2024: Scissortail Biographies

Aly Allen is a trans, neurodivergent poet, parent, and veteran. She is the author of Paying for Gas with Quarters (Middle West Press, 2023) and the chapbook Approaching Valhalla (Bottlecap Press, 2022). She has been an editor, reviewer, and reader for publications including: The Cimarron Review, Consequence, Glass Mountain, & Inkling. She founded the Military Memoirs Workshop (for veterans, servicemembers, and their families) and Edited the Military Memoirs Journal, featuring the work of a Vietnam veteran and their daughter. Her recent publications appear in: One Art Poetry, Panoply, new words (press), Press Pause, Consequence, New Note Poetry, and @ThreadsLitMag. She won the 2019 Lillie Robertson Prize for Poetry. She holds an MFA creative writing from Oklahoma State University, where she now teaches. Follow her on Threads and Instagram @notasquirrel

Dr. Rubeena Anjum is an educator and a psychologist. Now retired, she is one of the members of the Richardson Poets Group and Dallas Poets Community. Her work has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, The Bosphorus Review of Books, Artistic Antidote UMN Clinical Affairs, Corona Virus Anthology by Austin International Poetry Festival-2020, Art on the Trails: Mending 2021 Chapbook, Word City Literary Journal, Southwestern American Literature, and The Writer’s Garret-Common Language Project: Networks Anthology 2023, among others. Her full-length collection of poems by Finishing Line Press-2023 is titled My Photo Album.

Rilla Askew is the author of five novels, a book of stories, and a collection of creative nonfiction. She’s received the American Book Award, Western Heritage Award, Oklahoma Book Award, and Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her essays, poems, and short fiction have appeared in Nimrod, Tin House, World Literature Today, AGNI, and elsewhere. Askew’s novel Prize for the Fire, about Early Modern English writer Anne Askew, was a finalist for the 2023 Oklahoma Book Award. A new collection of stories, The Hungry & The Haunted, will be published by Belle Point Press in Fall 2024.

Paul Austin’s most recent book is Spontaneous Behavior, the Art and Craft of Acting, published by Turning Plow Press in 2022. His poetry collection, Notes on Hard Times, was published by Village Books Press. His work has appeared in This Land, Sugar Mule, Oklahoma Review, More Monologues by Men, and Newport Review. His poems have also been included in Speak Your Mind, the 2019 anthology of Woody Guthrie Poets, and Bull Buffalo and Indian Paintbrush, an anthology of Oklahoma poetry, Behind the mask: Haiku in the Time of Covid-19, Jerry Jazz Musician, and LEVEL Land: poems for and about the I-35 corridor. Turning Plow Press is preparing is latest collection Mother and Son for a release TBD. Late Night Conspiracies, a collection of his writings, was performed with jazz ensemble at New York’s Ensemble Studio Theatre. More about his writing and his life in the theatre can be found on his website: https://paustin.net.

Cody Baggerly is a graduate of East Central University, where he received his degree in English and Literature. He has been featured in three volumes of ECU’s literary journal, Originals. He also served as editor of the 2022 volume of Originals and has had work featured on The NoSleep Podcast and The Rising Phoenix Review, a monthly online literary magazine. Cody currently serves as ECU’s Communications Specialist and writer for their Marketing Department with articles featured in a variety of news outlets. He also has two more poems slated for release by The Rising Phoenix Review in the coming weeks.

Walter Bargen has published 27 books of poetry including: My Other Mother’s Red Mercedes (Lamar University Press, 2018), Until Next Time (Singing Bone Press, 2019), Pole Dancing in the Night Club of God (Red Mountain Press, 2020), You Wounded Miracle, (Liliom Verlag, 2021), Too Late to Turn Back (Singing Bone Press, 2023), and Radiation Diary: Return to the Sea (Lamar University Press, 2023). He was appointed the first poet laureate of Missouri (2008-2009). His awards include: a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Chester H. Jones Foundation Award, and the William Rockhill Nelson Award. He currently lives outside Ashland, Missouri, with his wife and too many former feral cats.

Alan Berecka is a retired librarian, who lives in Sinton, Texas, with his congenial wife Alice and ornery Belgian Shepherd Ophelia. His sixth full collection, Atlas Sighs: Selected and New Poem was published in late 2023 by Turning Plow Press. From 2017-2019, he served as the first poet laureate of Corpus Christi.

