Howl

by Bark Editors

  KINKY FRIEDMAN is a singer, songwriter, novelist, humorist, and politician (most recently, he ran as an Independent in the 2006 Texas gubernatorial race). Originally a country-and-western singer, he went on to write a succession of crime-thriller detective novels featuring himself as the hero. A former columnist for Texas Monthly, he also supports animal rescue work through donation of his share of the proceeds from the sale of his “private stock” salsa.

  FRANK GANNON has written four books and is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, Harper’s, and Soldier of Fortune magazines (just kidding on the last one). He was not allowed to have a dog when he was a kid, so he has neurotically overcompensated by having many, many dogs as an adult. He lives with his mixed-breed Terrier, Otto, and his wife, Paulette, in the mountains of north Georgia. To Otto, he is “The Great One Who Takes Me on Walks.”

  GEORGIA GETZ is an acclaimed essayist, novelist, screenwriter, and director. No, wait!—that’s Nora Ephron. But Georgia did dream of one day becoming these things and more—just as soon as she finished college at the age of thirty-five. In the meantime, she wrote several unacclaimed essays, TV pilots, and screenplays, and raised two children and one humor blog: iambossy.com. You’ll find Getz’s name featured on the cover of the finest magazines—right on the subscription tag.

  JON GLASER is a writer and actor. Several of his stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine. His television writing credits include Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Saturday Night Live, and The Dana Carvey Show.

  TOM GLIATTO is a television critic for People. He is also a contributor to McSweeney’s humor Web site.

  MARGA GOMEZ tours nationally as the writer/performer of seven solo plays and as one of the first openly gay comedians in America. Her television appearances include HBO, Showtime, and Comedy Central. Ms. Gomez has been nominated for New York’s Drama Desk Award and is the recipient of several performance honors, including Theatre LA’s Ovation Award and the GLAAD Award. Her dog Tabasco took second place for “Best Butt” in a Brooklyn dog parade.

  LEE HARRINGTON’S award-winning series “Rex and the City” has been appearing in The Bark since 2000. Her bestselling memoir, Rex and the City: A Woman, a Man, and a Dysfunctional Dog, based on this series, was published in 2006, and her first novel, Nothing Keeps a Frenchman from His Lunch, is forthcoming from Villard in 2008. She is at work on the second volume of Rex and the City.

  ANTHONY HEAD lives in Austin and is editor in chief of Directions: The Magazine of the Texas Hill Country (hillcountrydirections.com). He is not Anthony Head the distinguished English actor. This means that, despite having lived in Hollywood for fifteen years, this Anthony Head has less silver-screen time than his dog, Jerry.

  FRANCIS HEANEY is the author of Holy Tango of Literature and several puzzle books. He is a former editor-at-large for Games magazine; the composer and co-lyricist of the off-off-Broadway musical We’re All Dead; and the author of the highly irregularly scheduled webcomic Six Things.

  ANN HODGMAN is the author of several humor books, a number of cookbooks, and more than fifty books for children, most recently, The House of a Million Pets. She and her family live in Connecticut.

  PAM HOUSTON is the author of the novel Sighthound; two collections of short stories, Cowboys Are My Weakness and Waltzing the Cat; and a collection of essays, A Little More About Me. She has received a Western States Book Award and her stories have been selected for the Best American Short Stories, the O. Henry Awards, the Pushcart Prize, and the Best American Short Stories of the Century. She is the director of creative writing at UC Davis and has been the grateful recipient of the love and wisdom of (so far) five Irish Wolfhounds.

  REBECCA ROSE JACOBS is a journalist who writes for the London Financial Times.

  HAVEN KIMMEL is the author of the novels The Used World, Something Rising (Light and Swift), and The Solace of Leaving Early; the memoirs A Girl Named Zippy and She Got Up Off the Couch; and the children’s book Orville: A Dog Story. She studied English and creative writing at Ball State University and North Carolina State University and attended seminary at Earlham School of Religion. She lives in Durham, North Carolina.

  KATHE KOJA writes adult and young-adult fiction. She is the author of Straydog, which was honored by the ASPCA and the Humane Society. Her novels include The Blue Mirror, Talk, Going Under, Kissing the Bee, and Buddha Boy.

  JEAN-PIERRE LACRAMPE lives in San Francisco and is currently earning his MFA in creative writing at Saint Mary’s College of California, where he is the fiction editor of Mary magazine. His work has appeared on McSweeney’s Web site.

  CATIE LAZARUS, a comedian and writer, has appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Fox News, and the CBS Evening News, and has been heard on NPR. Awarded “Best Comedy Writer” by Emerging Comics of New York, Lazarus has contributed to the New York Post, Forward, Time Out New York, The Jerusalem Report, and the books Nobody Reins, Insomnia, and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Jokes. Currently, she is writing for the show Dr. Lazarus, as well as working on her first novel, Me Inc. lazarusrising.com.

