Dragonfly (page 44) — End

The last bit in Dragonfly is a bio page. An interesting snapshot of my career up that point, some 30 years ago. A Note About the Author Vince Gotera was born and raised in San Francisco but also lived in the Philippines for several years as a young child. He lives in Arcata, California, with his wife Mary Ann and their three children, Amanda, Amelia, and Melina. He also has a son, Marty, from a previous marriage. Gotera teaches ethnic American literature and creative writing at Humboldt State University. Gotera holds a BA in English from Stanford University, MA in American literature from San Francisco State University, MFA in creative writing as well as a PhD in English and in American Studies from Indiana University. His book of literary criticism, Radical Visions: Poetry by Vietnam Veterans, was published in 1994 by the University of Georgia Press. Gotera has won a 1993 Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, an Academy of American Poets Prize, the 1988 Mary Roberts Rinehart Award in Poetry, and the 1988 Felix Pollak Poetry Prize awarded by the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He is poetry editor of the journal Asian America. Page 44 The book went into three printings, and I happened to be looking at a later printing to do this blog post and saw that the last sentence of the first parafraph says, "Gotera teaches ethnic American literature and creative writing at the University of Northern Iowa." A year after the book was published, I moved in 1995 to a new professor job at in northern Iowa, and I must have asked the Pecan Grove Press publisher and editor, Palmer Hall, to update the bio. There was probably some dissonance there for some readers because the later version of the bio still said I lived in California. Speaking of H. Palmer Hall, who published and edited the book at Pecan Grove Press, I'd like to say a few words in tribute. I knew Palmer from my research into Vietnam war literature, which produced my book of literary criticism on that war, Radical Visions: Poetry by Vietnam Veterans (1994). Palmer was a Vietnam veteran and a damn fine writer of poems, stories, and essays, with strong skills and rep as a book editor, not just at his own press but also at other publishing houses, for example, Scarecrow Press. Most of all, he was a good friend to me and to others in the Vietnam war literary realm. Palmer passed away in February 2013, and we all miss him very much. Also, a quick correction here. In the first Dragonfly blog post, I mentioned that Palmer was the founder of Pecan Grove Press. While writing this current page and reading Pecan Grove Press's Wikipedia page, I learned that the founder of the press was Karen Navarte, an English professor at St. Mary's University (San Antonio, Texas), where Pecan Grove Press was based. Apologies to Karen. Finally, I'd like to post the author's photo on the back cover of Dragonfly. The photo shows me holding my third daughter Melina when she was a baby (she's now 31 years old!). That shot was a tribute to Jessica Hagedorn, famed Filipina American writer, who once had an author's photo of herself with one of her daughters. Since Jessica wrote a blurb for the book, I thought my author's photo would be fitting paean to her and her influence on me and other FIlipinx writers. Melina Blue and Vince Gotera, Author Photo, Dragonfly I hope you have enjoyed this serialized version of Dragonfly. It's been a pleasure for me to revisit the book, even though it's taken a long time — sixteen years! — to complete this presentation. As always, I'd love to get some feedback or discuss anything with all y'all. Comment, okay? Thanks. Ingat. DRAGONFLY FIRST CONTENTS PREVIOUS NEXT LAST