2017: Scissortail Biographies

Dorothy Alexander, author of four poetry collections and one memoir, is a founding member of the Oklahoma Woody Guthrie Poetry Readers. Her work, deeply rooted in Oklahoma, embraces a form she calls “narcissistic narrative.” She also indulges in “selfie” poetry. Her publications include a volume of ekphrastic poetry and art, Lessons From and Oklahoma Girlhood, The Art of Digression, a Memoir in Fragments, Borrowed Dust, The Dust Bowl Revisited, as well as poems and essays in several anthologies. Dorothy received the 2013 Carlile Distinguished Service Award from the Oklahoma Center for the Book. In an alternate universe she is a lawyer and a municipal judge in rural western Oklahoma. She spends 35%  of her life in Santa Fe, New Mexico, along with her spouse, Devey Napier.

Rilla Askew is the author of four novels and a book of stories. She’s a PEN/Faulkner finalist, recipient of the Western Heritage Award, Oklahoma Book Award, and a 2009 Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her novel about the Tulsa Race Riot, Fire in Beulah, received the American Book Award in 2002, and was selected for Oklahoma’s One Book One State reading program. Askew’s essays and short fiction have appeared in Tin House, World Literature Today, Nimrod, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, and elsewhere. Her recent novel, Kind of Kin, is published by Ecco Press, and her collection of essays, Most American: Notes from a Wounded Place will be forthcoming from the University of Oklahoma Press in 2017. She is married to actor/writer Paul Austin, and they live in Norman, where Askew teaches creative writing at the University of Oklahoma.


Paul Austin has acted and directed On and Off Broadway, Off-Off Broadway, summer stock, and regional theatres around the nation, as well as acting for television and film. Late Night Conspiracies, a collection of his writings was performed with jazz ensemble at New York’s Ensemble Studio Theatre, where he is a long time member. He has written for and about the theatre in essays, poetry and plays. His work has appeared in such publications as This Land, Sugar Mule Newport Review and in the next issue of Oklahoma Review. He has just completed a series titled Mother and Son. He’s currently working on to other collections In Praise of Actors and Persons of Influence.

Jim Benton is a retired public school teacher who practiced his love of poetry by teaching high school students to write it for over twenty years. In retirement, he has sought and found the time to write more poetry himself. He says he’s not much interested in the publication game, but four of his poems have been published in the last two years, including in Sin Fronteras and Bloodstone Review. His chapbook From the Back Seat was a finalist in the 2014 Palettes & Quills Chapbook Competition. Along with a wide array of poetry collections and children’s books, he’s currently working with just over 100 former students in a Facebook group to collect and encourage their poems and other writings.

Alan Berecka’s newest book is a collaboration with his childhood friend and cartoonist John Klossner. It take its name from a sign that was placed in the front yard of Berecka’s boyhood home-The Hamlet of Stittville. Berecka currently lives in Sinton, Texas and earns his keep in Corpus Christi as a reference librarian at Del Mar College. This year is his eleventh Scissortail conference, and he is happy to be back in Ada.

Paul Bowers lives with his wife on a ten-acre farm in Ringwood, Oklahoma. He earned a B.A. from The University of Tulsa, M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Oklahoma State University, and he currently teaches writing and literature at Northern Oklahoma College in Enid. Honors include Pushcart nominations for fiction and poetry, and the Herman M. Swafford Award for Fiction. Publications include a poetry collection, The Lone, Cautious, Animal Life (Purple Flag Press, 2016), as well recent publications in Red Earth Review and Oklahoma Humanities magazine (Spring 2017).

Joey Brown is the author of two collections of poetry, Oklahomaography and Feral Love. Her poems, essays, and short stories have appeared in several literary journals including Louisiana Review, The Oklahoma Review, The San Pedro River Review, The Florida Review, and others. Currently she is writing and revising a new collection mixing poetry and non-fiction. Cross-Cut Stanzas explores themes related to building, making, creating, learning, and failing. Joey teaches writing at Missouri Southern State University and lives on the Missouri-Oklahoma border with her husband, fiction writer Michael Howarth, and their three rescue dogs.

