Riffing on Strings: Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory

Edited by Sean Miller & Shveta Verma

Contributors

Sandy Beck began her corporeal existence in Massachusetts. After graduating from a sheltered girls’ prep school, she moved to New York City where she studied figure painting at the Art Students League and Film Studies at Hunter College. Subsequent years included travel in Southeast Asia, South America, and Europe, plus an MFA in Creative Writing. Currently, Sandy is working on a PhD in English. She lives by the sea in Port Townsend, Washington.

Félix T. Bermúdez de Castro y Sorondo’s professional experience encompasses art, design, and architecture. He has won several art and design awards and has enjoyed a successful career with experience ranging from business, site management, and architectural projects such as retail, exhibition and leisure, conversions, the refurbishment of listed historic fabrics to a new luxury holiday villa. His talents and multiple skills have been profitably and successfully used across the board in England and other countries.

Robert Borski has written two books about the fiction of Gene Wolfe, Solar Labyrinth and The Long and the Short of It, and lives in central Wisconsin. He believes his exposure to the Duncan Yo-Yo Craze in the early 1960s, along with a fascination for Cat's Cradles and the like, predisposed him to an acceptance of string theory, but at the same time denies he still has trouble tying his shoes.

Carole Buggé has five published novels, four novellas and a dozen or so short stories and poems. Winner of the Euphoria Poetry Competition and the Eve of St. Agnes Poetry Award, she is also the First Prize winner of the Maxim Mazumdar Playwriting Competition, the Chronogram Literary Fiction Prize, Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Award, and the Jean Paiva Memorial Fiction award, which included an NEA grant to read her fiction and poetry at Lincoln Center.

Daniel Conover is a journalist and new-media maverick in Charleston, South Carolina. He blogs, cartoons, and makes films with his friends at <http://xark.typepad.com>.

It's a long story why college librarian Lloyd Daub of Milwaukee writes poetry using both male and female pseudonyms. A long story. Fortunately, there is Deb Kolodji's version: “There's the interesting question of oino sakai and Lucinda Borkenhagen being two different literary personalities of the same person…Have they met? In which dimension?”

Diane Shipley DeCillis’ poems and prose have appeared in Nimrod International Journal, Rattle, William & Mary Review, Gastronomica, Connecticut Review, South Dakota Review, Puerto del Sol, Poet Lore, Sanskrit, Slipstream, Phoebe and other journals. She won the Crucible Poetry Prize 2005 and the 2005 MacGuffin National Poet Hunt. She owns an award-wining gallery in Southfield, Michigan and is co-editor of Mona Poetica, an anthology of poetry on the Mona Lisa published by Mayapple Press.

Lindsay A.S. Félix earned her BA in English from Mary Washington College in 1998 and MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University in 2007. She teaches English composition at Northern Virginia Community College, works full time as a business analyst, and is a poet at night and on weekends. Lindsay married her fabulous husband, Marvin, in 2004 and has two wagging dogs, Max and Shamone.

Linda Nemec Foster is the author of seven books of poetry including Amber Necklace from Gdansk (finalist for the Ohio Book Award) and Listen to the Landscape (finalist for the Michigan Notable Book Award). Her poems have been published in over 250 literary journals (e.g. The Georgia Review, New American Writing, and North American Review), translated in Europe, and produced for the stage. She is the founder of the Contemporary Writers Series at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Cherryl E. Garner manages a small law office in South Carolina but has her deepest roots in Alabama, the inspiration for much of her poetry. Her poetic interest is in exploring family, landscape, the common and the divine in any forms that seem best to fit, and she waits patiently for an acceptable theory of everything. In the past year, her work has been included in IBPC, The Rose & Thorn, and The Petigru Review.

Paul Ginsparg is Professor of Physics and Computing & Information Science at Cornell University and is widely known for his development of the ArXiv.org e-print archive. He has published numerous papers in the areas of quantum field theory, string theory, conformal field theory, and quantum gravity. A Fellow of the American Physical Society, he has won many awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship in 2002, the PAM (physics astronomy math) Award from the Special Libraries Association, the Council of Science Editors Award for Meritorious Achievement, and the Paul Evans Peters Award.

Sheldon Glashow has done seminal research in the fields of elementary particle physics and cosmology. He played a key role in unifying the weak and electromagnetic forces and in creating today's successful Standard Model, for which he won, along with Steven Weinberg and Abdus Salam, the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1979. He is the Arthur G.B. Metcalf Professor of Physics at Brown University and author of some 300 research papers and three books: Interactions (with Ben Bova, 1988), The Charm of Physics (1990), and From Alchemy to Quarks (1993).

