Staff Biographical Statements

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania USA percontra05@yahoo.com

Miriam N. Kotzin, Founding Editor

Miriam N. Kotzin writes both poetry and fiction that has appeared in more than 100 print and online publications; her poetry received three nominations for a Pushcart Prize. She writes both formal poetry and free verse; her fiction ranges from flash fiction to a blognovel. She has been a contributing editor of Boulevard since its inception. A teacher of creative writing and literature, she directs Drexel University’s Certificate Program in Writing and Publishing and is a former director of the Literature Program. She is the author of A History of Drexel University. Her book reviews appeared in numerous publications ranging from College Literature to The Daily Planet. From 1973-1982 she was a juror for the American Film Festival and has also judged competitions in poetry, the literary short story and the popular short story for the Mad Poets Review and the Philadelphia Writers’ Conference. She received her BA in English, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Pennsylvania, and her Ph.d in English with distinction from New York University.

Bill Turner, Founding Editor

Bill Turner was formally trained in Political Science and Post-Colonial Latin American History. He taught History and Political Science for four years at a preparatory school in Puerto Rico, before accepting a position as the executive director of one of the largest environmental non-governmental organizations in the Caribbean (St. Croix Environmental Association). He has been called as an expert witness on issues ranging from conservation to public health by the United States Department of the Interior, the Congress of the United States, the Senate of the United States Virgin Islands, The Congressional Black Caucus and has been interviewed by ABC Television and BBC World News. He was a newspaper columnist for the Virgin Islands Daily News and The Virgin Islands Source Online. He was a founding member of two organizations dedicated to sustainable development in the Caribbean, a member of the board of directors of a nature and tourism organization and successfully negotiated a study of the salt pond on the Southgate Nature Preserve by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. He began writing fiction and stage plays in 2004. His fiction has appeared extensively online, and he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Peter Groesbeck, Associate Editor

A winner of the Toppan Drawing Prize, the Cecilia Beaux Portrait Prize, and the Cresson Traveling Scholarship at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Peter Groesbeck is currently employed by Drexel University and maintains a freelance photography business. His work has been most recently displayed at the Pentimenti Gallery, Philadelphia, and the JMS Gallery in Chestnut Hill, PA. His photography has appeared in Darkroom Photography, Collector’s Photography, Popular Photography, and has been published in several books, including Graphis Nude, and Sensual Photography.

Richard Burgin, Contributing Editor

Richard Burgin is a fiction writer, editor, composer, critic and teacher. Burgin is the author of 11 books, including the novel, Ghost Quartet (l999), and the short story collections The Sprit Returns (2001), Fear of Blue Skies (l998), Private Fame (1991), and Man Without Memory (l989). The latter three books were each listed as a Notable Book of the Year by The Philadelphia Inquirer. Burgin’s stories have won four Pushcart Prizes and 15 others have been listed by that prestigious anthology as being among the year’s best. Other stories have been reprinted in the anthologies The Best of Witness and As the Story Goes: Twenty Five years of the Johns Hopkins Short Fiction Series, among others. Burgin is also the author of Conversations with Isaac Bashevis Singer, which has been translated and published in four foreign language editions. A major excerpt from the book appeared in two parts as the cover story in The New York Times Magazine. Burgin was the founding editor of Boston Review and New York Arts Journal and the founding and current editor of the internationally distributed literary journal Boulevard (l985 to present), now in its 21st year of continuous publication.

Paul D. Green, Contributing Editor

Paul D. Green is a Professor of English at West Chester University in West Chester, PA. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University with High Honors. His academic writing has appeared in such places as Journal of the History of Ideas, Studies in the Renaissance, Studies in English Literature: 1500 - 1900, as well as in a number of anthologies of selected scholarly conference papers.

Al Gury, Contributing Editor

Al Gury is a painter in oils of figures, portraits, landscapes and still-lifes. He shows his work at F.A.N. Gallery in Philadelphia. His paintings have been shown at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the National Academy of Design in New York and the National Capitol in Washington D.C., as well as many other galleries and museums. Gury is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Painting Department at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, America's oldest and first art school and art museum. He has been featured in articles and interviews. He has won many awards and grants, including, among others, the Alumni Painting Award (The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts), the Best of Show Award and Medal (The Philadelphia Sketch Club), the Cresson Memorial Traveling Scholarship, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant for Arts in Education. He writes for American Artist magazine and is currently writing a book on painting methods.

Steven Rosen, Contributing Editor

Steven Rosen is a professional music journalist with a career spanning thirty years. During this period he has published well over 700 articles appearing in major periodicals. Among the publications Rosen’s work has appeared in are Rolling Stone, Los Angeles Times, Playboy, Musician, Guitar Player, Guitar World, Musician, US, Creem, Circus, Player, Total Guitar, Classic Rock, Drum! and many others. A recognized authority on the eclectic world of rock, Rosen has been tapped five times to write books: The Beck Book (Jeff Beck), The Artist Formerly Known As Prince, part of the Rock Lives series, Bruce Springsteen, The Story of Black Sabbath: Wheels Of Confusion (now in its third printing) and his most recent work, a quasi-dual endeavor covering both Free and Bad Company titled Free At Last: The Story of Free and Bad Company. He served as West Coast Editor for Fachblatt, one of Germany’s most respected and highest circulated magazines (typically, more than half of the cover features were Rosen-based compositions). He currently lends his hand to Player, a Japanese periodical employing his services for over twenty years. Also, he has recently shared his skills with a number of prestigious English periodicals including Classic Rock, Guitarist, Total Guitar, Mojo and Record Collector.

David R. Slavitt, Contributing Editor

David R. Slavitt is the author of 86 books, including his own fiction and poetry as well as his translations from the Greek and the Latin, including, among others: Seneca, Ovid, Virgil and Aeschylus. His translation of OedipusTyrannos will be published this fall by Yale University Press. His non-fiction includes a book on Virgil (also published by Yale) and Physicians Observed, Doubleday, as well as his account of running for office, Blue States Blues, published in April 2006 by Wesleyan University Press. He has also published under the names Henry Sutton, David Benjamin, Lynn Meyer and Henry Lazarus.

Contributors:

Vic Ferri, Feature Writer - Per Contra Tech

Vic Ferri is an electronics and software writer and an associate for Mr Inkman where you can save on inkjet cartridges for Canon, Lexmark, HP, Epson, Apple, and others, with a complete satisfaction guarantee.

Chris Nickson, Per Contra Correspondent - Europe

Chris Nickson was born in Leeds, England. At the age of 21 he moved to the U.S., ending up in Seattle, where he lived until 2005, when he returned to the U.K. Now ensconced on the edge of the Peak District in Derbyshire, he's published some 30 books, including The NPR Curious Listener's Guide to World Music and the forthcoming Solid Air: The Life of John Martyn. Divorced with one wonderful son, he makes his living as a journalist specializing in world and roots music.

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