Apoala with Tree #4; Aztec Calendar; Toltec Elegy; Solola Market; Labna with Flowers, Mexico; Sacred Valley, Peru; Edzna with Tree, Mexico; Machu Picchu, Peru; Xochimilco, Mexico; and Apoala with Cactus— After graduating from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville with an MFA, Michael Aakhus received a grant to continue his work at the Roswell Artist in Residence Program in New Mexico. His internationally-exhibited artwork takes a primary interest in Latin American indigenous cultures, and is represented in many public and private collections throughout the United States and other countries.
Mary C. Mohr Poetry Award First Prize Winner: "Skin"—Kristine Rae Anderson’s poems have appeared in Crab Creek Review, Entelechy International, Phase and Cycle, the anthology Active Voices IV, and elsewhere. In 2005 Anderson was awarded a Tomales Bay Fellowship in poetry, and she was awarded a Fishtrap Fellowship for 2006. She teaches English at Riverside Community College in Riverside, California.
Mary C. Mohr Poetry Award Second Prize Winner: “Dirge for the White Birds Standing in a Marsh, Seen Through a Train Window on the Day After Thirty-fifth Birthday”—Sam Witt's first book of poetry, Everlasting Quail, won the Katherine Nason Bakeless First Book Prize in 2000, sponsored by Breadloaf, and was published by UPNE the following year, at which time Witt received a Fulbright Fellowship to live and write in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Witt has participated in poetry festivals at Druskininkai and Vilnius at the invitation of the Lithuanian government; he has been a resident at the Breadloaf Writers' Conference and at Yaddo; and his poems have been published in Virginia Quarterly, Harvard Review, Georgia Review, Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, Fence, and New England Review, among other journals. His second book, Sunflower Brother, won the Cleveland State University Press Open Book competition for 2006. Witt is currently looking for a publisher for his new manuscript, Occupation: Dreamland, while serving as a visiting assistant professor of English at Whitman College.
Mary C. Mohr Poetry Award Third Prize Winner: “Unrepeatable Poem”—Christina Hutchins has worked as a biochemist and a Congregational (UCC) minister, and she currently teaches philosophy of religion/aesthetics at Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley. Recent poems are published in The New Republic, The Missouri Review, Antioch Review, Prairie Schooner, Denver Quarterly, The Southern Review, and Sycamore Review. She lives in Albany, California.
Mary C. Mohr Poetry Award Third Prize Winner: “Lambing Season”—Cora Stryker is a former tropical field biologist and urban gardener and the recipient of the University of California Poet Laureate Award, the Bobette Bilble Gugliotta Memorial Scholarship in Creative Writing, and the 2008-09 Steinbeck Fellowship at San Jose State. As a Steinbeck Fellow, she will be working on her first novel,Manzanita, which is set in a post-petroleum San Francisco.
“Colored Store,” “Come-Along,” “Moment of Here,” “Goose Blind” & “Incident with Black Woman in a Truck”—Dave Smith is the author of Little Boats, Unsalvaged (Louisiana State University Press, 2005), his fourteenth collection of poetry; The Wick of Memory, New and Selected Poems, 1970-2000; Onliness, a novel; Southern Delights, a collection of stories; and two collections of essays: Local Assays: On Contemporary American Poetry and Hunting Men: A Life in the Life of Poetry (Louisiana State University Press, 2006). He was the editor of The Southern Review from 1990-2002 at Louisiana State University, where he also was the Boyd Professor of English, and has edited The Essential Poe, The William Morrow Anthology of Younger American Poets and The Pure Clear Word: Essays on the Poetry of James Wright. Currently, he is the editor of the Southern Messenger Poetry Series at Louisiana State University and the Eliot Coleman Professor of Poetry at Johns Hopkins University. Smith has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in Poetry, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Lyndhurst Fellowship, as well as the Virginia Prize in Poetry and an Award in Poetry from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He is an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.
“The Hinckley News,” “Choir School,” “Girl Sleeping on a Trampoline,” “Snow Angels,” & “The Book Thief” —Leslie Adrienne Miller is author of five books of poetry, The Resurrection Trade and Eat Quite Everything You See from Graywolf Press, and Yesterday Had a Man in It, Ungodliness, and Staying Up For Love from Carnegie Mellon University Press. Miller is a professor of English at the University of Saint Thomas, in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
“His Heart”—Michelle O’Sullivan lives on the west coast of Ireland. Her work has appeared in The Sunday Tribune, Iota, Mobius, Mslexia, The Shop, New Voices, and Crannog and various other publications. Forthcoming work will appear in The London Magazine, PN Review, The Interpreters House, Obsessed with Pipework and Equinox. Nominated for The Hennessey Award 2007, she is currently working on a collection of poetry, as well as a collection of short fiction.
“She Yells George Shrinks from the Basement,” "My Life in Sunglasses," "Mostly Ever After," "I'm Your Huckleberry," & "Jerusalem"—Austin Hummell’s books are Poppy (Del Sol Press) and The Fugitive Kind (University of Georgia Press). He teaches at Northern Michigan University and is poetry editor of Passages North.
