Dorothy Alexander is a poet, publisher, storyteller, and sort of an actress. From Cheyenne, Oklahoma, she is the co-owner of Village Books Press, a two-woman publishing house. Author of four collections of poetry: The Dust Bowl Revisited, Borrowed Dust, Rough Drafts, and the latest, Lessons from an Oklahoma Girlhood, a collection of art and poetry, she also writes non-fiction, has edited two collections of oral history in her home community in western Oklahoma, and was recently cast as the kindly (but eccentric) old woman, Ruther Rutherford, in Diane Glancy’s film, The Dome of Heaven, based on Glancy’s novel Flutie. Dorothy is currently at work on a memoir about her late son under the working title, The Boy Who Played Violin. In a previous life, she was an attorney and municipal judge for thirty-five years.
A fifth generation Oklahoman, Rilla Askew is the author of three novels and a collection of stories. Her short fiction has appeared in a variety of literary magazines and has been selected for Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. Her first novel The Mercy Seat was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and received the Western Heritage Award and the Oklahoma Book Award in 1998. Her novel about the Tulsa Race Riot, Fire in Beulah, received the American Book Award in 2002 and was Oklahoma's One Book One State selection for 2007. Her most recent novel, Harpsong, was nominated for the Dublin IMPAC Prize and received the Oklahoma Book Award, the Western Heritage Award, the Willa Cather Award from Women Writing the West, and the Violet Crown Award from the Writers League of Texas. The recipient of a 2009 Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Askew received her MFA in Fiction from Brooklyn College. She has taught in the MFA Creative Writing Programs at Brooklyn College, Syracuse University, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the University of Central Oklahoma, where she currently serves as Artist in Residence. She is married to actor Paul Austin, and they divide their time between New York and Oklahoma.
Paul Austin’s professional life spans forty years plus and includes acting and directing On and Off Broadway, Off-Off Broadway, summer stock, and regional theaters around the nation, as well as acting for television and film, including roles on West Wing, Law and Order, Cosby, and the films, Palookaville, Thirteen Conversations, Tune in Tomorrow, and Sommersby. Among recent stage appearances were the Foreman in Vaclav Havel’s Audience and Late Night Conspiracies, a collection of his own writings at New York’s Ensemble Studio Theatre, where he is a long time member. Mr. Austin has directed first productions of a number of new plays, including Percy Granger’s Eminent Domain at the Circle in the Square on Broadway. He most recently appeared as Neils Bohr in Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen at the University of Oklahoma. He has written for and about the theater in essays, poetry, plays, and Spontaneous Behavior, a book on acting. One of his recent works, Dreaming Angel, was included in More Monologues for Men by Men and was also published in Newport Review. He was for many years the Artistic Director of The Image Theatre in New York, where he produced plays and taught acting. He was a tenured faculty member at Sarah Lawrence College for twenty years. Mr. Austin is currently Artistic Director of The Liberty Free Theater in upstate New York. He and his wife, Oklahoma native and writer, Rilla Askew, divide their time between the Catskill mountains of New York and the Sans Bois.
Since he attended last year's Scissortail Festival, Alan Berecka has read at the DPF literary festival in Lithuania, had poems taken by journals such as The Concho River Review, Blue Rock Review and Ruminate; he was included in Travelin' Music: A Poetic Tribute to Woody Guthire, and had his book Remembering the Body published by The Mongrel Empire Press. But perhaps his best moment came when he read the blurb which Ken Hada wrote for Remembering the Body: "You will laugh and cry as you read these poems, but most of all, you will think what a good and haunting thing it is to be human." Berecka is a librarian at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas.
Timothy Bradford’s poetry has most recently appeared in No Tell Motel, Upstairs at Duroc, ecopoetics and Drunken Boat. His first book, Nomads with Samsonite, is forthcoming from BlazeVOX [books] in spring 2011. From 2007 to 2009, he was an associate foreign researcher with the Institut d’Histoire du Temps Présent in Paris while working on a novel. Currently, he is teaching English composition at the University of Central Oklahoma. He lives with his wife and two sons and an ever-changing menagerie just outside of Oklahoma City.
