2015 Scissortail: Author Biographies

Dorothy Alexander is a poet, storyteller and editor/publisher of a small independent press. Author of four poetry collections, and a memoir in prose and poetry, Dorothy is a founding member of the Woody Guthrie Poetry Readings in Okemah, Oklahoma. Inspired by the agrarian literary tradition and the populist political movements in the rural United States. She embraces primarily the narrative form, what she calls “narcissistic” narrative, and “selfie” poetry. The Oklahoma Center for the Book selected Dorothy as recipient of the Carlile Distinguished Service Award for her services to the Oklahoma literary community in 2013.

Rilla Askew received a 2009 Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in a variety of journals, and her story "The Killing Blanket" was selected for Prize Stories 1993: The O. Henry Awards. Askew's first novel, The Mercy Seat, was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Dublin IMPAC Prize, was a Boston Globe Notable Book, and received the Oklahoma Book Award and the Western Heritage Award in 1998. Fire in Beulah, her novel about the Tulsa Race Riot, received the American Book Award and the Myers Book Award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights. She was a 2004 fellow at Civiella Ranieri in Umbertide, Italy, and in 2008 her novel Harpsong received the Oklahoma Book Award, the Western Heritage Award, the WILLA Award from Women Writing the West, and the Violet Crown Award from the Writers League of Texas. Askew received the 2011 Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oklahoma Center for the Book. Her latest novel is Kind of Kin (Ecco Press, 2013 and in the UK by Atlantic Books).

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, 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 Neil's Bohr in Copenhagen, the title role in Krapp’s Last Tape, 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 has written for and about the theatre in essays, poetry, plays, and Spontaneous Behavior, a book on acting.  Dreaming Angel, was included in More Monologues for Men by Men and was also published as a prose poem in Newport Review. A poem, chet baker’s return, will be published by This Land Press. He was for many years the Artistic Director of The Image Theatre in New York, where he produced plays and taught acting.  In addition to teaching privately in NY, he has also taught at Rutgers University, the University of Oklahoma, the Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute and was a tenured faculty member at Sarah Lawrence College for twenty years. He recently received the Teachers who Make a Difference award from the Creative Coalition. Mr. Austin is currently Artistic Director of The Liberty Free Theatre in upstate New York.

Walter Bargen has published eighteen books of poetry. His most recent books are: Days Like This Are Necessary: New & Selected Poems (2009), Endearing Ruins (2012), Trouble Behind Glass Doors (2013), Quixotic (2014), and Gone West (2014). He was appointed the first poet laureate of Missouri (2008-2009). He was awarded a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship (1991), the Hanks Prize (1996), The William Rockhill Nelson Award (2005), and others. His poems, essays, and stories have appeared in over 100 magazines. www.walterbargen.com

Alan Berecka is a librarian at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi. He has published poetry in such places as the Red River Review, Concho River Review and the Texas Review. He has published three collections of poetry. He has been a regular presenter at the Scissortail since its second year and is grateful to have had a front row seat to watch the growth of this wonderful annual event, and for all the deep friendships this event has brought him. In appreciation of one of those friendships he would like to dedicate his reading to the memory of the Late-Great Jim Spurr.

Jerry Bradley is University Professor of English at Lamar University. He is the author of 6 books including 3 books of poetry: Simple Versions of Disaster, The Importance of Elsewhere, and most recently Crownfeathers and Effigies. A member of the Texas Institute of Letters, Bradley was selected as a 2014 Piper Professor by the Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation. He was also named Outstanding Alumnus from Midwestern State University’s College of Liberal Arts in 2002. His poetry has appeared in many literary magazines including New England Review, Modern Poetry Studies, Poetry Magazine, and Southern Humanities Review.  He is poetry editor of Concho River Review.