“A Thousand Words”—Sarah Kennedy is the author of four books of poems, including Consider the Lilies (David Robert Books), Double Exposure (Cleveland State University Press), and Flow Blue (Elixir Press). Her fifth book, A Witch’s Dictionary, is forthcoming from Elixir Press and her sixth, Home Remedies, is forthcoming from LSU Press. Kennedy has received grants from both the National Endowment for the Arts and the Virginia Commission for the Arts, and she is a contributing editor for West Branch and Pleiades. Kennedy is an associate professor at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Virginia.
“The News Today" & "Vortex: The Super-Sized Supermarket"—Matthew Guenette's poetry has appeared recently in Pindeldyboz and Diagram. His first book, Sudden Anthem, winner of the 2007 American Poetry Journal Book Prize, is now available from Dream Horse Press. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with his wife Julie and two unruly cats.
“Funhouse at Night”—James Doyle's new book, Bending Under The Yellow Police Tapes, was published by Steel Toe Books in June, 2007. He has poems coming out in The Briar Cliff Review, Paper Street, Skidrow Penthouse, Slant, and The Paterson Literary Review.
"Two breathings,” "Waiting," "Memory, if I recall," "In a time of biblical references," & "Perhaps I'm in the wrong mood to write a Christmas carol"—Bob Hicok's most recent book is This Clumsy Living (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007).
"Leaf Blowers,” "Ambushed,” & “How the Future Might Work Out”—Stephen Dobyns is the author of 10 books of poems, 21 novels, and a book of essays on poetry, Best Words, Best Order. His books of poetry include Mystery, So Long(2005); The Porcupine’s Kisses (2002); Pallbearers Envying the One Who Rides(1999); Common Carnage (1996); Velocities: New and Selected Poems, 1966-1992 (1994); Cemetery Nights (1987), which won a Melville Cane Award; Black Dog, Red Dog (1984), which was a winner in the National Poetry Series; Heat Death (1980); and Concurring Beasts (1972), which was the 1972 Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets. His fiction includes the short story collection Eating Naked, the novel The Church of Dead Girls, and the Saratoga mysteries featuring Charlie Bradshaw.
“Letters from Mrs. Chenowith”—In 2007, Jill Walsh received her MFA in creative writing from the University of Montana. She has several creative projects underway, including a novel, a collection of short stories and a children’s book, which she will also illustrate. She lives with her husband and dogs in Scarborough, Maine.
“Declensions of the Verb To Buy” & "Implements"—Susan Neville’s essay collections include Indiana Winter and Fabrication. She is the author of the story collections Invention of Flight, which won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, and In the House of Blue Lights, selected as one of the "Best Books of 1998" by the Chicago Tribune, and Iconography, a memoir and meditation on writing. Her most recent book is Sailing the Inland Sea: On Writing, Literature, and Land (Quarry Books, 2007). A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Pushcart Prize, Neville teaches at Butler University in Indianapolis.
“Good Enough for Guppies”—Jacob M. Appel is a graduate of the MFA program in creative writing at New York University. His short fiction has recently appeared in the Greensboro Review, The Missouri Review, StoryQuarterly, Southwest Review and elsewhere. Appel currently teaches at the Gotham Writers Workshop in New York City.
“Four Postcard Captions”—Michael Martone has recently published Double-wide, a collection of his work over the past two decades, and Michael Martone: Fictions, a memoir in contributor’s notes. He is the author of many books of short fiction including Seeing Eye, Pensées: The Thoughts of Dan Quayle, Fort Wayne Is Seventh on Hitler's List, Safety Patrol, and Alive and Dead in Indiana. Michael Martone Answers Some Questions
“The Pyromaniac's Chickens”—Adam Peterson graduated from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Cream City Review and Flint Hills Review.
“The Fates Embodied: Nickole Browns Sister”—Melanie Jordan received her PhD in creative writing and literature at the University of Houston. Her work has appeared in Iowa Review, Black Warrior Review, Southeast Review, Diagram,Poetry Southeast, and Pebble Lake Review.
“Pathos and Paradoxes”—Patrick Shaw is director of composition at the University of Southern Indiana. Previously, he taught at Lindsey Wilson College, in south-central Kentucky.
“Water Cure by Percival Everett: A Review”—Contributing editor Brenda DeMartini’s stories and poems have appeared in Confrontation, Kansas Quarterly, Minnesota Review, Mississippi Mud, The Sun, and Three Rivers Poetry Journal.
"The Task of Truth”—Mihaela Moscaliuc’s co-translations of Romanian poetry appear in Arts & Letters, Connecticut Review, Mid-American Review, Mississippi Review, and elsewhere. Other publications include articles in Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal and History of the Literary Cultures in East-Central Europe and Interculturality and Translation; book reviews in TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, Georgia Review, Fugue, and Poetry International; and poems in Great River Review, Near East Review, Crab Orchard Review, New Letters, The English Record, and Meridians.
“Something Like Love: Review of Benjamin Percy's Refresh, Refresh”—Ken Gillam is an assistant professor in rhetoric and composition and assistant- director of the writing program at the University of Southern Indiana.