Nathan Brown is an author, songwriter, and award-winning poet living in Wimberley, Texas. He holds a PhD in English and Journalism from the University of Oklahoma where he taught for seventeen years. He served as Poet Laureate for the State of Oklahoma in 2013/14 and mostly travels now, performing readings and concerts, as well as speaking and leading workshops in schools, libraries, and community organizations on creativity and creative writing. Nathan has published thirteen books. Most recent is Don’t Try, a collection of co-written poems with Austin Music Hall of Fame songwriter, Jon Dee Graham. Karma Crisis: New and Selected Poems, was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and the Oklahoma Book Award. His earlier book, Two Tables Over, won the 2009 Oklahoma Book Award. He’s taught memoir, songwriting, performance, and creativity workshops for the Sisters Folk Festival in Oregon, the Taos Poetry Festival, the Woody Guthrie Festival, the Everwood Farmstead Foundation in Wisconsin, as well as Blue Rock Artist Ranch near Austin, Texas. Naomi Shihab Nye said about Nathan’s book, My Salvaged Heart: “Brave new world! The sizzle of couplings and uncouplings – attraction and romance, ineffable magnetism, mysterious as ever – but doused with a savory dose of Nathan Brown humor, a tilted long-ranging eye that sees the next bend in the road even when he’s standing right here, firmly planted.”

Jenny Yang Cropp’s debut poetry collection, String Theory (Mongrel Empire Press), was a 2016 Oklahoma Book Award finalist. Her poems have appeared in Boxcar Poetry Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Ecotone, and other journals. Her creative nonfiction is forthcoming in Voices from the Heartland, Vol. 2, a collection of essays by Oklahoma women. She received an MFA in creative writing from Minnesota State University-Mankato and a PhD in English from the University of South Dakota where she served for two years as the managing editor of South Dakota Review. She currently teaches English and creative writing at Cameron University.

Village Books Press published Terri Lynn Cummings’ first poetry book, Tales to the Wind, in the spring of 2016.  Her poetry appears in Contemporary Rural Social Work, Oklahoma Humanities Magazine, Red River Review, Dragon Poet Review, Illya’s Honey, Songs of Eretz Poetry Review, Melancholy Hyperbole, Eclectica, and elsewhere, in addition to anthologies: Blood and Thunder, Absolute, and soon, Oklahoma Poets/Malpais Review. She is a 2015 and 2016 Woody Guthrie Poet, 2016-17 Mark Allen Everett Poet, hosts Oklahoma Voices: First Sunday Poetry readings/open mic in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and presents her work at Scissortail Creative Writing Festival, Howlers & Yawpers Creativity Symposium, Southwest Popular/American Culture Association Conference, and elsewhere. She has studied poetry, fiction, and non-fiction at Creative Writing Institute and holds a B.S. Sociology/Anthropology from Oklahoma State University. Terri continues to explore cultural humanity, while she and her husband travel the world.

Richard Dixon is a retired high-school Special Education teacher and tennis coach living in Oklahoma City. He has had poems and essays published in Crosstimbers, Westview, Walt’s Corner of the Long Islander, Texas Poetry Calendar, Cybersoleil, Dragon Poet Review as well as a number of anthologies including the Woody Guthrie compilations in 2011 and 2012, and Clash by Night, an anthology of poems related to the 1979 breakthrough album by the Clash, London Calling. He has been a featured reader at Full Circle Bookstore in Oklahoma City, Benedict Street Marketplace in Shawnee, Norman Depot, the Woody Guthrie poetry readings in Okemah, as well as the Scissortail Festival

Michael Dooley, aka Woodstok Farley, is an assistant professor at Tarleton State University. He has taught in the Department of English and Languages for the past fifteen years. Originally from south Florida, Michael has lived and loved in Texas now for over 36 years. More comfortable in sandals than boots, Michael recently had his first short story, “As the Wave Rose,” published in the online literary journal Cybersoleil. The story is the first of an episodic trilogy of short stories entitled Surf, Swamp, and Stone. Michael has been presenting original creative fiction at regional and out-of-state conferences for many years now, including Scissortail Creative Writing Festival, South Central MLA, Langdon Review, and SWPACA.

