Mag Bio Notes
William Aarnes was born in Columbia, Missouri, grew up in Fargo, North Dakota, and now lives with his wife in Clemson, South Carolina, where he teaches at Furman University. His first book, Learning to Dance, was published in1991 by Ninety-Six Press, which also published his second collection, Predicaments, in 2001. His first published poem appeared in Field in 1969. Over the years he has had poems in such magazines as The American Scholar, The Southern R, and Poetry. He has work forthcoming in Shenandoah, The Literary R, and nthposition.
Kendra Aber-Ferri is an MFA student at Sarah Lawrence College. She lives in New Paltz, New York and spends her time hiking and filling in the holes her dogs dig in her yard. Her poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in Apple Valley R and Tar River Poetry. "Giles Corey's Six Stones" is one of a series of poems about the Salem Witch Trials.
Jack Anderson is the author of nine books of poems, including Traffic: New and Selected Prose Poems (1998) which won the Marie Alexander Award. His work recently appeared in Off the Cuffs, a police anthology, and Tokens, a subway anthology. He is a dance historian and critic for The New York Times and The Dancing Times of London.
Ankur Agarwal is an independent publishing professional, based in India. He has recently started writing poetry himself, after having read poetry all this time. He lives in Pondicherry currently, and has been previously published in Tiny Lights. He is also due for publication in Paperwall.
Verna Austen received her MFA from Spalding University in Louisville and has been published in The Minnetonka R, The Dead Mule, and others. She has work forthcoming in Flying Island.
Brian Edward Bahr lives in the woods of Northern Minnesota with his cat Yuki. Check out his other work at http://brianedwardbahr.blogspot.com/.
Geoffrey Babbitt’s poems have appeared in Hawaii R, Interim, Colorado R, Octopus Magazine, Confrontation, Pebble Lake R, West Wind R, and elsewhere. He is currently a Ph.D. student in poetry at the University of Utah, where he serves as an Associate Editor of poetry for Quarterly West and Western Humanities R.
Pavel Barakhvostov is 17 years old and lives in Minsk, Belarus.
Reagan Barna is 23 years old and currently resides in Manhattan. Born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, she dropped out of school at 14, got her GED, and began to support herself. At 20 years old she hit rock bottom of what had been a five-year addiction to drugs and alcohol. She was hospitalized, and moved to California, where she spent over a year in various halfway houses up and down the coast. She remains clean to this day. Her poetry was most recently published in Underground Voices Magazine. Ms. Barna can be contacted at reagan.barna@gmail.com"
Willis Barnstone was born in Lewiston, Maine, and educated at Bowdoin, Columbia, and Yale. He taught in Greece at the end of the civil war (1949-51), in Buenos Aires during the Dirty War, and during the Cultural Revolution went to China, where he was later a Fulbright Professor of American Literature at Beijing Foreign Studies University (1984-1985). His publications include Modern European Poetry (Bantam, 1967), The Other Bible (HarperCollins, 1984) The Secret Reader: 501 Sonnets (New England, 1996), a memoir biography With Borges on an Ordinary Evening in Buenos Aires (Illinois, 1993), and To Touch the Sky (New Directions, 1999). His literary translation of the New Testament The New Covenant: The Four Gospels and Apocalypse was published by Riverhead Books in 2002. A Guggenheim Fellow and Pulitzer Prize finalist in poetry, Barnstone is Distinguished Professor at Indiana University.
http://web.whittier.edu/barnstone/willis.html
Joel David Beacon is a graduate of Simon Fraser University where he studied English, Music, and Philosophy. His short fiction has appeared in Venue Magazine and a couple of other online and print periodicals. He lives in Vancouver, Canada, and works in the Complaints Department of a Canadian tourism company composing conciliatory letters and emails for its disgruntled clientele.
Heather Bell graduated in 2005 from Oswego State University in Oswego, NY. Since, she has been published in Mannequin Envy, From East to West: BiCoastal Verse, Empowerment4Women, Ditch, ReadThisMagazine, Pomegranate and Killpoet, to name a few. She has also released two books of poetry, one available from Verve Bath Press, Nothing Unrequited Here, and one available directly from the author How To Make People Love You. She spends her time polishing boots, gardening, painting and looking brightly at all raw stars. Heather dedicates all her writing to JNB. Without him, she never would have written any of it down.
Jenn Blair is from Yakima, WA. She is a PhD candidate in creative writing at the University of Georgia. She has published in Copper Nickel and Melus, and has work forthcoming in The Tusculum R.
C. L. Bledsoe was born and raised on a catfish farm in eastern Arkansas. He has published poems, short stories, and essays in many journals, most recently Barrow Street and The Arkansas R. Click for an earlier poem in Barnwood.
Richard Bloom lives in New York City, with his wife and a dog that he found in a park. He works for an advertising agency.
Emily Brink is a twenty-nine year old writer living in the Bay Area. She writes that she “grew up scarred by the usual things--Catholic school, a broken home, dreams that incubated too long then exploded.” She has been published in Word Riot, SoMa Literary Review, Blaze Vox, and Literary Mary.
