2015 Contributors

ABE AAMIDOR is the author of short fiction that has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, The Arkansas Review, Amoskeag, and elsewhere.

KATHY ACKERMAN grew up in Northwest Ohio but has lived in the Carolinas since 1984. She has published three poetry chapbooks: The Time It Takes (Finishing Line Press); Crossbones and Princess Lace (NCWN Mary Belle Campbell Poetry Chapbook Award); and Knock Wood (Main Street Rag), and her poems have appeared in several literary journals. Her first full-length collection of poems, Coal River Road, was published in 2013 by Livingston Press (University of West Alabama). In 2004, Ackerman published the only book to date, called The Heart of Revolution (University of Tennessee Press), on North Carolina proletarian novelist and poet Olive Tilford Dargan. Ackerman is Writer-in-Residence and Dean of Arts and Sciences at Isothermal Community College in Spindale, North Carolina, and resides in Tryon, North Carolina, with her husband of 31 years, Gary.

JEFFREY ALFIER is winner of the 2014 Kithara Book Prize for his poetry collection, Idyll for a Vanishing River (Glass Lyre Press, 2013). He is also author of The Wolf Yearling (Silver Birch Press) and The Storm Petrel—Poems of Ireland (Grayson Books, forthcoming). His recent work has appeared in Spoon River Poetry Review, Poetry Ireland Review, and Tulane Review.

HARLEY APRIL completed her bachelor’s degree at Barnard College, where she studied English with a writing concentration. April has participated in the International Women’s Writing Guild Conference in Saratoga, New York, and Writer’s Week at Manhattanville College. She has also been attending Writer’s Week and seminars at the Writing Institute of Sarah Lawrence since 2008. Her work has appeared in The Alembic, The Westchester Review, and Wild Violet. In April’s free time, she enjoys candy-making, walking, and swimming.

KB BALLENTINE was a finalist for the Joy Harjo Poetry Award in 2006 and was awarded the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize in 2006 and 2007. Fragments of Light (2009) and Gathering Stones (2008) were published by Celtic Cat Publishing. In 2011, two anthologies published her work: Southern Light: Twelve Contemporary Southern Poets and A Tapestry of Voices. Her third collection, What Comes of Waiting, won the 2013 Blue Light Press Book Award.

TINA BARR lives in Western North Carolina. She is the author of five collections of poetry, two of which are full-length books, Kaleidoscope and The Gathering Eye.  She has received fellowships from the NEA, the Tennessee Arts Commission, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

MILTON J. BATES has published several nonfiction books, including, most recently, The Bark River Chronicles: Stories from a Wisconsin Watershed (2012). His poems have appeared in anthologies and magazines such as the Great Lakes Review, Midwestern Gothic, and the Wallace Stevens Journal.

PETER BERGQUIST earned a bachelor’s in English from Princeton University and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. His poems have been published in Rougarou, The Queen City Review, The New Verse News, A Handful of Dust, and the Broad River Review, among others. His poems “Gristle on the Bone,” “The Easy Winter” and “Pulled Over Outside Santa Fe” were finalists for the latter journal’s Rash Awards. His first novel, Where the West Ends, was published last year and a second is forthcoming.

JOHN BRANTINGHAM is an English professor and director of the creative writing program at Mt. San Antonio College (Walnut, California), the writer-in-residence at the dA Center for Cultural Arts (Pomona, California), an instructor at the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts, and the president of the San Gabriel Valley Literary Festival. He has published hundreds of poems and short stories in the United States and abroad. Brantingham’s books include the poetry collection, The Green of Sunset, and the short story collection, Let Us All Pray Now to Our Own Strange Gods.

DEVYNN BRAUN has a bachelor’s degree in English with an emphasis in creative writing from Western Washington University. She has been writing recreationally for years, and her interests include creative nonfiction as well as poetry. This is the first of what will be many submissions as she begins her career as a writer.

AARON BROWN is a novelist and poet who lived for ten years in Chad, Africa. He is the author of the novella Bound (2012) and the poetry chapbook Winnower (2013), both published by Wipf & Stock. Brown’s work has been published or is forthcoming in Tupelo Quarterly, Warscapes, The Portland Review, jmww, RELEVANT, Polaris, North Central Review, Windhover, and Saint Katherine Review, among others. He lives with his wife in Lanham, Maryland.