Native Oklahoman Margaret Dornaus holds an M.F.A. in the translation of poetry—focusing on the works of Neruda and Lorca—from the University of Arkansas. An award-winning poet and non-fiction writer, her food and travel articles are published in a variety of national publications and her poems appear regularly in international anthologies and journals, including: Dos Gatos Press’ Bearing the Mask: Southwestern Persona Poems; Red River Review; and The Texas Poetry Calendar. In 2016, she released her first book of poetry, Prayer for the Dead: Collected Haibun & Tanka Prose through her small literary press, Singing Moon. She has taught Culinary Arts, teaches English, and is the book review editor for the Tanka Society of America’s journal Ribbons, and the Southern Coordinator for the Haiku Society of America. A self-proclaimed late bloomer, her discovery of and appreciation for haibun and tanka prose grew from her interest in blending prose and poetry into a narrative form that could uniquely express her love of nature and the world.

Mary Anna Evans is an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma, where she teaches fiction and nonfiction writing. Isolation, her tenth Faye Longchamp archaeological mystery, was a finalist for the 2016 Oklahoma Book Award. Her work has received other recognition that includes the Mississippi Book Award, the Patrick D. Smith Florida Literature Award, and three Florida Book Awards bronze medals. She is a former writer-in-residence at The Studios of Key West. Her short work has appeared in publications including The Atlantic, Flyway, EarthLines, and MonkeyBicycle. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Rutgers-Camden. Her latest book, Burials, was published in March 2017.

Todd Fuller grew up in Indiana where he participated in the clichéd rituals of youth. Since then, he completed his Ph.D. in English from Oklahoma State University and published his first book, 60 Feet Six Inches and Other Distances from Home: the (Baseball) Life of Mose YellowHorse (Holy Cow! Press), which was released in 2002. In 2015, his first poetry collection, To the Disappearance, was published by Mongrel Empire Press. His poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals across the country, including theAmerican Indian Culture and Research Journal, American Literary Review, Apalachee Review, Cimarron Review,  Crazyhorse, Hawai’i Review, New York Quarterly, Poet Lore,Puerto del Sol, Quarterly West, South Dakota Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Third Coast, and William and Mary Review. In 2004, he helped found Pawnee Nation College and served as the school’s first president until 2011. He currently serves as an Associate Director for Research Development at the University of Oklahoma. 

Andrew Geyer’s latest book is the hybrid story cycle Texas 5X5, a collection of twenty-five interconnected fictional narratives by five Texas writers that was published in 2014 by Stephen F. Austin University Press.  His story “Fingers,” the opening piece in the collection, won the 2015 Spur Award for Best Short Fiction from the Western Writers of America.  He is the co-editor of the composite anthology A Shared Voice, published by Lamar University Press in 2013.  His individually authored works are Dixie Fish (2011), a novel; Siren Songs from the Heart of Austin (2010), a story cycle; Meeting the Dead (2007), a novel; and Whispers in Dust and Bone (2003), a story cycle that won the silver medal for short fiction in the Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Awards and a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America.  A member of the Texas Institute of Letters, he currently serves as Professor and Chair of English at the University of South Carolina Aiken and as fiction editor for Concho River Review.

Lyman Grant’s poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies including descant, Re: Arts and Letters, Concho River Review, Windhover, Red River Review, Brazos River Review, Texas Observer, Sulphur River Review, Visions International, Borderlands, Is this Forever or What?, Agave, Stone Renga, Bearing the Mask, and The Great American Wise Ass Anthology (in which his poems won first prize).  He has published four volumes of poems:  Text & Commentary, The Road Home, As Long as We Need, and Last Work:  A Meditation on the Final Paintings of Neal Adams.  A former student at both the Breadloaf and Sewanee Writers’ conferences, he has read his poems at several writing conferences and college events.  In addition, Grant has published two college textbooks, three volumes related to regional literature, and a magazine devoted to what was once called The Men’s Movement.