Joey Brown is a poet and prose writer whose work has appeared in a number of literary journals and magazines, most recently Cybersoliel, Oklahoma Review, and Louisiana Review. She has published one collection of poems, Oklahomaography (2010), and recently completed a second titled Feral Love. Her most recent projects include a collection of humorous essays about her misadventures in home

renovations, and a nonfiction essay/blogging project on what it means to live well which she is coauthoring with her husband, prose writer Michael Howarth. In 2014, Joey founded the Celebration of Ozarks Literature at Missouri Southern State University, where she teaches professional, technical, and creative writing.

Julie Chappell’s creative writing has appeared in several anthologies and journals including Revival: Spoken Word from Lollapalooza 94; For Jayhawk Fans Only; Agave: A Celebration of Tequila in Story, Song, Poetry, Essay, and Graphic Art; Elegant Rage: A Poetic Tribute to Woody Guthrie; Cybersoleil: A Literary Journal; Malpaïs Review; Voices de la Luna, and Dragon Poet Review & Quarterly. Her first poetry collection, Faultlines: One Woman’s Shifting Boundaries, was published by Village Books Press in October 2013. She also co-edited an anthology of creative works, entitled Writing Texas, published in March 2014 by Lamar University Press. She is currently working on a second volume of poetry, Mad Habits of a Life, and a memoir of her years as the sheriff’s daughter, The Jail/House Rocked.​

Jerry Craven has published 25 books; the most recent is a 2014 novel, Women of Thunder from TCU Press: http://womenofthunder.com/ . Currently Craven lives in Jasper, Texas and commutes to Lamar University where he is press director for Lamar University Press. He also serves as director for Ink Brush Press and as editor-in-chief of the literary journal Amarillo Bay.  He has taught for five universities in three countries and has lived for extended periods of time in South America, South-East Asia, the Middle East and Europe.  www.jerrycraven.com

Terry Dalrymple's publications include four books of fiction, including the forthcoming collection Love Stories (Sort Of); thirty or so stories published in anthologies and literary journals; and a collection he edited called Texas Soundtrack. He founded the long-running literary journal Concho River Review as well as the Fort Concho Museum Press Literary Festival held in San Angelo, TX, for ten years. He is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters. He has taught literature and writing at Angelo State University for the past thirty-five years.

Michael Dooley (aka Woodstok Farley) is an assistant professor at Tarleton State University. He has taught in the Department of English and Languages for nearly fourteen years now. Michael also is a long time sponsor of Sigma Tau Delta and a founding advisor of TSU’s Academic Advising Center. Having submitted regularly to faculty chapbooks, Michael has branched out and began attending local and regional conferences to present original creative short stories in such venues as SCMLA, Langdon Review, SWPCAC, and Scissortail. Recently, Michael had his first short story, “As the Wave Rose,” published in the online literary journal Cybersoleil. His latest creation is the third chapter of an episodic work entitled Surf, Swamp and Stone.

Third generation Oklahoman Maureen Oehler DuRant is dead set on becoming a poet. So, she writes, reads, wanders the Wichitas, and goes to Scissortail where she finds inspiration and encouragement. She teaches at Cameron University and presents writing workshops for Oklahoma teachers and students as an Oklahoma Writing Project Teacher Consultant. Her publications include poetry in Red River Review, Crosstimbers, poetry and fiction in The Oklahoma Writing Project 2011 and 2013 anthologies, and a postcard history of the United States Military Academy at West Point published by Arcadia Press.

Alan Gann, a retired electrical engineer in the midst of his second career as a teaching artist, facilitates creative writing workshops at Texans Can Academy and wrote DaVerse Works, Big Thought’s poetry curriculum for secondary schools. A longtime member and current president of the Dallas Poets Community, he has helped edit their literary journal, Illya’s Honey, and has become the guiding force behind their peer workshop series. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Award nominee, Alan co-edits the online journal Red River Review. Some of the journals that have published his work are Red Fez, Main Street Rag, The Texas Poetry Calendar, and Cybersoleil (forthcoming). What’s left of Alan’s time is filled with folk music, bike riding, bird walks, and photographing dragonflies.

