posted July 22, 2002 01:04 AM         

scroll down the webpage and click on assistant editor and that's me!

Excuse me if I'm boasting. I'm just so excited. It's a new updated websited and I'm going a bit giddy at seeing my name there.

posted July 22, 2002 05:24 AM         

By the way, I could tell you were excited from your websited!

posted July 26, 2002 06:25 PM         

For a long while, we thought Lisa Marie was being locked in the back room of Canterbury Booksellers, and we didn't know why because Lisa Marie is by far the nicest person on staff. That is why, as assistant editor, she works with writers. Anyhow, we thought she was being locked in the back room because every time someone came to visit her at work, she had to be called out from the back.

We were, naturally, concerned that she was not being treated well at Canterbury, although we know them to be of the finest sort of bookstore we can think of. Not that we are much better than the folks at Canterbury. We make Lisa Marie work by herself because she is much more accomplished than the rest of the staff, and we are afraid she will one day discover this and quit. We do not want her to quit. So we make her work by herself. She even has a separate phone line.

We often hear about Lisa Marie in conversations, see her reading her poetry around town, read about her in the paper, and listen to her on the radio. She has had her share of work in journals-North American Review and Poetry Motel come to mind. And she keeps winning prizes for her writing. She is also publishing a chapbook this year, "A Dark Riddle and a Head Full of Bees." She encourages everyone to seek her out and buy a copy.

Other books are in the works.

She assures us that she is grateful to be on staff at THE STYLES. She also reassures us that she is not being abused at her place of work, that she isn't a cashier, but the Poetry Coordinator, and thus her job, as many important jobs are, is behind the scenes.

She says she has breathed writing since birth, knowing no other daily diet but creativity and TV dinners (she was a latchkey child). After a brief stint at Beloit College, Lisa Marie gratefully graduated from Loyola University at Chicago with a B.A. in English/Creative Writing. She used some of the money she won writing fiction to travel to Ireland.