  FRANZ LIDZ is a Sports Illustrated writer, a New York Times film essayist, and the author of Unstrung Heroes: My Improbable Life with Four Impossible Uncles and Ghosty Men: The Strange but True Story of the Collyer Brothers. He lives on a six-acre farm in Pennsylvania’s Brandywine Valley with two llamas (Ogar and Edgar), three Great Pyrenees (Ella, Errol, and Tyrone), two cats (Yojimbo and Sanjuro), three dozen chickens and guinea fowl (don’t ask), two daughters (Gogo and Daisy), and one wife (Maggie).

  DAN LIEBERT, author of discontinuous soup, is known as the Verbal Cartoonist. He is one of the few modern aphorists included in the forthcoming Bloomsbury USA book An Encyclopedia of Aphorisms, and his work has appeared in anthologies. He lives in Lawrence, Kansas, surrounded by dog memories.

  DAVID MALLEY has worked in various editorial capacities for the Discovery Channel, Rolling Stone, and most recently Maxim. He currently lives in Berlin, Germany, where he is writing, performing with Belgian theater director Michael Laub’s Remote Control Productions, and trying, with great pains, to learn the German language.

  MERRILL MARKOE, as the multiple Emmy Award–winning head writer for Late Night with David Letterman, created “Stupid Pet Tricks.” In addition to a wide variety of television and print, she has penned eight books, including What the Dogs Have Taught Me and Walking in Circles Before Lying Down. For more, including dog videos, try MerrillMarkoe.com.

  ROBERT MASELLO is a journalist, television writer, and bestselling author based in Santa Monica, California. His most recent book is a supernatural thriller entitled Bestiary (Berkley Books). He has written for several popular television series, including Early Edition and Charmed, and also serves as the visiting lecturer in literature at Claremont McKenna College.

  PATRICK MCDONNELL, children’s book author and creator of Mutts, lives in New Jersey with his wife, Karen, their dog, Earl, and their cat, MeeMow. Patrick’s cartoons, as well as his efforts on behalf of humane and shelter groups, have received awards from the National Cartoonists’ Society, HSUS, and PETA.

  ROB MCKENZIE wrote a funny article about his dog that nobody wanted. Then one day he saw a Bark bumper sticker. He sent the article to The Bark and voilà, a meeting of minds. Rob lives in Ontario, Canada, with his wife, Pam, daughter McKenzie, and dog Kiki J. His day job is TV critic for the National Post newspaper.

  PATRICK F. MCMANUS’s columns for Outdoor Life and other magazines have been collected in several books, including The Bear in the Attic, Never Cry “Arp!,” How I Got This Way, The Good Samaritan Strikes Again, Real Ponies Don’t Go Oink!, The Grasshopper Trap, Never Sniff a Gift Fish, They Shoot Canoes, Don’t They?, and A Fine and Pleasant Misery.

  SUSAN MILLER is a playwright best known for her critically acclaimed one-woman show My Left Breast. Winner of two OBIE awards and a Guggenheim Fellowship, Miller has had plays produced at The Public Theater, Second Stage, Mark Taper Forum, and Naked Angels. Her articles appe
ar in O, The Oprah Magazine and American Theatre. Miller was a consulting producer on the hit Showtime series The L Word.

  MARK NEWGARDEN is a cartoonist whose work has appeared in alternative weekly newspapers and publications ranging from Raw to the New York Times op-ed page. His work has also graced the walls (and screens) of the Smithsonian Institution, the Cooper-Hewitt, the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Television and Radio, and the ICA in London. Mark has also worked as a novelty creator and has conceived, scripted, and designed programming for Nickelodeon and the Cartoon Network. He is the author of Cheap Laffs, We All Die Alone, and, with Megan Montague Cash, has recently created a number of “Bow-Wow books” starring a dog that looks suspiciously like their little Terrier. laffpix.com

  LAURIE NOTARO is the author of six books, keeps a jar of dog cookies on her desk, and is an idiot who regrettably taught her dog Maeby to nudge her when in need of something. Like dog cookies from the jar on her desk. She lives in Eugene, Oregon, and spends a great deal of her day dressing Maeby in raincoats and washing Oregon mud off her paws.

  ALISON PACE is the author of the novels If Andy Warhol Had a Girlfriend, Pug Hill, and Through Thick and Thin. She lives in New York City with her extremely cool dog, Carlie.

  ALYSIA GRAY PAINTER’s work appeared in Dog Is My Co-Pilot; the humor compilations May Contain Nuts and More Mirth of a Nation; and McSweeney’s anthologies, Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans and Mountain Man Dance Moves. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two Pugs who are skilled at turning any new lap they encounter into their very own chaise longue in under twenty seconds flat.

  MELISSA HOLBROOK PIERSON is the author of three books, one of which, Dark Horses and Black Beauties, is about our equine companions. Her next will be about shifting styles in dog training, as well as about the dogs with whom she has been honored to live and learn.

  NEAL POLLACK is the author of the bestselling memoir Alternadad, hailed as “the most off beat parenting memoir ever written.” In addition to his four-year-old son, he’s also dad to Hercules and Shaq, two gassy Boston Terriers. Because of the dogs, he’s having a hard time persuading the boy that incessant humping and licking aren’t acceptable human behaviors. They all live in Los Angeles.

  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 WRIGH
T 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.