Contributors Fall 2000

Charles Johnson won the 1990 National Book Award for his novel Middle Passage. He has written three other novels, a collection of short stories, numerous critical books and reviews, and is a published cartoonist. His next book, King: The Photobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.(Viking Studio, 2000) will be published in November.

A student of the Dalai Lama, Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron ordained as a Buddhist nun in 1977. A passionate advocate for political commitment, she teaches at Dharma Friendship Foundation in Seattle, Washington. Her most recent book is the newly released Blossoms of the Dharma: Living as a Buddhist Nun (North Atlantic Books, 1999).

A songwriter whose repertoire includes “The Kundalini Cowboy” and “The Buddha Blues,” Wes Nisker is a teacher of insight meditation and is affiliated with the Spirit Rock Center in northern California. When not on stage or on the cushion, Nisker serves as co-editor of the Buddhist journalInquiring Mind.

A student of Theravada Buddhism, Mary Talbot says that her practice is “strictly of the householder variety” and focuses on three-year-old daughter Willa Pearl (named for Zen Master Dogen’s “one bright pearl”). Talbot, a former executive editor of Tricycle, is Buddhism Producer for Beliefnet.com, an online religion, spirituality, and morality magazine.

Russell C. Leong, editor of AMERASIA Journal, is a poet, writer, and a contributing editor toTricycle. His recent books include Asian American Sexualities (Routledge, 1994) and Phoenix Eyes and Other Stories (University of Washington Press, 2000), a collection of fiction on Buddhism, sexuality, and migration.

Since 1994 Gustav Niebuhr has been the national religion correspondent for the New York Times. An avid reader of history and biography, as well as an accomplished body-surfer, Niebuhr spends much of his free time playing with his two-year-old son.