Roseanna Alice Boswell is the author of Hiding in a Thimble (Haverthorn Press, 2021) and Imitating Light (Iron Horse Literary Review, 2021). A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Roseanna holds an MFA from Bowling Green State University and is a Ph.D. student in English-Creative Writing at Oklahoma State University. Her work has appeared in: RHINO, Whiskey Island, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and elsewhere. Originally from upstate New York, Roseanna currently haunts Oklahoma with her husband and their three cats.

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. He is the author of three poetry collections and a short story collection, and is the founder of Turning Plow Press.

Joey Brown is a poet and a fiction writer. She has authored two poetry collections: The Feral Love Poems (Hungry Buzzard Press) and Oklahomaography (Mongrel Empire Press). Her poems and prose have appeared in The Red Earth Review, Plainsong, Concho River Review, The Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, Tulsa Review, Oklahoma Review, The San Pedro River Review, and other journals. She frequently performs her poetry at festivals and writing conferences around the Midwest, South, and sometimes beyond. In 2023 Joey was chosen to be featured writer of the Oswald Writers Series at the University of South Carolina-Aiken. Her poetry has been selected for several anthologies including Oklahoma Poems and Their Poets (2014), and The Working Man’s Hand: Poems of Protest and Resistance (2023). She lives with her husband, prose writer Michael Howarth.

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’s taught for over 20 years. He served as Poet Laureate for the State of Oklahoma in 2013/14, and now travels fulltime performing readings, concerts, and workshops. Nathan has published 26 books. Most recent is his new collection of poems, In the Days of Our Endurance, the fifth in a series now known as the Pandemic Poems Project, a collection of commissioned poems that deal with the days of the pandemic, and a travel memoir Just Another Honeymoon in France: A Vagabond at Large. 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 Oklahoma Book Award. 

David R. Bublitz is the son of a veteran. He completed an MFA at the Oklahoma City University Red Earth program. He is a 2015 Pangaea Prize finalist, a Naugatuck River Review narrative poetry contest finalist, and a founding editor of Oklahoma City University’s graduate literary magazine, the Red Earth Review. His first collection of poems, “Combat Pay,” was published by Main Street Rag in May 2020. He has also published poetry in CONSEQUENCE Magazine; O-Dark-Thirty; f(r)iction; Revise the Psalm: Work Celebrating the Writing of Gwendolyn Brooks; and Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors.

Corbett Buchly’s poems have appeared in 23 journals, including SLAB, Rio Grande Review, North Dakota Quarterly, and Barrow Street. He is an alumnus of Texas Christian University and the professional writing program at the University of Southern California. He currently resides in Northeast Texas with his wife and two children. You can find him online at buchly.com.

Yvonne Carpenter’s work has appeared in Grain (a Canadian literary journal), Concho River Review, Red Dirt Review, Dragon Poets, Dos Gatos, several anthologies, and ezines. She has written three books, managed farm finances, worked for a tax accountant, a newspaper, and taught school.

Leah Chaffins is a short story writer, a novelist, and a poet. Her primary writings are horror fiction, memoir, poetry, and journalism. Her work can be found in publications such as the anthologies Bull Buffalo and Indian Paintbrush, Ain’t Gonna Be Treated This Way: Poems of Protest & Resistance, Behind the Yellow Wallpaper, and in the Military Experience & the Arts journal As You Were, Red Earth Review, Oklahoma Review, Southwest Impressions and 580 Monthly. Leah recently published her first novel, The God Seed, and is currently revising her second novel, Birthmarks: Lucille and a chapbook Deep Prairie Bitters. She is an Assistant Professor at Cameron University. In her free time, Leah volunteers with organizations that are using creative writing to positively impact the world we share.

In her former life as a professor of medieval and early modern English literature and creative writing, Julie Chappell published six books of scholarship; a collection of her original poetry, Faultlines (Village Books Press, 2013); and other writings. Her poetry and prose have appeared in a number of anthologies and journals including Malpaïs Review; Voices de la Luna; Concho River Review; Stone Renga; Bull Buffalo and Indian Paintbrush; and The Working Man’s Hand: Celebrating Woody Guthrie. She has also read her work widely in a variety of venues from California to Virginia and places in between. In 1994, she was the Grand Slam Poetry prize winner in Lawrence, Kansas. Since retiring in 2018, she has published two more collections of poetry, Mad Habits of a Life (Lamar University Literary Press, 2019) and As I Pirouette Away (Turning Plow Press, 2021). Her second collection, Mad Habits of a Life was nominated for the Paterson Prize in 2020. She also has two collections of original short stories, Homecoming and Other Mythic Tales (Fine Dog Press, 2021) and Contrary Qualities of Elements (Fine Dog Press, 2023). A third collection of short stories, Perpetual Echoes, and a fourth collection of poetry, Watermarks: Only Visible in the Light, are in progress