SUSAN ELLIOTT BROWN’S poem “Oyster” was a finalist for the 2013 Rash Award. Her chapbook, The Singing is My Favorite Part, is forthcoming from Etched Press. Brown’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Best American Poetry blog, Measure: A Review of Formal Poetry, and Alehouse, among others. Brown is currently a doctoral student in creative writing at the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi.

WESLEY BROWNE owns a small pizza shop and practices law in Richmond, Kentucky, where he lives with his wife and two sons. Browne’s writing has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Still: The Journal, drafthorse lit journal, The Pikeville Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Appalachian Journal, and elsewhere.

BOB BUCHANAN’S poetry collection, Beyond The Wall, has been published by Cardinal House Publishing and was listed as a “Best Poetry Book” for May 2014 by Grace Cavalieri in the Washington Independent. His work has appeared in multiple literary journals, and he is active in the Scottsdale poetry community. Buchanan has a new collection of work coming out in 2015. Buchanan earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Oklahoma State University, but rest assured he no longer has need of a pocket protector.

SHARON CHARDE, a retired psychotherapist and a writing teacher since 1992, has won numerous poetry awards, the latest being first prize in the Arcadia Press 2014 Ruby Irene chapbook contest. She is published over sixty-five times in journals and anthologies of poetry and prose, including Calyx, PMS (poememoirstory), The Paterson Review, Ping Pong, Rattle, Poet Lore and The Comstock Review, and has had seven Pushcart nominations. She has also edited and published I Am Not A Juvenile Delinquent, containing the work of the adjudicated teenaged females she has volunteered with since 1999 at a residential treatment center in Litchfield, Connecticut. She has two first prize-winning chapbooks, Bad Girl At The Altar Rail and Four Trees Down From Ponte Sisto, and a full-length collection, Branch in His Hand, published by Backwaters Press in November 2008, which was adapted as a radio play by the BBC, broadcast in 2012. After Blue, for which she won honorable mention in Finishing Line Press’s 2013 chapbook contest, was published in September 2014. She has been awarded fellowships to the Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and The MacDowell Colony.

For over 30 years, JOAN COLBY has been editor of Illinois Racing News, a monthly publication for the Illinois Thoroughbred Breeders and Owners Foundation, published by Midwest Outdoors LLC. In addition, Colby is an associate editor of Kentucky Review and of FutureCycle Press. She lives with her husband and assorted animals on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois.

PATTY COLE is a poet who lives in Chatham County, North Carolina, on a 17-acre farm with her husband and various pets. She is published in several journals and anthologies. Her passion is capturing impressions into words. Cole is at work on her chapbook, A Way I Sing, which she hopes to publish in 2015.

MICHAEL COLLINS’ poems have appeared numerous publications, including Grist, Kenning Journal, Pank, SOFTBLOW, and Smartish Pace. His first chapbook, How to Sing when People Cut off your Head and Leave it Floating in the Water, won the Exact Change Press Chapbook Contest in 2014. A full-length collection, Psalmanadala, is forthcoming.

JACOB COLLINS-WILSON is the high-gain, high-fiving English high-school teacher you wish you’d had. His poetry appears in Spillway, Hobart, Spry, and Split Lip. In addition to being a finalist for the Best of the Net 2013 anthology, he has received a residency with the Atlantic Center for the Arts. He writes reviews, too (The Review Review and Heavy Feather). Currently, Collins-Wilson is an M.F.A. candidate in poetry at Syracuse University. He can be reached by everyone at [email protected].

BARBARA CONRAD is author of Wild Plums (FutureCycle Press, 2013), The Gravity of Color (Main Street Rag, 2007), and editor of Waiting for Soup (2004), a collection of art and poetry from her weekly workshops with homeless neighbors in Charlotte, North Carolina. Her poems have been selected by numerous journals and anthologies, such as Tar River Poetry, Sow’s Ear, Southern Women’s Review, Icarus, Kakalak, and Southern Poetry Anthology. Three poems were finalists in the 2015 North Carolina Literary Review James Applewhite Poetry Prize. Conrad’s writings, which focus on personal journey, nature and social justice issues, have won awards, honorable mentions and a Pushcart nomination.

