Jen Bergmark

Cynthia Black is the former WSC Press Managing Editor out of Wayne State College. She currently lives in Corvallis, Oregon where she edits, writes and teaches. She lives with her husband, Cave Canem fellow Timothy Black and her two boys.

Faith Colburn

Neil Harrison’s poems have been collected in Story (Logan House, 1995/96), In a River of Wind (Bridge Burner’s, 2000), and Into the River Canyon at Dusk (Lone Willow, 2005). His fourth collection, Back in the Animal Kingdom, is presently seeking publication. He teaches English and Creative Writing at Northeast Community College in Norfolk, Nebraska, where he runs the Visiting Writers Series.

Hope was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  She moved to New York City at eighteen to attend Eugene Lang College at The New School where she studied Philosophy.  After college she traveled to India, where she studied yoga for two months.  Returning to New York City, she enrolled at Brooklyn College for a Master’s degree in Education for Students with Disabilities.  After three years of teaching, the inner-city noise, pollution and lack of anything wild made moving back home irresistible.  Hope now teaches at a ACE Leadership High School, a charter school dedicated to teaching in the context of Architecture, Construction and Engineering.    

Greg Kosmicki, thebackwaterspress@gmail.com
Greg is the founding editor and publisher of The Backwaters Press. He had his first near-poetry experience as a young man when a bright light filled the room and he found he was hovering above himself watching himself write. A voice spoke to him and told him to go get more of the latte he was drinking, but he later discovered that it was just that his undershorts were too tight.

Candace Nadon received an MFA from Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing, and she is now a PhD candidate in English with a Creative Writing Concentration at Georgia State University in Atlanta.  Her work has appeared in "Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose" and Agnes Scott College's Writers' Festival Magazine.  She is a Colorado native

Princella Parker is a member of the Omaha Tribe of Nebraska. She graduated in 2008 from Creighton University with a Bachelors Degree in Broadcast Theatre. Parker was Associate Producer for the NET Televisions documentary Standing Bear’s Footsteps, due to broadcast nationwide on PBS in October of 2012. She assisted in production of a documentary on the Omaha, Santee and Winnebago Reservations with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Native Daughters course.  She interned at two newspapers as a multimedia journalist at the In Forum in Fargo, North Dakota and The News Leader in Springfield, Missouri.

Heather Riccio

Heather Riccio is the Career Editor at Urbanette Magazine and Director of Partnerships at Project Migration, an accessories company with a charitable initiative. She holds a BA in Liberal Studies with an emphasis in English and Creative Writing and a BS in Anthropology from University of California, Riverside. She completed her MFA in Fiction writing from the UCR Palm Desert MFA program in December 2009. For more information on Project Migration, check out www.projectmigration.org.  More about Heather and her writing can be found at www.heathermriccio.com.

Karin Rosman lives in Seattle, Washington with her husband and son. Her stories have appeared in Stone’s Throw Magazine and Revolution House.

Terry Sanville lives in San Luis Obispo, California with his artist-poet wife (his in-house editor) and one skinny cat (his in-house critic). He writes full time, producing short stories, essays, poems, an occasional play, and novels. Since 2005, his poetry and short stories have been accepted by more than 140 literary and commercial journals, magazines, and anthologies including the Houston Literary Review, Birmingham Arts Journal and Boston Literary Magazine. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for his short story “The Sweeper.” Terry is a retired urban planner and an accomplished jazz and blues guitarist – who once played with a symphony orchestra backing up jazz legend George Shearing.

Karen Gettert Shoemaker’s short story collection Night Sounds and Other Stories was published by Dufour Editions in 2002. It was re-issued in the United Kingdom by Parthian Books in 2006. Her short story “Playing Horses” was short-listed in Best American Short Stories 2002, and has been anthologized in A Different Plain, published by Nebraska Press, and Times of Sorrow/Times of Grace, published by Backwaters Press. Her list of publications for both fiction and poetry include: the London Times, Prairie Schooner, South Dakota Review, Foliage, Kalliope, Fugue, Heartlands Today, and The Nebraska Review. She holds a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of Nebraska Lincoln and is a faculty mentor with the University of Nebraska’s MFA in Writing Program. She lives in Lincoln, NE where she and her husband own and operate Shoemaker’s Travel Center. 

