CONTRIBUTOR BIOS
A former resident of Mexico City, Diana Anhalt moved recently to Atlanta, GA, to be closer to her family. She is the author of A Gathering of Fugitives (Archer Books), a chapbook, Shiny Objects, and essays, articles and book reviews in both English and Spanish. Her second chapbook, Second Skin, was recently released by Future Cycle Press in September, 2013 and, most recently, her poems have appeared in Nimrod, Atlanta Review, Sow’s Ear, and Poem.
Urvashi Bahuguna grew up in Goa and is now an undergraduate student of English Literature at St. Stephen’s College in New Delhi. She contributes regularly to Helter Skelter Magazine and co-edits their New Writing section. Her poetry has previously appeared in Red River Review, The Four Quarters Magazine, Muse India, and elsewhere. She blogs at urvashibahuguna.wordpress.com.
Caleb Beissert is a poet, translator, and freelance writer from Washington D.C. His first book of translations from the Spanish, Beautiful: Poems of Federico García Lorca & Pablo Neruda, was published by New Native Press in 2013. His poems or translations have appeared in Asheville Poetry Review, International Poetry Review, Tar River Poetry, and Pisgah Review. In 2008, Beissert was selected to participate in North Carolina Poetry Society’s Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet Series. He has produced a number of poetry readings, including the ongoing series “Poetry at the Altamont.” Beissert lives in Asheville, North Carolina. He blogs at calebbeissert.wordpress.com.
Jesse Breite lives and teaches in Atlanta, Georgia, though he was raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, and considers it his home. Jesse writes each night around 10 PM EST while his new wife, Emily, falls asleep. His recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Slant: A Journal of Poetry, The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume V: Georgia, and Prairie Schooner.
Joseph Bruchac lives in the Adirondack mountain foothills town of Greenfield Center, New York, in the same house where his maternal grandparents raised him. Much of his writing draws on that land and his Abenaki Indian ancestry. He's edited a number of anthologies of contemporary Native poetry including Songs from this Earth on Turtle's Back, Breaking Silence, and Returning the Gift. His own poems, articles, and stories have appeared in over 500 publications, from American Poetry Review, Orion, and Aboriginal Voices to National Geographic and Parabola. His honors include a Rockefeller Humanities fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Writing Fellowship for Poetry, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas.
David Budbill was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1940, to a streetcar driver and a minister's daughter. He is the author of nine books of poems (three of which are Copper Canyon Press books), nine plays, a novel, a collection of short stories, a picture book for children, and dozens of essays, introductions, speeches, and book reviews. He is also a performance poet on two CDs, Zen Mountains/Zen Streets and Songs for a Suffering World with The Judevine Mountain Trio. His newest book, Park Songs: A Poem/Play, will be published by Exterminating Angel Press in September of 2012. Garrison Keillor reads frequently from David's poems on The Writer's Almanac. His prizes and honors include an Honorary Doctorate from New England College, 2009, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in playwriting, 1991, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry, 1982-1983. He lives in the mountains of northern Vermont where he cuts firewood, tends his garden, and keeps a blog. You can also find him on Twitter and Facebook.
Kathryn Stripling Byer has published seven books of poetry, including Wildwood Flower and Black Shawl, both from LSU Press, both cast in the voices of North Carolina mountain women. Her recent collection, Descent, was published by LSU Press in November. Her poetry, essays, and short fiction have appeared in journals ranging from The Atlantic Monthly to Appalachian Heritage. She was the 2007 recipient of the Hanes Award in Poetry from the Fellowship of Southern Writers and served as North Carolina's first woman Poet Laureate. She lives in Cullowhee, NC, on a hillside above the Tuckasegee River.
Sandy Coomer is a graduate of “The Writer's Loft,” a certificate in creative writing program at Middle Tennessee State University. Her poems have been published in POEM, Number One, Yemassee, Third Wednesday, Trajectory, Slant, and the anthologies Motif: Come What May, and Because I Said So: Poems on the Happiness and Crappiness of Parenthood. Her chapbook, Continuum, was released in July 2012 by Finishing Line Press. When not writing or studying the craft of writing, she spends her time knitting or training for triathlons. She lives in Brentwood, TN, with her husband, four children, and two dogs.
Eric Thomas Crawford is originally from Bay City, Michigan. For the last five years he has lived near Atlanta, Georgia and has therefore become a solitary, cynical Midwesterner who sometimes writes poetry to try to mend his broken life. He is obsessed with Hank Thoreau, finding the perfect cereal, and a tight, justified electric guitar solo.
Philip Daughtry has published four books of poetry: Kid Nigredo (Turkey Press), The Stray Moon (Turkey Press), Magic Harness (Equestrian Video Library), and Celtic Blood (New Native Press). In 2010 Mercury House published a collection of short stories, The Centaur's Son, and will release a forthcoming novel, Night Ride With Dahlia, in 2012.
Daughtry's poetry work has appeared in over fifty magazines and anthologies. He edited Beatitudes in North Beach, California, and was featured in The Baby Beats, a collection of beat and post-beat poets published in Paris ( Le Main Courante). Daughtrry has taught film writing and story development at USC's Lucas Film School, Emily Carr College (Vancouver), Clairmont College, and UCLA. He currently lives in Topanga California with his wife Rita George, a bohemian saint.
Michael Delp lives in Northern Michigan and spends most of his free time fishing on the Boardman River at his refuge, the Reeling Waters Lodge. He is the co-editor of the "Made in Michigan" books series from Wayne State University Press. His most recent book is a collection of stories from WSU Press, As If We Were Prey.
Dominica Dipio is an Associate Professor of Literature and Film and a Fulbright research fellow from Makerere University in Uganda. She is currently hosted by Kennesaw State University, where she writes about folktales from Uganda. In the past five years, Dipio has collected folktales from various ethnic groups from Uganda, in an effort to search for a sense of cultural nationhood that transcends local differences. The stories collected are meant to foster communication among Ugandans and between Ugandans and other global cultures. The philosophy behind this project is the belief in the capacity of tales to draw peoples together along shared human values, to delight, and to instruct.
Painter and papermaker Elizabeth Ellison is the owner/operator of Elizabeth Ellison Watercolors, a studio/gallery in Bryson City, NC. She and her husband George Ellison (writer/naturalist) have maintained the studio/gallery/office space in the old Clampitt Hardware building on Main Street since 1986 Elizabeth is a native of Caswell County which is in the piedmont section of North Carolina. She is of Occaneeci descent on her mother's side of the family. This Native American heritage has strongly influenced her outlook on life as well as her artistic endeavors. Ellison graduated from Averett College and studied art at Virginia Commonwealth (formerly RPI), The University of South Carolina, and at Mississippi State University. She teaches workshops at a variety of institutions, including the North Carolina Arboretum in Asheville. The quality and individuality of Elizabeth's work led to her
inclusion in Fodor's Guide to the National Parks and Seashores of the East (1994).