Claire Collins is a queer poet, teaching artist and co-founder of Poetic Justice, a program that teaches literacy and poetry to incarcerated people. They have been published in This Land Press, Held Zine and The Tulsa Voice. They are of Mohawk, French, and Dutch descent. As a member of the Six Nations of the Grand River, they are working to reconnect with Kanien'kéha (Mohawk) Language and literacies. They are currently working on a forthcoming collection of poetry that will be released in May 2024 by the Calliope Group.

Chase Dearinger is an Oklahoma native who now lives in Kansas with his wife and two daughters. His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in magazines around the country, including Bayou, The Southampton Review, Short Story America, and Heavy Feather Review. He currently serves as the Chief Editor of Emerald City, a quarterly online fiction magazine, and directs the Cow Creek Chapbook Prize, an annual poetry chapbook contest. He is a professor of creative writing and literature at Pittsburg State University. His novel, This New Dark, is due out in February of 2024 from Belle Point Press.  

Marc DiPaolo has published Fake Italian: An 83% True Autobiography with Pseudonyms and Some Tall Tales (Bordighera Press, 2021), and the nonfiction books Fire and Snow: Climate Fiction from the Inklings to Game of Thrones (SUNY Press, 2018), Emma Adapted: Jane Austen’s Heroine from Book to Film (Peter Lang, 2007) and the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title War, Politics, and Superheroes (McFarland, 2011). He has also edited essay collections about directors Ozu and Mike Leigh with Bloomsbury, on religion in American culture with Scarecrow, and a literary anthology with Pearson. DiPaolo has been interviewed on NPR, BBC4, and the AMC docuseries Robert Kirkman’s Secret History of Comics (s1e4, 2017). He is Associate Professor of English at Southwestern Oklahoma State University and Secretary for the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States

Woodstok Farley, aka Michael Dooley, is an assistant professor at Tarleton State University-Stephenville, Texas. Having migrated from South Florida to Texas, Woodstok remains more comfortable in sandals than boots. His fiction reflects a deep yearning to return to the seacoast. Woodstok’s short story, “As the Wave Rose,” was published in the online literary journal Cybersoleil. This story is part of his episodic collection entitled As the Wave Rose: Florida Tales and Other Wandering Stories, published by Fine Dog Press (2020). His next collection, The Water Stop Saloon: More Wandering Tales, also by Fine Dog Press, was published in 2022. Coming soon is Woodstok’s first full-length novel entitled The Judas Coins.

Wendy Dunmeyer’s full-length collection, My Grandmother’s Last Letter, was recently published by Lamar University Literary Press. Her poetry has been selected as a finalist for the Morton Marr Poetry Prize; received honorable mention in NDSU’s Poetry of the Plains and Prairies Chapbook Contest; and featured in Bismarck Arts & Galleries Association’s visual-arts exhibition, “The Artistry of Trees.” Her work has appeared in Measure, Natural Bridge, The Oklahoma Review, Cumberland River Review, and elsewhere. She nurtures young poets by teaching poetry classes for children at her local library and volunteers as a visiting writer for National Poetry Month at local elementary schools.

Alan Gann, a teaching artist-poet, tutors and facilitates writing workshops for underserved youth. His newest collection of poems, Better Ways to See from Assure Press, features nature and ekphrastic poems celebrating the wonder-filled attitude his parents instilled in him and his sister. He is the author of two other volumes of poetry, That’s Entertainment (Lamar University Press) and Adventures of the Clumsy Juggler (Inkbrush Press), as well as DaVerse Works, Big Thought’s performance poetry curriculum. Alan’s nonexistent spare time is spent outdoors: biking, birding, and trying to photograph some of the cool things he sees there.

Ky George is a poet, essayist, and proud member of the Okie diaspora, living and working in the high desert of New Mexico. Their work explores the relationship between the land, her people, and whatever else is out there in the great beyond. Ky is a graduate of the Red Earth MFA, and has previously been published in The Red Mesa Review, The Oklahoma Review, Insurrection, and Lesbians are Miracles. 

