SIBLINGS: Our First Macrocosm

Our families, especially our siblings, provide our first macrocosm. How much of that experience do we carry out into the world as part of our deepest, inchoate expectations of the world or of ourselves? Is birth order destiny? How are we shaped by the constellation we're born into, whether dyad or nebula? What is the appropriate sentiment to have towards those with whom we may share only a preponderance of genes and, before we have any choices in the matter, propinquity? Towards those who knew us before we had a sense of self? Towards those who helped us define what we are not as much as what we are? What happens to us as adults when we return to these first numinous macrocosms trying to understand how they still shape our ways of being?

Fifty-three talented contemporary writers share poetry, memoir, and story that help us explore these questions and invite us to deeper understanding, unexpected insights, release of old grievances and grief, and celebration of the mystery of the present moment which is so core to our early relations, that graced sense of community that often precedes language, insight, all the mechanisms of adult intimacy.

EDITORS: Heather Tosteson, Charles D. Brockett, Kathleen L. Housley, Kerry Langan, Michele Markarian

CONTRIBUTORS: Laura Apol, Patricia Barone, Carol Barrett, Sarah W. Bartlett, Rachel Squires Bloom, Deborah Burch-Lavis, Brian Burns, Katie Glauber Bush, Christa Champion, Lori DeSanti, Elizabeth Brule' Farrell, Maureen Tolman Flannery, Diane D. Gillette, Rose Hamilton-Gottlieb, Grey Held, Charlotte Jones, Kavanaugh, J.S. Kierland, Steve Koppman, Susan Lanier, Ruth Latta, Sharon Leder, Roseann Lloyd, Katharyn Howd Machan, Paula MacKay, Susan Mahan, Frances Ruhlen McConnel, Beth McKim, Greggory Moore, Tania Moore, Elaine P. Morgan, Sharon Lask Munson, Tim J. Myers, Sarla S. Nichols, Ann Podracky, Julie Preis, Andrea Rosenhaft, Emily Rubin, Ira Schaeffer, Peter Schmitt, Patti See, Alexandrina Sergio, Christine Sikorski, Jill Wilbur Smith, Jane St. Clair, Cindy Stewart-Rinier, Elizabeth Stoessl, Alison Stone, Heather MacDonald Storey, Donald R. Vogel, Loretta Diane Walker, Michele Wolf, Gary Young