Writer-naturalist George Ellison has lived several miles west of Bryson City, NC, adjacent to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, since 1976. He has written bio-critical introductions for reissues of James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees (Historical Images, 1992); Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders (University of Tennessee Press, 1976); and Kephart’s posthumous novel Smoky Mountain Magic (Great Smoky Mountains Association, 2009), as well as his Camping and Woodcraft (2011). Books published by the History Press in Charleston, SC, with artwork by Elizabeth Ellison, include: Mountain Passages (2005); A Blue Ridge Nature Journal (2006); Blue Ridge Nature Notes (2007); High Vistas: An Anthology of Nature and Descriptive Writing from Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains (vol. I, 1540-1900, 2009; vol. II, 1901-2007, 2011); and Permanent Camp (2012). His columns appear in the Asheville Citizen-Times; Chinquapin: The Newsletter of the Southern Appalachians; and Smoky Mountain News. Natural history workshops are conducted for the NC Arboretum, Native Plant Conference, and Smoky Mountain Field School. Blue Ridge Nature Journal was a finalist for the non-fiction book of the year award sponsored by the Southeastern Independent Booksellers Association and Permanent Camp: Poems, Narratives and Renderings from the Smokies has been nominated for this year’s poetry award. He is currently co-authoring a biography of Horace Kephart for the GSMA and working on a collection titled Near Horizons: Blue Ridge Poems & Narratives.
Roberta Feins received her MFA in poetry in 2007 from New England College. Her poems have been published in Five AM, Antioch Review, The Cortland Review, and The Gettysburg Review. Her first chapbook, Something Like a River, will be published by Moon Path Press in 2013. Roberta edits the e-zine Switched On Gutenberg.
Rupert Fike was named a finalist for Georgia Author of the Year 2011 on the basis of his collection, Lotus Buffet (Brick Road Poetry Press). He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in fiction and poetry with work appearing in Rosebud, The Georgetown Review, A&U: America’s AIDS Magazine, Natural Bridge, storySouth,The Blue Fifth Review, Cortland Review, A Baker's Dozen, and others. His work is forthcoming in The Southern Review of Poetry and Alligator Juniper. He has a poem inscribed in the downtown Atlanta plaza that fronts the city jail (just across the street from Free At Last Bail Bonds). His nonfiction, Voices from The Farm, is now in its second printing with stories from his ten years on America's largest spiritual community (hippie commune). He lives in Clarkston, Georgia with his wife, Kathy.
Alice Friman’s latest collection is Vinculum (LSU Press), for which she won the 2012 Georgia Author of the Year Award for Poetry. Her last two books are The Book of the Rotten Daughter (BkMk Press) and Zoo (U of Arkansas Press). New work appears in The Georgia Review, The American Literary Review, The Cortland Review, and others, as well as the 2012 Pushcart Prize Anthology. She is Poet-in-Residence at Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville, Georgia.
Ellen Fuson was educated as a sculptor at Washington University in St. Louis, MO, and an architect at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, GA. She is originally from Nashville, TN, and is currently living in San Francisco, CA.
Erin Ganaway is the author of The Waiting Girl, winner of the Texas Review Press Breakthrough Poetry Prize: Georgia. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Third Coast, The Texas Review, Sea Stories, and elsewhere. She was a featured poet in Town Creek Poetry, and her poems were selected for inclusion in the Georgia volume of The Southern Poetry Anthology, as well as Best New Poets. Ganaway holds a Master of Fine Arts from Hollins University. She divides her time between Atlanta and Cape Cod.
Jenn Gutiérrez holds a M.F.A. in English and Writing from Southampton College. Gutiérrez’s first book, Weightless, was published in 2005. Her second collection, Silence Imbibed, was released from Anaphora Literary Press (2011). Previous work has appeared in journals such as The Texas Review, The Writer’s Journal, The Acentos Review, Bacopa Literary Review, Verdad Magazine, and Antique Children. She is working on a doctoral degree in Curriculum & Instruction at the University of Denver and hopes to graduate December 2013.
Anna Maria Johnson and Steven David Johnson make their home in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley in a place that was formerly known as Cootes Store.
Amaris Ketcham is an honorary Kentucky Colonel and regular contributor to the arts and literature blog, Bark. She teaches writing and publishing at the University of New Mexico's Honors College. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bosque, Cactus Heart, Glassworks, Rio Grande Review, Sacred Fire, and the Utne Reader.
David King is Associate Professor of English and Film Studies at Kennesaw State University where he has taught for twenty years. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals, and he has won first prize awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Poetry Society of America, Concepts magazine, and Snake Nation Review. Most recently his poetry was featured in Volume 5: Georgia of The Southern Poetry Anthology. He is also the arts and culture columnist for the Georgia Bulletin, the newspaper of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta, and his work has been awarded by the Catholic Press Association. A fourth generation Georgia native, he lives in historic Marietta with his wife and two young sons.
Kendall Klym has published poetry in The French Literary Review, Cottonwood, and Thorny Locust, and the first chapters of his recently completed novel Dancing with Ghosts received second place in the Luigi Bonomi Award competition in London, England. In the late spring, Kendall will have a short story published in Cooweescoowee and another in the Bryant Literary Review. He joined the Flycatcher editorial team this past fall.
Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet with a deep interest in habitats for wildlife. She is a Master Gardener with certification from the Audubon Society for native plants and providing habitat for wild creatures in an urban garden. In recent months her poems have appeared in national and regional poetry journals and an anthology about sleep.
Alyse Knorr is the author of Annotated Glass, forthcoming from Furniture Press Books. She co-edits Gazing Grain Press and serves as assistant festival manager for the Fall for the Book literary festival. Her work has appeared in RHINO, Sentence, Puerto Del Sol, and The Southern Poetry Anthology, among others. Her writing often explores the intersections of religion, gender, and sexuality in the American South.
John Lane's Abandoned Quarry: New & Selected Poems (Mercer University Press) was selected as the SIBA Poetry book of the year, and his book length narrative My Paddle to the Sea (University of Georgia Press) was a finalist for the SELC Reed Prize for Best Environmental Writing in the South. Both came out in 2011. In 2012 he edited with his wife Betsy Teter the anthology Literary Dogs and Their South Carolina Writers (Hub City Press). In 2008, the Texas Tech University library purchased his literary papers for inclusion in the James Sowell Family Collection in Literature, Community, and the Natural World. He is Director of Wofford College's Goodall Environmental Studies Center, where he teaches environmental writing and humanities. He collaborated with artist Doug Whittle, whose work is featured here alongside "Eddy Lines," on The Dead Father Poems in 1999. His website is kudzutelegraph.com.