Andrea Gradidge, she who might be obeyed, in a dimension somewhere, has relocated in space from the UK to British Columbia, Canada. Her son, Benjamin, studies computer science, and her daughter, Jennie, emigrated back to England with husband Kevin and their boys. Andrea strings words into minimalist poems and also does some computer illustration.

Lauren Gunderson is a resident of New York City by way of Atlanta, earning her BA at Emory University. A nationally commissioned and produced playwright, as well as a short story author and poet, Lauren is currently pursuing her MFA in Dramatic Writing at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. She teaches and speaks around the world on the intersection of science and theatre, as well as arts as activism. <http://laurengunderson.com>

Kathleen M. Heideman is a fellow of the National Science Foundation's Antarctic Artists & Writers Program. Her poems appear in the anthology 33 Minnesota Poets, chapbooks (Explaining Pictures to a Dead Hare; She Used to Have Some Cows; TimeUponOnce), and various literary magazines — Three Candles, Exquisite Corpse, Cream City Review, Water-Stone, etc. Her poem “Woman in a Barrel, About to Go Over Niagara Falls” was nominated for a Pushcart. She lives in Minnesota.

Tania Hershman <http://taniahershman.com> is a former science journalist living in Jerusalem, Israel, and a founding member of the Fiction Workhouse online writing collective. Her short and very short stories have been published in Cafe Irreal, the Hiss Quarterly, Front&Centre, Vestal Review, Steel City Review, Creating Reality, Entelechy Review, the Steel City Review, Riptide, and Transmission, and the Wonderwall and Ideas Above Our Station anthologies from Route. She has had three stories broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Tania's first collection, The White Road and Other Stories, will be published by Salt Publishing in 2008. Tania is the editor of The Short Review <http://theshortreview.com>, a site dedicated to reviewing short story collections and anthologies.

Brenda Hillman has published seven collections of poetry, all from Wesleyan University Press, the most recent of which are Cascadia (2001), and Pieces of Air in the Epic (2005), which won the William Carlos Williams Prize for Poetry. Hillman serves on the faculty of Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, California, where she is the Olivia Filippi Professor of Poetry. She is involved in non-violent activism with Code Pink in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Heather Holliger is a teacher, poet, and activist in the San Francisco Bay area. She holds an MFA in creative writing from George Mason University and currently teaches writing and literature at Ohlone and Chabot Colleges. She is interested in the connections between poetry and social change and has served on the boards of several community-based poetry and spoken word organizations. She plans one day to start an artist community with fellow activists.

Daniel Hudon, originally from Canada, teaches natural science at Boston University. His first book, The Bluffer’s Guide to the Cosmos, will be published in 2008 by Oval Books (UK). He has published more than two dozen travel stories in literary magazines, including, most recently, in Bayou Magazine. He is working on a series of short stories like the one in the present volume. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.

David Hurst’s poetry has appeared in the online and print journals Arsenic Lobster, In the Grove, and hardpan. He feels the congruence of science and art is no accident; poetry walks that line merging code with rhythm, idiom and nuance.  David received his MFA in Creative Writing at CSU, Fresno and teaches English at College of the Sequoias in Visalia, CA. He lives in California's Central Valley with his wife, several children, and various animals.

Colette Inez has authored nine books of poetry and won Guggenheim, Rockefeller and two NEA fellowships. Her latest collection Spinoza Doesn’t Come Here Anymore has been released by Melville House Books, followed by her memoir The Secret of M. Dulong from the University of Wisconsin Press. A visiting professor formerly at Cornell, Ohio, Bucknell and Colgate Universities, she is widely anthologized, teaches in Columbia University’s Undergraduate Program, and has appeared on public radio and TV.

N.K. Jemisin is a writer of science fiction, dark fantasy, and unclassifiables like her contribution to this anthology. Her work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Ideomancer, Escape Pod, and on the 2006 Recommended Reading list from the Carl Brandon Society. She is fascinated by singularities, quantum or otherwise — including New York, where she now lives.

Jeff P. Jones’s poetry chapbook, Stratus Opacus, is forthcoming from Main Street Rag Publishing. His poems are recently in Blood Orange Review, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. He teaches writing at the University of Idaho.