Terri Brown-Davidson's first novel, Marie, Marie, Hold On Tight, was published in 2005. Her first book of poetry, The Carrington Monologues, was published in 2002. Her chapbook Rag Men won The Ledge 1994 Chapbook Competition. A novel-in-verse, The Doll Artist's Daughter (1997) is available from White Eagle Coffee Store Press. Her poetry is featured in the anthology TriQuarterly New Writers (Northwestern University Press, 1996) and she has received the AWP Intro Award and residency fellowships from Yaddo, the Millay Colony, the Ucross Foundation, Hambidge Arts Center, and Walker Woods.
Hélène Cardona is a poet, actor, translator and teacher. A citizen of the United States, France and Spain, she is fluent in English, French, Spanish, German, Greek and Italian. Born in Paris of a Greek mother and Spanish father and raised all over Europe, she studied English Philology and Literature in Cambridge, England; Spanish at the International Universities of Santander and Baeza, Spain; and German at the Goethe Institute in Bremen, Germany. She attended Hamilton College, New York, where she also taught French and Spanish, and the Sorbonne, Paris, where she wrote her thesis on Henry James for her Master’s in American Literature. She worked as a translator/interpreter for the Canadian Embassy and the French Chamber of Commerce and translated the Lawrence Bridges film Muse of Fire for the NEA. She teaches at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Her first book, The Astonished Universe, a collection of poetry about consciousness, is the first bilingual edition in English and French from Red Hen Press. She also translated What We Carry by Dorianne Laux, the poetry of her father José Manuel Cardona, Eloise Klein Healy and John FitzGerald. She is collaborating with David St John, translating into French the libretto of his novel in verse The Face. Web site
Kevin Carollo teaches creative writing and world literature at Minnesota State University, Mooorhead. A regular contributor to Rain Taxi Review of Books, he’s had poems picked up recently by Lungfull!, Court Green, Cranky, and The Magazine of Speculative Poetry.
C.E. Chaffin edited The Melic R www.melicreview.com for eight years prior to its hiatus. Widely published, he has written literary criticism, fiction, personal essays, as well as being the featured poet in over twenty magazines. He’s appeared in The Alaska Quarterly R, Byline, Contrary, The Cortland R, Envoi, Kimera, Magma, Pif, The Pedestal, the Philadelphia Inquirer Book Review and Rattle, among others. For more of his work visit his website at www.cechaffin.com
Leonard J. Cirino (1943) is the author of sixteen chapbooks and thirteen full-length collections of poetry since 1987 from numerous small presses. He lives in Springfield, Oregon where he is retired and works full-time as a poet. Since 2006 he has published two chaps and two full-length volumes. His book, Omphalos: Poems 2007, will be released by Cervena Barva Press in spring, 2009. He has never won an award or grant,he is simply a hardworking poet. He can be reached at cirino7715@comcast .net.
Temple Cone is an associate professor of English at the U.S. Naval Academy and the author of five poetry chapbooks, most recently Eurydice & Orpheus (Finishing Line Press, 2008).
Alfred Corn’s recent books of poetry are Contradictions (2002), and Stake: Selected Poems, 1972-1992 (1999). He has published a collection of critical essays, a study of prosody, and a book of art criticism. A frequent contributor to The New York Times Book Review and The Nation, he also writes art criticism for Art in America and ARTnews magazines.
James Cox writes that he writes poems as a way to understand his life. “Poetry is a way which reflects The Great Way of Tao – sometimes the reflection is dark, sometimes light. Learning from and enjoying the poetry of others has moved me to return the favor.” His poems have appeared in The Cherry Blossom Review, Silkworm, Your Daily Poem, Pinesong, Short Poems, and forthcoming in 2009 NetWest Anthology.
Rick Crelia is a poet and metal sculptor living the good life in Seattle, WA. When he's not writing or twisting hot metal, he's maybe tinkering with a crazy idea or perhaps snowshoeing in the Cascades.
Chris Crittenden was recently interviewed on Poet’s Café, a radio show of KPFK Los Angeles. He’s been invited to read for a series at the University of Maine at Machias called “Meet Prominent Down East Poets.”
James Cushing’s most recent collection of poems is Undercurrent Blues (2005). His other books of poetry are The Length of an Afternoon (1999) and You and the Night and the Music (1991). Formerly the director of the Al’s Bar Poetry Series and host of a live poetry program on KPFK-FM in Los Angeles, he now hosts a weekly jazz program on KCPR-FM, the college radio station at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, where he teaches.
Tristan D’Agosta has published in Poesia, Pocket Change, The Writer’s Eye, Cause & Effect, and others.
Heather Derr-Smith’s first collection of poems, Each End of the World, about the war in Bosnia in the 1990's, was published in 2005 at Main Street Rag Press. Her second book, The Bride Minaret is forthcoming from University of Akron Press. Her poems have appeared in Fence, Margie, TriQuarterly, and NewYork Quarterly. She currently lives In Iowa.
Roger Desy writes: Teaching lit and creative writing, I turned to technical writing/editing. For the last few years I’m doing what I should be doing for better or worse. The best poems are waiting to be written. Familiar with traditions, my work plays with the paradigm. The first tool our ancestor picked up was misapplied — we’ll know ourselves after finding our nature outside ourselves. A few poems have been printed by Blue Unicorn, Mid-American Review, The New Renaissance, Poet Lore, and The Spoon River Poetry Review.
