A NEUROBIOLOGIST’S CANVAS, EDITORS’ PRIZES AND REMEBERING WALLACE STEGNER – ISOTOPE RELEASES ITS SPRING/SUMMER 2009 ISSUE.

Inside Isotope issue 7.1, featured artist and neurobiologist, J. David Sweatt, showcases paintings inspired by his ongoing research regarding memory formation and memory disorders. His paintings of neurons and nervous-systemprocesses offer an intuitive perception of what he states are "real things that no one has ever seen" and represent the abstract and realistic nature of these subjects. His work has also been featured in the PBS television series "NOVA".

Our Voice department features Isotope's first play, "Background," written by up-and-coming playwright Lauren Gunderson, who has been featured in the Los Angeles Times. In this piece, Gunderson plumbs the depths of the universe and the less magnificent depths of scientific credit.

The winner of the 2009 Editors' Prize in Fiction, Jaimee Wriston Colbert, cleaves ecological, emotional and physical loss together within her melancholy yet powerful story “We Are All in Pieces.”

Naturalist, author and photographer Stephen Trimble closes the issue with a Soliloquy, “Participating in Home: Following Wallace Stegner Into the Heart of the West,” which is an account of Trimble's lovely remembrance of Wallace Stegner and their personal interactions, just in time for the centennial of Stegner's birth.

This issue also features an array of physics-themed poetry as well as explorations of astronomers, migrations and lost languages.

Isotope: A Journal of Literary Nature and Science Writing is a bi-annual publication of the English department at Utah State University. Single issues of Isotope, up through 6.2, are available to order for $5 online at isotope.usu.edu or in RBW Room 410. Issues 7.1 and beyond will cost $10. One-year subscriptions (two issues) are $15. Two-year subscriptions (four issues) are $25. Please make checks payable to Isotope and send to Isotope, Department of English, Utah State University, 3200 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT, 84322-3200.