Michio Kaku holds the Henry Semat Chair in Theoretical Physics at the City University of New York. He is the cofounder of string field theory and the author of several widely acclaimed books, including Visions, Beyond Einstein, Hyperspace, and most recently Parallel Worlds. He hosts a nationally syndicated radio science program. His website is <http://mkaku.org>.

Christine Klocek-Lim lives in Pennsylvania. Her poems have appeared in Nimrod, The Pedestal Magazine, OCHO #5, About.com, the Quarterly Journal of Ideology, and elsewhere. In 2006, her work was selected as a finalist for Nimrod's Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. She is editor of the online journal, Autumn Sky Poetry, and serves as Site Administrator for The Academy of American Poets' online discussion forum at Poets.org. Her website is <http://novembersky.com>.

Cleo Fellers Kocol proceeded from being a writer of fiction, non-fiction, and drama to poetry. The Sacramento Bee publishes her column about poets and poetry – also found online. Her poetry appears in Poetry Now, Mobius, and other journals, and was choreographed, set to music, and danced at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. She’s also presented her poetry and drama at the Steve Allen Theater in Los Angeles, California. Kocol is 81 years old.

Deborah P. Kolodji works in information technology to fund other dimensions of her life, where she sometimes creates strings of haiku with other poets.   Shunning the use of colorful pseudonyms, she is the president of the Science Fiction Poetry Association and a member of the Haiku Society of America. Her work has appeared in a variety of places including Modern Haiku, Strange Horizons, Frogpond, Eclectica, Poetic Diversity, Dreams and Nightmares, and St. Anthony Messenger Magazine.

David Kopaska-Merkel describes rocks for the State of Alabama and publishes Dreams and Nightmares, a magazine of science fiction and fantasy poetry. In 2006, a collaboration with Kendall Evans won the Rhysling Award of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, long-poem category. Recent flash fiction can be found at <http://dailycabal.com>. Chapbooks are available through <http://genremall.com> and <http://spechouseofpoetry.com>. David lives in Alabama with artists and furry layabouts; learn more here <http://dreamsandnightmares.interstellardustmites.com>.

Dr. Kristine Larsen is Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Central Connecticut State University where she has been on the faculty since 1989. The author of Stephen Hawking: A Biography, Cosmology 101, and numerous articles on the history of women in astronomy and astronomy education, Larsen has also published and presented various scholarly works on the astronomical motifs and motivations in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien.

Elissa Malcohn edited Star*Line (Science Fiction Poetry Association) from 1986 to 1988. Her work has appeared in Amazing, Asimov's, Full Spectrum (Bantam), Tales of the Unanticipated, and elsewhere. She was a 1985 John W. Campbell Award finalist and a four-time Rhysling Award nominee. Covenant, the first volume in her Deviations series, is available from Aisling Press. Forthcoming fiction includes work in Electric Velocipede and Helix. See her website (search for “Malcohn's World”) for more information.

Michelle Morgan’s work appears in numerous journals, including parva sed apta, Arsenic Lobster, JMWW, Salt River Review, The Aurorean, Plain Spoke, Pemmican, Ruined Music, Wicked Alice, Marginalia, Blood Lotus, Alimentum & New Verse News, and in over half a dozen anthologies. She is editor of the online literary & arts journal panamowa: a new lit order, and she is also a graduate student in the R. Kelly School of Disembodied Metaphorics.

Dave Morrison, a high school graduate and above-average guitar player, has published two novels and two collections of poetry. Visit him at <http://dave--morrison.com>.

Conceived originally in Kiev, Ukraine, Alex Nodopaka was first exhibited by accident in Vladivostock, Russia. Then he finger-painted in Austria, studied tongue-in-cheek at the École des Beaux-Arts, Casablanca, Morocco. Now he’s back to doodling with crayons but on human canvases. Full time artist, art critic, and poet, he still dreams of silent acting in an IFC or Sundance movie.

James O'Hern is the author of Honoring the Stones published by Curbstone Press. Raised on a ranch in South Texas, he was mentored by a Mexican Indian who taught him native ways. Thus, he became profoundly aware of how progress erases the collective memory of indigenous people. After 35 years as an investment banker, he is committed to honor the loss of cultural identity through language and poetry. He lives in New York City. < This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it >

Lynn Pattison's work has appeared in: The Notre Dame Review, Rhino, The Dunes Review, Heliotrope, The MacGuffin and Poetry East. Besides her chapbooks, tesla's daughter and Walking Back the Cat, she is the author of the book, Light That Sounds Like Breaking. Her poems have been anthologized in several collections and have twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She imagines that in another dimension she might really understand quantum physics.