CAROLINE COTTOM’S personal essays and poems have been published or are forthcoming in Motif, Morning Glory, Cumberland Poetry Review, Crack the Spine, Glassworks, The Pen Is Mightier Than The Broom, and Common Boundary. Cottom won the Transitions Abroad personal essay contest.  She earned a Ph.D. in educational policy from Vanderbilt University and now teaches meditation and leads spiritual retreats in Mexico, after living in Fiji and Ecuador for several years. During the 1980s, Cottom directed the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign and the coalition that essentially ended nuclear testing in Nevada. Her memoir, Love Changes Things: Even In The World Of Politics, describes this experience.

DENNIS DESMOND is an attorney living in the Washington, D.C. area with his wife and daughter. Desmond received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a J.D. from Antioch School of Law. Desmond is a member of the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and was a contributing author to Pipe Dream Blues by Clarence Lusane (South End Press, 1991). In addition to writing, Desmond’s other interests include learning foreign languages and playing basketball.

DONNA L. EMERSON is a college instructor, licensed clinical social worker, photographer, and writer. Some of her publications include CALYX, Eclipse, The Los Angeles Review, New Ohio Review, Paterson Literary Review, Praxis: Gender & Cultural Critiques, and the South Carolina Review. Her work has received numerous prizes and awards including the California State Poetry Society (2008) and Naugatuck River Review (2010). Emerson’s chapbook Body Rhymes was nominated for a California Book Award.

TERRI KIRBY ERICKSON is the author of four collections of poetry, including In the Palms of Angels (Press 53, 2011), winner of a Nautilus Book Award and a Gold Medal for Poetry in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, and her latest collection, A Lake of Light and Clouds (Press 53, 2014). Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the Asheville Poetry Review, 2013 Poet’s Market, The Writer’s Almanac, The Christian Science Monitor, American Life in Poetry, Verse Daily, and many others, and has won multiple awards and honors, including the 2014 Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, the Poetry For Their Freedom Award, and the Nazim Hikmet Poetry Prize. For more information about her life and work, please visit her website at www.terrikirbyerickson.com.

RUPERT FIKE’S collection of poems Lotus Buffet (Brick Road Poetry Press) was named Finalist in the 2011 Georgia Author of the Year awards. He has received Pushcart nominations in fiction and poetry, with work appearing in Rosebud, The Southern Review of Poetry, Natural Bridge, A&U America’s AIDS Magazine, The Buddhist Poetry Review, and others. Now in its second printing, Fike’s nonfiction book Voices from The Farm offers accounts of life on a spiritual community in Tennessee in the 1970s.

TERRY FORD is now semi-retired after four decades of full-time teaching at Kent State University at Stark. During that time, Ford served as English department coordinator, spoke and presented at numerous academic conferences, was featured in campus literary publications, earned a distinguished teaching award, and was honored as a distinguished woman of the university. A longtime supporter of Ohio and Midwest writing, Ford was a perennial organizer and grant writer for the Midwest Writer’s Conference. Ford enjoys reading, writing, gardening, and grandmothering.  Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in The Chaffin Journal, Corium Magazine, Existere, Foliate Oak, Folly, Grey Sparrow, Meridian Anthology, Our Town, North Canton, The Portland Review, St. Ann’s Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and Viral Cat.

SUSAN CLAIRE GLASS is a freelance writer, musician, and amateur ornithologist living in Saratoga, California. She is Associate Editor of The Blind Californian, a state affiliate publication of the American Council of the Blind. Her poetry has appeared in The Snowy Egret Journal and Magnets and Ladders, an online Journal of writing by and about people with disabilities. She recently retired from a full professorship at West Valley Community College, where she taught courses in composition, American literature, creative writing, and women’s studies. She shares her home life with her husband John and Zeus, her black Labrador Retriever Guide Dog.

