Collected Contributor Notes of Garth Ransom By Garrett Rowlan

1. This is the first publication for Garth Ransom. He hopes there will be more, as he believes nothing is more ennobling than the study and creation of literature. He is a junior college student living with his parents in Los Angeles.

2. Garth Ransom currently lives in a cheap motel room in West Sacramento. There was a stabbing in another unit two months ago that is the inspiration for this story. He is finding that simply wanting to be a writer may not be enough. He is grateful for this publication giving him 490 words of published hope.

3. Garth Ransom, a senior at UCLA, dedicates this poem to his father, to whom he owes a certain clear-eyed truth about life. His mother is definitely not the crazy person in the poem.

4. Garth Ransom is a graduate student whose father’s unexpected passing leaves a zero in the emotional middle of his life, though his legacy helped to purchase investment property. For which he is eternally grateful. He reminds others to always have their brakes checked to prevent a car sliding off the road.

5. Garth Ransom is an associate professor at New Athens University. He has previously published poetry with Obscurity Review and Left Hand Review. He encourages his students with his personal vision, which includes relations going beyond the classroom.

6. “The publication of this poem is in memory of my mother who bequeathed to me a love of writing and nature, when we would take long hikes on high trails together. I know she blesses my version of academia in the way she didn’t understand before.” Garth Ransom reminds others to be careful when hiking in high places.

7. A professor at New Athens University, Garth Ransom tries to instill in his students a love of reading, of literature, and of nature, particularly long hikes on places with magnificent vistas, though he is careful not to have happen to one of his students what happened to his mother. He confesses to a certain guilt, the way he panicked and lost valuable time that might have been enough to save her life.

8. A professor at Gogol University, Garth Ransom believes literature can raise and ennoble the human spirit, something he teaches his student Gretchen, who now lives with him. They have their differences, owing to their views on how they should spend her inherited wealth. Ransom believes a full and honest airing resolves problems.

9. “This poem is dedicated to the memory of Gretchen Hines,” Garth Ransom writes. He believes the murder charges will be dropped.

10. Currently incarcerated on a false conviction, Garth Ransom still believes poetry can ennoble the human condition. He is up for parole in two years.

11. Garth Ransom is a short-order cook in a Texas roadhouse. He has previously published poems in now-defunct journals. The poetry-writing classes in prison helped him to understand the source of his problems, particular his anger at those who don’t understand the nature of true genius.

12. Garth dedicates this poem to his husband Bill, who understands his lover’s complexity.

13. This account of prison life is authentic. Garth Ransom has been at Leavenworth too many years to count. He hates the screws whose nightsticks rattle his prison bars just for sport. He misses Bill, and sincerely regrets that night. But it wasn’t his fault.

14. Garth Ransom died of sustained wounds. This is his last published poem.

Garrett Rowlan is a retired sub teacher. He has published 80 or so stories and essays and his book To Die, To Sleep (a retelling of Hamlet with an Elvis-like figure as the “king”) is available here.

His website is garrettrowlan.com