Andrew Geyer’s latest book project 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. 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 the Spur Award from the Western Writers of America. A member of the Texas Institute of Letters, and recently recognized as a Breakthrough Rising Star by the USC system, he currently serves as Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina Aiken and as fiction editor for Concho River Review.

Jessica Glover teaches for the English department and the Gender and Women’s Studies program at Oklahoma State University. She graduated from Missouri State University in 2009 with her MA in English. Currently, she is working on her first book as a PhD candidate. Her latest work has appeared in American Literary Review, Aesthetica, Magma Poetry, Reed Magazine, So to Speak, and MuseWrite's Shifts: An Anthology of Women's Growth Through Change. She won the 2013 Rash Awards and the 2013 Edwin Markham Prize for Poetry. Her work is forthcoming in Slippery Elm and Oklahoma Humanities.

Bayard Godsave is the author of two short story collections: Lesser Apocalypses and Torture Tree. His work has appeared in the Cream City Review, The Gettysburg Review, and Pleiades, among other places. He teaches writing at Cameron University in Lawton, Oklahoma.

As a lifelong student of history and lover of alternative historical fiction, William Peter Grasso’s novels explore the concept 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 six novels—East Wind Returns, Unpunished, Long Walk To The Sun, Operation Long Jump, Operation Easy Street, and Operation Blind Spot—have spent many months 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.

Gail Henderson has been published in Byline and Creations 2012, Creations 2013, Creations 2014, and Blackbirds: First Flight. She has published two books of poetry. Red Bird Woman is a collection of poems published under the name Gail Wood. Bare is a collaboration with Oklahoma photographer Mike Duncan which features poems written specifically for nude photographs. She holds a Masters of Education in English and Social Studies from East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma, and currently sits on the board for the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services.

Carol Hamilton has upcoming and recent publications in Louisiana Review, Tribeca Poetry Review, Boston Literary Review, Atlanta Review, I-70 Review, U.S.1 Worksheet, Colere, A Narrow Fellow, Lilliput, Bluestem, Flint Hills Review, Hubbub, Blue Unicorn, Sow’s Ear Poetry and others. She has published 17 books: children's novels, legends and poetry. She is a former Poet Laureate of Oklahoma and has been nominated five times for a Pushcart Prize. Her most recent volume of poetry is Such Deaths.

Michelle Hartman’s work was recently featured in the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, and also appears in over 70 journals and 20 anthologies as well as multiple countries overseas. Her second book of poetry, Irony and Irreverence from Lamar University Press is due out soon and will be available on Amazon along with her first book, Disenchanted and Disgruntled. She is the editor for the online journal, Red River Review and holds a BS in Political Science-Pre Law from Texas Wesleyan University.

LeAnne Howe is the author of novels, plays, poetry, screenplays, and scholarship that deal with Native experiences. An enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, her first novel Shell Shaker, received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation 2002; Evidence of Red, poetry, won the Oklahoma Book Award, 2006, and Choctalking on Other Realities, memoir, won the 2014 MLA Prize for Studies in Native American Literatures, Cultures, and Languages. Other awards include a Fulbright scholarship 2010-2011; 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas; and a 2012 United States Artists Ford Fellowship. Howe’s current project is a new play co-authored with playwright and actress Monique Mojica titled, Sideshow Freaks and Circus Injuns.  She is the Eidson Distinguished Professor of American Literature at the University of Georgia. For more info see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWDVttYrMJo&feature=youtu.be

Jessica Isaacs is an English professor at Seminole State College, where she serves as the director of SSC’s annual Howlers & Yawpers Creativity Symposium. Her first full-length book of poems, Deep August, was released by Village Books Press in December, 2014. She has presented her writing at several regional and national conferences, and she has published her poems in various journals and anthologies, including Cybersoleil Literary Journal, All Roads Lead Home Poetry Blog, SugarMule’s Women Writing Nature, The Muse, Elegant Rage, an audio book – Spare Ashes (in production with KevyD Records), and a chapbook – smoldering embers. She is a member of the coordinating committee for the Woody Guthrie Poets, and she is also the founder and co-editor of Dragon Poet Review, an online literary journal. She makes her home in Prague, Oklahoma with her husband, kids, dog, and cat.