Joey Brown began as a fiction writer, and after a few short story publications, she completed a Master of Arts in English with a concentration in Creative Writing at the University of Oklahoma (1995). She remained at OU to complete a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies, with concentrations in Creative and Professional Writing, in 2000. She has published poems, short stories and essays in several national journals including Rhino, The Mid-America Poetry Review, The Dos Passos Review, The Chaffin Journal, Quiddity, Phantasmagoria, Westview, Argestes, Journal of the West, Front Range Review, storySouth and The Florida Review. Last year her poetry collection, Oklahomaography, was published by Mongrel Empire Press. Joey’s work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize three times.
Nathan Brown is a poet, musician and photographer from Norman, Oklahoma. He’s published five books of poetry, the most recent of which, Two Tables Over, won the 2009 Oklahoma Book Award. Previous titles include: Not Exactly Job, Ashes Over the Southwest, Suffer the Little Voices and Hobson’s Choice. He is anthologized in Two Southwests and also recently released a new album, Gypsy Moon.
After receiving an MA in Literature from Wright State University in Dayton Ohio, James Brubaker moved to Oklahoma to begin work on a PhD in Creative Writing at OSU. His short stories are forthcoming or have appeared in Confrontation, Blue Mesa Review, Rabbit Catastrophe Review and The Cupboard. He is also a co-editor for the music section of the online arts journal, The Fiddleback.
J. Don Cook, whose hometown is Ada, is an artist, writer and photographer. As a photojournalist, he was nominated three times for a Pulitzer Prize, one of them when he worked for the Ada Evening News in the seventies covering a double drowning when cousins fell through thin ice. The forthcoming essay and poem were written after Mr. Cook covered the famine in Ethiopia in the eighties. The University of Oklahoma Press just published a collection of his photographs and essays titled Shooting from the Hip.
Since earning an MFA from Wichita State University in 1996, Jeanne Dunbar-Green has taught as an adjunct at various colleges and universities, the last four years at East Central University and Murray State College. She is currently halfway through writing a new novel, tentatively entitled, Okieland, and about as far through a novel co-written with her husband Richard, tentatively titled, The Bee Tree. Her
class=WordSection2> latest story was published in Sugar Mule as well as in Ain’t Nobody That Can Sing Like Me: New Oklahoma Writing.
Phil Estes is a first-year PhD student in Creative Writing an Oklahoma State University. Currently he is working on a poetry manuscript titled High Life. Poems from this manuscript have appeared (or are forthcoming) in Harpur Palate, Hayden's Ferry Review, Willow Springs, Greensboro Review and PANK.
Robert Ferrier received BA in Journalism and Master of Business Administration degrees from the University of Oklahoma. He is the author of four published novels at SynergEbooks.com. His poems have been published in ten literary journals. His collections, “Rhythms,” and “Ambient Light,” won Best Book of Poetry awards in 2004 and 2006 contests sponsored by the Oklahoma Writers Federation, Inc. He has begun a video chapbook series, “The Dante Dreams: Inferno,” on YouTube. Robert was a 2006 nominee for Poet Laureate of Oklahoma.
Steve Garrison’s novel Shoveling Smoke was published under the pseudonym “Austin Davis” by Chronicle Books in 2003. He is currently working on a novel set in a small Oklahoma town in the mid-1960s. A professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Central Oklahoma, Garrison is married to Dr. Constance Squires, the director of the M.F.A. degree program in writing at UCO.
The work of Bayard Godsave has appeared in Cream City Review, Confrontation, Another Chicago Magazine, Florida Review, Bryant Literary Review, Cimarron Review and the Evansville Review, among other places. He has completed two book-length manuscripts, and both are looking for publishers: The Torture Tree, a novel, and a collection of short stories called The Gas Mask (which includes "La Revolution du Ventose"). In 2001 Bayard received his MFA from Minnesota State University, Moorhead; in 2008 he received his PhD in English from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; and currently he is an Assistant Professor of English at Cameron University.