William Peter Grasso’s approach to writing alternative historical fiction is simple: change one thing…and watch what happens. The results are works of fiction in which actual people and historical events are weaved into a seamless and entertaining narrative with the imagined. Grasso’s eight novels—East Wind Returns, Unpunished, Long Walk To The Sun, Operation Long Jump, Operation Easy Street, Operation Blind Spot, Operation Fishwrapper, and Moon Above, Moon Below—continue to reside in the Amazon Top 100 for Alternative History and War. Retired from the aircraft maintenance industry, he is a veteran of the US Army and served in Operation Desert Storm as a flight crew member with the Civil Reserve Air Fleet. These days, he confines his aviation activities to building and flying radio controlled model aircraft

Chera Hammons is a graduate of the MFA in Creative Writing program at Goddard College in Plainfield, VT. Her work has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Rattle, THRUSH, Tupelo Quarterly, and Valparaiso Poetry Review, among other fine journals and anthologies. Her chapbook Amaranthine Hour received the 2012 Jacar Press Chapbook Award. Books include Recycled Explosions (Ink Brush Press, 2016) and The Traveler’s Guide to Bomb City (Purple Flag Press, 2017). She is a member of the editorial board of poetry journal One. She lives in Amarillo, TX.

Michelle Hartman’s work has been featured in The Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas. She has been published in Spillway, Plainsongs, Crannog, Poetry Quarterly, The Pedestal Magazine, Raleigh Review, San Pedro River Review, Pacific Review, Concho River Review, and RiverSedge, as well as over seventy other journals and thirty anthologies. Michelle’s work also appears overseas in Ireland, Germany, Australia, Canada and Nepal as well as a being a multiple Pushcart Nominee. Her poetry books, Irony and Irrelevance and Disenchanted and Disgruntled, from Lamar University Press are available on Amazon. Michelle is the editor for the online journal, Red River Review and hold a BS in Political Science-Pre Law and a Certificate in Paralegal studies.

Katherine Hoerth is the author of four poetry books. Her most recent collection, Goddess Wears Cowboy Boots (Lamar University Literary Press, 2014) won the Helen C. Smith Prize from the Texas Institute of Letters for the best book of poetry. Katherine’s work has been included in numerous journals such as Concho River Review, Texas Poetry Calendar, and BorderSenses. She teaches at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and serves as Managing Editor of Ink Brush Press. She lives in deep south Texas.

Michael Howarth received his M.F.A. In Creative Writing from the University of Alaska at Anchorage and his Ph.D. In English from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. His primary teaching areas include children’s literature, young adult literature, and film studies. He directs the Honors Program at Missouri Southern State University where he is an Associate Professor of English. His critical text, Under the Bed, Creeping: Psychoanalyzing the Gothic in Children’s Literature, was published in 2014 by McFarland Press. His young adult novel, Fair Weather Ninjas, was published in 2016 by Lamar University Literary Press.

Ann Howells’s poetry appears in Borderlands, Spillway, and THEMA among many other small press and university journals here and abroad. Her work appears the anthologies: Goodbye, Mexico and The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume VIII: Texas (Texas Review Press), also Pushing the Envelope and Texas Weather Anthology (Lamar University Press) as well as anthologies from Mutabilis and Dos Gatos Presses. She has edited Illya’s Honey since 1999, recently going digital (www.IllyasHoney.com) and taking on a co-editor. In 2001, Ann was named a “Distinguished Poet of Dallas” by the city. Her publications include: Black Crow in Flight (Main Street Rag, 2007), Under a Lone Star (Village Books Press, 2016), Letters for My Daughter (Flutter Press, 2016), and Cattlemen & Cadillacs, anthology of DFW poets which she edited (Dallas Poets Community Press, 2016). Ann has served on the board of Dallas Poets Community, a 501-c-3, as President of for four years and as Treasurer for many more. She is a frequent judge of poetry and chapbook competitions and has four times been nominated for a Pushcart.
        
Jessica Isaacs, founder and co-editor of Dragon Poet Review, received the 2015 Oklahoma Book Award for Poetry for Deep August.  Her poems appear in Oklahoma Today, Cybersoleil Literary Journal, All Roads Lead Home Poetry Blog, SugarMule’s Women Writing Nature, One Sentence Poems, Short Order Poems (September 2014), My Life with a Funeral Director, Scissortail Commemorative CD (2014), and Elegant Rage.  