Joseph Radke’s poems have appeared in Boulevard, Versal, Poetry East, Natural Bridge, and several other journals. He is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets prize. He lives in Milwaukee where he teaches writing and works on The Cream City Review. Salt&Sand, his poetry manuscript, is seeking a publisher.

Michael Ricciardi is naturalist, teacher, writer/poet, designer, and multi-media artist living in Seattle, Washington. He is also a former professional illusionist. As a science writer/reporter, Michael has interviewed several renowned scientists, including physicists Brian Greene (Columbia), Paul Steinhardt (Princeton), and Nobel Laureate Ilya Prigogine. Ricciardi is also an award winning, internationally screened video artist, and has received several grants for his artistic projects, including a Paul G. Allen Foundation for the Arts grant (2002, 2003).

Adam Roberts was born two thirds of the way through the last century. He is currently Professor of Nineteenth-century Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London. Perhaps surprisingly, given that fact, he is also the author of a number of science fiction novels, the most recent of which are: Gradisil (Gollancz, 2006, which was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke award), Splinter (Solaris 2007), Land of the Headless (Gollancz 2007) and Swiftly (Gollancz 2008).

Bruce Holland Rogers is an American writer living temporarily in London. His fiction has been translated into 23 languages and has won a Pushcart Prize, two Nebulas, and two World Fantasy Awards. His most recent collection is The Keyhole Opera, and more of his stories are available at <http://shortshortshort.com> along with information about an e-mail subscription service to his short-short stories. He teaches fiction writing for the Whidbey Writers Workshop low-residency MFA program.

Mary Margaret Serpento (a.k.a. *.mms) writes SF short poetry in English and French, and is a figment of her own imagination.

scifaijin Celtic and bilingual—

     a cat reborn as human

     this turn (of the wheel)

Beret Skorpen-Tifft writes poetry and fiction. She lives in South Portland Maine with her husband and two children. She received her B.A from Hampshire College and her MFA in fiction from Vermont College. Her work has appeared in The Louisville Review, Passages North, The Red Owl, The Sow’s Ear, The Sun, Maine Things Considered, The Maine Times, and The Bangor Daily News. She is a long distance runner, completing 7 marathons.

Jarvis Slacks attends the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, finishing his masters degree in Creative Writing. He also writes a weekly nightlife column, Good Evening, for the Star News and is working on his first novel. He likes cookies and ice cream.

Elaine Terranova’s most recent book of poems is Not To: New and Selected Poems. Other books include The Cult of the Right Hand, for which she won the 1990 Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, Damages, and The Dog's Heart. Her translation of Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis is part of the Penn Greek Drama Series. She was named a Pew Fellow in the Arts and has received an NEA fellowship.

Wendy Vardaman, Madison, Wisconsin, has a PhD in English from University of Pennsylvania, as well as a BS in Civil Engineering from Cornell University. Her poems, reviews, and interviews have appeared in various anthologies and journals, including Poet Lore, Main Street Rag, Nerve Cowboy, qarrtsiluni, Free Verse, Pivot, Wisconsin People & Ideas, Women’s Review of Books and Portland Review. 

Cecilia Vicuña is a poet and artist born in Chile. She performs and exhibits her work widely in Europe, Latin America, and the US. The author of 16 books, her work has been translated into several languages. Among them: QUIPOem, Wesleyan University Press, l997, and Spit Temple, forthcoming by Factory School Press, 2008. The co-author of 500 Years of Latin American Poetry for Oxford University Press, she lives in New York and Chile. <http://ceciliavicuna.org>

Peter Woit is a Lecturer in the mathematics department at Columbia University and a researcher in the field of mathematical physics. He holds a doctoral degree in theoretical particle physics from Princeton and writes a blog, Not Even Wrong, which often takes a critical view of string theory. His book of the same name was published in 2006 in the US and the UK and has recently appeared in Italian and French translations.

Susan Zwinger has published seventy poems and five books of natural history, including The Last Wild Edge, Stalking the Ice Dragon, Still Wild, Always Wild, a Sierra Club book. She teaches for the Whidbey Writers Workshop Master of Fine Arts in creative nonfiction, keeps illustrated journals, and leads natural history and creative writing workshops across the West. Zwinger has an MFA in Poetry from University of Iowa in 1971. She lives on an island where she translates from eagle to English daily.