CHAIN 10

existed by 1245 C.E. * KISHWAR NAHEED is considered one of the
foremost poets writing in Pakistan today. She has been writing poetry in
ghazal and free-verse format on social and political issues since the 1960s;
her influence, as one of the first women poets to use and popularize the
free-verse form in Urdu poetry, is far-reaching in contemporary Urdu
literature. She is a social activist and has tirelessly worked for human rights
and women’s equality in her capacity as a civil servant and NGO worker.
Naheed was a vocal critic of the draconian policies enforced during the
martial law rule of General Zia and has faced the wrath of the authorities
on numerous occasions for her articulation of social dissent; for instance,
in 1983, her Urdu translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex
was banned and became the basis of charges of obscenity filed against her,
which were later challenged and repealed. Naheed has written nine
volumes of poetry, an autobiography, and a travel memoir; she has also
translated poetry from other languages into Urdu and has edited anthologies
and essay collections about women’s roles in literature and society. Naheed’s
poetry, along with that of her compatriots Fahmida Riaz and Sara Shugafta,
was featured in We Sinful Women: Contemporary Urdu Feminist Poetry,edited
by Rukhsana Ahmad (London,Women’s Press, 1991), and the latest
translation of her work has appeared in editor Asif Farrukhi’s compilation
of her work, The Distance of a Shout (Oxford University Press, 2001).
* MARCI NELLIGAN has an M.F.A. in creative writing from Mills
College and has published in Syllogism, the Free Lunch young writers
series, and the Walrus. * DENISE NEWMAN’s collection of poetry
Human Forest was published by Apogee Press, and her translation of Inger
Christensen’s novel The Painted Room is available from Random House.
* SUSANNA NIED is a writer and literary translator whose most recent
publications are Selected Poems by Søren Ulrik Thomsen (Poetry New
York) and Alphabet by Inger Christensen (New Directions). She was the
winner of the 1981 PEN/ASF translation award. * MARK NOWAK is the
author of a poetry collection, Revenants, co-editor with Diane Glancy of
the anthology Visit Teepee Town: Native Writings After the Detours (both from
Coffee House Press), and editor of the journal XCP: Cross-Cultural Poetics.
(http://bfn.org/~xcp). * DOUG NUFER is the author of Never Again
(ubu.com and forthcoming from Black Square Editions), a novel where
no word appears more than once.“The Gettysburg Variations” are from
his constraint-driven novel-in-progress Circus Solus, parts of which also
appear in Monkey Puzzle magazine and at the Muse Apprentice Guild
Web site. His novel Negativeland is forthcoming from Autonomedia.
* KAREN OHNESORGE’s poems have appeared in Ploughshares and
Mudfish.Her current research concerns image-and-text combinations
258