Self-Portrait(s) in a Convex Mirror

Here’s this quote-of-a-quote that I’m wont to trot out in front of my various internet personas:

“Everything is biographical,” Lucian Freud says. “What we make, why it is made, how we draw a [blog],* who it is we are drawn to, why we cannot forget. Everything is collage, even genetics. There is the hidden presence of others in us, even those we have known briefly. We contain them for the rest of our lives, at every border that we cross.”

That’s Michael Ondaatje quoting the painter Lucian Freud in his (Ondaatje’s) wonderful novel Divisadero.

But it’s something of a mission statement for me.

So. One time I asked everybody I ever knew to tell me stuff about themselves.

These brave 17 souls replied. And I love them for it. I contain them for the rest of my life, etc.

John Barret

John Barret surfaces from time to time in the strangest of places. He loves literature, teaching and learning passionately, but dislikes “education.” Philology is king. He reads and writes and enjoys reading and writing. He pines for Alabama his mistress. He pleads with anyone he meets to go to Egan’s when in Tuscaloosa — a true ramshackle pit of good cheer and constant disasters — a crossroads for crossed Joads — “the liver of Dixie.” He has so perfected the art of failing gloriously in all things attempted, a vertiginous gamble, that his friends often fear, appropriately enough, for his well-being. He enjoys making and listening to song. He is very happy when someone buys his brother Jimmy Barret’s music but knows nothing of cross marketing or placement advertising.…He has been fortunate in his friends and the list could very easily have been 3,000 people he loves dearly and is grateful for having met….

Havi Brooks

Um. Well. If you mean “THE” Havi Brooks who’s the brains (etc) behind The Fluent Self and who’s a Shivanaut and who is internet famous and who also has her very own Playground (where she holds Rallys!) and who lives in a place that’s a haven for introverts and Highly Sensitive People and that calls itself — unabashedly/fittingly — The Rose City (also: I prefer: Rip City, just because that’s kind of cool)…

Laura Didyk

Laura Didyk lives, writes, teaches writing, reads, cooks, and looks for part-time work (and new freelance clients) in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts. She also has a blog on which she posts irregularly but wholeheartedly. She has worked for spiritual nonprofits for the past decade, and as a result has many stories — both expected and surprising — that she will, likely, write about one day. She writes poetry about death, god, reincarnation, and heartbreak (if she were limited to four inadequate words), and her most recent nonfiction publication, in the 2011 issue of Alligator Juniper, is called “All the Steves,” which is about men and relationships, but also about everything, about getting over it, about finding her way (yes, through cavernous and difficult times).

Matt Maki

Matt Maki is meta. (Ingeniously so.)

And multifaceted. (Ingeniously so.)

With concise symmetries and alliteration for all.

Jason Slatton

Jason Slatton studied English literature and creative writing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He teaches English at the Alabama School of Fine Arts. He used to play music a whole bunch. He still does, just not as much. Now he reads, cooks, bikes and generally enjoys himself in Birmingham, Alabama. He has good taste in music, and, to that end, he’s probably listening to the Replacements right now.

Angela Jane Fountas

Angela Jane Fountas writes in Seattle no matter the weather. She likes to read, too, on the couch. And walk outside, especially through the forest. There are many forests to choose from in her state. And there are sea stacks in the ocean. Where she lives now is probably somewhat like Ireland, but nothing like Greece. Not even on a hot day. She’s been to Greece many times, but she’s never been to Ireland. This will change soon, she hopes. She is a graduate of the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Alabama.

Mike Hamilton

Mike Hamilton is a great father, husband, brother, son. He is the big brother I always wanted and never really had. He is a graduate of Robert E. Lee High School in Springfield, Virginia.

John Malatino

John Malatino is a financial advisor on the Space Coast of Florida. He’s a husband, a father, a homeowner, a Little League coach. He is not an American, he’s the American. He is a graduate of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia; Robert E. Lee High School and Francis Scott Key Intermediate School, both in Springfield, Virginia.

Jesse Castaldi Keen

Jesse Castaldi Keen is a writer who works in higher education in Portland, Oregon, and lives a little bit south of there. Things that used to define her that she hasn’t done seriously in several years: piano, poetry, sewing, letterpress, zines, mail art. Things she’s been doing more recently: attempting the delicate art of balancing work and home and toddler and love and self. Partly that has included adventures in Shiva Nata and writing at http://www.myseedhouse.wordpress.com.

Jennifer Horne

Jennifer Horne is a poet and editor who lives in Cottondale, Alabama. She is a graduate of the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Alabama.

Amber Holloway

Amber Holloway was a 2011 Presidential Scholar in the Arts. She is a graduate of the Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham.

Emma Bolden

Emma Bolden is a poet, prose-writer, professor, ponderer, putterer, and professional cat-wrangler. She blogs about all of these things, as well as her love of Britney Spears and dread of Dementors, at www.emmabolden.com. She is a graduate of the Alabama School of Fine Arts.

[Name Redacted by Negotiated Settlement]

[NAME REDACTED BY NEGOTIATED SETTLEMENT] lives in [REDACTED] and is an [REDACTED]. She is funny, smart, and pretty. She might even be a good kisser but, I mean, that’s not something I’m at liberty to confirm/deny.

Finley Bullard Evans

Finley Bullard Evans is a poet, memoirist, wife, and mother who lives in Birmingham, Alabama. She is a graduate of the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Alabama.

Clay Greene

Clay Greene is a fellow laborer somewhere in the workaday world. This is all I am at liberty to say.

Don Gilliland

Don Gilliland is a writer, flutist, and teacher who lives in Birmingham, Alabama. He holds a slew of graduate degrees, one of which is an MFA from the program in creative writing at the University of Alabama.

Stuart Flynn

Stuart Flynn, an Arkansawyer and reformed attorney/politico, chairs the creative writing department at the Alabama School of Fine Arts. He is a graduate of the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Alabama.