Andrew Geyer’s latest individually authored book is the short story cycle Lesser Mountains (Lamar University Press, 2019).  A member of the Texas Institute of Letters and the South Carolina Academy of Authors Literary Hall of Fame, he currently serves as English Department Chair at the University of South Carolina Aiken.

Lyman Grant is an expat Texan living in the Shenandoah Valley. He was a professor, department chair, and dean at Austin Community College for over four decades. His poems and essays have appeared in several journals and anthologies, such as descant, Concho River Review, Comstock Review, Windhover, Written in Arlington, Unknotting the Line, and The Great American Wise Ass Poetry Anthology. His most recent books are Symptom and Desire: New and Selected Poems and ostraca, a volume of golden shovel poems. His tenth book, November Constellation, will be published in 2024.

Joshua Grasso is a professor of English at East Central University, where he teaches classes in everything from Batman to Beowulf. He has a PhD in eighteenth-century British literature from Miami University, and many of his academic articles appear in Oklahoma Humanities, The Literary Encyclopedia, and the MLA Approaches to Teaching series. When not teaching or grading, he writes speculative fiction stories which have recently appeared in Jake Magazine, On Spec, Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores, and Tales to Terrify.

Nikki Herrin is an ECU alum. She had several works published in ECU's literary magazine, Originals, during her time at ECU from 2018-2021. She was worked as an English teacher and softball coach for the last three years. Last May, she was named High School Teacher of the Year for her school district.

Angela Hooper is a life-long resident of Oklahoma City. She has a BA in English from the University of Central Oklahoma. For over twenty years she has participated in the various local community poetry readings which has helped her hone her skills as a poet. She has been published in the The Mom Egg, Crosstimbers, Living Out Loud, and Ain’t Ganna Be Treated This Way. This fall she published her inaugural collection Where the Sky is a Wall (Village Press Books).

Ann Howells edited Illya’s Honey for eighteen years. Recent books are: So Long As We Speak Their Names (Kelsay Books, 2019) and Painting the Pinwheel Sky (Assure Press, 2020). Chapbooks include: Black Crow in Flight, Editor’s Choice in Main Street Rag’s 2007 competition and Softly Beating Wings, 2017 William D. Barney Chapbook Competition winner (Blackbead Books). Her work appears in small press and university publications including Plainsongs, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and San Pedro River Review. Ann has received multiple Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations

Jessica Huntley is a visual artist, mother, and writer based in Krebs, Oklahoma. She is the founder and inaugural president of the McAlester Public Library Poetry Club in which she is still active and continually supports the club’s endeavors. She is a founding member of the Southeastern Oklahoma Creatives Coalition. A number of her poems have been published in Cross Timbers (2022), a mini-zine co-authored with her friend Britton Morgan, and she is currently editing her first book.

Nell Johnson (Aries Sun, Capricorn Rising) is graduate of the University of New Mexico, where she majored in English and Russian. While in attendance, she worked on the staff of three different student publications: The Daily Lobo, Scribendi, and Conceptions Southwest. Nell received the UNM undergraduate Lena Todd Award for creative nonfiction, and her prose and poetry have been published in Bending Genres, Cordella Press, 45th Parallel, and most recently, Rundelania, where the poem "Parable" was nominated for the Robert Siegel Prize. When not serving Oklahoma County as an assistant librarian, she's reading interlibrary loans, playing strategy games, and listening to Eurodance.

Quinn Carver Johnson (they/them) is the author of The Perfect Bastard (Curbstone Press, 2023), a poetry collection about queerness and class in the world of professional wrestling. Their work has appeared in Rappahannock Review, Right Hand Pointing, Cimarron Review, Red Earth Review, and elsewhere. Carver Johnson currently lives in Tulsa and hosts the People’s Poetry reading series.

Hank Jones backpacked the world in his youth hoping to find a poet within until lack of funds prompted him to seek a job at his alma mater, Tarleton State University. He planned to stay a year or two and get back on the road, but twenty-three years later, he is an assistant professor at the same university. To keep his creative spirit alive, and to hone his facility with the written word, he enrolled in the Red Earth MFA program at Oklahoma City University from which he graduated in 2019. His poetry has been published in Cybersoleil: A Literary Journal, Voices de la Luna, Dragon Poet Review, The Concho River Review, and Red River Review. He’s also contributed poems to The Great American Wise Ass Poetry Anthology from Lamar University Literary Press, Speak Your Mind: Poems of Protest & Resistance, published by Village Books Press, the Stone Renga Anthology from Tale Feathers Press, Bull Buffalo and Indian Paintbrush (The Poetry of Oklahoma), edited by Ron Wallace; and The Working Man’s Hand: Celebrating Woody Guthrie, Poems of Protest and Resistance (Fine Dog Press, 2023). His first book of poetry, Too Late for Manly Hands, was published by Turning Plow Press in 2021. He now lives in a beautiful house overlooking Lake Keystone with his wife, Julie Chappell, and drives six hours to teach his courses at Tarleton. 