Giovanni Diaz writes that he “is a born and raised New Yorker who wants nothing more than for his writing to capture the human experience. He has been writing for as long as he can remember, and has seen a lot of ups and downs in his - sure as hell does not feel like - relatively young life.”
William Doreski's poems have recently appeared in Notre Dame Review, River Styx, and several electronic journals. He teaches writing and literature at Keene State College in New Hampshire.
J.M. FitzGerald is a writer/attorney in Los Angeles. He is a dual citizen of the United States and Ireland. His first book, Spring Water, the fictional story of the mental life of a psycho bottling plant shipping clerk who poisons bottles of water and ships them to Los Angeles stores, was a Turning Point Books prize selection in 2005. Telling Time by the Shadows, a book of poems of love and longing, was released in April 2008. As yet unpublished works include Primate, the fictional tale of a sign-language speaking chimp allowed to testify in court, The Zeroth Law, a work of poetic literary non-fiction comparing the beliefs of the world’s major religions to history, myth and science, and The Mind, a series of poems about consciousness and thought, forthcoming from Salmon Poetry in 2011.
Brent Fisk is a writer from Bowling Green, Kentucky. His work has appeared in recent issues of Prairie Schooner, Rattle, Southern Poetry R, and Southeast R among others. Last year he won the Sam Ragan Prize, the Willow Award, and honorable mention in Boulevard's Emerging Poets contest and also picked up his fourth Pushcart nomination.
Hugh Fox was a founder and Board of Directors member of COSMEP, the International Organization of Independent Publishers, from 1968 until its death in 1996, editor of Ghost Dance: The International Quarterly of Experimental Poetry, 1968-1995, Latin American editor of Western World Review & North American Review, during 60’s. He was a contributing reviewer on Smith/ Pulpsmith, Choice, etc. and currently is a contributing reviewer to SPR and SMR, etc. 105 books published. Most recent publications: Collected Poetry (540 pp., from World Audience), Ghosts (poetry chapbook from Green Panda Press in Cleveland Heights), Alex (poetry chapbook, Rubicon Press, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada), Icehouse and Thirteen Keys to Talmud (Crossing Chaos Press).
Jack Galmitz was born in N.Y.C. in 1951. He attended the public schools and received a Ph.D in English from the University of Buffalo. His books of poems include Of All The Things and My Wife Practices Calligraphy & Other Poems. He lives with his wife in Elmhurst, New York.
Karl Garson is the author of two books of poetry, Thoughts in Available Light, a chapbook, and Driving Away from East and West. In progress are a third book of poetry, The Pull of the Heart, and a novel, The Spanish Circus, about his experience as a Naval Aviator in Vietnam. He lives on a farm in Crawford County, Wisconsin, and in Lexington, Kentucky.
Randy Gentry lives with his wife and two children in New Jersey, where he is writing a novel and renovating a house. His poems have appeared recently in The New Orleans R, Illumination, Number One, Crab Creek R, Perigee, and Mangrove R.
Robert Gibb was born in the steel town of Homestead, Pennsylvania. He is the author of seven books of poetry, including World Over Water (2007), The Burning World (2004), and The Origins of Evening (1998), which was a National Poetry Series winner. He lives on New Homestead Hill above the Monongahela River. In 19 Barnwood Press published his chapbook, Entering Time.
Naomi Glassman writes from New Jersey. Everything else is still subject to conjecture.
James Grabill's poems have appeared in numerous literary magazines, since the ‘70s. He lives in Portland, Oregon, and teaches writing (creative and technical), literature (Beat, Creative Nonfiction, and Shakespeare), and sustainability (as a member of an interdepartmental team).
Barbara Gregorich is a writer of adult fiction and nonfiction and also of children's literature. Harcourt published her best-known book, Women at Play: The Story of Women in Baseball, in 1993; Houghton published her two early readers, Waltur Buys a Pig in a Poke and Other Stories and Waltur Paints Himself into a Corner and Other Stories.
JP Gritton works in the editorial department of the Seattle weekly Real Change. His fiction and poetry have appeared in Fulcrum and his essays have appeared in the proceedings of the National Conference of Undergraduate Research. He's reading Breece Pancake, likes the Ozark hills where he was born and raised, and has robbed a bank with his beautiful though deadly wife Norma Jean.
Jaimie Gusman currently lives in Seattle, and works as a data analyst and poetry instructor. She will be a PhD candidate at the University of Hawaii in the Fall of 2009. Her poems have been published in DIAGRAM, 2River, Dark Sky, Dirty Napkin, Permafrost and Margins.
Ian Haight has been awarded translation grants from the Daesan Foundation, Korea Literary Translation Institute, and Baroboin Buddhist Foundation. He is the co-translator of Borderland Roads: Selected Poems of Kyun Ho (White Pine, 2009). His poems were awarded the John Woods Scholarship, and were selected as finalists for the Pavel Strut and SLS fellowships. Poems, essays, and translations appear in Barrow Street, Writer’s Chronicle, and New Orleans Review.