Jennifer Kidney is an adjunct assistant professor for the College of Liberal Studies at the University of Oklahoma.  She has a B.A. with Highest Honors in English from Oberlin College and an M.Phil. and Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from Yale University.  She is the author of six books of poetry; her most recent collection, Road Work Ahead, was published by Village Books Press in 2012.  Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and little magazines, including Sugar Mule, Crosstimbers, Picking Up the Tempo, Kudzu, The Seattle Review, Malpais Review, The Bellingham Review, Dragon Poet Review, as well as in several anthologies, including Lamar University Literary Press's Great American Wise Ass Poetry Anthology.  She has done poetry readings all across Oklahoma as well as in Texas, Wyoming, Ohio, Michigan, and at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2005.  She has been nominated for Oklahoma Poet Laureate three times—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, and again in 2016 by the Jim Lucas-Checotah Public Library.  She is the secretary of the Cleveland County Audubon Society, for which she writes an e-mail newsletter, “Bird Notes,” and hosts an annual Bird Poetry Reading, and she serves on the Norman Animal Welfare Center Oversight Committee.  She has won awards for her poetry, technical writing, teaching, and brownie baking.  She lives in Norman with her dog Lizzie and her cat Marvin Gaye.

Roxie Faulkner Kirk, and all of the stories she can scratch up, come from the red dirt flatlands of northwest Oklahoma. She credits any successes to her writing mentor, Oklahoma Book Award-Winner Anna Myers, and to her husband, Terry Kirk--who could give seminars on how to live with a writer. Roxie's most recent credits include publication in the literary journals Cowboy Jamboree and Eclectica. She will be reading excerpts from her forthcoming book, represented by Lauren Spieller and Triada US.

Terry Lucas is the author of two full-length poetry collections: Dharma Rain (Saint Julian Press, October 2016), and In This Room (CW Books, January 2016). In addition, he is the author of two award-winning poetry chapbooks: Altar Call (San Gabriel Valley Literary Festival, 2013), and If They Have Ears to Hear, winner of the 2012 Copperdome Chapbook contest (Southeast Missouri State University Press). His work has received numerous other awards, including the 2014 Crab Orchard Review Feature Award in Poetry, and five Pushcart Prize nominations. His poems, reviews, and essays have appeared in dozens of national literary journals, including Best New Poets 2012, Green Mountains Review, Great River Review, PoetryFlash, and South 85 Journal. Terry is a guest lecturer for the Dominican University Low-Residency MFA Program; Co-Executive Editor of Trio House Press; and a freelance poetry coach. More about Terry and his work can be found at www.terrylucas.com.

Jennifer Luckenbill is a freelance writer, editor, and crafter currently living in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. She has been published in journals such as Red River Review, Prism Review, Words Dance, Poetry Breakfast, Poetry Quarterly, Mused, GlassFire Magazine, Black Heart Magazine, Industry Night, The Long Islander, and Short, Fast, and Deadly. Her work was also featured in an anthology, Entrances and Exits, published in 2013 by PegLeg Publishing. Her story "Roar: A Trio of Shorts" was a finalist for Sundress Best of the Net Anthology for 2013.

J. C. Mahan, aka Catfish, is a home grown Street Poet from right here in Oklahoma. He has been writing and reading poetry for over twenty years. Along with being a regular at many of the local open mic Spoken Word readings, JC has had the honor of being the featured reader at the Shawnee Third Thursday Night Reading, the Norman Train Depot Reading and The Last Sunday poetry reading at Full Circle Book Store in OKC. In the past, Catfish has been published in Blood and Thunder, many of the Woody Guthrie Poet journals and some of the Oklahoma poet Anthologies as well as DragonPoet online journal and other internet journals. This year he has two poems published in Dragon Poet: 'Costa Brava" and "Song of the Sirene" and one in OBU's journal, Ink and Letters: "It is Autumn". While still presenting his current collection, "Living Posthumorously", Catfish is also working on a new collection of fun and hopefully thoughtfully provocative poems entitled "I Hate Poetry" which includes some of the slam poems he has competed with as well as social inquisitive poems.