An advocate for peace, freedom, and equality Shirley Hall challenges social, economical, religious, and political agendas through controversial poetry and essays. Her work is provocative, inspirational, and insightful. As a voice for the people behind the story, her poems minister to current affairs and emotions befitting the times. Shirley says, "My poetry is a teaching tool. It forces mankind to confront the consequences resulting from their decisions and face the snubbed realities of today’s “everyman”. Shirley has presented her poems in colleges and universities, and at social and professional venues. Her book One Day was selected among 10 others as required reading for a Humanities class at the University of Maryland. Her latest book is titled Listen.
Carol Hamilton has upcoming publications in South Carolina Review, Poet Lore, Art Times, Willard and Maple, Avocet, Quercus Review, Sunstone, Karamu, The Aurorean, Louisiana Literature, Abbey, Ibbetson Street, Southwestern American Literature, Poem, Listening Eye, California Quarterly and others. She has been nominated five times for a Pushcart Prize. Her latest works include Master of Theater: Peter the Great, released by Finishing Line Press, and a chapbook from Pudding House Press, Umberto Eco Lost His Gun, a book of peace poems.
Having finished her novel Cold Sunshine, and drafting a second titled Venus Flytrap, Tara Hembrough is looking for an agent. She graduated with her PhD in creative writing, fiction, and modernism, from Oklahoma State University in December. At OSU, she taught introductions to Creative Writing and Literature as well as reading for the Cimarron Review. She recently moved to Southern Illinois where she teaches English at John Logan College. A member of the Southern Illinois Writers' Guild, an excerpt of Cold Sunshine is published in the SIWG's anthology.
class=WordSection3> Arn Henderson is an architect and Professor Emeritus of Architecture at the University of Oklahoma. He has authored two books of poetry, Document for an Anonymous Indian and The Surgeon General’s Collection. He also co-edited The Point Riders Great Plains Poetry Anthology and his work has appeared in several journals including World Literature Today, Nimrod, Interstate, Southwestern American Literature, Renegade 10, Broomweed Journal and Crosstimbers.
Jim Hunter was educated at Miami University and earned his Master's at Virginia Tech. He has been an actor, a writer, a cook, an accountant, a paramedic, and he currently teaches English at East Central University. His one published novel is called Drawing Constellations.
Jordan Jacobs teaches high school English in Lawton, Oklahoma. He has been writing poetry for approximately five years and has been published in both print and online journals, such as Borderline, Cooweescoowee, and The Whiskey Monologues. Jordan also performs at open mics and feature sets at various concerts around the state. In 2008, he self-released a chapbook of poetry entitled Sucking the Salt from God's Sweat.
Hardy Jones is the Direcor of Creative Writing at Cameron University. His writing has been awarded two grants and he has had over twenty-five pieces of fiction and nonfiction published in journals. His short story "Snow" appeared in the Dogzplot Flash Fiction Anthology 2009 and his novel Every Bitter Thing was published in 2010 by Black Lawrence Press.
Dr. Abigail Keegan is a Professor of English and Women's Literature at Oklahoma City University. In addition to essays on American and British writers and numerous poems, she has published two books of poetry, The Feast of the Assumptions and Oklahoma Journey and a critical book, Byron's Othered Self and Voice: Contextualizing the Homographic Signature. In 2007 she received a merit award from Byline Magazine's Silver Anniversary Poetry chapbook competition. Depending on the Weather, her latest book of poems, was published by Village Books Press, 2011.
Jennifer Kidney is a freelance scholar and published poet. She is the author of five books of poetry: Field Encounters, Endangered Species, Animal Magnetism, Women Who Sleep with the Dogs, and Life List. She has twice been nominated for Oklahoma Poet Laureate-by the Oklahoma Library Association in 2006 and by the Jim Lucas-Checotah Public Library in 2008, when she was one of three finalists for the distinction. She has a B.A. with Highest Honors in English from Oberlin College and a M.Phil. and Ph.D. in English from Yale University and more than twenty years of university level teaching experience. She has also worked as a technical writer, poet-in-the-schools, and arts administrator. For twenty-two years, she oversaw the statewide reading and discussion program, “Let's Talk About It, Oklahoma,” and has made hundreds of “Let's Talk About It, Oklahoma,” scholar presentations on almost as many books. Kidney has won awards for her poetry, technical writing, and brownie baking. She lives in Norman with three cats and her dog Lizzie.