Born in Mexico and an Associate Professor at Northwest Vista College, Natalia is a member of Macondo. She received an MA at the University of Texas and an MFA from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Awards include the Alfredo Moral de Cisneros Award and the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize. A board member of Wising Up Press, she is overjoyed that her first book of poems, Eight Marry Wives, is forthcoming from Pecan Grove Press. Her works appear in the Sugar House Review,  Bordersenses,  Borderlands, other anthologies, and most recently Shifting Balance Sheets: Women's Stories of Naturalized Citizenship.

Robert Wexelblatt is professor of humanities at Boston University’s College of General Studies.  He has published essays, stories, and poems in a wide variety of journals, two story collections, Life in the Temperate Zone and The Decline of Our Neighborhood, a book of essays, Professors at Play; his recent novel, Zublinka Among Women, won the Indie Book Awards First Prize for Fiction.

Kirby Wright was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii.  He is a graduate of Punahou School in Honolulu and the University of California at San Diego.  He received his MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University.  Wright has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and is a past recipient of the Ann Fields Poetry Prize, the Academy of American Poets Award, the Browning Society Award for Dramatic Monologue, and Arts Council Silicon Valley Fellowships in Poetry and The Novel.  BEFORE THE CITY, his first book of poetry, took First Place at the 2003 San Diego Book Awards.  Wright is also the author of the companion novels PUNAHOU BLUES and MOLOKA’I NUI AHINA, both set in Hawaii.  He was a Visiting Writer at the 2009 International Writers Conference in Hong Kong, where he represented the Pacific Rim region of Hawaii.  He was also a Visiting Writer at the 2010 Martha’s Vineyard Writers Residency in Edgartown, Mass.

Malaika King Albrecht’s chapbook Lessons in Forgetting was a finalist in the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards and received honorable mention in the Brockman Campbell Award. Her poems have been published in many literary magazines and anthologies and have recently won awards at the North Carolina Poetry Council, Salem College and Press 53. She’s the founding editor of Redheaded Stepchild, an online magazine that only accepts poems that have been rejected elsewhere. She lives in Pinehurst, N.C. with her family and is a therapeutic riding instructor.

Jan Beatty’s new book, Red Sugar, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press and was named a finalist for the 2009 Paterson Poetry Prize. Other books include Boneshaker (U. of Pgh. Press, 2002), finalist for the Milton Kessler Award, Mad River, winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize (U. of Pgh. Press, 1995), and a limited edition chapbook, Ravenous, winner of  the 1995 State Street Prize. Other awards include the $15,000 Creative Achievement Award in Literature from the Heinz Foundation and Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, and two fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Individual poems have appeared in journals such as Quarterly West, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, and Court Green. Her poetry has appeared in anthologies published by the Oxford University Press, University of Illinois Press, Kent State University Press, and the University of Iowa Press. Her work has earned writing fellowships at the MacDowell Colony; Ucross, Wyoming; Hedgebrook, Washington; Leighton Studios at Banff, Alberta, Canada; Ragdale; Jentel, Wyoming; and the Santa Fe Arts Institute. Beatty directs the creative writing program at Carlow University, where she runs the Madwomen in the Attic writing workshops and teaches in the low-residency MFA program

Robert Bensen’s poems have been published in the US, UK, Caribbean, and in African-American and Native American journals.  Recent publications include poems and prose in the Journal of Commonwealth Literature (India), and an essay in River, Blood, and Corn.  He will be Featured Poet in a 2012 issue of The Thomas Hardy Review. Awards for his poetry include an NEA poetry fellowship and the Robert Penn Warren Award.  He edited Children of the Dragonfly:  Native American Voices on Child Custody and Education.  His poetry has been exhibited in five galleries including in the National Museum of Dance, Saratoga Springs, NY. 

Timothy Black’s first poetic novella, Connecticut Shade, is in its second printing through WSC Press. He teaches poetry at Wayne State College, and is a Cave Canem Fellow. He lives in Wakefield, Nebraska with his wife and two sons. Timothy’s work has appeared in the anthologies The Logan House Anthology of 21st Century American Poetry, The Great American Roadshow, and Words Like Rain. His poem, How to Finally Cry, won the Maravillosa Contest from Caper Literary Journal. He has been published in The Platte Valley Review and at bringtheink.com, has poems forthcoming in Breadcrumb Scabs, Black Magnolias and Decanto Poetry Magazine, and has won an Academy of American Poets prize for his poem Heavy Freight.

Becky Faber

Howie Good is the author of the full-length poetry collections Lovesick (Press Americana, 2009), Heart With a Dirty Windshield (BeWrite Books, 2010), and Everything Reminds Me of Me (Desperanto, 2011).