Paul Juhasz was born in western New Jersey, grew up just outside New Haven, Connecticut, and has spent appreciable chunks of his life in the plains of central Illinois, in the upper hill country of Texas, and in the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania. Most recently seduced by the spirit of the red earth, he now lives in Oklahoma City. A graduate of the Red Earth M.F.A., his work has appeared in several literary journals, most recently Concho River Review, Poetry Quarterly, Oklahoma Review and Main Street Rag. He has been serving as curator and coordinator of the Woody Guthrie Poets since 2020. His first book, Fulfillment: Diary of a Warehouse Picker—a mock journal covering his six-month stint in an Amazon warehouse—was published by Fine Dog Press in 2020. His second book, Ronin, a collection of (mostly) prose poems—also published by Fine Dog Press—was named a finalist for the 2022 Oklahoma Book Award in poetry. His second collection of poetry, The Inner Life of Comics, was published by Turning Plow Press in the fall of 2022. A collection of short fiction, As If Place Matters, was published by Fine Dog Press in the fall of 2023.

Born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Audrey Kallenberger has been dreamily writing poetry, prose and stories since she was 9 years old. A deep sense of curiosity and love of travel led her to study French Language and International Studies at the University of Oklahoma in Norman and she left home for the East Coast in 2006. She completed a Master’s Degree in Political Theory at The University of Massachusetts in Amherst. She spent a life-changing summer in Beirut, Lebanon in 2010. She then moved to Brooklyn, New York without a plan, and fell into freelance writing and acting until she moved back to her hometown in 2018. Much to her surprise and delight, the slower pace of life in the Midwest suits her. She published her first book, The Year of Our Lady of Independence in 2022 and has plans to write and publish more in 2024.

Vallejo, California Poet Laureate Emerita D.L. Lang is an internationally published poet. Her work appears in over 60 anthologies globally. She has performed her poetry hundreds of times at festivals, demonstrations, and literary events across California. She received proclamations from the California State Senate, California Arts Council, and Vallejo City Council for her service as poet laureate. Her poems have been transformed into songs, used as liturgy, and to advocate for a better world. A winner of the 2023 Curbside Haiku contest, her haiku was displayed across downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma and archived at the Woody Guthrie Center. She also performed at the 2023 Woody Guthrie Folk Festival as a Woody Guthrie Poet. KPOO, KPFA, KALW, and KZCT have broadcast her poetry. She grew up in a lot of places, including Enid, Oklahoma. Find her at poetryebook.com

Heather Levy is a born and bred Oklahoman and graduate of Oklahoma City University’s Red Earth MFA program for creative writing. The New York Times called her Anthony-nominated debut Walking Through Needles “a spellbinding novel at the nexus of power, desire, and abuse that portends a bright future” and the L.A. Times called it “a standout for its frank but sensitive exploration of trauma and desire.” Her novels, including the forthcoming Hurt for Me and This Violent Heart, focus on kink-positive stories centered around badass women. She lives in Oklahoma with her husband, two kids, and three murderous cats. Readers can follow her on X and IG @heatherllevy and explore her website at www.heatherlevywriter.com

Sharon Edge Martin writes poetry and prose. She has published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Family Circle, Oklahoma Today, Outside, True West, Malpais Review, and other magazines. Her work is included in anthologies and literary texts, including Michael Bugeja’s The Art and Craft of Poetry. She is a regular contributor to The Oklahoma Observer, and she hosts a monthly poetry reading at Tidewater Winery in Drumright. Sharon’s most recent books are a poetry collection, Not a Prodigal, which was a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award, and a book of essays, I’ve Got the Blues: Looking for Justice in a Red State.

Bill McCloud is a poetry editor for Right Hand Pointing and is the poetry reviewer for Vietnam Veterans of America. His poetry book, The Smell of the Light, reached #1 on The Oklahoman's "Oklahoma Bestsellers" list. His poetry is studied at the University School of Milwaukee in Wisconsin, the Air Force Academy in Colorado, and the University of Tulsa. 