Susanna Lang’s first collection of poems, Even Now, was published in 2008 by The Backwaters Press. A chapbook, Two by Two, was released in October 2011 from Finishing Line Press, and a new collection, Tracing the Lines, will be published by Brick Road Poetry Press in 2013. She has published original poems and essays, and translations from the French, in such journals as Little Star, New Letters, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, The Green Mountains Review, The Baltimore Review, Kalliope, Southern Poetry Review, World Literature Today, Chicago Review, New Directions, and Jubilat. Book publications include translations of Words in Stone and The Origin of Language, both by Yves Bonnefoy. She lives with her husband and son in Chicago, where she teaches in the Chicago Public Schools.
Sara Lippmann is a 2012 New York Foundation for the Arts Fiction Fellow. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Valparaiso Fiction Review, Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, Used Furniture Review, Our Stories, Joyland, PANK, Slice Magazine, Potomac Review, Big Muddy, and elsewhere. She co-hosts the Sunday Salon, a monthly NYC literary series, and lives with her family in Brooklyn.
Sandra Marchetti currently teaches writing at Elmhurst College outside of her native Chicago. She completed her MFA in Creative Writing–Poetry at George Mason University in 2010. Sandra was named the winner of the Midwest Writing Center’s 2011 Mississippi Valley Chapbook Contest for her volume, The Canopy. Her full-length manuscript, Confluence, was a quarter-finalist for Able Muse’s 2012 Book Award, and she was also a finalist for Gulf Coast’s 2011 Poetry Prize. Sandy's poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Ohio State’s The Journal, Nashville Review, Phoebe, The Bakery, Subtropics, and elsewhere. She is currently the Poetry Editor for Minerva Rising, a journal of women and their stories.
Imani Marshall-Stephen is a New York City native, born and raised. She graduated from Spelman College in 2007 with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and from Kennesaw State University with a Master of Arts in Professional Writing. She is currently working on editing her first book of poems for publication. Besides writing poetry, Imani spends most of her time soaking in the cinema with friends, enjoying good food and conversation, and spending time with her new husband and best friend, Ostus.
Christopher Martin is editor of Flycatcher. His wife, Deana, is the real force behind Flycatcher, though, and she told him to publish a poem in this issue. "Stoneroller" is the newest poem from his collection-in-progress, Starting from Kennesaw. Chris has a manifesto on Christianity coming out soon in the online journal Parable Press and a poem about birds coming out soon somewhere. His one-year-old daughter just started calling him "Daddy," and that's the latest thing that's changed his life.
Jason Lee Miller, MFA, is a technical writer, curriculum developer, and composition instructor at Eastern Kentucky University. His work--poetry, fiction, essays, and book reviews--have appeared in 94 Creations, Blood Lotus, Bluegrass Accolade, Copperfield Review, Danse Macabre, Du Jour, Dew on the Kudzu, Gloom Cupboard, Joyful!, The Legendary, Milk Sugar, Numinous, Ontologica, State of Imagination, and Subliminal Interiors. Sporadically, he updates a blog.
Cara Ellen Modisett grew up in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. She has an MFA in creative nonfiction from Goucher College and bachelor's degrees in English and piano performance from James Madison University. Former editor (now editor-at-large) of Blue Ridge Country magazine, she is an adjunct instructor in English at Ferrum College, a reporter and on-air announcer for WVTF public radio, and a performing collaborative pianist. Her work has appeared or is about to appear in Still: The Journal; Braided Brook; Artemis; Pluck! Journal of Affrilachian Arts and Culture, and two volumes of Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel.
Thorpe Moeckel is the author of Odd Botany (Silverfish Review Press, 2002), Making a Map of the River (Iris Press, 2008), and Venison: a poem (Etruscan Press, 2010). Chapbooks include Meltlines and The Guessing Land. A 2011 NEA fellow in poetry, his writings have appeared or are forthcoming in Shenandoah, Orion, Poetry, Virginia Quarterly Review, Taproot, Open City, and elsewhere. He teaches in the MFA program at Hollins University and lives near Buchanan, Virginia, where he helps his amazing wife Kirsten, their three children, and lots of lovely Nubian dairy goats and other herds, flocks, and plants make good soil and eats on their small, Permaculture-based family farm.
Jeff Muse writes along the Upper Mississippi River where he teaches environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. A longtime educator in science and natural history, he recently received an MFA from Ashland University, focusing on creative nonfiction. He was raised near Indianapolis, Indiana, along Buck Creek, a thin green ribbon through farmland and suburbs, but hardy enough to get him wondering, Where does it all go? Jeff has recent publications in EarthLines, High Country News, La Crosse Magazine, Poydras Review, Soundings Review, and Stymie: A Journal of Sport & Literature, and he's working on a collection of personal essays exploring manhood, wild places, and his own inner landscape--the high points and the low.
Angelina Oberdan is currently a lecturer at Clemson University in South Carolina where she teaches advanced writing classes. Awarded the Joyce Scantleberry Award for Poetry, judged by Cody Walker (2010), she received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing (Poetry) and an M.A. in English from McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in journals such as Cold Mountain Review, Louisiana Literature, Mobius, Southern Indiana Review, and Yemassee.
David Oestreich lives in Northwest Ohio with his wife and three children. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Tar River Poetry, Ruminate, Chagrin River Review, and Lilliput Review.
James Owens divides his time between central Indiana and northern Ontario and finds his writing heavily influenced by, perhaps dependent on, these two landscapes, the rural and the wild, open fields, rough water, tamarack clinging to rock. Two books of his poems have been published: An Hour Is the Doorway (Black Lawrence Press) and Frost Lights a Thin Flame (Mayapple Press). Recent poems, translations, and photographs have appeared in Town Creek Poetry, Poetry Ireland, Floyd County Moonshine, The Cresset, and Ezra: An Online Journal of Verse Translation. His hobbies include metaphysical disquiet and watching small objects moved about randomly by wind. More of his work can be found at his blog, Ein Klage Himmel.
Cody Lee Rhodes, a native of the small kaolin-mining town Sandersville, Georgia, attended the nearby Georgia College and State University and took part in its Creative Writing program, focusing on poetry but not limiting himself to playwriting and prose. During his studies, he departed the country to take part in a study abroad partnership with Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan. His fascination with the culture, history, and landscape of the country brought him to a place of grand respect for all the aspects of life there, particularly how the Japanese artist relates a strong sense of nostalgia, recollection, and memory into a body of work. Since then, observation dominated his own work in relation to himself and to his surroundings. Much like works of Basho, he reiterated the importance of the relationship of the author and his place, whether its home, a place he calls home, or a place visited.
Tania Rochelle grew up in Powder Springs, GA, back when you could buy a cup of pickle juice for a nickel at the skating rink. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from The Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, as well as an MS in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Mercer University. She is the author of two books of poetry, Karaoke Funeral and The World's Last Bone, published by Snake Nation Press. She teaches writing at Portfolio Center and is a counselor at The Conley Center, both in the Buckhead area of Atlanta. She lives in the suburbs, with the people she loves and four dogs she loves to hate.
