Aerial Rhythm; Black, White, and Gray; Harmony in Three Parts, Locust Tre; Oak Leaf Mosaic; Red Leaf; River Run; Spring Leaf;Tempo in Line; White Earth II; & Winter Light—Artist Nancy McCroskey is a maker of tiles, sculpture, and public murals. She exhibits her work in invitational and juried exhibitions, most recently The 2010 Clay National in Lubock, Texas, and The Feats of Clay Exhibition 2010 in Lincoln, California, where White Covering with Paw Paw Leaves won the Tile Heritage Award. McCroskey is represented by Denise Bibro Fine Arts in New York City where she has had two solo exhibitions. Her work has been reviewed in American Ceramics, reproduced in Ceramics Monthly and American Craft, and featured in books such as Mastering the Craft by Richard Zakin, Handmade Tiles by Frank Giorgini, and Architectural Ceramics for the Studio Potter by Peter King. Nancy won regional and national competitions for public murals Riverun and Aerial Rhythm and has been awarded an Individual Artist Grant by The Indiana Arts Commission. McCroskey heads the Ceramics Program at Indiana Purdue University in Fort Wayne.
"Casa Marina" & "Palmetto Bugs"—Candace Black's chapbook Casa Marina won the RopeWalk Press 2009 Thomas A. Wilhelmus Award, and her first collection of poems, The Volunteer, was the 2000 winner of the Minnesota Voices Poetry Prize from New Rivers Press. Black teaches creative writing at Minnesota State University Mankato.
"There was once a shoe and a coat" & "Wish and ache, emphatic"—Marianne Boruch is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently Grace, Fallen from (Wesleyan, 2008) and Poems: New and Selected (Oberlin, 2004). A second book of essays on poetry, In the Blue Pharmacy, appeared in 2005 from Trinity University Press. Boruch teaches in the MFA program at Purdue University and in the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
"Splitting Post"—Haines Eason is the 2010 winner of the Cream City Review Beau Boudreaux Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared widely in journals like New England Review, Pleiades, Yale Review, Barrow Street, Indiana Review, and Shenandoah. His chapbook, A History of Waves, selected by Mark Doty for a PSA Chapbook Fellowship, is forthcoming. Eason teaches at the Kansas City Art Institute.
"The Postcard"—Chelsea Henderson is in her third year pursuing her undergraduate degree in poetry-writing at the University of Virginia, where she studies with Rita Dove and Lisa Russ Spaar. She has had poems accepted in the Sow's Ear Poetry Review, The Briar Cliff Review, and The North American Review. Henderson was awarded second place in the 2009 James Hearst Poetry Prize, and is a co-winner of the 2010 Hollins University undergraduate poetry contest.
"Alzheimer's, a Portrait"—Sara E Lamers’s collection of poetry A City Without Trees was published by March Street Press in 2007. A chapbook, Applause: The Patron Saint Poems, is forthcoming from Pudding House Publications. Other work has appeared in journals such as Fugue, The MacGuffin, Main Street Rag, and Rattle. Lamers teaches at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, MI, and received an MFA in poetry from Purdue University.
"'A Struggle Between a Demon & a Gritty Little Dwarf,'" "Chicken & Other Stereotypes," "Marriage Proposal," "Race Relations (Etta Duryea)," & "Race Relations (Jack Johnson)"—Adrian Matejka is the author of The Devil’s Garden (Alice James Books, 2003) and Mixology (Penguin, 2009), which was a winner of the 2008 National Poetry Series. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry 2010, Crab Orchard Review and Pleiades. Matejka teaches at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville where he serves a poetry editor of Sou’wester.
"He Says the Sins"—Laura McCullough has four collections of poems including Panic, winner of the 2009 Kinereth Gensler Award and forthcoming from Alice James Press; Speech Acts, forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press in fall 2010; as well as two chapbooks, including Women and Other Hostages, forthcoming from Amsterdam Press. A two time New Jersey State Arts Council Fellow, her work has appeared recently or is forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, The Writers Chronicle, Prairie Schooner, Harpur Palate, Crab Orchard Review, Gulf Coast, and others. She is a doctoral candidate in the Critical and Creative Writing program at Bangor University in Wales.
"Corridor"—Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, received his MFA in Poetry from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and now conducts genetic research at the University of Southern California. He has recent or forthcoming poems, interviews, and reviews in The Missouri Review, Sou’wester, Southern Indiana Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Grist, Rattle, Third Coast, The Cortland Review, The Crab Orchard Review, CENTER, Blueline, and The River Oak Review. He is also the founder and editor of PoemoftheWeek.org, an online forum of Contemporary American Poetry, original and previously-published interviews, essays, and reviews.