A Pushcart honoree, with a personal essay in Pushcart Prize XLII, David Meischen is the author of Nopalito, Texas: Stories, new from the University of New Mexico Press. Caliche Road Poems is forthcoming from Lamar University Press. Anyone’s Son, from 3: A Taos Press, won Best First Book of Poetry from the Texas Institute of Letters in 2020. David’s work has appeared in The Common, Copper Nickel, The Gettysburg Review, Naugatuck River Review, The San Pedro River Review, Southern Poetry Review, The Southern Review, Valparaiso Fiction Review, and elsewhere. A former juror for the Kimmel Harding Nelson center for the arts, David is an alumni of the Jentel Arts residency program. Co-founder and Managing Editor of Dos Gatos Press, he lives in Albuquerque, NM with his husband—also his co-publisher and co-editor—Scott Wiggerman.

Britton Morgan is a musician, tarot reader, and writer from the foothills of the Ozarks in Wagoner, Oklahoma. He has been an active member of Oklahoma's music community for almost twenty years and hosts poetry readings in punk house basements. His writing centers on history, consciousness, and nature. He has self-published two zines: Synchronicity Machine, a DIY guide to reading tarot, and Cross Timbers, a collection of poetry with his friend Jessica Huntley.

John Graves Morris, Professor of English at Cameron University, is the author of Noise and Stories. He is reworking the manuscript for a second collection, still entitled The County Seat of Wanting So Many Things, which he hopes to begin circulating again soon, and has begun work on putting together the manuscript of a third collection, tentatively entitled as The Strongest Song, which he hopes to begin circulating soon. His poems have appeared in various publications, most recently in Big Muddy and The Concho River Review. He lives in Lawton.

Christopher Murphy is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Northeastern State University. He has a collection of flash fiction, Burning All the Time, from Mongrel Empire Press and a fiction chapbook, Rites, from USPOCO Books. 

Tom Murphy is the 2021-2022 Corpus Christi Poet Laureate and the Langdon Review’s 2022 Writer-In-Residence. Murphy’s books: When I Wear Bob Kaufman’s Eyes (2022), Snake Woman Moon (2021), Pearl (2020), American History (2017), and co-edited Stone Renga (2017). He’s been published widely in literary journals and anthologies and has been featured and has performed at GonzoFest in Louisville, Ky, at Sovereign Kava in Asheville, NC, and Wednesday Night Poetry in Hot Springs, AR, Trinidad, CO among other locations. He will be a feature reader at GonzoFest Europe in Dublin this September.

Benjamin Myers was the 2015-2016 Poet Laureate of the State of Oklahoma and is the author of four books of poetry: The Family Book of Martyrs (Lamar University Press, 2022), Black Sunday (Lamar University Press, 2018), Lapse Americana (New York Quarterly Books, 2013) and Elegy for Trains (Village Books Press, 2010). His poems may be read in The Yale Review, Image, Rattle, The Cimarron Review, Ninth Letter and many other literary journals. He has been honored with an Oklahoma Book Award for Poetry and with a Tennessee Williams Scholarship from the Sewanee Writers Conference. Myers is the Crouch-Mathis Professor of Literature at Oklahoma Baptist University, where he teaches creative writing and English literature and directs the great books honors program. His first book of non-fiction, A Poetics of Orthodoxy, was recently published by Cascade Books.

Shaun Perkins is the founder/director of the Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry, a teaching artist with the Oklahoma Arts Council, a newspaper columnist and the co-host of the Wacky Poem Life podcast. Her work has been published in a variety of books, literary journals, newspapers, and magazines.

Brady Peterson lives near Belton, Texas where for twenty-nine years he worked building houses and teaching rhetoric. He is the author of Glued to the Earth, Between Stations, Dust, From an Upstairs Window, García Lorca Is Somewhere in Produce, and At the Edge of Town.

Remi Recchia (he/him), PhD, is a trans poet, essayist, and editor from Kalamazoo, Michigan. A five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Remi's work has appeared in World Literature Today, Best New Poets 2021, and Prairie Schooner, among others. His works include Quicksand/Stargazing (Cooper Dillon Books, 2021); Sober (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2022); Little Lenny Gets His Horns (Querencia Press, 2023); From Gold, Ghosts: Alchemy Erasures (Gasher Press, 2023); and Transmasculine Poetics: Filling the Gap in Literature & the Silences Around Us (Sundress Publications, forthcoming). Remi has been a Tin House Scholar and Thomas Lux Scholar and previously served as associate editor for the Cimarron Review. Recently, he served as a grant reviewer for the Poetry Foundation. He holds an MFA in poetry from Bowling Green State University.