Rosemary Royston holds an MFA in Writing from Spalding University and is a lecturer at Young Harris College. Rosemary’s poetry has been published or is forthcoming in journals such as Southern Poetry Review, The Comstock Review, Main Street Rag, Coal Hill Review, FutureCycle, Still, New Southerner, and Alehouse. Her essays on writing poetry are included in Women and Poetry: Tips on Writing and Teaching and Publishing by Successful Women Poets (McFarland). Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and she was the recipient of the 2010 Literal Latte Food Verse Award. Most recently, she received Honorable Mention in the George Scarbrough Poetry Contest, along with her short fiction being selected as Honorable Mention in the Porter Fleming Literary Awards, 2012.
Beate Sass earned a Bachelor’s degree in Music from the University of Southern California in 1983 and a Certificate in Physical Therapy from the University of California, San Francisco in 1989. Beate writes, “When I discovered photography nine years ago, I was in the midst of raising a family and furthering my career as a physical therapist.” At that time, she realized that she needed a creative outlet. In 2004, “with much cajoling from my husband,” she purchased a digital camera. Since then she has taken a few college classes and attended Sante Fe Workshops, but is primarily self-taught. After living 22 years in Tallahassee, FL, Beate moved to Decatur, GA, in 2011 with her family. She works part-time as a physical therapist while pursuing her photographic interests . She blogs at beatesass.wordpress.com.
Scott A. Singleton is pursuing a Master of Arts in Professional Writing at Kennesaw State University. His work has appeared in Flourish Magazine and Share Art and Literary Magazine, and is forthcoming in Computers and Composition Online. His comparative work on Flannery O’Connor and Cormac McCarthy is featured in the Kennesaw Journal of Undergraduate Research. He is also speaking on the subject of his thesis, copyright and fair use issues in English studies, at the Southern Humanities Council in Savannah and the Conference on College Composition and Communication in Las Vegas. When he is not working or writing, he enjoys being outdoors. Scott has lived in Kennesaw, Georgia, his whole life, and still happily resides there with his wife.
Emily T. Smith received her MFA from Florida State University and currently teaches composition as an adjunct for Tallahassee Community College. She is the author of the chapbook baboon heart (Holocene, 2006), and was selected by guest editor D.A. Powell for inclusion in Best New Poets, 2011.
Karissa Knox Sorrell is an educator and writer living in Nashville, Tennessee. She received her MFA from Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky. Her poetry and prose have been published in several journals, including Etchings, San Pedro River Review, Relief, Circa Literary Review, St. Katherine Review, and Catapult . She works as an instructional coach helping ELL teachers and students. Karissa blogs about writing, reading, education, family life, and spirituality at karissaknoxsorrell.com.
Scott T. Starbuck's poetry book, River Walker, at Mountains and Rivers Press, covers his adventures and misadventures fishing from the Rogue River in southern Oregon to the Tanana River in Alaska. Before working as a Creative Writing Coordinator at San Diego Mesa College, he was captain of the salmon troller/charterboat Starfisher in Depoe Bay, Oregon. Information about his poem "The 'Moon Tree' by San Luis Creek" is here, and about "Moon Trees" in general is here.
Cheryl Stiles has published numerous poems, essays, and reviews in journals such as Poet Lore, 32 Poems, The Atlanta Review, Storysouth, SLANT, Plainsongs, Southern Women’s Review, and POEM. Her work has received the Agnes Scott Literary Festival Prize and a Pushcart nomination. As a member of the Georgia Writers Registry, she gives readings and workshops throughout the southeast. She works as a university librarian in Atlanta and is completing a doctoral degree at Georgia State University.
Christine Swint studies in the M.F.A. program at Georgia State University, where she also teaches introductory poetry writing and first-year composition. This fall she served as an assistant editor for Five Points Literary and Art Journal. Her poems have appeared most recently or are forthcoming in Ekphrasis, Hot Metal Bridge, Slant: A Journal of Poetry, The Tampa Review, and Shadowbox. She is the winner of the 2012 Agnes Scott Writer's Festival award for "Learning to Pray in Spanish," judged by Joy Harjo, which is published in this issue.
Jessica Tyner is originally from Oregon, USA, a member of the Cherokee Nation, and has been a writer and editor for ten years. Currently, she is a copy writer for Word Jones, a travel writer with Mucha Costa Rica, a writer for TripFab, a copy editor at the London-based Flaneur Arts Journal, and a contributing editor at New York’s Thalo Magazine. She has recently published short fiction in Out of Print Magazine in India, and poetry in Slow Trains Literary Journal, Straylight Magazine, and Solo Press. She lives in San José, Costa Rica.
Douglas E. Whittle came to the University of Wisconsin in 2004 after spending 12 years as professor of fine art at Converse College in South Carolina. He received a bachelor of fine arts degree in painting from the University of Florida in 1984 before spending two years in Zaire, Africa, as a Peace Corps volunteer building fish ponds with local tribesmen in the Congo River basin. He returned to the University of Florida and received a master of fine arts degree in printmaking in 1990. His work as a painter and printmaker has been widely nationally in galleries and museums, as well as in several international competitions. Institutions that own his artwork include The Fogg Museum at Harvard University, Carolina First Bank, The Palmetto State Bank, Marriott Hotels Inc., Wofford College, and other private collections throughout the U.S. and Europe. He has traveled extensively in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Central America, and has led trips on five continents for University of Wisconsin Continuing Studies.
Currently an English Lecturer at Southern Polytechnic State University in Marietta, Georgia, Michelle Nichols Wright is actively engaged in researching and writing contemporary fiction and nonfiction with work included in such publications as Bitter Oleander, The 2012 Zahir Fiction Anthology, Pank, and The Texas Review. She obtained her Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing (Fiction) from The University of Southern Mississippi in 2010.
William Wright is author of five collections of poems, including Night Field Anecdote (Louisiana Literature Press, 2011) and Bledsoe (Texas Review Press, 2011). He is series editor of The Southern Poetry Anthology and founding editor of Town Creek Poetry. He has been published in many journals. He won the 2012 Porter Fleming Prize in Poetry, translates German poetry, and is at work on a novel.
A former resident of Mexico City, Diana Anhalt moved recently to Atlanta, GA, to be closer to her family. She is the author of A Gathering of Fugitives (Archer Books), a chapbook, Shiny Objects, and essays, articles and book reviews in both English and Spanish. Her second chapbook, Second Skin, was recently released by Future Cycle Press in September, 2013 and, most recently, her poems have appeared in Nimrod, Atlanta Review, Sow’s Ear, and Poem.
Urvashi Bahuguna grew up in Goa and is now an undergraduate student of English Literature at St. Stephen’s College in New Delhi. She contributes regularly to Helter Skelter Magazine and co-edits their New Writing section. Her poetry has previously appeared in Red River Review, The Four Quarters Magazine, Muse India, and elsewhere. She blogs at urvashibahuguna.wordpress.com.