A.W. Marshall has lived in Oklahoma for the last nine years, but grew up on the beaches of Southern California.  His work is published or forthcoming in The Fiddlehead, Appalachian Heritage, Red Wheelbarrow, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, theNewerYork, The Oklahoma Review, Fiction Attic, Austin Review, and The Vestal Review.  His story, “The Lover,” published in the Vestal Review was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2014.  His collection of short stories, Simple Pleasures, was published in 2015 by ELJ Publications.  In 2005, he wrote and directed the professional theater production of his play, Pan, with the Long Beach Shakespeare Company, and Mead-Hill published this play in 2015.  In 2003, his play, Emptier, was produced at the Hudson Theater in Hollywood and directed by Kristin Hanggi. He received his MFA in playwriting from USC and an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. For the last five years, he has been writing a novel, Hendo, about a half man, half rabbit hybrid who survives in 1850’s California by assimilating with Chinese Immigrants.

George McCormick is the author of the short story collection Salton Sea and the novel Inland Empire. A recipient of a 2013 O. Henry Prize, his work has appeared most recently in EPOCH, Arcadia, and This Land. He currently lives in Lawton, Oklahoma, and teaches in the department of English at Cameron University.

Jeanetta Calhoun Mish is a poet, writer, and literary scholar. In 2015, Lamar University Press published Mish’s first collection of prose, Oklahomeland: Essays. Her 2009 poetry collection, Work Is Love Made Visible (West End Press), won an Oklahoma Book Award, a Wrangler Award, and a WILLA Award from Women Writing the West. Her chapbook, Tongue Tied Woman, won the 2001 Edda Poetry Chapbook for Women contest sponsored by Sarasota Poetry Theater Press. Mish is a contributing editor for Oklahoma Today and Sugar Mule: A Literary Journal. She is founding editor of Mongrel Empire Press, which was recognized as 2012 Publisher of the Year by the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers. Dr. Mish directs The Red Earth Creative Writing MFA program at Oklahoma City University where she also serves as a faculty mentor in writing pedagogy and the craft of poetry. More information and upcoming readings and events can be found on her website: www.tonguetiedwoman.com.

A graduate of St. John's College and of the George Mason University MFA Program, Gary Worth Moody has worked as a forest fire fighter, a farrier, a cowboy, and building a town for coal miners in Siberia’s Kuzbass Region. His poems have appeared in myriad journals on both sides of the Atlantic, and in the anthology, Cabin Fever: Poets at Joaquin Miller’s Cabin, 1984-2001 (Word Works Press). He is the author of Hazards of Grace (Red Mountain Press, 2012) and Occoquan (Red Mountain Press, 2015) which was shortlisted for the international Rubery Book Award in poetry. A falconer, Gary lives in Santa Fe with the artist and writer, Oriana Rodman, two dogs, and Plague, a 2^nd year male red-tail hawk.

John Graves Morris, Professor of English at Cameron University, is the author of Noise and Stories (Plain View Press, 2008).  He has finally put together the manuscript for second collection, entitled Unwritten Histories, which he hopes will be accepted for publication.  His poems have appeared recently in Westview, The Concho River Review, The Red Earth Review, The Great American Wise Ass Poetry Anthology, and Jazz Cigarette.  He lives in Lawton, Oklahoma.

Tom Murphy’s poetry book American History will be published by Slough Press in late Spring of 2017. His chapbook Horizon to Horizon was published in 2015 by Strike Syndicate. In the fall of 2016, Murphy had two poems in each Illya’s Honey and Nothing Journal. Murphy also featured ten poems in the 2016 The Langdon Review. Plus, he was the feature poet for the Red River Review’s May 2016 online issue. Other recent work has been in The Great American Wise Ass Poetry Anthology, Outrage: A Protest Anthology for Injustice in a Post 9/11 World, 2016 Texas Poetry Calendar, Beatitude: Golden Anniversary Edition, Centrifuge, Nebula, Strike, Switchgrass Review, Voices de la Luna and Windward Review. Murphy co-editor with Alan Berecka the Stone Renga that features sixty poets, which is forthcoming in the December of 2016. He lives in Corpus Christi, Texas