Keely Record lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Received an MFA from the Red Earth Creative Writing MFA program at Oklahoma City University. She serves on the editorial board of Nimrod International Journal. Her poetry has appeared in Atlas Poetica and Bamboo Hut.

Sally Rhoades lives in Albany, NY. She was part of a Community Read of Ironweed by William Kennedy on November 1st, All Saints Day, in celebration of the New York State Writers Institute’s forty years. Ms. Rhoades received her MA in English/ Creative Writing from the University of Albany where the NYSWI is located. She has been featured on Charlie Rossiter’s podcast Poetry Spoken Here and interviewed by Andrea Cunliffe for the Hudson Mohawk magazine at WOOC105.3 FM, a Sanctuary for Independent Media. She is published in Unlocking The Word, an Anthology of Found Poetry, Misfit Magazine, Dragon Poet’s Review, 2, Elegant Rage, a poetic tribute honoring the centennial of Woody Guthrie, The Highwatermark Salo[o]n performance series, Up the River and in Peerglass, an anthology of Hudson Valley peer groups and has a chapbook, Greeted by Wildflowers.

Jim Roberts grew up in rural East Texas. After college, he lived and worked briefly in Houston before moving to Cincinnati, Ohio in the early 1980s to pursue a business career. Now a full-time writer, he splits his time between Ohio and Texas. His fiction has appeared in Prime Number Magazine, Rappahannock Review, Snake Nation Review, Flash Fiction Magazine and is forthcoming in ArLiJo-The Arlington Literary Journal. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and twice named to the finalist list for the Screencraft Cinematic Short Story Award. The short story collection Of Fathers & Gods was longlisted for both the Santa Fe Writers Project Short Fiction Prize and the W.S. Porter Prize. 

Rob Roensch is the author of a story collection, The Wildflowers of Baltimore (Salt, 2012), a novella, The World and the Zoo (Outpost19, 2020) and a novel, In the Morning, the City is the Prairie (Belle Point Press, 2023). His stories were included in the Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Stories of 2018 and Best Small Fictions 2023 and listed as Distinguished Stories in the 2015 and 2022 Best American Short Stories. He has been awarded a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award and the Peter Taylor Scholarship in Fiction from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. He teaches at Oklahoma City University. 

Audell Shelburne is a professor and assistant dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, where he teaches poetry and a few other classes. In an earlier time, he served as chief editor of Windhover (2002-2010) and New Texas (2002). He has published poems in various venues, such as descant, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Agave, Blue Rock Review, Di-Verse-City. Most recently his poems have appeared in Verse Virtual, anthologies published by Dos Gatos Press, Up Your Ars Poetica, and Sequoia Speaks. In addition to the chapbook that this reading is taken from, Shelburne is nearing a completion of a book-length collection titled Before, Between, Above, Below, Beyond.

Molly Sizer is a retired rural sociologist living in southwest Oklahoma. She spends much of her at the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge, and occasionally writes poetry. She enjoys presenting her words to Lawton’s Third Saturday readings, the Woody Guthrie Poetry Readings (2018, 2022, 2023) and the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival. (2019, 2022, 2023). Her work has been published in Westview and The Oklahoma Review. She’s finally working on a chapbook.

Christopher Stephen Soden received his MFA in Poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts in January of 2005. He teaches craft, theory, genre and literature. He writes poetry, plays, literary, film and theatre critique for sharpcritic.com and EdgeDallas. Christopher’s poetry collection, Gusher, was recently released by QueerMojo. He received a Full Fellowship to Lambda Literary's Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices in August 2010. His performance piece: Queer Anarchy received The Dallas Voice's Award for Best Stage Performance. Water and A Christmas Wish were staged at Bishop Arts and Radio Flyer and Every Day is Christmas. In Heaven. at Nouveau 47. Other honors include: Distinguished Poets of Dallas, Poetry Society of America's Poetry in Motion Series, Founding Member, President and President Emeritus of The Dallas Poets Community. His work has appeared in: Rattle, The Cortland Review, 1111, Peculiar, Briar’s Lit, Typishly, F(r)iction, G & L Review, Chelsea Station, Glitterwolf, Collective Brightness, A Face to Meet the Faces, Resilience, Ganymede Poets: One, Gay City 2, The Café Review, The Texas Observer, Sentence, Borderlands, Off the Rocks, The James White Review, The New Writer, Velvet Mafia, Poetry Super Highway, Gertrude, Touch of Eros, Gents, Bad Boys and Barbarians, Windy City Times, ArLiJo, Best Texas Writing 2.