Caleb Beissert is a poet, translator, and freelance writer from Washington D.C. His first book of translations from the Spanish, Beautiful: Poems of Federico García Lorca & Pablo Neruda, was published by New Native Press in 2013. His poems or translations have appeared in Asheville Poetry Review, International Poetry Review, Tar River Poetry, and Pisgah Review. In 2008, Beissert was selected to participate in North Carolina Poetry Society’s Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet Series. He has produced a number of poetry readings, including the ongoing series “Poetry at the Altamont.” Beissert lives in Asheville, North Carolina. He blogs at calebbeissert.wordpress.com.
Jesse Breite lives and teaches in Atlanta, Georgia, though he was raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, and considers it his home. Jesse writes each night around 10 PM EST while his new wife, Emily, falls asleep. His recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Slant: A Journal of Poetry, The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume V: Georgia, and Prairie Schooner.
Joseph Bruchac lives in the Adirondack mountain foothills town of Greenfield Center, New York, in the same house where his maternal grandparents raised him. Much of his writing draws on that land and his Abenaki Indian ancestry. He's edited a number of anthologies of contemporary Native poetry including Songs from this Earth on Turtle's Back, Breaking Silence, and Returning the Gift. His own poems, articles, and stories have appeared in over 500 publications, from American Poetry Review, Orion, and Aboriginal Voices to National Geographic and Parabola. His honors include a Rockefeller Humanities fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Writing Fellowship for Poetry, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas.
David Budbill was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1940, to a streetcar driver and a minister's daughter. He is the author of nine books of poems (three of which are Copper Canyon Press books), nine plays, a novel, a collection of short stories, a picture book for children, and dozens of essays, introductions, speeches, and book reviews. He is also a performance poet on two CDs, Zen Mountains/Zen Streets and Songs for a Suffering World with The Judevine Mountain Trio. His newest book, Park Songs: A Poem/Play, will be published by Exterminating Angel Press in September of 2012. Garrison Keillor reads frequently from David's poems on The Writer's Almanac. His prizes and honors include an Honorary Doctorate from New England College, 2009, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in playwriting, 1991, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry, 1982-1983. He lives in the mountains of northern Vermont where he cuts firewood, tends his garden, and keeps a blog. You can also find him on Twitter and Facebook.
Kathryn Stripling Byer has published seven books of poetry, including Wildwood Flower and Black Shawl, both from LSU Press, both cast in the voices of North Carolina mountain women. Her recent collection, Descent, was published by LSU Press in November. Her poetry, essays, and short fiction have appeared in journals ranging from The Atlantic Monthly to Appalachian Heritage. She was the 2007 recipient of the Hanes Award in Poetry from the Fellowship of Southern Writers and served as North Carolina's first woman Poet Laureate. She lives in Cullowhee, NC, on a hillside above the Tuckasegee River.
Sandy Coomer is a graduate of “The Writer's Loft,” a certificate in creative writing program at Middle Tennessee State University. Her poems have been published in POEM, Number One, Yemassee, Third Wednesday, Trajectory, Slant, and the anthologies Motif: Come What May, and Because I Said So: Poems on the Happiness and Crappiness of Parenthood. Her chapbook, Continuum, was released in July 2012 by Finishing Line Press. When not writing or studying the craft of writing, she spends her time knitting or training for triathlons. She lives in Brentwood, TN, with her husband, four children, and two dogs.
Eric Thomas Crawford is originally from Bay City, Michigan. For the last five years he has lived near Atlanta, Georgia and has therefore become a solitary, cynical Midwesterner who sometimes writes poetry to try to mend his broken life. He is obsessed with Hank Thoreau, finding the perfect cereal, and a tight, justified electric guitar solo.
Philip Daughtry has published four books of poetry: Kid Nigredo (Turkey Press), The Stray Moon (Turkey Press), Magic Harness (Equestrian Video Library), and Celtic Blood (New Native Press). In 2010 Mercury House published a collection of short stories, The Centaur's Son, and will release a forthcoming novel, Night Ride With Dahlia, in 2012.
Daughtry's poetry work has appeared in over fifty magazines and anthologies. He edited Beatitudes in North Beach, California, and was featured in The Baby Beats, a collection of beat and post-beat poets published in Paris ( Le Main Courante). Daughtrry has taught film writing and story development at USC's Lucas Film School, Emily Carr College (Vancouver), Clairmont College, and UCLA. He currently lives in Topanga California with his wife Rita George, a bohemian saint.
Michael Delp lives in Northern Michigan and spends most of his free time fishing on the Boardman River at his refuge, the Reeling Waters Lodge. He is the co-editor of the "Made in Michigan" books series from Wayne State University Press. His most recent book is a collection of stories from WSU Press, As If We Were Prey.
Dominica Dipio is an Associate Professor of Literature and Film and a Fulbright research fellow from Makerere University in Uganda. She is currently hosted by Kennesaw State University, where she writes about folktales from Uganda. In the past five years, Dipio has collected folktales from various ethnic groups from Uganda, in an effort to search for a sense of cultural nationhood that transcends local differences. The stories collected are meant to foster communication among Ugandans and between Ugandans and other global cultures. The philosophy behind this project is the belief in the capacity of tales to draw peoples together along shared human values, to delight, and to instruct.
Painter and papermaker Elizabeth Ellison is the owner/operator of Elizabeth Ellison Watercolors, a studio/gallery in Bryson City, NC. She and her husband George Ellison (writer/naturalist) have maintained the studio/gallery/office space in the old Clampitt Hardware building on Main Street since 1986 Elizabeth is a native of Caswell County which is in the piedmont section of North Carolina. She is of Occaneeci descent on her mother's side of the family. This Native American heritage has strongly influenced her outlook on life as well as her artistic endeavors. Ellison graduated from Averett College and studied art at Virginia Commonwealth (formerly RPI), The University of South Carolina, and at Mississippi State University. She teaches workshops at a variety of institutions, including the North Carolina Arboretum in Asheville. The quality and individuality of Elizabeth's work led to her
inclusion in Fodor's Guide to the National Parks and Seashores of the East (1994).
Writer-naturalist George Ellison has lived several miles west of Bryson City, NC, adjacent to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, since 1976. He has written bio-critical introductions for reissues of James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees (Historical Images, 1992); Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders (University of Tennessee Press, 1976); and Kephart’s posthumous novel Smoky Mountain Magic (Great Smoky Mountains Association, 2009), as well as his Camping and Woodcraft (2011). Books published by the History Press in Charleston, SC, with artwork by Elizabeth Ellison, include: Mountain Passages (2005); A Blue Ridge Nature Journal (2006); Blue Ridge Nature Notes (2007); High Vistas: An Anthology of Nature and Descriptive Writing from Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains (vol. I, 1540-1900, 2009; vol. II, 1901-2007, 2011); and Permanent Camp (2012). His columns appear in the Asheville Citizen-Times; Chinquapin: The Newsletter of the Southern Appalachians; and Smoky Mountain News. Natural history workshops are conducted for the NC Arboretum, Native Plant Conference, and Smoky Mountain Field School. Blue Ridge Nature Journal was a finalist for the non-fiction book of the year award sponsored by the Southeastern Independent Booksellers Association and Permanent Camp: Poems, Narratives and Renderings from the Smokies has been nominated for this year’s poetry award. He is currently co-authoring a biography of Horace Kephart for the GSMA and working on a collection titled Near Horizons: Blue Ridge Poems & Narratives.
