports and Other Essays, A Time to Dance, and, most recently, The War the Women Lived: Voices from the Confederate South. He is professor and director of the program in creative writing at Vanderbilt University. TOM WHALEN has published fiction, poetry, criticism, and collaborative translations in numerous journals and anthologies. He directs the creative writing program at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and teaches American Literature and film at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. His recent books include Roithamer's Universe (Portals Press) and A Newcomer's Guide to the Afterlife with Daniel Quinn (Bantam Books). Light on Glass (poems) is forthcoming from Red Dust. ALLEN WIER is the author of three novels, Blanco, Departing As Air, and A Place for Outlaws; also a collection of stories, Things about to Disappear. He has edited a collection of essays on contemporary fiction and an anthology of short fiction. In 1997 he received the Robert Penn Warren Award for Fiction from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He teaches at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, and he has just completed a new novel.
