Sharon Raynor's essay, "Breaking the Silence: The Unspoken Brotherhood of Vietnam Veterans," comprised en entire issue of NC Crossroads (Summer 2002) published by the North Carolina Humanities Council.  Raynor's essay begins: "I have possessed a genuine curiosiity about my father's experiences in Vietnam ever since I found his diary and photo album from the war when I was in middle school.  He reluctantly shared those items with me for a class project, but he didn't talk much about his experience, at least not to me."  Raynor's essay recounts the Vietnam Veterans oral history project she conducted from February to November 2000.  In conjunction with this project, Raynor's article, "The Unspoken Brotherhood/Sisterhood of Viet Nam Veterans," was published in Chapel Hill News on October 13, 2002.  For the text of this article, please see: http://www.triangle.com/triangle.com/ communities/chapelhill/opinion/story/1806600p-1806902c.htm

Peter Makuck's short story, "Family," appeared in the Hudson Review (Autumn 2002).  Please see: http://www.hudsonreview.com/makuck.html.  Also, Makuck's essay, "The Pleasures of His Madness," reviewed Joe Ashby Porter's Touch Wood: Short Stories (Turtle Point P, 2002) and was published November 22 in the Sunday Raleigh News and Observer.  From the publisher: "This third collection of stories from the author of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Kentucky Stories offers us a mixture of realistic and fabulist fictions, all of them reflecting Porter's keen sense of the unusual and the ironic in the everyday.  The title story tells of (improbable) consequences following a missed phone connection between a woman and her lover and then tells the story of that story's impact on various people, with great or unfortunate consequences, alternately. The remarkable 'Bone Key' shows life in Key West through the eyes of a sidewalk hair wrapper, attuning himself to the sensibilities of assorted clients and curious 'passersby covered in jangling idiosyncrasies' and reflecting on his day job at IBM and the layoffs he must make there. This character's perspective counters, perhaps at least partly, the 'illusion of sightlessness' that spectators and performers alike find appealing. Porter is effective at using quite long sentences to plunge us fully into his character's worlds, at elaborating whole scenarios or background stories in a single sentence, and at ironic, fablelike endings, as in 'A Man Wanted to Buy a Cat.'"

Pat Bizzaro's essay, "Houses of History Are Made of Words," and poem "Houses of History" were published in the collection, September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond, edited by William Heyen and published by Etruscan Press (2002).  The book is an attempt "to catch the first, passionate reactions of many of our finest creative writers to a matrix of grievous events that would continue to intensify in the American memory ... .  In September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond, more than 125 fiction writers, poets, and essayists are seized in ways that often surprise themselves: together they offer a revelation of our collective psyche during a perilous time. ... Included are Pultizer Prize winning authors W. S. Merwin, Henry Taylor, and John Updike, National Book Award winner Lucille Clifton, former Poets Laureates Richard Wilbur and Robert Pinsky, and others ... Tess Gallagher, Ray Gonzalez, Kimiko Hahn, Joy Harjo, Denis Johnson, Erika Jong, Maxine Hong Kingston, Ishmael Reed ... and more than one hundred others." Other works by Bizzaro also appeared in print: an afterword/review of Fred Chappell's "Gift of Roses" was published by the North Carolina Literary Review (Fall 2002); a review of Robert Morgan's This Rock in Pembroke Magazine 34 (2002); and a review of  Robert Morgan's Topsoil Toad: Poems in Appalachian Journal (Summer 2002).

Donald Palumbo's comprehensive chapter on "Science Fiction" was published in The Greenwood Guide to American Popular Culture (Greenwood Press, 2002).  Palumbo's chapter is a history of science fiction in all media and an analysis of reference works and critical studies.  According to the editors,  "the intent of [this work] . . . is to assemble in one place the basic bibliographical data needed to begin the study of most of the major areas of popular culture."  The Greenwood Guide includes 46 aspects of popular culture, ranging from "Advertising" to "Women" and including such topics as "The Automobile," "Comic Strips," "Computers," "Death," "Foodways," "Jazz," "Magazines," "The Occult," "Pornography," "Self-Help," and "Television." Each chapter consists of introductory remarks, an historical outline, a list of basic reference works, research collections, history and criticism, anthologies, and a bibliography.

Roger Schlobin's essay, "Fantasy," was also published in The Greenwood Guide to American Popular Culture (2002), a four-volume set edited by M. Thomas Inge and Dennis Hall.  Schlobin says, "This essay explores the development of American fantasy literature from its beginnings in 1632 to 1998 and includes examinations and bibliographic citations of the individual critical and scholarly studies and resources (including the internet)."

Bryan Oesterreich's biography of lyricist Leo Robin (1895-1984) was published in the Dictionary of Literary Biography (v.265).  Known for his collaborations with Richard Rainger, Leo Robin is "[r]emembered today as a prolific lyricist of popular songs from the mid-1920s into the 50s. ... Robin's work for the Hollywood studios began in 1929, when he contributed songs for the Chevalier film Innocents of Paris and his film work ended in 1975 when he contributed songs to the film Sheila Levine is Dead and Living In New York."  He worked on more than 75 motion pictures, including Halfway to Heaven (1929), Love in Bloom (1936), The Vagabond King (1940), Four Jills In A Jeep (1944), and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953).  He was also known for writing the lyrics to the Bob Hope theme song "Thanks for the Memories."

Mary Carroll-Hackett's "On Not Being Carried" was published in Apostrophe: UCSB Journal of the Arts (October 2002).  Her prize-winning story, "Lifeline," appeared in the Clackamas Literary Review (November 2002).  Her chapbook entitled Three published by UBE includes "Life-line" and two pieces of flash fiction.