Chuck Ladd has successfully taught English in public schools in Southern Oklahoma and Northern Texas for over thirty years while also serving as adjunct professor at Southeastern Oklahoma State University for fifteen years. He has also published a number of poetic works in a variety of journals and literary periodicals, but has dedicated himself to the advancement of Howard Starks’ poetry. Howard Starks was born in1929 in Shidler, Oklahoma. He served in the U.S. Army before earning a degree in English Education from East Central Oklahoma State University. He was all-but-dissertation Ph.D in English at the University of Oklahoma where he taught as a graduate assistant before teaching at the University of Nevada in Reno and the University of Colorado in Boulder. In 1968 He became a professor of English and Humanities at Southeastern Oklahoma State University where he served until his retirement in 1995. In retirement Starks finally found time to collect and work on his poetry, mainly at the behest of fellow professors Elbert and Marion Hill and Dennis and Billie Letts. At Southeastern in Durant, Oklahoma, Tracy Letts , the son of Billie and Dennis began to view Howard as a mentor and would take the title of his Pulitzer Prize winning play "August: Osage County" directly from the title of one of Howard's poems. Starks only published book was Family Album (A Collection of Poetry) in 1996 and became a finalist in the 1997 Oklahoma Book Awards. A New York Times best-selling novelist, a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, a number of prize-winning poets, a nationally acclaimed western artist, a number of actors from stage and screen, several other novelists all praise his work and consider him a friend and mentor. Howard Starks died in Durant, Oklahoma April 7th, 2003.
Billie Letts has received national and international recognition since starting her first novel at age 54. The award-winning author is a native of Tulsa. She retired as an English professor from Southeastern Oklahoma State University in 1995. Letts is the author of four screenplays, including the filmed version of Veritas, Prince of Truth, and numerous short stories. Where The Heart Is was her first novel and it reached the coveted No. 1 slot on The New York Times’ paperback bestseller list. It was chosen as a read for Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club, has been published in 14 countries with more than three million copies sold and was made into a movie by 20th Century Fox in 2000. Her other novels are Honk And Holler Opening Soon, Shoot The Moon, and Made In The USA. Letts won the prestigious Walker Percy Literary Award at the 1994 New Orleans Writers Conference and the Oklahoma Book Award for fiction in 1996 and 1999. Honk and Holler Opening Soon was chosen as the “Oklahoma Reads Oklahoma” book in 2004.
George McCormick has published stories and poems most recently in Shenandoah, The Laurel Review, Concho River Review, and Acreage Journal. He splits time between Lawton, Oklahoma and Cook City, Montana. His story, "The Mexican", comes from a book collection entitled, The Salton Sea.
Ben Meyers’ first book of poems, Elegy for Trains, was recently published by Village Books Press. His poems have appeared in Ruminate, The Mid-America Poetry Review, Mobius, Byline, and other journals. Several of his poems are forthcoming online at poetrybay.com and as part of the Red Lion Square poetry podcast. His poem, "Tornado," is scheduled to be featured in the "Walt's Corner" column of the Long Islander newspaper, and his poem, "A Small Town Mourns its First Casualty," was included by Lee Bennett Hopkins in his book America at War (illustrated by Stephen Alcorn and published by McElderry Books, 2008). His essays on poetics have appeared in Studies in Philology, English Literary History, English Literary Renaissance, and other journals. Ben earned a Ph.D. from Washington University and currently is an associate professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University.
Phillip Carol Morgan is the award-winning author of The Fork-in-the-Road Indian Poetry Store (Salt Publishing, 2006), co-author of Reasoning Together: The Native Critics Collective (University of Oklahoma Press, 2008), author of Chickasaw Renaissance (Chickasaw Press, 2010) and Who Shall Gainsay Our Decision? Choctaw Literary Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century (Chickasaw Press, forthcoming 2011). The father of three children, he collaborates professionally with Kate Morgan, his painter-sculptor wife of 30 years, and lives on his family’s original allotment farm in the northwestern region of the Chickasaw Nation. He is a member of the Academy of American Poets and holds a PhD in Native American literature form the University of Oklahoma.
