Rod Bauer
Midair. A short story.
Rod Bauer is editor of Spark. His photographs also are included in this issue. Prior to entering the M.A. program at U.C. Davis, Rod spent 14 years in the computer software industry. His fiction has been published in various literary magazines and reviews, and his plays performed in small theatres on the West Coast. You can e-mail Rod at rdbauer@ucdavis.edu.Amy Boyer
Burning Grass. A short story.
Amy Boyer is a second-year fiction student at UCD. Before this interlude, she worked as a software tester, a gardener, a cook at a hotel on the Mendocino coast, and a teacher of conversational English in Japan—among other things. She is a closet math major. "Burning Grass" is part of a projected collection of stories about Jude's family, but most of the time Amy works on a science fiction novel about insiders, outsiders, technocrats, farmers, trains, rooms, rain, fire, shoes, hands, etc.
Steve Cassal
The Watermelon. A short story.
Steve Cassal's fiction has appeared in The Piedmont Literary Review , Frank Magazine and AIM Magazine. He lives in Berkeley, California.
David Ira Cleary
Rising. A short story.
I grew up in Colorado, got my B.A. at CU Boulder, and moved to San Francisco after the earthquake. I've had stories published in Science Fiction Age, Full Spectrum II, and High Fantastic: Colorado Fantasy, Dark Fantasy, and Science Fiction. I'm strongly considering becoming a neurosurgeon once I've left my mark in fiction.
J. K. Colvin
Deadman's Squall. A short story.
Employment: Twenty-seven years as a Coast Guard aviator (7000+ flight hours). I've lived in all corners of the US, including Alaska, and Hawaii. Did two years in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, as the Coast Guard Attaché. Had the pleasure of helping Baby Doc Duvalier, and his corrupt entourage, sneak out of the country in the dead of night. (We thought things would get better after he left. We guessed wrong.) My wife asks me why I write. I tell her because it feels good when I stop.
Paige Davis
Losing North Vernon. A poem.
I am a second year graduate student of Poetry here at UCD. I completed my BA in Creative Writing at Purdue University where I worked with Marianne Boruch and Neil Myers.
A. K. DiFranco
Poems
Aaron DiFranco is a misplaced Midwesterner. Born in Ohio and educated in New York, he now lives in Palo Alto, California.
Tamara Grippi
Poems
Tamara Grippi grew up in the Bay Area. She graduated from UC Santa Barbara with a degree in English in 1994. While at Santa Barbara, she won the 1993 College of Creative Studies Poetry Contest. In 1996, she completed her M.A. in Creative Writing at UC Davis. She has taught in the Poetry in the Schools Program as a volunteer.
Gary Snyder
"The Circumambulation of Mt. Tamalpais," from Mountains and Rivers Without End, Counterpoint, 1996
Gary Snyder is the author of several volumes of essays and collections of poetry, including Riprap, Regarding Wave, No Nature: New and Selected Poems, Axe Handles, Left Out in the Rain, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Turtle Island. He teaches literature and wilderness thought at the University of California at Davis and lives with his family on San Juan Ridge in the Sierra foothills. Snyder was awarded the Bollingen Prize in poetry by Yale University Library in 1997.
Stephen Stralka
The Anger Clinic. A short story.
Stephen Stralka is a native of Riverside, California, now living in Davis. He is quite tall.