Interviews

Carol Ann Bassett is the author of three works of literary nonfiction: Galápagos at the Crossroads: Pirates, Biologists, Tourists, and Creationists Battle for Darwin's Cradle of Evolution; A Gathering of Stones: Journeys to the Edges of a Changing World (a finalist for the Oregon Book Award in creative nonfiction); and Organ Pipe: Life on the Edge (part of the Desert Places series). Her essays have been published in the American Nature Writing series and other anthologies. Bassett was a regular contributor to The New York Times and Time-Life, and was an independent producer for National Public Radio. Her work has appeared in The Nation, The Los Angeles Times, Mother Jones, Cond Nasté Traveler, and numerous other national publications. She teaches environmental writing and literary nonfiction at the University of Oregon.

Judith Halberstam is Professor of English and Director of The Center for Feminist Research at USC. Halberstam teaches courses in queer studies, gender theory, art, literature and film. Halberstam is the author of Female Masculinity, The Drag King Book, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters, and a new book from NYU Press titled In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives.

Leslie Epstein was born in Los Angeles to a family of film makers. His father and uncle together wrote dozens of films, including Casablanca. He has published ten works of fiction and his best known novel, King of the Jews, became a classic of Holocaust Fiction. His articles and stories have appeared in such places as Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, and Harper's. He was a Rhodes Scholar and later won many additional awards and fellowships, including a Fulbright. He received his D.F.A. in Playwriting from the Yale Drama School. Epstein has been the director of the Creative Writing Program at Boston University for over thirty years.

Michael Martone is the author of five books of short fiction including Seeing Eye published in September of 1995 by Zoland Books, as well as Penses: The Thoughts of Dan Quayle (Broad Ripple Press, 1994), Fort Wayne Is Seventh on Hitler's List (Indiana University Press, 1990), Safety Patrol (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), and Alive and Dead in Indiana(Alfred A. Knopf, 1984). He has edited two collections of essays about the Midwest: A Place of Sense: Essays in Search of the Midwest and Townships: Pieces of the Midwest (University of Iowa Press, 1988 and 1992). He edits Story County Books, and his newest book, The Flatness and Other Landscapes (University of Georgia Press, 2000), a collection of his own essays about the Midwest, won the AWP Prize for Creative Nonfiction in 1998.

Robin Ekiss is a former Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford, recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Award for emerging women writers, and author of the book, The Mansion of Happiness (University of Georgia Press VQR Poetry Series, November 2009). She has received grants, awards, and residencies from the Barbara Deming/Money for Women Foundation, Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Fund, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Millay Colony for the Arts, MacDowell Colony, and Headlands Center for the Arts. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, POETRY, APR, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, New England Review, and elsewhere. She lives in San Francisco with her husband, the poet Keith Ekiss, and their two cats, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.

Robin Hemley is the author of eight books of nonfiction and fiction and the winner of many awards including a 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship, The Nelson Algren Award for Fiction from The Chicago Tribune, The Story Magazine Humor Prize, an Independent Press Book Award, two Pushcart Prizes and many others. His work has been published in the U.S., Great Britain, Germany, Japan, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and elsewhere and he frequently teaches creative writing workshops around the world. He has been widely anthologized and has published his work in such places as The New York Times, The Believer, The Southern Review, Orion, Ploughshares, Narrative.com, The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune, New York Magazine, and many of the finest literary magazines in the U.S.

Tania Katan is an author, playwright, and performer. Her memoir My One-Night Stand With Cancer is the winner of the 2006 Judy Grahn Award in Nonfiction, an honoree of the 2006 American Library Association's Stonewall Book Award in Non-Fiction, and a finalist for the 2006 Lambda Literary Award. Rock-n-Roller Melissa Etheridge said of Tania's memoir, This book rocks! It's passionate, playful, and downright beautiful, and the Library Journal gave the book a Star Review. Since the success of her first book, Tania has been performing her one-woman show, Saving Tania's Privates (adapted from My One Night Stand With Cancer), which made its European premiere at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2008 where it was a critical success! In the U.S. Saving Tania's Privates has been seen at such prestigious venues as ACT in Seattle and The Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia.

A recent contributor to HARRIET, Wanda Coleman occasionally contributes to drgodine.blogspot.com, and is featured in Writing Los Angeles (Library of America, 2002), in Poet's Market (2003), and Quercus Review VI (2006). She has been an Emmy-winning scriptwriter, and a former columnist for Los Angeles Times magazine; a nominee for poet laureate, California 2005 and for the USA artists fellowship 2007. Coleman's works from Black Sparrow include the novel Mambo Hips and Make Believe, Bathwater Wine, winner of the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prizethe first African- American woman to receive the award.