Melissa Morphew, a native of Tennessee, is an associate professor at Sam Houston State University. Her work has appears in such journals as The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, Alaska Quarterly Review and Parnassus: Poetry in Review. She is the recipient of an Individual Artist’s Grant in Poetry from the Tennessee Arts Commission, winner of the Randall Jarrell International Poetry Prize, and winner of the W.B. Yeats Society Award in Poetry. She has been four times nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her poetry collections include Hunger and Heat: The Missionary Letters and The Garden Where All Loves End, and Fathom. Her two most recent collections are Weeding Borges’ Garden and Bluster.
John Graves Morris, Professor of English at Cameron University, is the author of Noise and Stories (Plain View Press, 2008). His poems have appeared in such journals as The Chariton Review, The Concho River Review, Jelly Bucket, Westview, Crosstimbers, Blood and Thunder, among others.
E. K. Mortenson works as an instructor in the Creative and Professional Writing MFA program at Western Connecticut State University. His work has appeared in numerous anthologies and literary journals, both in print and online. He is the author of Dreamer or the Dream (Last Automat Press, 2010), What Wakes Us (Cervena Barva Press, forthcoming), and was the 2008 recipient of the Leslie Leeds Poetry Prize. He lives in Connecticut with his wife and two children.
Karen Neurohr has been researching Wilma McDaniel's life and writing since 2007 by conducting oral history interviews with twenty-eight of her family and friends for the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program of the Oklahoma State University Library. Along with other content, her interviews are being added to a library website about McDaniel and her legacy --http://digital.library.okstate.edu/mcdaniel. Karen is an Associate Professor and Assessment Librarian at Oklahoma State University where she is working on a doctoral degree in higher education. Sholds a Master's in Library Science from the University of North Texas and a Bachelor of Arts degree is in English Education from Northeastern State University. She co-chairs the Oklahoma Literary Landmarks Program for Friends of Libraries in Oklahoma (FOLIO) and serves as a Board Member for the Oklahoma Center for the Book of the Oklahoma Department of Libraries.
Susan Perabo is Writer in Residence and Associate Professor of English at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA. Her short fiction has appeared in magazines such as Glimmer Train, Story, TriQuarterly and The Missouri Review, and in the anthologies Best American Short Stories and New Stories from the South. Her short story collection, Who I Was Supposed to Be, was published in the summer of 1999 by Simon & Schuster, and named a "Book of the Year" by the Los Angeles Times, The Miami Herald, and The St. Louis Post Dispatch. Her first novel, The Broken Places, was published in 2001. She is currently at work on a new collection of short stories. She holds an MFA from The University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.
Jason Poudrier is an Iraqi Freedom veteran who was awarded the Purple Heart. He was privileged to read from his manuscript of war poems titled "Baghdad International" at the 2008 and 2009 Scissortail Creative Writing Festivals and was the recipient of the John G. Morris Poetry Prize in 2008. His work has appeared in an anthology of Oklahoma Writers, the New Mexico Poetry Review, Connecticut Review, Sugar Mule, and Cameron University's Gold Mine.
Elizabeth Raby has a new manuscript titled This Dazzling Heartbreak. She has two previously published two poetry collections with Virtual Artists Collective: The Year the Pears Bloomed Twice (2009), and Ink on Snow (2010). She also has three previously published chapbooks. One of the poems from Ink on Snow, "Bride-to-Be," was selected as the winning poem for Angelo State University's 2010 Kelton Poetry Contest. Elizabeth was a poet-in-the-schools in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and for the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. She recently read and conducted a workshop at the New Mexico Women Author's Book Festival. She has lived with her husband Jim in Santa Fe since 2001.
Dean Rader’s first book of poems, Works & Days, won the 2010 T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize.
Poems in the book also garnered the 2008 Crab Creek Review Prize and the 2009 Sow's Ear Poetry Prize. Other poems have been published in Colorado Review, POOL, Connecticut Review, Cincinnati Review, Poet Lore, Quarterly West, and others. Dean also reviews poetry regularly for The San Francisco Chronicle and The Rumpus, and he blogs about the intersection of arts/media/politics/culture at The Weekly Rader. Dean is also widely published in the field of American Indian Studies. His book Speak To Me Words: Essays on Contemporary American Indian Poetry (edited with Janice Gould) was published in 2003 and earlier this year, he curated a special issue of Sentence devoted to contemporary American Indian prose poetry. His book, Engaged Resistance: American Indian Art, Literature, and Film, is forthcoming in April of 2011 from the University of Texas Press. Dean lived in Oklahoma for the first 18 years of his life and still consider it home. Presently, he is a professor at the University of San Francisco, and lives in San Francisco with his wife, Jill, and son, Gavin.