Therése Halscheid housesits in order to write. Her poems have appeared in many magazines, and her book, Uncommon Geography, received a Finalist Award for the Paterson Poetry Prize. Other collections include a chapbook awarded by Pudding House Publications’ series, Greatest Hits. For reviews and publication credits see
http://www.theresehalscheid.com
Mike Harrell lives in Brooklyn, NY, and Richmond, VA, and works in film and television production.
Joy Harris is an emerging poet with a background in philosophy and design and is currently working as a marketing manager in the legal field. Her previous publications include being the featured writer for Houston-based DiverseWorks' telephone poetry series where she recorded readings of 5 works and also writing text for a multimedia art piece which was shown in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Alec Hershman received his B.A. in linguistics from Indiana University in Bloomington. Presently he is completing his M.F.A. in poetry at Washington University in St. Louis.
Katherine L. Holmes has work in paper journals eg The South Dakota Review, Cider Press Review, Phantasmagoria, WordWrights, Marginalia, Minnesota Poetry Calendar, Porcupine, and on the internet eg Amarillo Bay, Avatar, Denver Syntax, Eclectica, Facets, Fringe, The King’s English, Perigee, Review Americana, Shadowtrain, Stirring, Word Riot. http://home.earthlink.net/~klouholmes/
Ward Irvin writes: I live in Central New York, Camillus to be exact. The above listed poems were written while I was deployed overseas, almost three years ago - they were certainly inspired by events that I can still visually walk through even today. As for my education, I studied geography at the University of Florida; not knowing exactly what I was to do with a geography degree, I simply earned my degree in something that I was and still am highly interested in, practical or not. After having served nearly five years in the US Army, I am now again a civilian. Married with one amazing six-month-old son, I am living the high life.
Leland James is the pen name of Leland James Whipple. He is the author of two novels and a book of essays. Recently he has focused his writing on poetry, winning the 2008 Portland Pen Poetry Contest and the 2008 Writers' Forum Short Poem contest, and placing runner up for the 2008 Fish International Poetry Prize. He has also had several other honorable mentions and publications in the US, UK, Ireland, and Israel, including Inspirit, New Millennium Writings, Ruminate, By Line, Harûah Breath of Heaven, Voices of Israel, joyful, Shine, Cyclamens and Swords, The Dawntreader, and Carillon Magazine.
Saeed Jones is an undergraduate student at Western Kentucky University. His work has also appeared in StorySouth. He swears by virtue of bell hooks, spinach chicken enchiladas, and nam-myoho-renge-kyo. He loves letters and can be reached at saeed.jones@gmail.com.
Jeff Kass is a teacher of English and Creative Writing at Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor MI and Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanit MI. He was the Ann Arbor Grand Slam Poetry Champion in 1999 and 2000 and the runner-up in 2001 as well as the Champion at the inaugural Ann Arbor Book Festival Poetry Slam in 2004. He was the Poetry Director in the acclaimed theatrical production Lay Your Comfort Down. He currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors for the Ann Arbor Book Festival and is pursuing his MFA in Creative Writing through the Stonecoast program at the University of Southern Maine. His one-man performance poetry show “Wrestle the Great Fear” will debut at Ann Arbor’s Lydia Mendelssohn Theater in April of 2009 and his short story collection Knuckleheads is forthcoming from Dzanc Books.
Rachel Kellum’s recent publishing history includes two creative non-fiction pieces printed in the book, Journey into Motherhood, in 2005. Prior to that, her poetry appeared online in The Nieve Roja R, and in Greyrock R. She teaches writing, literature, humanities and oil painting at Morgan Community College on the Colorado plains, and sells her artwork online at Rachel Kellum Fine Art
Clyde Kessler lives in Radford, VA with his wife Kendall, and son Alan. Recently he has published a few poems online in Nantahala, Sugar Mule, and Xelas Magazine.
Clare Kirwan performs regularly as part of Liverpool’s Dead Good Poets Society. She has had poems published widely including in MsLexia, Orbis, The Interpreter’s House, and Aberrant Dreams. She won the Liverpool Slam in 2005. www.clarekirwan.co.uk
Stephen Lefebure has published poems in Wilderness, The Literary Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, among others, and has one upcoming in The Literary Bohemian.
Charles Leggett is a professional actor and voice-over artist based in Seattle. His poetry has been published in Soul Fountain, Waterways (Staten Island), the Rio Grande Review (El Paso) and in Epicenter (Riverside, CA) and is forthcoming in Measure (Evansville, IN). Other writing projects/experience include a play, The River’s Invitation, a revival of which was featured in Seattle’s first annual Solo Performance Festival, “SPF 1: No Protection!” in March 2007. He spent three years as lyricist/frontman for the Seattle blues band Uncle Ed’s Molasses Jam. His work in audiobook recordings includes voicing both Edgar Allan Poe, a major character in Louis Bayard’s detective novel, The Pale Blue Eye, and Walt Whitman, in Kurt Andersen’s historical novel, HeyDay.
