Volume 26:3

Before and After

"Sometimes we initiate changes in our lives... or we can at least anticipate and try to control them. Some changes take place slowly without our even knowing they are happening or when they started. Other changes occur suddenly and without warning. Regardless of the origin or timing, change often blends a new opportunity with the loss of something we once knew. The stories, poems and artwork in this issue of Room of One's Own depict lives in the moments before or after some significant change. Almost all of the pieces leave us wondering what comes next."

-- Lana Okerlund, editor

Patricia Brody holds degrees from Sarah Lawrence College, Columbia and City College of New York. In the 1970s and 1980s, she wrote articles for several pop-culture publications including Crawdaddy, the Boston Real Paper and the San Francisco Chronicle and won the Geraldine Griffin Moore Award in 2001. Patricia lives in New York.

After three years treeplanting in northern Alberta, Sarah Butler moved from the block to the cook shack, feeding planters for five seasons before retiring in 2001. Her most recent homes have been in Varanasi, India and Nelson, B.C. She now lives in Ontario. "Block 56" is Sarah's first published work.

Alexis Easley is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Alaska Southeast, where she teaches literature and creative writing. She has published poetry in Frontiers and Canadian Women’s Studies. Her articles on women's literature have appeared in Women's Writing, Nineteenth-Century Prose and many other journals. Her book, First-Person Anonymous: Women Writers and Victorian Print Media is forthcoming from Ashgate Press.

Penelope Harwood's background is in theatre and writing. She has just finished directing scenes from Much Ado About Nothing at Glenlyon-Norfolk School in Victoria, B.C. "Hands" is one of the first poems she has been able to write since suffering a brain injury a number of years ago.

Heather Horton (cover artist for this issue) was born in Burlington, Ontario and went on to complete a B.A. in English at McMaster University and a three-year program in interpretive illustration at Sheridan College. Her work is carried at Circle Arts Gallery in Tobermory and in private collections in Canada, England and Germany.

Jennifer D. Munro's work has appeared in Calyx, A Journal of Art and Literature by Women and Clean Sheets. Under a pseudonym, her work appears in Best Women's Erotica and Ripe Fruit: Erotica for Well-Seasoned Lovers (both Cleis Press) and Shameless: W's Intimate Erotica (Seal Press). "Fill in the Blank" is part of her collection of irreverent personal essays about fertility issues. Jennifer lives in Seattle, Washington.

Lana Okerlund (Editor of this issue) is a Vancouver-based business consultant and a member of the collective that publishes Room of One’s Own. Lana recently relocated to Vancouver from her hometown of Winnipeg, where she obtained a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Manitoba. She is currently enrolled in Simon Fraser University's Certificate in Editing program and is a member of a local creative writing group.

Pamela Porter's poems have been published in the Atlanta Review, Descant, the Seattle Review, and many others. She has been a Canadian Literary Awards finalist three times and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her chapbook Poems for the Luminous World has been published with Frog Hollow Press in Victoria, B.C. Pamela lives in Sidney.