The poems and essays of Carol Coffee Reposa have appeared or are forthcoming in The Atlanta Review, Coal City Review, The Formalist, Iron Horse Literary Review, The Valparaiso Review, The Texas
class=WordSection4> Observer, and other journals and anthologies. She has three collections of poetry: At the Border: Winter Lights, The Green Room, and Facts of Life. Nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize, she also has received three Fulbright-Hays Fellowships, the first for study in Russia (1995), a second for research in Peru and Ecuador (1999), and a third for work in Mexico (2005). A professor emeritus of English at San Antonio College, she still serves as nonfiction editor for Concho River Review.
Jason Roberts is pursuing a doctorate in English with a Creative Writing emphasis at Oklahoma State University. He is in his sixth year, and says with luck, he will graduate this summer. (though given our economy, he says he is not sure he wants such luck!). This is Jason’s second appearance at Scissortail Festival.
John G. Rodwan, Jr., is the author of Fighters & Writers (Mongrel Empire Press, 2010), a collection of essays on boxing and literature that combine literary criticism, journalism and memoir. One of the selections in Fighters & Writers was named a Notable Essay of 2009 by The Best American Essays and another was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His writing has been published by The American Interest, The Mailer Review, Blood and Thunder, Spot Literary Magazine, The Nevada Review, The Oregonian, Palimpsest, Fight News, Free Inquiry, The Humanist and The Brooklyn Rail, among other journals, magazines and newspapers. He wrote and co-produced the independent documentary No Neutral Corner, which was an official selection of the 2010 All Sports Los Angeles Film Festival and winner of the Las Vegas Film Festival’s Silver Ace Award. A former editor with the International Labor Office, he contributed to the organization’s Encylopaedia of Occupational Health and Safety. He was a Thomas C. Rumble Fellow at Wayne State University . Raised in Detroit , Michigan , he has also lived in Geneva , Switzerland , and Brooklyn , New York . He currently resides in Portland , Oregon .
Steven Schroeder grew up in the Texas Panhandle, where he first learned to take nothing seriously, and his poetry continues to be rooted in the experience of the Plains. He teaches at the University of Chicago in the Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults and at Shenzhen University (China). In addition to numerous poetry and philosophy publications in regional, national and international journals, Schroeder’s poetry book titles include: A Dim Sum of the Day Before (Ink Brush Press, 2010), a guest giving way like ice melting: thirteen ways of looking at laozi (Ink Brush Press, 2010), Six Stops South (Cherry Grove, 2009), The Imperfection of the Eye (Virtual Artists Collective, 2007), Fallen Prose (Virtual Artists Collective, 2006), Theory of Cats (Pudding House Publications, 2003). He has also edited or contributed to several anthologies such as on the no road way to tomorrow (Virtual Artists Collective, 2009), and Two Southwests (Virtual Artists Collective, 2008).
Regina Schroeder was raised by anarcho-syndicalist wolves in an urban jungle. She was permanently warped by early exposure to atonal music, west Texas, Piaget, and the picture books of Eugene Ionesco.
Carl Sennhenn is a retired English professor, Poet Laureate of Oklahoma 2001 - 2003 and winner of the 2006 Oklahoma Book Award in poetry for his book Travels Through Enchanted Woods. Currently Carl teaches one literature class a semester at Rose State and a creative writing class for senior adults in Continuing Education at Rose. Poems in “An Irish Idyll” will appear in a forthcoming book of poetry.
Karen Eileen Sisk received her M.A. in Literature and Graduate Certificate in Women's Studies at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio in 2008. Since then, she has been working on a doctorate in Creative Writing with an emphasis in poetry at Oklahoma State University. Her work has appeared or is forth coming in Nexus and Permafrost. Her current working poetry collection is titled Ruins.