Mei-Li Liu, born and raised in Taiwan, lives in Colorado. “My Father Found His Dream” won in Father’s Hall of Fame 2000. Award in the Mighty Muse 2001. Author and illustrator of first book, “Ten Thousand Miles from Home,” published by Dragon Press 2004. Brave Hearts, Red Hawk Review, The Mid-America Poetry Review 2006. Author and illustrator of chapbook, Poems, published by Dragon Press 2007. Arabesques Review, Skipping Stones, Long Story Short, Essential Wellness, Heron’s Nest 2007, publication in Asian American Female Poets Anthology, Autumn Leaves, Taj Mahal Review and lucid rhythms 2008, Pinewood Review 2009. Mei-Li Liu
Jeanne Lohmann’s new book is Calls from a Lighted House (Fithian, 2007).
Zachary Lundgren has been accepted into the creative writing program of the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Taylor Mali was one of the original poets to appear on the HBO series Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry. His work has appeared in anthologies and other publications including The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, The Idiot’s Guide to Slam Poetry, Spoken Word Revolution, The Tampa Review, Pank, Taj Mahal Review, Cadillac
Cicatrix, Spindle, and Paddlefish. He runs the Page Meets Stage reading series at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City. For more information, visit www.taylormali.com.
Rick Marlatt teaches English in Nebraska. He has BAs in English and Philosophy and a MA in Creative Writing from the University of Nebraska, and he is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California Riverside at Palm Desert. His previous publications include Earthshine, Future Earth Magazine, SN Review, Paradigm, Hamilton Stone Review, Blue House, Trillium, Slow Trains, Language and Culture, Words-Myth, Events Weekly, The Carillon, The Reynolds Review, Prairie Poetry, The Bumbershoot Annual, and the University of Nebraska Research Journal. He performs as an actor, poet, and writer, most recently winning the University of Nebraska Sigma Tau Delta Annual Short Fiction Slam this spring.
Janet McCann has published in journals including Christian Century, Christianity and Literature, Kansas Q, New York Q, Nimrod, Parnassus, Poetry Australia, Sou’wester, and Tendril. She has won three chapbook contests, sponsored by Pudding Publications, Chimera Connections, and Franciscan University Press. A 1989 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship winner, she has taught at Texas A & M University since 1969. Her most recent
collection is Emily’s Dress, Pecan Grove Press, 2004.
Judith Moffett was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1942. Her collections of poetry include Whinny Moor Crossing (1984), and Keeping Time: Poems (1977). She first wrote works about poets, including James Merrill: An Introduction to the Poetry (1984). In 1986 she began writing science fiction, and gained immediate attention by winning the first Theodore Sturgeon Award, in 1987.
Kristina Moriconi is currently enrolled in the Rainier Writing Workshop low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. She is working on a collection of lyric essays. Her work has appeared in Big Ugly Review, Lost Magazine, Verbsap, Flash Me Magazine, Opium and others. Most recently, her poetry was included in What Happened To Us These Last Couple Years? An Anthology of the Bush Years 2000-2008.
Tendai R. Mwanaka writes that he is single, 34 years old and has written over 100 poems and 2 books of short stories. He is from Zimbabwe and stays in the city of Chitungwiza. Many of his poems have been published in the United States, South Africa, UK and INDIA in the past year or so. He works in Harare as a Sales and Marketing Administrator at Amtec motors, and he is a graduate member of THE SOUTHERN AFRICAN INSTITUTE OF MARKETING.
Paul Nelson writes “ I retired a while back as Prof of English, Director, Creative Writing for Ohio U. Five books, NEA, AWP Award for Poetry, Alabama Press Series winner. Moved back to O'ahu where I started as a high school teacher in 1961. I troll offshore from Hale'iwa Harbor and am sending around a new full length ms. of poetry, a chapbook of poems with Hawaiian imagery (new for this Mainer) and a couple of short stories.
Leonard Neufeldt is the author of five volumes of poetry, and more than 250 of his poems have appeared in magazines throughout Canada and the U.S. His work has been read on PBS, and the composers P. Randolph Peters, Lawrence Warkentine, and Carol Weaver have set his poems to music. The painter Peter Smith has done an extensive series of paintings based on his poems. His most recent book is The Coat Is Thin (2008).
Dustin Nightingale has been published in venues such as Margie, Cimarron Review, Mudfish, and Portland Review. Recently his book manuscript was a finalist for The National Poetry Series.
Ashok Niyogi was born in Calcutta in 1955. He was schooled all over India in Irish Christian Brothers' Schools and graduated with Honors in Economics from Presidency College, Calcutta. During 30 years in the world of International Commerce, he lived in East Europe, Russia, the CIS and South East Asia. He now divides his time between California where his two daughters live, and India. He has published two books of poetry in India—Crossroads and Reflections in the Dark (both from A-4 Publications) and one book of poems inthe USA—Tentatively (iUniverse). He has been published extensively on line and in print in India, the USA, the UK, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Holland, etc.
Mark Noble is a retired firefighter who writes short stories as well as poetry. He is a member of the Writers Garrett in Dallas. He and his wife have four children and one dog, and spend most weekends at the movies.
Andrew H. Oerke’s poems have appeared in many magazines, including The New Yorker, The New Republic, and Poetry. In 2006, two new books of his poems, African Stiltdancer and San Miguel de Allende, were published jointly by Swan Books and the UN Society for Writers and Artists. These books received the United Nations Literature Award.