Denise Tolan's work has been included in places such as The Best Small Fictions, The Best Short Stories from The Saturday Evening Post, The Penn Review, Blue Mountain Review, Atlas and Alice, and Lunch Ticket. Her memoir, Italian Blood, was published by CavanKerry Press in October 2023.

Maria Veres is the author of four poetry books, most recently, The Breaking Place (Stonecrop Press, 2002). Her 2017 collection Church People was an Oklahoma Book Award finalist. She has been a featured reader at poetry events throughout the OKC area, and she is one of the hosts for the Last Sunday Poetry Reading at Full Circle Bookstore. She has also published a children's book, and she is a freelance content marketing writer. Originally from Colorado, she has lived in the OKC area since 1999.

Ron Wallace is an Oklahoma native and currently an adjunct instructor of English at Southeastern Oklahoma State University, in Durant, Oklahoma. He is the author of ten books of poetry, five of which have been finalists in the Oklahoma Book Awards. Renegade and Other Poems was the 2018 winner of the Oklahoma Book Award. Wallace has been a multiple Pushcart Prize nominee and has recently been published in Oklahoma Today, Concho River Review, San Pedro River Review, Borderlands and a number of other magazines and journals. He also edited Bull Buffalo and Indian Paintbrush, a collection of Oklahoma Poetry and completed his first novel, A Secret Lies in New Orleans, a finalist in fiction in the 2022 Oklahoma Book Awards.

Mark Wallingis the author of the short story collection I Can Hear Everything from Here, recently published by Turning Plow Press.

Cullen Whisenhunt, a graduate of Oklahoma City University's Red Earth MFA program, whose poetry has been included in a variety of journals. He has published two chapbooks of poetry with Fine Dog Press, Among the Trees (2020) and Childish Thing (2022), and he has a full-length collection forthcoming from Turning Plow Press. His scholarly publications include co-authoring an article on OK author Sanora Babb and serving as a contributing editor of the blog Archive Serendipities, both projects he's worked on with Dr Jeanetta Calhoun Mish. He currently teaches English at Eastern Oklahoma State College in McAlester, where he works with the McAlester Public Library Poetry Club and other area arts organizations. He also co-hosts (with Ron Wallace) monthly Poetry on Lost Street readings in Durant. 

Clarence Wolfshohl is professor emeritus at William Woods University. Since his first publication in The Road Apple Review, he has been active in the small press as writer and publisher for over fifty years, publishing poetry and non-fiction in many journals, both print and online, including New Texas, San Pedro River Review, Agave, Cape Rock, and New Letters. Among his publications are the e-chapbook Scattering Ashes (Virtual Artists Collective, 2016), the chapbook Holy Toledo (El Grito del Lobo Press, 2017), Queries and Wonderments (El Grito del Lobo Press, 2017), and Armadillos & Groundhogs (2019). 

Robert Wynne earned his MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University.  A former co-editor of Cider Press Review, he has published 6 chapbooks, and 3 full-length books of poetry, the most recent being “Self-Portrait as Odysseus,” published in 2011 by Tebot Bach Press.  He’s won numerous prizes, and his poetry has appeared in magazines and anthologies throughout North America.  He lives in Burleson, TX with his wife and a lively German Shepherd. His online home is www.rwynne.com

Stanton Yeakley is an attorney who lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma and writes between cases. He has been previously published in BULL, Epilogue Magazine, Haunted Waters Press, Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, New Plains Review, and Thimble Literary Magazine, among others. He has forthcoming work appearing in Evening Street Review. 

John M. Yozzo is a retired professor of English, residing in Tulsa. A native of Ponca City, Oklahoma, Yozzo was graduated from the University of Tulsa and taught college English over 34 years in Tulsa OK, Birmingham AL, and Ada, OK. Yozzo is the author of 3 books of poems, Only Wonder and Echoes and Omens, with the forthcoming Rhythm of the Years, through Village Books Press. Yozzo enjoys biking, especially along the less traveled sections of the Katy Trail in Missouri, and kayaking, especially on Lakes Ponca and Tenkiller and the Elk River.