Alan Michael Parker is the author of five books of poems, including Elephants & Butterflies (BOA, 2008), a novel, Cry Uncle (Mississippi, 2005) and the editor of The Imaginary Poets (Tupelo, 2005), among other scholarly volumes. His essays and reviews appear widely in journals including The Believer, The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker and The San Francisco Chronicle. He directs the creative writing program at Davidson College, and is a core faculty member in the Queens University low-residency M.F.A. program. His next book will be a novel, A Tale of a Whale, forthcoming from WordFarm in early 2011. 

Leily Kleinbard is a Taiwanese-American woman born in Brooklyn, New York. She has spent the past four years reading and writing poetry at Davidson College in North Carolina. Leily has enjoyed working for Connotation Press and is grateful to Alan Michael Parker for the opportunity to co-guest-edit the April issue. She would also like to thank the poets and painter included here, Leily feels honored to publish their work.

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