Roberta Feins received her MFA in poetry in 2007 from New England College. Her poems have been published in Five AM, Antioch Review, The Cortland Review, and The Gettysburg Review. Her first chapbook, Something Like a River, will be published by Moon Path Press in 2013. Roberta edits the e-zine Switched On Gutenberg.
Rupert Fike was named a finalist for Georgia Author of the Year 2011 on the basis of his collection, Lotus Buffet (Brick Road Poetry Press). He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in fiction and poetry with work appearing in Rosebud, The Georgetown Review, A&U: America’s AIDS Magazine, Natural Bridge, storySouth,The Blue Fifth Review, Cortland Review, A Baker's Dozen, and others. His work is forthcoming in The Southern Review of Poetry and Alligator Juniper. He has a poem inscribed in the downtown Atlanta plaza that fronts the city jail (just across the street from Free At Last Bail Bonds). His nonfiction, Voices from The Farm, is now in its second printing with stories from his ten years on America's largest spiritual community (hippie commune). He lives in Clarkston, Georgia with his wife, Kathy.
Alice Friman’s latest collection is Vinculum (LSU Press), for which she won the 2012 Georgia Author of the Year Award for Poetry. Her last two books are The Book of the Rotten Daughter (BkMk Press) and Zoo (U of Arkansas Press). New work appears in The Georgia Review, The American Literary Review, The Cortland Review, and others, as well as the 2012 Pushcart Prize Anthology. She is Poet-in-Residence at Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville, Georgia.
Ellen Fuson was educated as a sculptor at Washington University in St. Louis, MO, and an architect at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, GA. She is originally from Nashville, TN, and is currently living in San Francisco, CA.
Erin Ganaway is the author of The Waiting Girl, winner of the Texas Review Press Breakthrough Poetry Prize: Georgia. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Third Coast, The Texas Review, Sea Stories, and elsewhere. She was a featured poet in Town Creek Poetry, and her poems were selected for inclusion in the Georgia volume of The Southern Poetry Anthology, as well as Best New Poets. Ganaway holds a Master of Fine Arts from Hollins University. She divides her time between Atlanta and Cape Cod.
Jenn Gutiérrez holds a M.F.A. in English and Writing from Southampton College. Gutiérrez’s first book, Weightless, was published in 2005. Her second collection, Silence Imbibed, was released from Anaphora Literary Press (2011). Previous work has appeared in journals such as The Texas Review, The Writer’s Journal, The Acentos Review, Bacopa Literary Review, Verdad Magazine, and Antique Children. She is working on a doctoral degree in Curriculum & Instruction at the University of Denver and hopes to graduate December 2013.
Anna Maria Johnson and Steven David Johnson make their home in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley in a place that was formerly known as Cootes Store.
Anna Maria’s writing brings together her diverse interests in the visual arts, science and nature, family systems, and spirituality. She studied fiction and creative nonfiction at Vermont College of Fine Art (MFA July 2012), where her critical thesis explored image patterns in Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. She has taken coursework in spiritual formation at Eastern Mennonite Seminary. Her short stories and essays have been published in Ruminate Magazine, Numéro Cinq, DreamSeeker Magazine, and The Mennonite, as well as in the anthology, Tongue-screws and Testimonies. Anna Maria writes, gardens, and makes art along the Shenandoah River’s north fork, where she has lived for seven years with photographer Steven David Johnson and their two daughters.
Photographer Steven David Johnson is on sabbatical leave from Eastern Mennonite University where he has taught Visual and Communication Arts courses for the past seven years (MFA, Savannah College of Art and Design). Steve loves photography,whirlpools, literature, metaphor, form, salamanders, rivers, place, science writing, and vernal ponds. When not teaching, he’s often down by some river or stream exploring the natural world though the lens of his camera. He’s spending the 2012-2013 academic year in Lincoln, Oregon, collaborating on a series of photo essays about the ecology of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument with his wife, writer Anna Maria Johnson. Steve’s imagery has appeared in Orion, National Geographic Traveler, Ruminate Magazine, Rock and Sling, and Blue Ridge Country.
The family is spending a sabbatical year (2012-2013) in southern Oregon, living within the boundary of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, where they are observing and documenting its biodiversity. Both taught at The Oregon Extension, a humanities-based college semester program, in the fall, and are collaborating in the spring on a multi-media project. Check out “A Season in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument” at cascade-siskiyou.org.
Amaris Ketcham is an honorary Kentucky Colonel and regular contributor to the arts and literature blog, Bark. She teaches writing and publishing at the University of New Mexico's Honors College. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bosque, Cactus Heart, Glassworks, Rio Grande Review, Sacred Fire, and the Utne Reader.
David King is Associate Professor of English and Film Studies at Kennesaw State University where he has taught for twenty years. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals, and he has won first prize awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Poetry Society of America, Concepts magazine, and Snake Nation Review. Most recently his poetry was featured in Volume 5: Georgia of The Southern Poetry Anthology. He is also the arts and culture columnist for the Georgia Bulletin, the newspaper of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta, and his work has been awarded by the Catholic Press Association. A fourth generation Georgia native, he lives in historic Marietta with his wife and two young sons.
Kendall Klym has published poetry in The French Literary Review, Cottonwood, and Thorny Locust, and the first chapters of his recently completed novel Dancing with Ghosts received second place in the Luigi Bonomi Award competition in London, England. In the late spring, Kendall will have a short story published in Cooweescoowee and another in the Bryant Literary Review. He joined the Flycatcher editorial team this past fall.
Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet with a deep interest in habitats for wildlife. She is a Master Gardener with certification from the Audubon Society for native plants and providing habitat for wild creatures in an urban garden. In recent months her poems have appeared in national and regional poetry journals and an anthology about sleep.
Alyse Knorr is the author of Annotated Glass, forthcoming from Furniture Press Books. She co-edits Gazing Grain Press and serves as assistant festival manager for the Fall for the Book literary festival. Her work has appeared in RHINO, Sentence, Puerto Del Sol, and The Southern Poetry Anthology, among others. Her writing often explores the intersections of religion, gender, and sexuality in the American South.