Sherry O’Keefe, a descendent of one of the first Montana pioneers, a mother of two, sister to four, cousin to dozens, credits/blames her Irish upbringing for her story-telling ways and her collection of pocket rocks. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tipton Poetry Journal, The Sow’s Ear Review, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Two Review, Soundzine and Main Street Rag. A short story was a finalist with Glimmer Train. She likes peanut butter/dill pickle sandwiches. You may contact her for the recipe: redmittengirl (at) yahoo (dot) com.
Ellen Orner, Russian-born, now involuntarily but happily a former professional violinist, remains friends with the composers she got to know, still alive or long deceased. Writing and translating are now her preferred modes of communicating.
Jon Parry writes: “The following poem more or less describes the life of many working musicians and it is a question I am often asked, “Where are you living?”. With touring and etc. this poem is an attempt at an answer. I have been a fiddle player in several genre, for thirty-plus years now. You can find me on several cds, notably Hank Williams Jr., “Maverick”, Goose Creek Symphony and many others. I enjoy writing very much, but this is my first attempt at trying to publish anything.”
Craig Paulenich lives in Lisbon, Ohio. lately he has been involved in the creation of a consortial MFA program, the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, drawing on the creative writing faculty of Cleveland State University, Kent State University, the University of Akron, and Youngstown State University. His poems have recently been published in e.g. Arachne, Artful Dodge, Blackjack, Fish Drum Magazine, 5 AM, Hiram Poetry R, Laural R, The Midwest Q, Old Red Kimomo, Seems, and Tricycle: The Buddhist R.
Rod Peckman writes that he and his dog are so country that a bear almost stole their barbecue. “Civilization, thankfully, isn't too far away for me to make an appearance every once and awhile. I work for a large library system in Washington State, answering questions from the ridiculous to the sublime.” His poems have appeared in The Argotist Online and A Little Poetry and are forthcoming in Babel Fruit and Thieves Jargon.
Jennifer Gomoll Popolis lives and works in Springfield, IL. Her poetry and fiction have appeared or are upcoming in Switched-On Gutenberg, Poetry Superhighway, bottle rockets, Modern Haiku, and Cicada, among other magazines and websites.
Christine Potter writes: I'm the long-time, long-suffering head moderator over at The Alsop Review's Gazebo, and a recovering (retired) high school English teacher. My first collection of poetry, Zero Degrees At First Light, was published in Autumn '06. Meanwhile, I've been getting my stuff into little mags, mostly internet: The Pedestal, Stirring, Mimesis, The WORM...like that. I live on a creek in an old house with two spoiled cats and an organist/choirmaster husband who graduated from Ball State back in the early 60's.
Matthew Putman is a scientist working in applied physics. He has I recently had poems published in several journals. He has had technical scientific work published in various journals in five countries, and he received the American Chemical Society Best Paper Award for a paper written in 2001. He holds five patents, and he continues to work on other inventions. In addition to his work as a scientist, he has produced a motion picture called "Definition of Insanity", which has played in Europe and throughout the United States on cable’s Movies On Demand. He is a jazz improv piano and banjo player, whose music can be heard at www.myspace.com/matthewcputman.
Doug Ramspeck’s collection, Black Tupelo Country, was selected for the 2007 John Ciardi Prize for Poetry and will be published by BKMK Press (U of Missouri-Kansas City) in the fall of 2008. His poems have appeared in many journals including Confrontation Magazine, Connecticut R, Hunger Mountain, Nimrod, Rattle, Seneca R, and West Branch. He directs the Writing Center and teaches creative writing and composition at The Ohio State University at Lima, where he lives with his wife, Beth, and their eighteen-year-old daughter, Lee.
Oliver Rice has received the Theodore Roethke Prize and thrice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His poems have appeared widely in journals and anthologies in the United States, as well as in Canada, England, Austria, Turkey, and India. His book, On Consenting to Be a Man, has been introduced by Cyberwit, a diversified publishing house in the cultural capital Allahabad, India, and is available on Amazon.
Nanette Rayman Rivera, two-time Pushcart Nominee for non-fiction and poetry, is the author of the poetry collection, Project: Butterflies by Foothills Publishing and the chapbook, alegrias, by Lopside Press. She is the first winner of the Glass Woman Prize for non-fiction and has poetry on Best of the Net 2007. Her story, Puhi Paka, was best of issue in Greensilk Journal. Publications include The Worcester Review, Carousel, Carve, The Berkeley Fiction Review, MiPOesias, ditch, Prick of the Spindle, The Wilderness Review, Dragonfire, Pebble Lake Review, Mannequin Envy, Dirty Napkin, Wheelhouse, The Smoking Poet, Pedestal, Cliterature, O Sweet Flowery Roses, and Lily. Upcoming: Featured Poet in Up the Staircase, Offcourse, At Large, The Blue Jew Yorker. She is listed on imbd and Turner Classic Movies for her roles in Guns on the Clackamas and Stephan’s Silver Bell. She is shopping her memoir around to agents, a true story of what really goes on in the New York City’s homeless, welfare, food stamp and public housing system. She graduated from The New School University.
Steven Roggenbuck lives in Mount Pleasant, Michigan. His poems have been published in BlazeVOX and Moria; he is a founding member of Living Opposed to Violence and Exploitation (L.O.V.E.), a community of anti-oppression, vegan activists whose home is www.loveallbeings.org. His e-mail is steveroggenbuck@hotmail.com.