Benjamin Myers is the author of two books of poetry: Lapse Americana (New York Quarterly Books 2013) and Elegy for Trains (Village Books Press, 2010). His poems have recently appeared in The Yale Review, Image, 32 Poems, The Cimarron Review, Nimrod, Ninth Letter, and many other journals. His prose may be read in First Things, Books and Culture, and
World Literature Today, as well as in various academic journals. Myers is the recipient of a Tennessee Williams Scholarship from the Sewanee Writers Conference and of an Oklahoma Book Award from the Oklahoma Center for the book. He is a former Poet Laureate of Oklahoma and is the Crouch-Mathis Professor of Literature at Oklahoma Baptist University.

Juan Manuel Pérez, born and raised in the onion fields around La Pryor, Texas, is the author of many full poetry collections, poetry chapbooks, and poetry workshop workbooks. The award-wining poet is also the 2011-2012 Poet Laureate for the San Antonio Poets Association, El Chupacabra Poet Laureate (for lifetime), the 2005 People’s Comic Book Newsletter Award Winner For Best Comic Book Poetry, and the 31st Annual Southwest Texas Junior College Creative Arts Contest Over-All Literary Award Winner (Poetry & Prose) in 2012. Juan is a ten-year Navy Corpsman/Marine Medic with combat experience in the First Gulf War (1990-1991: Desert Storm with the 2nd Marine Division/2nd FFSG) and part of the Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force, United States Marine Corps Relief After Hurricane Andrew during the 1992 Hurricane Andrew Relief Operation in Homestead, Florida. Currently, the author worships his Creator, teaches history, writes poetry, and chases chupacabras by the Texas Gulf Coast in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Shaun Perkins is a poet, freelance writer, barista, Oklahoma Arts Council teaching artist, and director of the Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry in Locust Grove. She is a graduate of OSU and OU.  Her detective novel in verse The Book with the Beacon Lights is forthcoming in March 2017 from Indian University Press. Her poetry and stories have been published in numerous journals, including Slipstream, The Phoenix, Touchstone, Midland Review, Oklahoma Today and Storytelling Magazine.

Brady Peterson lives near Belton, Texas where for twenty-nine years he worked building homes and teaching rhetoric. His poems have appeared in Windhover, Nerve Cowboy, Boston Literary Magazine, The Journal of Military Experience, all roads will lead you home, Blue Hole, Red River Review, Illya’s Honey, and the San Antonio Express-News.  He is the author of Glued to the Earth, Between Stations, and Dust

Elizabeth Raby is the author of a four-generation memoir in prose and poetry, Ransomed Voices, (Red Mountain Press, 2013) which received an award from New Mexico Press Women; three full length poetry collections from vacpoetry.org, The Year the Pears Bloomed Twice, Ink on Snow, and This Woman, a finalist for the 2013 Arizona-New Mexico Book Award, and two full-length collections from vacpoetry.org/purple-flag, Beneath Green Rain and this new collection, A Matter of Time. Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies and have been translated into Romanian and Chinese.

The poems, reviews, and essays of Carol Coffee Reposa have appeared in The Atlanta Review, Evansville Review, Southwestern American Literature, The Texas Observer, Concho River Review, and other journals and anthologies.  Author of four books of poetry and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, she has received three Pushcart Prize nominations, along with three Fulbright-Hays Fellowships, and thrice has made the short list for Texas Poet Laureate.  Reposa also won the San Antonio Pubic LibTrary Arts & Letters Award in 2015.

Rob Roensch’s collection of stories, The Wildflowers of Baltimore, was published by Salt. He has published stories recently in American Short Fiction and Green Mountains Review. He teaches at Oklahoma City University.

