Authors: Bark Editors

Howl (35 page)

BOOK: Howl

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MO ROCCA,
author of
All the Presidents’ Pets,
appears regularly on CBS’s
Sunday with Charles Osgood
and NBC’s
Tonight Show.
He can be heard on NPR’s
Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me.
He began his career in television as a writer for the Peabody Award–winning PBS children’s series
Wishbone,
about a heroic Jack Russell Terrier who in his dream life becomes the heroes of classic novels. (And you find that strange?) A native of Washington, D.C., he lives in New York City.

MICHAEL J. ROSEN,
a writer and editor of humor (he created the biennial series
Mirth of a Nation
), has also created a shelf of books about dogs as a children’s book author, poet, kid-trainer, illustrator (
Kids’ Best Dog Book
), and editor (
Dog People, The Company of Dogs,
and
21st Century Dog: A Visionary Compendium
).

GRAHAM ROUMIEU’S
signature art has appeared in advertising, magazines, newspapers, and books, including
Some Really Super Poems About Squirrels
,
In Me Own Words: The Autobiography of Bigfoot
, and
101 Ways to Kill Your Boss
. His work has been honored by
American Illustration, Applied Arts
Magazine, and the National Magazine Awards. He lives in Toronto.

BILL SCHEFT
is the author of two novels (
The Ringer, Time Won’t Let Me
) and a collection of humor columns (
The Best of the Show
). He has been a writer for David Letterman since 1991, which means he responds to the command “Stay!”

ERICA SCHOENBERGER
is a professor of geography at Johns Hopkins University. Her Australian Shepherd, Sasha, teaches there as well.

GEORGE SINGLETON
has published four story collections and one novel. One collection is
Why Dogs Chase Cars,
and he continues to ponder his hypotheses as his rescued ex-strays (eleven of them at one point) sit close at his side. His fiction has appeared in
The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Playboy, Zoetrope, The Georgia Review, Shenandoah,
and elsewhere, and has been anthologized in
New Stories from the South
eight times. His new novel is
Work Shirts for Madmen.
He lives in Dacusville, South Carolina.

ROBERT SMIGEL
is
Saturday Night Live
’s longest-running writer, having been there for more than twenty years. A multiple Emmy Award–winner, Smigel has also written for
Late Night with Conan O’Brien,
where he is best known for Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, whose first CD earned Smigel a Grammy. In addition to writing for
SNL, Conan,
and
The Colbert Report
and collaborating with Adam Sandler on a number of films, he has advocated for and raised money on behalf of autism awareness, including producing Comedy Central’s
Night of Too Many Stars
to support autism education.

DAVID SMILOW
is an actor and writer who now lives in New York’s Hudson Valley, where he participates in a readers’ theater company called—appropriately enough—Actors & Writers. He has won an Emmy and two Writers Guild awards for his television work. As an actor, he has portrayed (in addition to the dog in
Part Pooch
)
another
dog, a deer, a monkey, a snake, a crocodile, a house, a Samsonite hard body suitcase, and the occasional biped.

MARC SPITZ
is the author of two novels,
How Soon Is Never
and
Too Much, Too Late,
and two adult nonfiction books,
We Got the Neutron Bomb
(with Brendan Mullen) and
Nobody Likes You: Inside the Turbulent Life, Times and Music of Green Day.
He is currently working on a biography of David Bowie. He is a former senior writer at
Spin
magazine, and his work has appeared in
Uncut, Maxim, Nylon,
the
Washington Post, Vanity Fair,
and the
New York Post.
Seven of his plays have been produced in theaters of varying size and cleanliness levels.

JEFF STEINBRINK’S
commentaries have aired on NPR’s
Marketplace, Marketplace Morning Report, Maine Things Considered,
and
Morning Edition.
Print pieces of his have appeared in
The Believer, McSweeney’s,
and the new online magazine
Lost.
He teaches American literature and creative writing at Franklin & Marshall College.