CAROL LYNN STEVENSON GRELLAS is a six-time Pushcart nominee and twice nominated Best of the Net nominee. She has authored several chapbooks along with her latest full-length collection of poems: Hasty Notes in No Particular Order, newly released from Aldrich Press. She is the 2012 winner of the Red Ochre Press Chapbook competition for her manuscript Before I Go to Sleep, and according to family lore, she is a direct descendent of Robert Louis Stevenson. Visit Grellas at www.clgrellaspoetry.com.

KEVIN GRIFFIN is an English/creative writing teacher and wrestling coach at Detroit Catholic Central High School.  He is most happily married to his wife, Premu, and they have two sons, Emmett and Henry.  His poetry has been published or will soon appear in Voices, The Garfield Lake Review, and The MacGuffin. Griffin also won first prize in the Dyer-Ives Poetry Contest (judged by Billy Collins) in 2007.

PATRICIA L. HAMILTON is a professor of English at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee. Her first volume of poetry, The Distance to Nightfall (Main Street Rag Press), was published in July. Other recent publications include Iodine Poetry Journal, Plainsongs, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, and Deep South Magazine. Hamilton’s work has appeared twice previously in Broad River Review.

CHAD HANSON serves as Chairman of the Department of Sociology & Social Work at Casper College. His creative nonfiction titles include Swimming with Trout (University of New Mexico Press, 2007) and Trout Streams of the Heart (Truman State University Press, 2013). His collection of poems, Patches of Light, won the Meadowhawk Prize (Red Dragonfly Press, 2014). Visit Hanson at www.chadhanson.org.

RYAN HAVELY earned his bachelor’s in English from Ohio University and his M.F.A. from Minnesota State University. He teaches English and creative writing at West Virginia University at Parkersburg. His work appears in such magazines as The Columbia Review, Niche, New Plains Review, Ampersand, Mobius, and Midwestern Gothic.

LINDA H. HEURING is a Southern writer temporarily transplanted to Chicago. Her short stories have appeared recently in Dos Passos Review, Alabama Literary Review, Kestrel, Clover: A Literary Rag, Concho River Review, 2012 Fish Anthology (Ireland), Rosebud, and Southern Women’s Review. Her story “Roommates” was awarded the Fish International Short Story Prize in 2012.

ALISON HICKS’ work has appeared or is forthcoming in A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, Eclipse, Fifth Wednesday, Gargoyle, Licking River Review, Louisville Review, OVS Magazine, Pearl, Permafrost, Sanskrit, Whiskey Island, and other journals. Books include a full-length collection of poems, Kiss (PS Books, 2011), a chapbook, Falling Dreams (Finishing Line Press, 2006), and a novella, Love: A Story of Images (AWA Press, 2004), a finalist in the 1999 Quarterly West Novella Competition. Awards include the 2011 Philadelphia City Paper Poetry Prize and two fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Hicks is founder of Greater Philadelphia Wordshop Studio, which offers community-based writing workshops.

As editor of Many Voices Press, LOWELL JAEGER compiled New Poets of the American West, an anthology of poets from 11 Western states. He is author of five collections of poems, including WE (Main Street Rag Press, 2010) and How Quickly What’s Passing Goes Past (Grayson Books, 2013). Most recently, Jaeger was awarded the Montana Governor’s Humanities Award for his work in promoting thoughtful civic discourse.

ANDREW JARVIS is the author of Sound Points (Red Bird Press), Ascent (Finishing Line Press), and The Strait (Homebound Publications). His poems have appeared in Evansville Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Tulane Review, and many other magazines. He was a Finalist for the 2014 Homebound Publications Poetry Prize. He also judges poetry contests and edits anthologies for Red Dashboard LLC. Jarvis holds an M.A. in writing (poetry) from Johns Hopkins University.

LORRAINE JEFFERY earned her bachelor’s degree in English and her MLIS in library science, and has managed public libraries in Texas, Ohio and Utah for over twenty years. She has won several poetry prizes in state and national contests and has published over thirty poems in various publications, including Calliope, Ibbetson Street, July Literary Press, and Rockhurst Review. Her articles have appeared in Focus on the Family, Mature Years, and Woman’s Touch, as well as other publications. She is the mother of ten children (eight adopted) and currently lives with her husband in Orem, Utah.

