Kate’s first love has always been poetry, her second editorial work. Earlier in her career, she edited books for Simon & Schuster and other publishers; now she has returned to the exciting job of discovering new writers, interacting with authors, and poring over manuscripts. The idea for Umbrella kept her awake at night and haunted her by day, until it became impossible not to bring the venture to fruition.
Kate is the author of Here from Away, a collection of poetry published in 2003; a second volume, In Company, publishes in fall 2011. Her poems began appearing in literary journals in 1980. She grew up in the Bronx, New York, and recently returned there, to the leafy Riverdale neighborhood, where she lives with her husband of 32 years, John Leahy, and her muse Oscar, the insatiable red tabby on our masthead.
Linda Stern co-published Endymion, a poetry magazine, in the 1970s. The title reflects an enduring love of the poetry of the Romantics, but her current tastes are wide-ranging: good work is good work.
Among Linda’s poetry credits are The New Criterion, Promethean, Balaam’s Ass, and Pot Hooks ‘N’ Hangers, as well as Umbrella. Linda also organized the Sweet Singer reading series, which featured readings by Samuel Menashe and other notable writers.
Linda works as a freelance book editor. A native New Yorker, she lives with her husband, the poet David M. Katz, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Linda also notes, as a completely objective statement of fact, that their sons, Jake and Jesse, are two of the most enormously talented musicians and writers of their generation. Readers who attend their gigs are encouraged to identify themselves as FOMs—friends of mom’s.
Bill Lantry is a native of San Diego, California, where he worked as a wildland firefighter and poured liquid metal in a magnesium foundry. He later founded and edited Eye Prayers, a small press journal of poetry. After leaving California, he taught at the Université de Nice in France, where he did “Higher Studies in Semiotics and Literary Sciences.” While in Nice, he participated in Interspace, a project seeking to unify Poetry, Philosophy, Music and Visual Art. As part of Interspace, he gave poetry readings in Nice, Paris, Rome, and Monte Carlo. During this time, he won the Paris/Atlantic Young Writers Award.
Holding four degrees from two continents, he clearly needs an extra set of hands. In spite of this handicap, he has taught at a dozen universities, most often in Writing, Literature, and Rhetoric, but also in History, Library Science, World Civilizations and Information Technology. He was the first in his doctoral program to be awarded a double Ph.D., one in the writing of Fiction and one in Poetry. After he was done, they changed the rules, so this will likely remain a unique accomplishment.
He has been widely published abroad, including journals in England, Germany, Sweden, India, China, Syria, Israel and Texas. His work has been translated into French, Arabic and Italian. He was a finalist for the 2009 Premio Mundial Fernando Rielo de Poesía Mística, and in 2010 won CutBank’s Patricia Goedicke Prize and the Lindberg Peace Foundation Poetry for Peace Prize in Jerusalem.
He stopped writing for twelve years while he was involved in a special project in Washington, DC, which took all his energy. When he started writing again in 2009, Umbrella was one of the first to publish his poetry. He still lives in Washington, DC, with his wife, a coloratura soprano, who sings far better than he ever will.
Oscar le Pu went to cat heaven in June of 2012; rest in peace, delightful pussycat!
Continued thanks to Peter Bloxsom, whose technical wizardry was critical to Umbrella’s launch in 2006, and to editors emeritus Rachel Dacus and C. E. Chaffin.
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