"Shifting with Both Hands"—Liam Rector’s books of poems include The Executive Director of the Fallen World, American Prodigal, and The Sorrow of Architecture. His poems appeared in Agni, Paris Review, American Poetry Review, The New Republic,Boston Review, Slate, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. His reviews and essays appeared in magazines and books that include American Poetry Review, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, The Boston Globe, Hudson Review, Bostonia, The Oxford Companion to Literature, and Contemporary Poets. Rector’s honors include fellowships in poetry from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and he received the Friend to Writers Award from PEN New England. He edited The Day I Was Older: On the Poetry of Donald Hall, and co-edited, with Tree Swenson, On the Poetry of Frank Bidart: Fastening the Voice to the Page. He founded and directed the graduate Writing Seminars at Bennington College, and administered literary programs at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Academy of American Poets. Rector died on August 15, 2007.
"Watching President Reagan's Funeral, I Think of My Father in the Hospital Waiting Room on the Day I was Born"—Joshua Robbins has recent work published or forthcoming in Best New Poets, Verse Daily, Third Coast, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Copper Nickel, Mid-American Review, Southern Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He won the 2008 James Wright Poetry Award, and recently received a Pushcart Prize nomination. Robbins is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Tennessee where he teaches poetry writing, and serves as Poetry Editor for the journal Grist.
"Nobody's Fool"—James Valvis has poems or short stories forthcoming in Confrontation, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Hurricane Review, New Laurel Review, New York Quarterly, Nimrod, Pearl, Rattle, Slipstream, Timber Creek Review, and others. He lives in Washington state with his wife and daughter.
"Preservation" & "Primer"—Kevin Allardice's fiction has appeared in The North American Review, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. A graduate of the University of Virginia's MFA program, he lives in Charlottesville.
"Graduated"—Randall Brown teaches at and directs Rosemont College's MFA in Writing and Graduate Literature programs. He is the author of the award-winning collection Mad to Live and has an essay in the anthology The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction: Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field. Brown has been published widely, both online and in print.
"Low Life"—Lori Rader Day’s stories have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, TimeOut Chicago, After Hours, Big Muddy, and the anthology Dia de los Muertos. She won the 2008 Chris O’Malley Prize in Fiction from The Madison Review. Day grew up in central Indiana and now lives in Chicago.
"Stray"—Mary C. Mohr Fiction Award winner Anne de Marcken is a writer and time-based artist. Her short stories have been featured in Best New American Voices, Glimmer Train, The Way We Knew It, Hunger Mountain, and on NPR’s "Selected Shorts." She has been awarded the Howard Frank Mosher Prize for Short Fiction, the Stella Kupferberg Memorial Prize, and has received grant and fellowship support from the Jentel Foundation, Centrum, the Hafer Family Foundation, and Artist Trust. She and her partner divide their time between Olympia and Oysterville, Washington.
"His Saving Grace and His Gravest Flaw"—Kristen den Hartog is the author of three novels: Water Wings, The Perpetual Ending, and Origin of Haloes. Her most recent book, The Occupied Garden: A Family Memoir of Wartorn Holland, was written with her sister, Tracy Kasaboski, and explores the life of their father’s family during the Second World War. She lives in Toronto, Canada, with her husband and daughter, and is currently at work on a novel.
"La Perdida"—Molly Giles was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her first book, Rough Translations, which also won the Pushcart Prize, Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, Small Press Book Award, Boston Globe Award, and PEN Syndicated Fiction Award. Her second book, Creek Walk, was named one of the most notable books of 1997 by The New York Times. Her stories have been featured on National Public Radio’s “Selected Shorts,” and her short story “Two Words,” first published in The Missouri Review, won the 2003 O. Henry Prize. In 2000, Giles published her first novel, Iron Shoes. Giles is currently Director of Programs in Creative Writing at the University of Arkansas.
"The Floating Wall"—Adam Johnson is a Senior Jones Lecturer in creative writing at Stanford University. A Whiting Writers’ Award winner and NEA Fellowship recipient, Johnson is the author of Emporium, a short story collection, and the novel Parasites Like Us, which won a California Book Award. His fiction has appeared in Esquire, Harper's, Paris Review, Tin House and Best American Short Stories.