ESTHER WHITMAN JOHNSON is a former high school English teacher and counselor from Southwest Virginia who now travels the globe doing volunteer gigs on five continents, often writing about her journeys. She has completed twelve international builds with Habitat for Humanity, the last in Mongolia, the next in Bolivia. She has traveled to central China on a sleeper train, voyaged to Patagonia on a freighter, ridden camels in the Gobi, and lived with an African family in a village in Madagascar.  Johnson’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Main Street Rag, Artemis, Colere, Dirty Chai, Blue Lotus, Virginia Literary Journal, and Virginia Writers.

JOSHUA JONES has lived in Virginia, Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, and now Massachusetts. He received his bachelor’s degree from Houston Baptist University and is a candidate for the M.F.A. in poetry at University of Massachusetts Boston. His poems have appeared in Dappled Things, The Rectangle, The Mayo Review, and others. Jones lives in Dorchester with his inestimable wife Lesleigh and their dog Guinivere.

JANET JOYNER grew up in the South Carolina Low Country. Until her retirement, she was professor of French language and comparative literature at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.  Her short stories have appeared in the Crescent Review and Flying South, and she is a past winner of the South Carolina Poetry Society’s Dubose and Dorothy Heyward Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared in Main Street Rag, Pembroke Magazine, and Bay Leaves (of The NC Poetry Council), The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, The Cincinnati Review, Emrys Journal, The Comstock Review, The Journal of Kentucky Studies, Flying South 2014, MayDay Magazine, The North Carolina Literary Review, and in the forthcoming North Carolina volume of The Southern Poetry Anthology. She is the translator of Le Dieu désarmé by Luc-François Dumas. She lives and writes in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

TIM KEPPEL’S work has appeared in Glimmer Train, The Literary Review, Mid-American Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Xavier Review, Carolina Quarterly, Best New Writing, Prism International, and elsewhere. He teaches literature and writing at the Universidad del Valle in Cali, Colombia.

After earning graduate degrees from the University of North Carolina, RICHARD LEBOVITZ taught college and high school English before entering the career path that has led him to his current position as editorial and educational director for an Atlanta-based B2B events and digital media company. His poetry springs from his desire to seize on those fleeting moments of beauty the natural world delivers to our doorsteps and to share those experiences on an emotional level with his fellow human beings.

KATHLEEN BREWIN LEWIS is a Georgia writer who published her first chapbook, Fluent in Rivers, in 2014. Her work has also appeared or is forthcoming in Valparaiso Poetry Review, San Pedro River Review, Heron Tree, Southern Humanities Review, James Dickey Review, Yemassee, and Still: The Journal. Lewis been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and is senior editor of the online journal Flycatcher.

DAVID LOOPE works as Vice President of Academic Affairs and Professor of Humanities at Reynolds Community College in Richmond, Virginia. His poems have appeared in Wayfarer and DeadMule.

CHRISTOPHER MARTIN is an essayist, poet, and editor from the Allatoona region of northwest Georgia, where he lives with his wife and their two young children. He is author of three poetry chapbooks, most recently Marcescence (Finishing Line Press, 2014) and Everything Turns Away (La Vita Poetica Press, 2014). His work has appeared in such publications as American Public Media’s On Being blog, Still: The Journal, Shambhala Sun, Thrush, and Waccamaw, among several others. The winner of the 2014 George Scarbrough Prize in Poetry, Martin is the founding editor of Flycatcher and a contributing editor at New Southerner. He has work forthcoming in the anthologies Hard Lines: Rough South Poetry (University of South Carolina Press) and Stone River Sky: An Anthology of Georgia Poetry (Negative Capability Press). You can find Martin online at www.christopher-martin.net.