Mark Allen Jenkins is a PhD student in Humanities with a Creative Writing Focus at the University of Texas at Dallas. He is the former Editor-in-Chief for Reunion: The Dallas Review. His poetry has appeared in Memorious, minnesota review, South Dakota Review, Sycamore Review, and is forthcoming in Every River on Earth: Writing from Appalachian Ohio.

Hank Jones has taught English composition and literature at Tarleton State University for the past fourteen years, as well as serving a four-year stint as Assistant Director in the International Office, and has found none of this conducive to writing poetry. But he has started writing again anyway. He has read his poetry and creative non-fiction at various venues including Woody Guthrie Festival stages in Oklahoma City and Okemah, Oklahoma; The Langdon Review Weekend in Granbury, Texas; The Winter Gathering Festival in Stephenville, Texas; South Central MLA in Fort Worth; PCA/ACA in San Antonio; and Southwest PCA/ACA in Albuquerque (for three consecutive years). His poetry and creative non-fiction have also appeared in Cybersoleil: A Literary Journal (2013, 2014), Voices de la Luna (2014), and Dragon Poet Review (2014). This past April he reached a pinnacle when he was accepted to read at the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival in Ada, Oklahoma.

Hardy Jones is author of the novel Every Bitter Thing (Black Lawrence Press, 2010) and the memoir People of the Good God (Mongrel Empire Press, 2015). His essay “Dry Gumbo” and short story “A New Bike for Little Mike” are nominated for 2015 Pushcart Prizes. His creative nonfiction has been awarded two grants. His fiction and nonfiction has appeared in journals such as the Red Truck Review, Louisiana Folklife Journal, Litterbox Magazine, The Straitjackets, Driftless Review, Dark Sky Magazine, The Furnace Review, and The Jabberwock Review. His short stories were anthologized in the 2009 Dogzplot Flash Fiction Anthology, The Best of Clapboard House Literary Journal, Southern Gothic: New Tales of the South, and Summer Shorts II. He is the co-founder and Executive Editor of the online journal Cybersoleil (www.cybersoleiljournal.com), and he is the Flash Fiction Editor for Sugar Mule Hardy Jones is an Associate Professor of English and the Director of Creative Writing at Cameron University (hjones@cameron.edu). His website is www.hardyjoneswriting.com and he is on Twitter @HardyJonesWrite. Hardy splits his time between Lawton, Oklahoma and Si Sa Ket Province Thailand.

Jennifer Kidney is a freelance scholar and adjunct assistant professor for the College of Liberal Studies at the University of Oklahoma. She is the author of six books of poetry; her most recent collection, Road Work Ahead, was published by Village Books Press in 2012. She hopes to have a new book, The Road to the River, out soon. Her poetry has also appeared in numerous journals and little magazines, including Sugar Mule, Crosstimbers, Picking Up the Tempo, Kudzu, The Seattle Review, Malpais Review, and The Bellingham Review. 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 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.  In 2007, the Oklahoma Library Association presented her with a Special Project Award for Let's Talk About It, Oklahoma, a statewide reading and discussion project that Kidney oversaw for twenty-two years. Kidney has won awards for her poetry, technical writing, and brownie baking, and lately she has been presenting a series of programs on Herbs and Spices at the Ada and Jim Lucas-Checotah Public Libraries. She lives in Norman with two cats, Princess Freddy and Marvin Gaye, and her dog Lizzie.

Former NEA Fellow Donald Levering’s 12th poetry book, The Water Leveling With Us, was published in 2014 by Red Mountain Press. He has worked as a groundskeeper, teacher on the Navajo reservation, and human services administrator. Featured in the Academy of American Poets Forum, the Ad Astra Poetry Project, and the Duende Series, he won the 2015 Literal Latté Award. His poems have appeared in The Alembic, Atlanta Review, Blue Rock Review, Bloomsbury Review, Columbia, Commonweal, Harpur Palate, Hiram Poetry Review, Hunger Mountain, Notre Dame Review, Poet & Critic, Poet Lore, Quiddity, Southern Poetry Review, Water~Stone, and Yemassee. He is married to the artist Jane Shoenfeld and lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Visit donaldlevering.com.