"Scavengers"—Alexander Lumans was born in Aiken, SC. His fiction has been published in or is forthcoming from Story Quarterly, Greensboro Review, Black Warrior Review, Cincinnati Review, Rosebud, Gargoyle, Clarkesworld, Surreal South ’09, Press 53 Open Awards 2009, and The Versus Anthology, among others. He recently graduated from the MFA Fiction Program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and now currently eats and teaches in Boulder, CO.
"Girlie-Girl"—Lee Martin is the author of the novels The Bright Forever, a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction; River of Heaven; and Quakertown. He has also published two memoirs, From Our House and Turning Bones, and a short story collection, The Least You Need To Know. Martin’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in such places as Harper’s, Creative Nonfiction, The Georgia Review, Story, The Kenyon Review, Fourth Genre, The Southern Review, and Glimmer Train. He is the winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction and the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council. Martin teaches in the MFA Program at The Ohio State University.
"Believers"—Joe Meno is a fiction writer and playwright who lives in Chicago. A winner of the Nelson Algren Literary Award, the Great Lakes Book Award, the Society of Midland Authors Fiction Prize, and a finalist for the Story Prize, he is the author of five novels, The Great Perhaps, The Boy Detective Fails, Hairstyles of the Damned, How the Hula Girl Sings, and Tender As Hellfire. His short-story collections are Bluebirds Used to Croon in the Choir and Demons in the Spring. His nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times and Chicago Magazine. Meno was a contributing editor to the now-defunct Punk Planet magazine and currently teaches at Columbia College Chicago.
"The Autopsy"—Joe Woodward lives in Los Angeles and is at work on a biography of Nathanael West to be published by O/R Books in the fall of 2010. A two-time winner of a Los Angeles Press Club Award, his nonfiction has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, Los Angeles Times, and Poets & Writers magazine. His story “Earthquake Kit,” was a finalist for the Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers. Woodward received an MFA at Brooklyn College, City University of New York.
“How Can I Help You?”—J. David Gonzalez is a fiction candidate in the MFA program at Florida International University. He has written for Beautiful Decay Magazine, Blueprint Directory, and D.A.M.N. Magazine.
"Houhai Lake in Winter" & "The Overnight Train from Xian Pulls Into Beijing"—Roy Kesey was born and raised in northern California, and currently lives with his wife and children in Peru. He’s the author of a novella called Nothing in the World (winner of the Bullfight Media Little Book Award), a collection of short stories called All Over (a finalist for the Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Award), and a historical guide to the city of Nanjing, China. His work has appeared in several anthologies including Best American Short Stories, New Sudden Fiction, The Robert Olen Butler Prize Anthology and The Future Dictionary of America, and in more than sixty magazines including McSweeney's, Subtropics, The Georgia Review, American Short Fiction, The Iowa Review and Ninth Letter.
"How to Care for Your Pets"—Laura Madeline Wiseman is the recipient of the 2009 Academy of American Poets Award from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she is completing her dissertation and teaching English. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Feminist Studies, Margie, MississippiReview.com, and elsewhere. Her poetry chapbook, My Imaginary, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. Other awards include the Mari Sandoz Award in fiction, the Will Jumper Award in poetry, and three Pushcart Prize nominations. “How to Care for Your Pets” was a finalist for the 2008 Mary C. Mohr Nonfiction Award.
"A Disturbing Dreamscape" & "Solitary Stanger"—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.
"An Elegant Unearthing:Pamela McClure's Rock Dove"—Pamela Garvey’s chapbook Fear is available from Finishing Line Press. She has published poetry in many literary journals including The North American Review, Sonora Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Pleiades, and others. Garvey is an associate professor of English at St. Louis Community College-Meramec, and lives in the city of St. Louis with her husband and son.
"Nomadic Music"—Mihaela Moscaliuc's first poetry collection, Father Dirt, was published by Alice James Books in 2010. Her poems, translations, reviews, and articles have appeared in The Georgia Review, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, Poetry International, Pleiades, Arts & Letters, Connecticut Review, Mississippi Review, Sou, and elsewhere. Moscaliuc teaches at Monmouth University and in the MFA Program in Poetry and Poetry in Translation at Drew University.
"Bringing the Past to Life: Matthew Brennan's The House with the Mansard Roof"— Tory Vandeventer Pearman's book Women and Disability in Medieval Literature is forthcoming from Palgrave Macmillan. She regularly publishes poetry and reviews of poetry.