Rolli writes - for adults (Quarterly West, CBC Radio) and children (Spider, Ladybug). He is the recipient of the 2007 John Kenneth Galbraith Literary Award; and as winner of a 2008 Commonwealth Short Fiction Award, his work will soon be broadcast in over 20 countries. Visit his blog - www.rolliwrites.blogspot.com.
Miriam Sagan was born in Manhattan, raised in New Jersey, and educated in Boston. She holds a B.A. with honors from Harvard University and an M.A. in Creative Writing from Boston University. She settled in Santa Fe in 1984. She is the author of over twenty books. Her most recent is a memoir, Searching for a Mustard Seed : A Young Widow's Unconventional Story (Quality Words in Print, 2004. Winner best Memoir from Independent Publishers, 2004). Her poetry includes Rag Trade (La Alameda 2004), The Widow's Coat (Ahsahta Press, 1999), and The Art of Love (La Alameda Press, 1994). She directs the creative writing program at Santa Fe Community College, and has taught at the College of Santa Fe, University of New Mexico, Taos Institute of the Arts, Aspen Writer's Conference, around the country, and on line for writers.com and UCLA Extension. She has held residency grants at Yaddo and MacDowell, and is the recipient of a grant from The Barbara Deming Foundation/Money for Women and a Lannan Foundation Marfa Residency.
John Schellhase, a native of Arkansas, is currently serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines. He teaches English and spearheads an HIV/AIDS education project at a rural college. In 2007, he received a Walton Fellowship for his translation of ancient Greek poetry.
Elizabeth Schultz retired in 2001 from the University of Kansas, where she was the Chancellor's Club Teaching Professor in the English Department. The author of Unpainted to the Last: Moby-Dick and Twentieth-Century American Art (1995), Shoreline: Seasons at the Lake (2001), and Conversations: Art Into Poetry at the Spencer Museum of Art (2006), she has published extensively in the fields of nineteenth-century American fiction, American women's writing, African American fiction and autobiography, and Japanese culture. A founder of the Melville Society Cultural Project in New Bedford, Massachusetts, she has curated several exhibitions related to Melville and the arts, and has co-edited a collection of essays on Melville and women. Her days presently are devoted to arts advocacy, environmental action, and writing--both poetry and nature essays. She spent spring 2007 in Beijing as a Fulbright lecturer.
Lucy Simpson lives in Seattle where she is a member of C & P Poets and Writers, raises two children, and reads and writes as much as she can. Her work has appeared in WordWrights and Poetry Bone, among other journals.
Blog: http://lucy750.vox.com/
R Jay Slais poetry has appeared in Wild Child Publishing EZine and elsewhere, and he has recent acceptances in Boston Literary Magazine and Clockwise Cat. A single father, raising his two children, hes an engineer/inventor in Metro Detroit Michigan. He can be reached at RJay61@comcast.net.
Janet Smith writes, “I enjoyed...especially the quote from Pinker construing art as a "pleasure technology." (Makes me think of sexual apparatus, like vibrators, but at least that prevents me from putting poetry on a fluffy, little cloud floating in a distant, disembodied sky.) If poetry is not about pleasure, if it's not about the real world of work [original meaning of techne, right?], then it doesn't speak to people. I do think there's a something else in poetic language that is more than the sum of the poet's technique, but it takes technique to find and deliver it. Hmmmm . . . time to think more about that. I'm reading Bachelard's The Poetics of Space and it's chock-full of ideas--new to me, at least-- about the origins of poetic speech.
Jason Spear is a writer and teacher of Anglophone Literature at the Cité Scolaire Internationale, in Lyon, France. Recent publications include poems in Eight Octaves and Agenda (series for younger poets).
Margaret Stawowy was born in Chicago and now lives in California after eight years in Japan. She is a librarian and serves on the board of a local poetry organization. Her work has appeared in numerous publications in both the U.S. and Japan. Her photo was taken at Monte Alban in Oaxaca and she is squinting, because bright sun really hurts her eyes.
Carolyn Stoloff is a lifelong New Yorker. A poet and painter, she taught poetry and studio art at Manhattanville College for many years and visited other parts of the country as guest writer. She also taught in public schools, a house of detention, and a Quaker-run halfway house for drug addicts. Of her six collections and three chapbooks of poetry, the most recent are Reaching for Honey (2004) and Greatest Hits (2003).
Linda Ann Strang lives in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, where she teaches at the university writing center. Her poems have been published internationally in magazines like Orbis, Gold Dust, Other Voices, Poetry Kanto, Bravado and MotherVerse. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee.
Elizabeth Swados is an award winning author and composer; she is a Tony nominated, Obie award winning theater artist, Guggenheim and Ford Foundation recipient, as well as a Pen/Faulkner citation. Her theatrical credits span from Broadway, to off-Broadway, to around the world including Runaways, Missionaries, and Jabu. Her latest book, At Play – Teaching Teenagers Theater was published by Faber and Faber. Her poetry has appeared in numerous publications.
R. L. Swihart currently resides in Long Beach, CA, and teaches mathematics in Los Angeles. His recent poetry credits include Lily, Ghoti Magazine, and Mimesis. He has work forthcoming in Temenos, WHL R, and Offcourse Literary R.