Sally Rhoades, a poet, playwright and performer, debuted Beautiful, an evening-length performance in NYC at the Bill Young studio in Soho. Her poem, “On a Night with a Poet", dedicated to Maurice Kenny was a finalist in the Stephan A. DiBiase poetry contest with a reading in Albany. Her new play, My Utica, had a reading this past December. She continues to make the trek from Albany to NY studying Klein technique and working with dance artists: Simone Forti, Deborah Hay, Vicky Shick, Jeremy Nelson and Luis Lara Malvacias. Her poetry has been published in Up the River, 2, Dragon Poet Review, Elegant Rage, the Highwatermark salo[o]n series, Peerglass and 8T3. My Utica is her fourth play. Other plays have been seen around NYS and presented at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Performances include full-length pieces: Beautiful (2016), Howl, a Poet Dances (2013) and Pomegranates and Roses, a love story (2008). Shorter pieces include: Here and Happy(2015), Excavations(2015), "I am Wing," She said. "I am Wing."(2014), ReWind (2013), Beyond the Birch, the Birch Beyond (2013), Possession (2005), I kissed truth gently on the lips (2003) and Finding Heaven in the Soles of My Feet (2003).

Gregory Stapp received his BA in English/Creative Writing from the University of Oklahoma where he worked for the Carl Albert Center Congressional Archives, was a Puterbaugh Fellow in World Literature, won the Tomas Rivera Student Writing prize in poetry, and the International Student Association's prize for short fiction. Now a librarian for the Pioneer Library System in central Oklahoma, he received his MFA from Queens University of Charlotte and his poems have appeared in Outside In Literary and Travel Magazine, Limehawk Journal, Shot Glass, The Ekphrastic Review, and Forage, among others. He recently served as the Poetry Editor for Qu: A Literary Magazine

Rebecca Hatcher Travis, an enrolled citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, often writes of her indigenous heritage and the beauty of the natural world. Her poetry book manuscript, Picked Apart the Bones, won the First Book Award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas and was published by the Chickasaw Press. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, literary journals and online. Ms. Travis is a member of Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers and lives in south central Oklahoma, near the land her ancestors settled in Indian Territory days. She is currently completing another book of poetry and continues to give poetry presentations at Oklahoma venues such as the Chickasaw Cultural Center and the ARTesian Gallery, in Sulphur.

Ron Wallace, is an adjunct professor of English at Southeastern Oklahoma State University and an Oklahoma Native of Choctaw, Cherokee and Osage ancestry. He is the author of six volumes of poetry published by TJMF Publishing of Clarksville, Indiana and a three time finalist in the Oklahoma Book Awards. He is also a three time winner of The Oklahoma Writer’s Federation Best Book of Poetry Award and a Pushcart Prize nominee for 2016. His work has been recently featured in Oklahoma Today, Poetry Bay, Concho River Review, Cybersoleil journal, Cobalt, Red Earth Review, Dragon Poets Review, Songs of Eretz Review, Gris-Gris, Oklahoma Poems and Their Poets and a number of other magazines and anthologies.

Sarah Webb edited poetry for twelve years for Crosstimbers (University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma). She co-edits the Zen arts magazine Just This for the Austin Zen Center and serves on the editorial committee of All Roads Will Lead You Home. Her work has recently appeared in Dragon Poet Review, The Enigmatist, Just This, Texas Nafas, The Syzygy Poetry Journal, and The Texas Poetry Calendar. Her collection Black (Virtual Artists Collective, 2013) was a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award and for the Writers League of Texas Book Award. She blogs online at bluebirdsw.blogspot.com

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".  As a photographer, he claims to have the world's largest collection of photos of unknown poets. He has been a featured reader at all the important poetry venues in the Capital District & throughout the Hudson Valley and is an active member of Veterans for Peace. His chapbook boundless abodes of Albany published by Benevolent Bird Press of Delmar, NY is available for Kindle from Amazon.  His latest book Gloucester Notes is available from FootHills Publishing.  You can read his Blog at dwlcx.blogspot.com.

Clarence Wolfshohl is professor emeritus of English at William Woods University. His poetry and creative non-fiction have appeared in many small press journals both in print and online. He has published several chapbooks and small collections of poetry, including Season of Mangos, poems about Brazil (Adastra Press, 2009), In Harm’s Way:  Poems of Childhood in collaboration with Mark Vinz  (El Grito del Lobo Press, 2013), and most recently Chupacabra (El Grito del Lobo Press, 2015).  In late 2014, his chapbook Equus Essence was published online by Right Hand Pointing. Wolfshohl lives with his writing, two dogs and one cat in a nine-acre woods outside of Fulton, Missouri