John Lane's Abandoned Quarry: New & Selected Poems (Mercer University Press) was selected as the SIBA Poetry book of the year, and his book length narrative My Paddle to the Sea (University of Georgia Press) was a finalist for the SELC Reed Prize for Best Environmental Writing in the South. Both came out in 2011. In 2012 he edited with his wife Betsy Teter the anthology Literary Dogs and Their South Carolina Writers (Hub City Press). In 2008, the Texas Tech University library purchased his literary papers for inclusion in the James Sowell Family Collection in Literature, Community, and the Natural World. He is Director of Wofford College's Goodall Environmental Studies Center, where he teaches environmental writing and humanities. He collaborated with artist Doug Whittle, whose work is featured here alongside "Eddy Lines," on The Dead Father Poems in 1999. His website is kudzutelegraph.com.
Susanna Lang’s first collection of poems, Even Now, was published in 2008 by The Backwaters Press. A chapbook, Two by Two, was released in October 2011 from Finishing Line Press, and a new collection, Tracing the Lines, will be published by Brick Road Poetry Press in 2013. She has published original poems and essays, and translations from the French, in such journals as Little Star, New Letters, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, The Green Mountains Review, The Baltimore Review, Kalliope, Southern Poetry Review, World Literature Today, Chicago Review, New Directions, and Jubilat. Book publications include translations of Words in Stone and The Origin of Language, both by Yves Bonnefoy. She lives with her husband and son in Chicago, where she teaches in the Chicago Public Schools.
Sara Lippmann is a 2012 New York Foundation for the Arts Fiction Fellow. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Valparaiso Fiction Review, Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, Used Furniture Review, Our Stories, Joyland, PANK, Slice Magazine, Potomac Review, Big Muddy, and elsewhere. She co-hosts the Sunday Salon, a monthly NYC literary series, and lives with her family in Brooklyn.
Sandra Marchetti currently teaches writing at Elmhurst College outside of her native Chicago. She completed her MFA in Creative Writing–Poetry at George Mason University in 2010. Sandra was named the winner of the Midwest Writing Center’s 2011 Mississippi Valley Chapbook Contest for her volume, The Canopy. Her full-length manuscript, Confluence, was a quarter-finalist for Able Muse’s 2012 Book Award, and she was also a finalist for Gulf Coast’s 2011 Poetry Prize. Sandy's poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Ohio State’s The Journal, Nashville Review, Phoebe, The Bakery, Subtropics, and elsewhere. She is currently the Poetry Editor for Minerva Rising, a journal of women and their stories.
Imani Marshall-Stephen is a New York City native, born and raised. She graduated from Spelman College in 2007 with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and from Kennesaw State University with a Master of Arts in Professional Writing. She is currently working on editing her first book of poems for publication. Besides writing poetry, Imani spends most of her time soaking in the cinema with friends, enjoying good food and conversation, and spending time with her new husband and best friend, Ostus.
Christopher Martin is editor of Flycatcher. His wife, Deana, is the real force behind Flycatcher, though, and she told him to publish a poem in this issue. "Stoneroller" is the newest poem from his collection-in-progress, Starting from Kennesaw. Chris has a manifesto on Christianity coming out soon in the online journal Parable Press and a poem about birds coming out soon somewhere. His one-year-old daughter just started calling him "Daddy," and that's the latest thing that's changed his life.
Jason Lee Miller, MFA, is a technical writer, curriculum developer, and composition instructor at Eastern Kentucky University. His work--poetry, fiction, essays, and book reviews--have appeared in 94 Creations, Blood Lotus, Bluegrass Accolade, Copperfield Review, Danse Macabre, Du Jour, Dew on the Kudzu, Gloom Cupboard, Joyful!, The Legendary, Milk Sugar, Numinous, Ontologica, State of Imagination, and Subliminal Interiors. Sporadically, he updates a blog.
Cara Ellen Modisett grew up in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. She has an MFA in creative nonfiction from Goucher College and bachelor's degrees in English and piano performance from James Madison University. Former editor (now editor-at-large) of Blue Ridge Country magazine, she is an adjunct instructor in English at Ferrum College, a reporter and on-air announcer for WVTF public radio, and a performing collaborative pianist. Her work has appeared or is about to appear in Still: The Journal; Braided Brook; Artemis; Pluck! Journal of Affrilachian Arts and Culture, and two volumes of Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel.
Thorpe Moeckel is the author of Odd Botany (Silverfish Review Press, 2002), Making a Map of the River (Iris Press, 2008), and Venison: a poem (Etruscan Press, 2010). Chapbooks include Meltlines and The Guessing Land. A 2011 NEA fellow in poetry, his writings have appeared or are forthcoming in Shenandoah, Orion, Poetry, Virginia Quarterly Review, Taproot, Open City, and elsewhere. He teaches in the MFA program at Hollins University and lives near Buchanan, Virginia, where he helps his amazing wife Kirsten, their three children, and lots of lovely Nubian dairy goats and other herds, flocks, and plants make good soil and eats on their small, Permaculture-based family farm.
Jeff Muse writes along the Upper Mississippi River where he teaches environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. A longtime educator in science and natural history, he recently received an MFA from Ashland University, focusing on creative nonfiction. He was raised near Indianapolis, Indiana, along Buck Creek, a thin green ribbon through farmland and suburbs, but hardy enough to get him wondering, Where does it all go? Jeff has recent publications in EarthLines, High Country News, La Crosse Magazine, Poydras Review, Soundings Review, and Stymie: A Journal of Sport & Literature, and he's working on a collection of personal essays exploring manhood, wild places, and his own inner landscape--the high points and the low.
Angelina Oberdan is currently a lecturer at Clemson University in South Carolina where she teaches advanced writing classes. Awarded the Joyce Scantleberry Award for Poetry, judged by Cody Walker (2010), she received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing (Poetry) and an M.A. in English from McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in journals such as Cold Mountain Review, Louisiana Literature, Mobius, Southern Indiana Review, and Yemassee.
David Oestreich lives in Northwest Ohio with his wife and three children. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Tar River Poetry, Ruminate, Chagrin River Review, and Lilliput Review.
James Owens divides his time between central Indiana and northern Ontario and finds his writing heavily influenced by, perhaps dependent on, these two landscapes, the rural and the wild, open fields, rough water, tamarack clinging to rock. Two books of his poems have been published: An Hour Is the Doorway (Black Lawrence Press) and Frost Lights a Thin Flame (Mayapple Press). Recent poems, translations, and photographs have appeared in Town Creek Poetry, Poetry Ireland, Floyd County Moonshine, The Cresset, and Ezra: An Online Journal of Verse Translation. His hobbies include metaphysical disquiet and watching small objects moved about randomly by wind. More of his work can be found at his blog, Ein Klage Himmel.
Cody Lee Rhodes, a native of the small kaolin-mining town Sandersville, Georgia, attended the nearby Georgia College and State University and took part in its Creative Writing program, focusing on poetry but not limiting himself to playwriting and prose. During his studies, he departed the country to take part in a study abroad partnership with Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan. His fascination with the culture, history, and landscape of the country brought him to a place of grand respect for all the aspects of life there, particularly how the Japanese artist relates a strong sense of nostalgia, recollection, and memory into a body of work. Since then, observation dominated his own work in relation to himself and to his surroundings. Much like works of Basho, he reiterated the importance of the relationship of the author and his place, whether its home, a place he calls home, or a place visited.