STEPHEN MASSIMILLA is a critic and professor. His co-authored book, Cooking with the Muse, is forthcoming from Tupelo Press. His book, The Plague Doctor in His Hull-Shaped Hat, was selected in the Stephen F. Austin State University Press Prize contest. He received the Grolier Prize for Later on Aiaia, an Academy of American Poets Prize, and multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Massimilla is published in AGNI, American Literary Review, Bellingham Review, Chelsea, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Epoch, The Literary Review, Paterson Literary Review, Provincetown Arts, Tampa Review, among other journals and anthologies. He holds an M.F.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University.

Born in Mobile, Alabama, CHARLOTTE MCCAFFREY moved to California after two decades in the Midwest. McCaffrey holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature and education from Washington University in St. Louis. Her work has been published in an anthology of poems concerning 9/11/01 (An Eye for an Eye Leaves the Whole World Blind edited by Allen Cohen), and has also appeared in many literary reviews and journals, including 13th Moon, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Chrysalis Reader, The Comstock Review, Confluence, Confrontation, Cumberland Poetry Review, The Distillery, Eclipse, English Journal, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly, Iris, Limestone, The Louisville Review, MacGuffin, Madison Review, Off The Coast, Pearl, Phantasmagoria, Phoebe, The Pikeville Review, Poem, Poet Lore, Poetry International, Red Wheelbarrow Literary Magazine, Reed Magazine, RiverSedge, Sojourner, Soundings East, Sulphur River Literary Review, Talking River, Weber Studies, Wisconsin Review, Women’s Studies Quarterly, and Writers’ Forum. A former chef and special education teacher, McCaffrey currently gardens, cooks, and writes in the San Francisco Bay area.

SARAH MERROW lived in New England until 2011, and she is now a Baltimorean who loves the Southern Appalachians. She works with professional flutists and repairs their flutes, hears music in language, and words in melody. She has studied English, German, Japanese, and Spanish, and began writing poetry in fifth grade.

DARLENA MOORE’S creative work has been published in The Rapid River Literary Digest, The Verge, Poetry Matters, and The Great Smokies Review. She lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, with her husband, Sam, and her dogs, Zu Zu and Fig.

JED MYERS lives in Seattle. Two recent poetry collections are The Nameless (Finishing Line Press) and Watching the Perseids (Sacramento Poetry Center Book Award). He’s won Southern Indiana Review’s Editors’ Award and the Literal Latte Award. He’s had a Pushcart nomination, and, in the UK, a Forward Prize nomination. His work’s appeared in Prairie Schooner, Nimrod, I-70 Review, Crab Orchard Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, and elsewhere.

BETTYJOYCE NASH is a journalist whose fiction has appeared in the North Dakota Quarterly. With the gift of time and space at residencies—The Tyrone Guthrie Center, in Ireland, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Ragdale—she is completing a novel she drafted in 2013 at The MacDowell Colony. She teaches creative writing at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail.

ALICE OSBORN’S past educational and work experience is unusually varied, and it now feeds her work as a poet, editor, and author mentor—she has helped hundreds of first-time authors write and publish their memoir, poetry and fiction. Alice is the author of three books of poetry (fourth book forthcoming in 2015) and is the editor of the Main Street Rag anthologies Tattoos and Creatures of Habitat. Alice lives in Raleigh with her husband, two children, and four messy birds. In her other life she’s an Irish dancer and enjoys performing accompanied by her acoustic guitar. Visit Alice at www.aliceosborn.com.

ADAM PADGETT’S fiction has appeared in Appalachian Heritage, Big Muddy, Cold Mountain Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, and elsewhere. Additionally, his fiction has recently been reprinted in Surreal South ’13: An Anthology of Short Fiction. Padgett is a mentor for PEN America’s Prison Writing Program and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He won the 2014 Rash Award in Fiction.

ALLISON PARRISH is a senior communications major at Gardner-Webb University. Parrish has a concentration in photography, as well as minors in graphic design and journalism. From Asheville, North Carolina, Parrish will graduate in May 2015.

RICHARD KING PERKINS II is a state-sponsored advocate for residents in long-term care facilities. He lives in Crystal Lake, Illinois, with his wife Vickie and daughter Sage. He is a three-time Pushcart nominee and a Best of the Net nominee whose work has appeared in hundreds of publications including The Louisiana Review, Bluestem, Emrys Journal, Sierra Nevada Review, Two Thirds North, The Red Cedar Review, and The William and Mary Review. He has poems forthcoming in the Roanoke Review, The Alembic, and Milkfist. His poem “Distillery of the Sun” was awarded second place in the 2014 Bacopa Literary Review poetry contest.