Sandra Soli's career includes radio broadcasting, regional theater in the U.S. and Europe, and special projects such as taping Tokyo Rose segments for military training. She has published articles, short
class=WordSection5> fiction for adults and children, photography, and poetry. A past author of the month for Highlights Magazine, she received the 2008 Oklahoma Book Award in poetry, LSU's Eyster Poetry Prize, and two nominations for the Pushcart Prize. Active with arts organizations and known for mentoring writers around the state, she serves on the board of the Oklahoma Center for the Book, teaches by E-mail and by
invitation, and enjoys collaborative projects with artists in other disciplines; she has worked with dancers, artists, musicians, actors, and clergy to develop new works. Sandra holds an honors M.A. from UCO. Annually, she coordinates a special project for National Poetry Month and also volunteers many hours each year at the Civic Center in downtown Oklahoma City.
Retired insurance adjuster Jim Spurr graduated high school in Shawnee, Oklahoma and completed a degree from Oklahoma Baptist University. Born in Crystal City, Texas, he was honorably discharged from the U.S. Army having served in the 82nd Airborne. Some of his poems have been published nationally, fifteen magazines and ten states. His book , Open Mike/Thursday Night, was a finalist for the 2008 Oklahoma Book Award, and his book It's Cool at 2AM won second place 2009 at Palettes and Quills, Ithaca, N.Y. Another collection is forthcoming in 2011. He and his wife live in Shawnee where he has been co-host of the highly popular Shawnee reading since 1993.
Constance Squires has a novel, Along The Watchtower, forthcoming from Riverhead/Penguin and is at work on a new novel. Her short fiction has appeared in a variety of places, including The Atlantic Monthly, Identity Theory, Eclectica, The Dublin Quarterly, The New Delta Review, The Gingko Tree Review, Bayou, and The Briar Cliff Review. She is the winner of the Bob Schacochis Short Story Award, the Matt Clark Fiction Prize, the Briar Cliff Review Short Fiction Award, and has received numerous nominations for Best New American Voices, the Pushcart Prize, the Million Writers Award, and the O.Henry Prize. She lives with her husband and daughter in Edmond, Oklahoma where she directs the M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the University of Central Oklahoma.
Jane Vincent Taylor’s first book of poems was a joint collection with Judith Tate O'Brien entitled By the Grace of Ghosts. It was a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award in 2005. In 2007, Jane collaborated with Anita Skeen in a collection of poems, When We Say Shelter. In 2008 Jane and Anita co-edited a collection of essays, poems and stories by Ghost Ranch writers entitled Once Upon a Place: Writing from Ghost Ranch. Jane wrote her latest book, What Can Be Saved, (Finishing Line Press) on her own – if you don't count the duet of voices from her childhood that make up the collection. Jane has a Master's in Creative Writing from University of Central Oklahoma, a Master of Library Science and a BA in Women's Studies from the University of Oklahoma. She is a Virginia Center for Creative Arts Fellow. Journal publications include Red Cedar Review, Whetstone, Enigmatist, Red Plains Review, Calyx, Flyway, Third Wednesday, Rhino, among others. Recent activities are posted at janevincenttaylor.blogspot.com.
Andrew Terhune is originally from Memphis, Tennessee. He is the author of the chapbooks Helen Mirren Picks Out My Clothes (The Greying Ghost Press, 2009) and Handle This Bludgeon and Run Me Through (Tilt Press, 2008). He currently lives in Stillwater, Oklahoma with his wife and two daughters, where he is pursuing a PhD in English/Poetry at Oklahoma State University.
Larry D. Thomas was the 2008 Texas Poet Laureate, and is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters. Born and reared in West Texas, Thomas has lived in Houston since 1967. He graduated from the University of Houston with a bachelor’s degree in English literature. He started writing poetry seriously in the early 1970s during his four-year tour of duty in the U.S. Navy. After his discharge, he was hired by the Harris County Adult Probation Department where he rose from the rank of probation officer to unit supervisor and ultimately to branch director, the position he held until his retirement in 1998. Thomas has published widely in regional and national journals. His first book collection, The Lighthouse Keeper, was published by Timberline Press in late 2000 and was selected by the Small Press Review as a “pick-of-the-issue” (May/June 2001). He has since then published fifteen additional collections of poems which have received several prestigious prizes and awards including a Western Heritage Award, two Texas Review Poetry Prizes, three pushcart nominations and five Spur Award finalist citations from the Western Writers of America. Recent notable titles include the recently released A Murder of Crows (Virtual Artists Collective), The Skin of Light, New and Selected Poems, The Fraternity of Oblivion, Where Skulls Speak Wind, Stark Beauty and Amazing Grace.