Johnie Catfish Mahan is a performance street poet. He loves to engage his audience with currently nostalgic ideas and thought provoking poems. With six self-published chap books and the seventh, Posthumorously, in the works JC is busy getting his poetry out to the people. He has featured at Shawnee, Full Circle, Wayward Poets, and soon at the Norman Train Depot. His poems have been published in Blood and Thunder, Dragon Poet, and many of the Oklahoma/Woody Guthrie Journals. One of his favorite venues is Scissortail. As a hair stylist and owner of JC"s funky Hair Ranch Salon in Edmond, he has hosted many poetry readings, wine tastings, art shows and concerts. Be sure to like the salon face book page. Catfish also enjoys cooking, pottery, painting, photography, raising poultry and bees. 

George McCormick has published stories most recently in Epoch, This Land, Santa Monica Review, and arcadia. His story collection, Salton Sea, was published by Noemi Press in 2013, and his story "The Mexican" won a 2013 O. Henry Prize. In 2015 Queen's Ferry Press will publish his novel Inland Empire. McCormick lives with his wife and daughter in Lawton, Oklahoma, where he teaches in the Department of English and Foreign Languages at Cameron University.

Gary Worth Moody's first collection of poems, Hazards of Grace was published by Red Mountain Press in 2012. His second collection, Occoquan, also by Red Mountain Press (forthcoming in March 2015) depicts the struggles of women for emancipation and suffrage in the environs of Virginia's piedmont region and the infamous Occoquan Workhouse. Of Hazards of Grace, Stephen Bodio, author of Eagle Dreams and Querencia writes: “In a time when so much poetry is weak tea, Gary Worth Moody’s comes on like a rare old bourbon, rich and complex and burning like fire”. About Occoquan, Denise Low, former Kansas Poet Laureate (2007-2009) and author of Mélange Block, states: “In reading Occoquan I enter timeless conflagrations of events. This poet is a live ember.” A graduate of St. John's College and of the George Mason University MFA Program, Gary 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). A falconer, Gary lives in Santa Fe with the artist and writer, Oriana Rodman, two dogs and a red-tail hawk.

Dr. Phil Morgan is a poet, a painter, a songwriter, a biographer and historian, a literary critic and novelist. Four of the six books he has published since 2006 have won regional, national or international awards. His most recent work, a novel titled Anompolichi the Wordmaster, a story set in 1399 in America, was published in October by White Dog Press.

John Graves Morris, Professor of English at Cameron University, is a naturalized Okie, having lived in the state nearly three times as long as he has ever lived anywhere else (Belleville, Illinois, his original hometown; Johnson Air Base in Tokyo, Japan; three cities in New Mexico; three cities in Wisconsin; Tempe, AZ; and for twenty-six years and counting, Lawton).  At Cameron, he teaches courses in freshman English, American literature, film, and creative writing--poetry.  He is the author of Noise and Stories (Plain View Press, 2008) and is still attempting to finish a second collection to be entitled Unwritten Histories.  His poems have appeared recently or will appear in The Great Plains Journal, The Red Earth Review, The Red River Review, Volume One, and Westview.  His poem "This Patched Town, This Home," which appeared in the August 2014 issue of The Red River Review has been nominated by the editors of the journal for a Pushcart Prize.

karla k. morton, the 2010 Texas Poet Laureate, is a Councilor of the Texas Institute of Letters and a graduate of Texas A&M University.  Described as “one of the most adventurous voices in American poetry,” she is a Betsy Colquitt Award Winner, twice an Indie National Book Award Winner, the recipient of the Writer-in-Residency E2C Grant, and the author of ten collections of poetry.  Morton has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, is a nominee for the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame, and established an ekphrastic collaborative touring exhibit titled:  No End of Vision: Texas as Seen By Two Laureates, pairing photography with poetry.  Morton’s work has been used by many students in their UIL Contemporary Poetry contests, and was recently featured with seven other prominent authors in 8 Voices: Contemporary Poetry of the American Southwest.  