Proof that you
can
teach an old dog new tricks,
MARK ALLEN SVEDE
occasionally stops writing about Eastern European art long enough to write something a bit funnier. (And proof that you can teach young pups all sorts of things, he has taught various film and art history courses at Ohio State University and other pedigreed institutions.)

ABIGAIL THOMAS
is the author of five books for adults, including
A Three Dog Life
and
Safekeeping,
and two books for children,
Lily
and
Pearl Paints.
She lives in Woodstock, New York, and teaches fiction writing in the graduate program at The New School.

MARK ULRIKSEN
lives in San Francisco, painting pictures for
The New Yorker,
the San Francisco Jazz Festival, and a growing roster of clients who commission him for dog portraits. His days center around deadlines, children’s homework assignments, and finding the tennis balls Henry, his Labrador, always manages to lose.

JEFF WARD
has written comedy for
Saturday Night Live, All Things Considered,
and BBC Radio 4. His comic essays have appeared in
Modern Humorist, The Big Jewel, Lowbrow Reader, Jest,
and the humor anthology
May Contain Nuts.
He lives in New York City with Mrs. Ethel Cohen and Chester, two Welsh Terriers.

MICHAEL WARD
is a product of suburban Boston. His attempts at humor writing have appeared in
The New Book of Lists, Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans,
and
Mountain Man Dance Moves,
as well as on the Web sites mcsweeneys. net and yankeepotroast.org. His dog Jasper looks suspiciously like a common house cat.

JOHN WARNER
is the editor of McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and the author most recently of
Fondling Your Muse: Infallible Advice from a Published Author to the Writerly Aspirant.
He teaches at Clemson University and lives in Greenville, South Carolina, with his wife, Kathy, and their dogs, Scully and Oscar.

Though
WILLIAM WEGMAN
is popularly known for photographic collaborations with his Weimaraners—Man Ray, Fay Ray, and assorted puppies—he is also an accomplished painter and videographer. His photographs, videos, paintings, and drawings have been exhibited in museums and galleries internationally. Wegman lives in New York and Maine. wegman world.com

MELISSA WEBB WRIGHT
is associate professor of geography and women’s studies at Pennsylvania State University. Surprisingly, she does not at present live with a dog, but has two cats, one partner, and an enchanting daughter.

ANDI ZEISLER
is a writer, illustrator, and the cofounder and editorial/ creative director of
Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture.
She got over an early childhood fear of dogs and now embraces, often literally, all dogs. A New Yorker by birth and temperament, she lives in Portland, Oregon, with her human and canine companions.

DAN ZEVIN,
who teaches journalism at NYU, is the author of three books—
The Day I Turned Uncool
(currently in development as a feature film),
The Nearly-Wed Handbook,
and
Entry-Level Life
—and numerous magazine pieces. He and his wife live in Brooklyn, New York, with Chloe (their first-born, who happens to be a dog) and their two recently arrived human babies.

IN
2005, when the Gulf Coast was ravaged by Hurricane Katrina and the floods that followed, media coverage of this natural disaster revealed the importance of the bond between humans and their companion animals. To honor this bond and assist with the ongoing rebuilding effort, all royalties earned by
Howl
will be donated to animal shelters and other humane organizations in the Gulf Coast region.

About the Editors

CLAUDIA KAWCZYNSKA AND CAMERON WOO
founded
The Bark,
the world’s premier dog magazine, in 1997 in Berkeley, California. Created initially to rally support for a local off-leash area,
The Bark
quickly grew from a modest newsletter into a glossy, award-winning magazine lauded for its intelligence, wit, and design. Hailed as “
The New Yorker
of dog magazines,”
The Bark
aspires to live its motto—Dog Is My Co-Pilot—by being the source for impassioned, thoughtful dog lovers. The editors’ first anthology,
Dog Is My Co-Pilot: Great Writers on the World’s Oldest Friendship,
was a
New York Times
bestseller. The editors live and work in Berkeley with their dogs and cats. To learn more about
The Bark
, see
thebark.com.