Tania Rochelle grew up in Powder Springs, GA, back when you could buy a cup of pickle juice for a nickel at the skating rink. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from The Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, as well as an MS in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Mercer University. She is the author of two books of poetry, Karaoke Funeral and The World's Last Bone, published by Snake Nation Press. She teaches writing at Portfolio Center and is a counselor at The Conley Center, both in the Buckhead area of Atlanta. She lives in the suburbs, with the people she loves and four dogs she loves to hate.
Rosemary Royston holds an MFA in Writing from Spalding University and is a lecturer at Young Harris College. Rosemary’s poetry has been published or is forthcoming in journals such as Southern Poetry Review, The Comstock Review, Main Street Rag, Coal Hill Review, FutureCycle, Still, New Southerner, and Alehouse. Her essays on writing poetry are included in Women and Poetry: Tips on Writing and Teaching and Publishing by Successful Women Poets (McFarland). Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and she was the recipient of the 2010 Literal Latte Food Verse Award. Most recently, she received Honorable Mention in the George Scarbrough Poetry Contest, along with her short fiction being selected as Honorable Mention in the Porter Fleming Literary Awards, 2012.
Beate Sass earned a Bachelor’s degree in Music from the University of Southern California in 1983 and a Certificate in Physical Therapy from the University of California, San Francisco in 1989. Beate writes, “When I discovered photography nine years ago, I was in the midst of raising a family and furthering my career as a physical therapist.” At that time, she realized that she needed a creative outlet. In 2004, “with much cajoling from my husband,” she purchased a digital camera. Since then she has taken a few college classes and attended Sante Fe Workshops, but is primarily self-taught. After living 22 years in Tallahassee, FL, Beate moved to Decatur, GA, in 2011 with her family. She works part-time as a physical therapist while pursuing her photographic interests . She blogs at beatesass.wordpress.com.
Scott A. Singleton is pursuing a Master of Arts in Professional Writing at Kennesaw State University. His work has appeared in Flourish Magazine and Share Art and Literary Magazine, and is forthcoming in Computers and Composition Online. His comparative work on Flannery O’Connor and Cormac McCarthy is featured in the Kennesaw Journal of Undergraduate Research. He is also speaking on the subject of his thesis, copyright and fair use issues in English studies, at the Southern Humanities Council in Savannah and the Conference on College Composition and Communication in Las Vegas. When he is not working or writing, he enjoys being outdoors. Scott has lived in Kennesaw, Georgia, his whole life, and still happily resides there with his wife.
Emily T. Smith received her MFA from Florida State University and currently teaches composition as an adjunct for Tallahassee Community College. She is the author of the chapbook baboon heart (Holocene, 2006), and was selected by guest editor D.A. Powell for inclusion in Best New Poets, 2011.
Karissa Knox Sorrell is an educator and writer living in Nashville, Tennessee. She received her MFA from Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky. Her poetry and prose have been published in several journals, including Etchings, San Pedro River Review, Relief, Circa Literary Review, St. Katherine Review, and Catapult . She works as an instructional coach helping ELL teachers and students. Karissa blogs about writing, reading, education, family life, and spirituality at karissaknoxsorrell.com.
Scott T. Starbuck's poetry book, River Walker, at Mountains and Rivers Press, covers his adventures and misadventures fishing from the Rogue River in southern Oregon to the Tanana River in Alaska. Before working as a Creative Writing Coordinator at San Diego Mesa College, he was captain of the salmon troller/charterboat Starfisher in Depoe Bay, Oregon. Information about his poem "The 'Moon Tree' by San Luis Creek" is here, and about "Moon Trees" in general is here.
Cheryl Stiles has published numerous poems, essays, and reviews in journals such as Poet Lore, 32 Poems, The Atlanta Review, Storysouth, SLANT, Plainsongs, Southern Women’s Review, and POEM. Her work has received the Agnes Scott Literary Festival Prize and a Pushcart nomination. As a member of the Georgia Writers Registry, she gives readings and workshops throughout the southeast. She works as a university librarian in Atlanta and is completing a doctoral degree at Georgia State University.
Christine Swint studies in the M.F.A. program at Georgia State University, where she also teaches introductory poetry writing and first-year composition. This fall she served as an assistant editor for Five Points Literary and Art Journal. Her poems have appeared most recently or are forthcoming in Ekphrasis, Hot Metal Bridge, Slant: A Journal of Poetry, The Tampa Review, and Shadowbox. She is the winner of the 2012 Agnes Scott Writer's Festival award for "Learning to Pray in Spanish," judged by Joy Harjo, which is published in this issue.
Jessica Tyner is originally from Oregon, USA, a member of the Cherokee Nation, and has been a writer and editor for ten years. Currently, she is a copy writer for Word Jones, a travel writer with Mucha Costa Rica, a writer for TripFab, a copy editor at the London-based Flaneur Arts Journal, and a contributing editor at New York’s Thalo Magazine. She has recently published short fiction in Out of Print Magazine in India, and poetry in Slow Trains Literary Journal, Straylight Magazine, and Solo Press. She lives in San José, Costa Rica.
Douglas E. Whittle came to the University of Wisconsin in 2004 after spending 12 years as professor of fine art at Converse College in South Carolina. He received a bachelor of fine arts degree in painting from the University of Florida in 1984 before spending two years in Zaire, Africa, as a Peace Corps volunteer building fish ponds with local tribesmen in the Congo River basin. He returned to the University of Florida and received a master of fine arts degree in printmaking in 1990. His work as a painter and printmaker has been widely nationally in galleries and museums, as well as in several international competitions. Institutions that own his artwork include The Fogg Museum at Harvard University, Carolina First Bank, The Palmetto State Bank, Marriott Hotels Inc., Wofford College, and other private collections throughout the U.S. and Europe. He has traveled extensively in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Central America, and has led trips on five continents for University of Wisconsin Continuing Studies.
Currently an English Lecturer at Southern Polytechnic State University in Marietta, Georgia, Michelle Nichols Wright is actively engaged in researching and writing contemporary fiction and nonfiction with work included in such publications as Bitter Oleander, The 2012 Zahir Fiction Anthology, Pank, and The Texas Review. She obtained her Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing (Fiction) from The University of Southern Mississippi in 2010.
William Wright is author of five collections of poems, including Night Field Anecdote (Louisiana Literature Press, 2011) and Bledsoe (Texas Review Press, 2011). He is series editor of The Southern Poetry Anthology and founding editor of Town Creek Poetry. He has been published in many journals. He won the 2012 Porter Fleming Prize in Poetry, translates German poetry, and is at work on a novel.