Hugh Tribbey's poetry has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in Sugar Mule, Otoliths, Experiential-Experimental Literature, and Moria. He is the author of five collections of poetry: Finish Your Sentence, Juvjula Detours, Asteroid, Waitinale Glasses, and Mime Box. Hugh holds a Ph.D. in Practical Poetics and Contemporary Literature from Oklahoma State University and teaches literature and creative writing at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma.
Alvin Turner is Dean Emeritus of Humanities and Social Sciences and Professor of History at East Central University. He remains active in research, writing history and poetry and pastoring a small Presbyterian church. His recent books include a poetic history Hanging Men and a biography of progressive preacher L.W. Marks (Mongrel Empire Press, 2009).
Ron Wallace has four volumes of poetry, all published by TJMF Publishing of Clarksville, Indiana: Native Son (American Poems from the Heart of Oklahoma), a finalist in the 2007 Oklahoma Book Awards, Smoke and Stone (The Voices of Gettysburg) and I Come from Cowboys… and Indians, the winner of the 2009 Oklahoma Writer's Federation Best Book of Poetry Award. His latest book is Oklahoma Cantos. Ron is a native Oklahoman whose Scots/Irish roots are woven securely into his Choctaw, Cherokee, Osage lineage. He is currently an adjunct faculty member of Southeastern Oklahoma State University. His work has been published in numerous magazines and anthologies such as: Sugar Mule, Crosstimbers, Encore, NFSPS Prize Poems, Grandmother Earth XIV, di-verse-city 2010, Walt's Corner in The Long Islander, The Enigmatist and Travelin' Music (A Poetic Tribute to Woody Guthrie).
Mark Walling is a professor in English at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma. He has fiction and poetry in issues of New Plains Review, Louisiana Literature, South Dakota Review, Chariton Review, Sugar Mule, among others, and in the recent anthology Aint Nobody That Can Sing Like Me: New Oklahoma Writing.
Sarah Webb is a retired English professor from the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. She serves as poetry editor for Crosstimbers and is co-editor for Just This, a zen arts magazine from the Austin Zen Center. Sarah performs poetry chorally in Quartet, a poetry performance troupe (with Carol Hamilton, Carl Sennhenn, and Dena Madole). Her essays and poetry have been published in Zen Bow, Zen Gong, Just This; The Oklahoma English Journal, Sugar Creek, Westview, Passager, The Enigmatist, and The Appalachee Quarterly, among others.
Dan Wilcox is the host of the Third Thursday Poetry Night at the Social Justice Center in Albany, N.Y. and is a member of the poetry performance group "3 Guys from Albany" (who travel the country reading and writing poetry in every city named “Albany” in the country, including Albany, Oklahoma). As a photographer, he claims to have the world's largest collection of photos of unknown poets. His chapbook boundless abodes of Albany is available from Benevolent Bird Press of Delmar, NY. You can read his Blog about the Albany poetry scene at dwlcx.blogspot.com.
Jim Wilson's MFA in creative nonfiction (2007) is from Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky. He is a professor of English at Seminole State College in Seminole, Oklahoma, and resides in West Ada, Oklahoma. His memoir-in-progress is The Journeyman, which is about becoming an archaeologist in 1980s, civil war Lebanon. Since 2007, Jim has taught creative writing in Ada for the Chickasaw Nation's Summer Arts Academy. In 2009 he initiated Going Forward/Looking Back, a community archaeology and creative writing project at the Daggs' Prairie site in West Ada.
I listen to Hardy Jones speak. He eased the audience by telling a few good jokes before he started. I enjoyed his story about the over weight boy that had a mean father. Jones was able to tell the story so that I could relate to it. It reminded me of stories my father told me about my grandfather. Great speaker and a joy to listen to.
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