Thomas “Tom” Murphy grew up in Barron Park, an unincorporated section of Palo Alto, CA. Murphy first published poems and fiction in 1986. Winner of the Charles Gordone award in both fiction and poetry 2000 and 2001 respectively, Murphy has had work recently published in Beatitude: Golden Anniversary Edition, Windward Review, Nebula, Strike, Switchgrass Review and forthcoming in Voices de la Luna. He has been an editor of three different literary journals. He continues to pen visceral poems, fiction, personal essays, literary articles, and interviews and has expanded his art in the mediums of photography, video, multimedia and sculpture. He lives with his wife and their three daughters and teaches at Texas A&M University—Corpus Christi.

Benjamin Myers is the 2015/2016 Oklahoma Poet Laureate and 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 appeared in The Yale Review, Nimrod, 32 Poems, Poetry Northwest, Tar River Poetry, Salamander, The New York Quarterly, The Christian Century, and many other journals, as well as online at the Verse Daily website. His reviews and essays may be read in World Literature Today, Books and Culture, and several academic journals. He is the recipient of a 2014 Tennessee Williams Scholarship from the Sewanee Writers' Conference and of a 2011 Oklahoma Book Award for Poetry. Myers teaches creative writing and literature at Oklahoma Baptist University, where he is the Crouch-Mathis Associate Professor of Literature.

Brent Newsom is the author of the poetry collection Love’s Labors (CavanKerry Press, 2015). His poetry and prose have appeared in This Land, The Southern Review, Cave Wall, PANK, Pleiades, The Oklahoma Review, and elsewhere. A native of Louisiana, he holds a PhD in English from Texas Tech University and teaches creative writing and literature at Oklahoma Baptist University.

Brady Peterson was born in Ft. Sill, Oklahoma and currently lives near Belton, Texas where for much of the past twenty-nine years he worked building homes and teaching rhetoric. His poems have appeared in New Texas, Windhover, Nerve Cowboy, Boston Literary Magazine, Heartlodge, The Journal of Military Experience, Texas Poetry Calendar, Enigmatist, all roads will lead you home, Blue Hole and San Antonio Express-News.  He has published a chapbook, Glued to the Earth and a full length volume of poetry, Between Stations.

Jason Poudrier is currently an instructor at Cameron University and is serving as an executive council board member of Military Experience & the Arts. His poems have recently appeared in World Literature Today and Blue Streak. He is currently working on his first novel Holding Midnight. He has authored two poetry collections, Red Fields (Mongrel Empire Press, 2012) and a chapbook, In the Rubble at Our Feet (Rose Rock Press, 2011). In 2013 Red Fields was awarded the Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal, short-listed for the Hoffer Grand Prize, and awarded an honorable mention in the poetry category.

Elizabeth Raby is the author of a memoir, Ransomed Voices (Red Mountain Press, 2013), three full-length poetry collections, This Woman, Ink on Snow, and The Year the Pears Bloomed Twice, all published by Virtual Artists Collective, and four chapbooks. She was one of eight poets selected for the anthology, 8 Voices: Contemporary Poetry of the American Southwest (Baskerville Publishers, 2012). She and her husband live in Santa Fe, NM where they conduct a monthly open poetry reading.

   

Charlotte Renk settled in rural Athens, Texas to teach, raise a family, and write after earning her Ph.D. from L.S.U.. Besides journals such as Kalliope, Concho River, Mochila Review, Sow’s Ear, and Southwest Review, Eakin Press published her prizewinning These Holy Hungers: Secret Yearnings from an Empty Cup, Poetry in the Arts published, Solidago, An Altar to Weeds, and Blue Horse Press selected The Tenderest Petal Hears, co-winner of the 2014 chapbook contest. She walks the woods behind her cabin to find inspiration in the natural world and sort thoughts about the unnatural one.