Thom Tammaro was born in 1951 and raised in the heart of the steel valley of western Pennsylvania. Among his collections of poems are Holding on for Dear Life (2004) and When the Italians Came to My Home Town (1995). He edited, with Sheila Coghill, Visiting Frost: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Robert Frost (2005), Visiting Walt… (2003), and Visiting Emily… (2001). He teaches in the MFA creative writing program at Minnesota State University, Moorhead, where he is Roland and Beth Dille Distinguished Lecturer.
Linda Taylor has poems in journals including Black Warrior R, Cimarron R, Georgia R, Indiana R, Kenyan R, Massachusetts R, Nimrod, Poetry Northwest, and Tar River R. TWo poems were reprinted in The Virago Book of Birth Poetry and Writing Poems, ed. Wallace and Boisseau.
Jessica Thompson lives on the banks of the Wabash River in Southern Indiana. Her poems have appeared in Tiferet, a Journal of Spiritual Literature; Raving Dove; Nerve Cowboy and are forthcoming in The Sow's Ear Poetry Review; Nomad's Choir and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. http://featherheart.wordpress.com
TWIXT is the mononym-onym of Peter Specker; he has had poetry published in Margie, The Indiana Review, Amelia, California State Quarterly, RE:AL, Pegasus, First Class, Pot-pourri, Art Times, The Iconoclast, Epicenter, Subtropics, and others. He lives in Ithaca, New York.
Donna Vorreyer lives and teaches in the Chicago area. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including New York Q, Boxcar Poetry R, DMQ R, Flashquake, and After Hours: A Journal of Chicago Writing and Art.
Ocean Vuong emigrated to the U.S. from Vietnam in 1995 at the age of 7. He is currently an undergraduate English major at Brooklyn College in NYC, but his home is in CT where he recently attended Manchester Community College. He also writes and edits for the Vietnam Literature Project at www.vietnamlit.org. He currently works with Yusef Komunyakaa’s MFA students in the publication of a post-war Vietnamese poetry anthology as a literary and cultural adviser. His poems have appeared in various journals including, WordRiot, The Connecticut River Review, Raving Dove Review, Ganymede, and Poetry Warrior Magazine among others. Samples of his work and an extensive bio can be found at www.oceanvuong.com.
Brian Walters is a PhD candidate in Classics at UCLA, and his poetry has recently been published in MATCHBOX magazine.
Jacqueline West's work has appeared in journals including The Pedestal Magazine, flashquake, St. Ann's Review, Pebble Lake Review, Inkwell Journal, and Briar Cliff Review. She currently lives, writes, and teaches English in Wisconsin. More about her work can be found at www.jacquelinewest.net.
John Sibley Williams recently received his MA in Writing. He calls both Boston and Vienna home, the latter for love and translation studies, and he is presently compiling manuscripts composed from the last two years of traveling and living abroad. Some previous or upcoming publications include: Flint Hills Review, Cadillac Cicatrix, Juked, The Journal, Phantasmagoria, The Alembic, River Oak Review, Tertulia Magazine, Black Rock and Sage, Language and Culture, Samizdada, Blue Fog Poetry Journal, Ampersand Poetry Journal, and Red Hawk Review.
A. D. Winans is a native San Francisco poet, writer, and photographer. He is a graduate of San Francisco State University. He returned home from Panama in February 1958 to become part of the Beat and post-Beat era. He is the author of over nearly fifty books and chapbooks of poetry and prose. More
Heather Winterer’s publications include Fence, American Poetry Review, Tusculum Review, Interim, Barrow Street, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, New Delta Review, The Journal, Nimrod, Literal Latte, and La Fovea. Her manuscript, The Two Standards, was a finalist for the Poets out Loud Prize and the Motherwell Prize. She won the 2008 Tusculum Review Prize for poetry, judged by Mary Jo Bang.
Mark Wisniewski, a fiction writer and poet, is the author of One of Us One Night, Confessions of a Polish Used Car Salesman, and All Weekend with the Lights On.
Joseph Wood lives in Tuscaloosa, AL where he is a lecturer in English and Creative Writing at the University of Alabama. His first book, I & We, will be published by WordTech Editions on the CustomWords Imprint in 2010, and his chapbook, In What I Have Done & What I Have Failed to Do, won the 2005 Elixir Press Poetry Chapbook competition and was published in 2006. Poems from a second manuscript in progress currently appear or will appear in Copper Nickel, Drunken Boat, Front Porch, Natural Bridge, Typo, Willows Wept Review, and Zone 3.
Mercedes M. Yardley writes because life is beautiful, and because she couldn't bear to live any other way. You can learn more about her at http://abrokenlaptop.wordpress.com.
Changming Yuan grew up in rural China, authored several books before moving to Canada, holds a PhD in Enlish and currently teaches writing in Vancouver. Yuan's poems (are to) appear in Barrow Street, Best Canadian Poetry (2009), the Cortland Review, Exquisite Corpse, the London Magazine, Mad Bunkers and nearly 200 other literary publications worldwide. His first collection Chansons of a Chinaman is availabe at leafgardenpress.com, and his monograph Politics and Poetics has recently been released in Germany.