JOHN REPP’S most recent collections are Music Over the Water (Alice Greene & Co., 2013) and Fat Jersey Blues (University of Akron Press, 2014).

M.C. RUSH currently lives in upstate New York. His poems have most recently appeared in 300 Days of Sun, Pirene’s Fountain, Better: Culture & Lit, Blue Fifth Review, and The Chaffey Review, and has work forthcoming in Open Road Review.

Born and raised in New York City, MIA SARA made a reluctant move to Los Angeles to facilitate her career as an actress in the film and television industry. Her acting credits include Legend, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Time Cop, Queenie, A Stranger Among Us, Jack And The Beanstalk: The Real Story, and many others.  Now, after twenty-five frenetic years, Sara has found her form at last, in poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Chaparral, Edison Literary Review, Pembroke Magazine, poemmemoirstory, Saint Ann’s Review, The Southampton Review, The Summerset Review, The Write Room, Forge, Superstition Review, Helix, The Kit-Cat Review, PANK, and Cultural Weekly, and she contributes regularly to PANK’s blog with her column, “Wrought and Found.”

NICOLE SAXTON is a senior broadcast journalism and English double major at Gardner-Webb University. She likes to say she is a “literary artist who uses the talents gifted by God to produce art. Poetry is more than a collection of pretty words; it’s my dinner, my light, my air while drowning.” Saxton’s work has been published previously in Broad River Review and by the Live Poets Society of New Jersey. Saxton won the 2014 J. Calvin Koonts Poetry Award.

MAUREEN SHERBONDY’S most recent poetry books are Beyond Fairy Tales and Eulogy for an Imperfect Man. She teaches at Alamance Community College and resides in Raleigh.

MATTHEW J. SPIRENG has published two books of poetry: What Focus Is (Word Press, 2011) and Out of Body (winner of the 2004 Bluestem Poetry Award and published in 2006 by Bluestem Press at Emporia State University). Spireng’s chapbooks include Clear Cut, a signed and numbered limited edition of his poems based on photographs by Austin Stracke, Young Farmer, Encounters, Inspiration Point (winner of the 2000 Bright Hill Press Poetry Chapbook Competition), and Just This. Since 1990, Spireng’s poems have appeared in publications across the United States, including Broad River Review, North American Review, Tar River Poetry, Southern Poetry Review, Louisiana Literature, English Journal, and Connecticut Review. Spireng holds an M.A. in creative writing from Hollins College.

BRADLEY STRAHAN just returned from two years in Ireland and the low countries. He has taught poetry at Georgetown University for 12 years. Strahan was also a Fulbright Professor of Poetry & American Culture in the Balkans. He has published six books of poetry and over 600 poems in numerous journals, including America, Poet Lore, and Hollins Critic. Strahan’s latest book, This Art of Losing, has had considerable critical praise and been translated into French. A book of poems about his recent stay in Ireland will be out soon.

JO BARBARA TAYLOR lives near Raleigh, North Carolina. Her poems and academic writing have appeared in journals, magazines, anthologies and online. She also leads poetry writing workshops through Duke Continuing Education. Of four chapbooks, the most recent, High Ground, was published by Main Street Rag in 2013.

LARRY D. THACKER is an Appalachian writer and artist. His poetry can be found in past issues of Still: The Journal, The Emancipator, Motif 2, Full of Crow, Kudzu Literary Magazine, Country Grind, The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume VI: Tennessee, Mojave River Review, Fried Chicken and Coffee, The Moon Magazine, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, and Appalachian Heritage. He is the author of Mountain Mysteries: The Mystic Traditions of Appalachia and the poetry chapbook Voice Hunting. He serves as Associate Dean of Students at Lincoln Memorial University.