The poems and essays of Carol Coffee Reposa have appeared or are forthcoming in The Atlanta Review, The Formalist, The Texas Observer, Coal City Review, The Valparaiso Review, and others. She has published four collections of poetry: At the Border: Winter Lights, The Green Room, Facts of Life and Underground Musicians. Thrice nominated for the Pushcart Prize and twice a finalist for Texas State Poet Laureate, she also has received three Fulbright-Hays Fellowships for study in Russia, Peru, Ecuador and Mexico. She now works as nonfiction editor for Concho River Review and as poetry editor for Voices de la Luna, having become a professor emerita of English at San Antonio College in 2010

Sally Rhoades, a North Country artist, is a poet, playwright and performer. She has been published in UpThe River, an anthology of the Hudson Valley, Elegant Rage, an Anthology on Woody Gutherie’s centennial, the Highwatermark Salo[o]n Series of Stockport flats, Peer Glass, an anthology of Hudson valley and on 8T3 at swankwriting.com.  Her first play, Cradle Arms, was invited to the New York State University Playwriting Festival at Brockport, NY. Tina Howe, the keynote speaker, called it, "...a brave new work." It had a twentieth anniversary performance in 2012. Her other play, Moon Over Manhattan, was produced at the Johnstown Colonial Theatre in 2007 and brought to the Philadelphia Fringe Festival in 2008. Performance work includes: “I am Wing,” she said. “I am Wing”, presented at the Yes! Poetry and Performance series, Albany, NY(2014), ReWind, shown in NYC(2013), Howl, a Poet Dances, performed at the Arts Center of the Capital Region(2013), Beyond the Birch, the BirchBeyond, NYC(2011) Pomegranates and Roses, a Love Story, shown at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival(2008).She has performed in Luis Lara Malvacias’, Sooner than you think at the 92nd street Y's Harkness Festival, NYC(2009). She received an MA in Creative Writing (1995) from the University of Albany, Albany, N.Y.

R. Flowers Rivera is a native of Mississippi. She completed a Ph.D. in English at Binghamton University, and an M.A. in English at Hollins University, in addition to an M.S. at Georgia State University and a B.S. at the University of Georgia. Her work has been anthologized in Mischief, Caprice & Other Poetic Strategies and published in journals such as African American Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Columbia, Feminist Studies, Obsidian, and The Southern Review. Her short story, “The Iron Bars,” won the 1999 Peregrine Prize. Rivera was awarded the 2009 Leo Love Merit Scholarship in Poetry in association with the Taos Summer Writers Conference. Rivera was a finalist for the May Swenson Award, the Journal Intro Award, the Naomi Long Madgett Award, the Gary Snyder Memorial Award, and the Paumanok Poetry Award, as well as a nominee for The Pushcart Prize. Her first collection of poetry, Troubling Accents (July 2013), received a nomination from Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters and the 2014 Poetry Book of the Year Award by the Texas Association of Authors. She has been most recently named recipient of the prestigious 2015 Naomi Long Madgett Poetry award for her second collection, Heathen. She currently resides in McKinney, Texas.

Rob Roensch is an Assistant Professor of English at Oklahoma City University. His book of short stories, The Wildflowers of Baltimore, was published by Salt in 2012. He has published short fiction recently in Epoch, American Short Fiction and Wigleaf.

Mary Stone is the author of the poetry collections One Last Cigarette and Mythology of Touch and the chapbooks The Dopamine Letters, Aching Buttons, and Blink Finch. Her poetry and prose has appeared in Mid-American Review, Gargoyle, Arts & Letters, Stirring and many other fine journals. She is the recipient of the Langston Hughes Award in Poetry and the 2012 AWP Intro Journals Award. After earning her BA in English Literature from Missouri Western State University, She her MFA in Poetry from the University of Kansas. Stone serves as a poetry editor for Sundress Publications, where she is currently co-editing an anthology of poetry on the politics of identity, and she is the co-editor of Stone Highway Review. Currently, she lives in St. Joseph, MO, where she teaches English and coordinates the First Thursdays Open Mic Reading Series.