KORY WELLS grew up on the stories of her southern Appalachian family and the wonder of the Space Age, diverse influences that have shaped her life’s work and writing. Author of the poetry chapbook Heaven Was the Moon (March Street Press), she often performs her poetry with daughter Kelsey Wells, an old-time musician. The Tennessee duo’s debut album is called Decent Pan of Cornbread. Kory’s novel-in-progress was a William Faulkner competition finalist, and her work is published or forthcoming in Christian Science Monitor, Unsplendid, Ruminate, Rock & Sling, Now & Then, The Southern Poetry Anthology, and other publications.

HELEN WICKES lives in Oakland, California, and worked for many years as a psychotherapist. In 2002, she received an M.F.A. from Bennington College. Her first book of poems, In Search of Landscape, was published in 2007 by Sixteen Rivers Press. Her poems can be read and heard online at From The Fishouse. In addition, Wickes’ work has appeared or is forthcoming in AGNI Online, Arroyo Literary Review, Atlanta Review, California Quarterly, The Citron Review, Confrontation, Evansville Review, ginosko, RiverSedge, Sakura Review, Sanskrit, Santa Fe Literary Review, South Dakota Review, Stand, Talking River, TriQuarterly, Runes, ZYZZYVA, Zone 3, Chicago Quarterly Review, The Hollins Critic, Jet Fuel Review, The Journal, Santa Clara Review, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Limestone, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Cloudbank, Bryant Literary Review, Willow Review, Boulevard, Soundings East, The Coe Review, Concho River Review, Crucible, The Jabberwock Review, Kaleidoscope, Pleiades, The Griffin, Blue Lake Review, Salamander, Weber: The Contemporary West, 5 AM, the Bennington Review, Picayune Magazine, The Tower Journal, and the anthology Best of the Web 2009.

HAROLD WHIT WILLIAMS was a featured poet in the 2014 University of North Texas Kraken Reading Series, as well as winner of the 2014 Mississippi Review Poetry Prize. His newest collection, Backmasking, is winner of the 2013 Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize from Texas Review Press. In his spare time, Williams is guitarist for the critically acclaimed rock band Cotton Mather.

HOWARD WINN’S fiction and poetry has been published by such journals as Dalhousie Review, Galway Review (Ireland), Descant (Canada), Blueline, Evansville Review, Antigonish Review, Strange Frenzies, Squawk Back, Break The Spine, Taj Mahal Review, Borderlands, and Xavier Review. Winn holds a bachelor’s from Vassar College, an M.A. in creative writing from Stanford University, and has additional graduate work at the University of California San Francisco and doctoral work at N.Y.U. Winn has been a social worker in California and is currently a professor of English of SUNY.

FRANCINE WITTE lives in New York City. She received her M.A. from SUNY Binghamton and her M.F.A. from Vermont College. Witte’s flash fiction chapbook, The Wind Twirls Everything, was published by MuscleHead Press. She is the winner of the Thomas A. Wilhelmus Award in fiction from Ropewalk Press, and her chapbook Cold June was published in 2010. Additional poetry chapbooks include First Rain (Pecan Grove Press, 2009) and Only, Not Only (Finishing Line Press). Witte is a high school English teacher.

JANE WOODS currently works at Gardner-Webb University, cooks in her free time, and dreams about becoming a full-time farmer. A past winner of the J. Calvin Koonts Poetry Award, her poems have been published once before in Broad River Review.

BARRY YEOMAN was educated at Bowling Green State University, The University of Cincinnati, and The McGregor School of Antioch University, in creative writing, world classics, and the humanities. He is originally from Springfield, Ohio, and currently lives in London, Ohio. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Red Booth Review, Futures Trading, Danse Macabre, Harbinger Asylum, Red Fez, Vine Leaves Literary Journal, Crack the Spine, Burningword Literary Journal, Two Hawks Quarterly, Wilderness House Literary Review, Soundings Review, and The Rusty Nail, among others. You can read more of his published work at www.redfez.net/member/1168/bookshelf.

LAURA A. ZINK lives in Oakland, California, and teaches English literature and composition at Berkeley City College. She earned her bachelor’s in English literature from Mills College and her M.A. in English from the University of Minnesota Duluth.

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