Larry D. Thomas (www.larrydthomas.com) is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and served as the 2008 Texas Poet Laureate.  He has published several collections of poetry, most recently The Goatherd (Mouthfeel Press 2014) and Art Museums (Blue Horse Press 2014).  As If Light Actually Matters: New & Selected Poems, is forthcoming from Texas Review Press (Texas A&M University Press Consortium) in Spring 2015 (http://www.tamupress.com/product/As-If-Light-Actually-Matters,8115.aspx).

A. J. Tierney obtained an M.F.A. in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Ms. Tierney sits on the editorial board of Nimrod Literary Journal. She has taught writing at Tulsa Community College, Bacone College, and Oral Roberts University. Her work has appeared in Foliate Oak, Narrative Magazine, River Lit, The Wordsmith Journal, and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. Currently, she works with the Carrera Program, an adolescent pregnancy prevention program, as the 9^th Grade Job Club Coordinator.

Leslie Ullman is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Progress on the Subject of Immensity, issued from University of New Mexico Press in 2013 and co-winner of the 2014 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award in Poetry. Previous collections have won the Yale Series of Younger Poets award (Natural Histories) and the Iowa Poetry Prize (Slow Work Through Sand), and she has received two NEA Creative Writing Fellowships. For twenty-seven years Ullman taught at University of Texas-El Paso, where she established and directed the Bilingual MFA Program. She remains on the faculty of the low-residency MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College of the Fine Arts, where she has taught for over thirty years. In addition to poems published in numerous journals, she also has reviewed books for the Kenyon Review and Poetry Magazine, and she has published craft essays in the AWP Writer’s Chronicle. She now lives in Taos, New Mexico, where among other things she teaches skiing every winter at Taos Ski Valley.

Ron Wallace was born and raised in Durant, Oklahoma.  He is the author of seven volumes of critically acclaimed poetry, all published by TJMF Publishing of Clarksville, Indiana. His first book, Native Son, was a finalist in the 2007 Oklahoma Book Awards. I Come from Cowboys … and Indians won the 2009 Oklahoma Writer’s Federation Best Book of Poetry Award. Oklahoma Cantos was again a finalist in the 2011 Oklahoma Book Awards, and won the 2011 Oklahoma Writer’s Federation Best Book of Poetry Award. His fifth volume of poetry Hanging the Curveball a collection of baseball-themed poems from his earlier volumes along with fifteen new baseball poems, won the 2013 Oklahoma Writer’s Best Book of Poetry Award. Cowboys and Cantos, a volume of reworked, collected and brand new poems made him a finalist for the third time in the 2013 Oklahoma Book Awards. His work has been featured in Oklahoma Today, The Long Islander, Concho River Review, cybersoleiljournal, di-verse city-Austin International Poetry, “Cobalt, Red Earth Review, Dragon Poets Review, Sugar Mule, Cross-timbers, and a number of other magazines and anthologies.

Retired from the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma, Sarah Webb edited poetry and fiction for Crosstimbers. She now serves as co-editor for Just This, a zen arts magazine from the Austin Zen Center, and is a member of the editorial committee for All Roads Will Lead You Home. Her poetry collection Black (virtual artists collective, 2013) was selected as a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award and the Writers' League of Texas Book Award. 

Jim Wilson is an assistant professor of English at Seminole State College, Seminole, Oklahoma. He has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Spalding University, Louisville, Kentucky. His personal essays are published in Platte Valley Review; Seeing Red, Hollywood’s Pixeled Skins; World of Indigenous North America; The Muse; and Dragon Poet Review. He will read “Puxa Vida” a short selection from is memoir-in-progress, Love in the Time of Civil War; and “Koroviev and Behemoth” from his novel-in-progress, 18 Lives: Johnny Quest and Mitt Romney. 

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