Juan Felipe spent his early years - field to field to ranch to mountains - with his two farmworking parents, in a hand-made trailer built on top of a found car. Sources: border stories, harmonicas, guitars and fuzzy radios, the birth of Rock & small towns & big city San Diego & San Francisco. Anything having to do with art, he loves. Over forty years on the poetry-for-the-people road. Recent winner of PEN USA, National Book Critics Circle Award & the Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry. Teaches at UC-Riverside. Loves dogs, clouds, rain and green chile. 

Kathleen Johnson, founding editor and publisher of the New Mexico Poetry Review, was born and raised in Oklahoma. She received her MFA in creative writing from the University of Kansas.  As a freelance book critic specializing in poetry, she has published numerous book reviews in the Kansas City Star, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and other publications.  Her first collection of poems, Burn (Woodley Press, 2008), was selected as a Kansas Notable Book.  She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Over 700 of Robert Lietz’s poems have appeared in more than one hundred journals in the U.S. and Canada, in Sweden and U.K, including Agni Review, Antioch Review, Carolina Quarterly, Epoch, The Georgia Review, Mid-American Review, The Missouri Review, The North American Review, The Ontario Review, Poetry, and Shenandoah.  Seven collections of poems have been published, including Running in Place (L’Epervier Press,). At Park and East Division ( L’Epervier Press,) The Lindbergh Half-century (L’Epervier Press,) The Inheritance (Sandhills Press,) and Storm Service (Basfal Books).  Basfal also published After Business in the West: New and Selected Poems . He has completed several print and hypertext (hypermedia) collections of poems for publication, including Character in the Works: Twentieth-Century Lives, West of Luna Pier, Spooking in the Ruins, Keeping Touch,  and Eating Asiago & Drinking Beer.

Nancy Morejón, one of the foremost Cuban writers and intellectuals, has published more than twelve collections of poetry, three monographs, a dramatic work, and four critical studies of Cuban history and literature. Her lyrical verse, shaped by an Afro-Cuban sensibility and a feminist consciousness, evokes the intimacy of family, the ephemerality of love, and the significance of Cuban history. Her poems have appeared in several bilingual editions in the United States, including Where the Island Sleeps Like a Wing (The Black Scholar Press) and Looking Within-Mirar adentro (Wayne State University Press). She has translated numerous acclaimed French authors including Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Éluard, and Aimé Césaire, and her books of criticism of the work of Nicolas Guillén are considered classics.

Kristine Ong Muslim’s publication credits include more than four hundred publications including Boston Review, Contrary Magazine, Mary Journal, Narrative Magazine, Potomac Review, Southword, and The Pedestal Magazine. She also authored the full-length poetry collection, A Roomful of Machines (Searle Publishing) and several chapbooks published by small presses. She has been nominated five times for the Pushcart Prize and twice for Best of the Web 2011.

Craig Santos Perez, a Chamoru from Guahan (Guam), is the co-founder of Ala Press, co-editor of Chamoru Childhood: an anthology of Chamoru literature (2010), and author of two poetry books: from unincorporated territory [hacha] (Tinfish Press, 2008) and from unincorporated territory [saina] (Omnidawn Publishing, 2010), winner of the Pen Center USA 2011 Poetry Award. He is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Hawai'i, at Manoa.

Don Russ is the author of Dream Driving (Kennesaw State University Press, 2007) and the chapbook Adam’s Nap (Billy Goat Press, 2005).  He continues to publish regularly and widely in literary magazines.

Maree Scarlett was born in Auckland, New Zealand and has written performed and recited poetry and the spoken word all over the world. Her work  featured in The International Literary Quartely. Maree has written live music reviews in Ireland and has been a book reviewer, has done voice over’s for radio. Maree performed at the home of famous French artist Bernard Locca whose clients included Lucille Ball and Henry Kissenger. Some of Maree’s earlier works are contained at Stanford University in Russian poet's Andrei Voznesensky archives. Maree has a B.A in philosophy and is completing a Graduate Diploma in psychotherapy. 

I have been mostly an English teacher and a writer, but worked too as a gardener, tile setter's helper, book clerk, concierge, and driver.  I have lived in the midwest, southwest, and now in Rhode Island, and seen many of my poems and stories in literary magazines.

Quincy Troupe

Quincy Troupe, born in St. Louis, Missouri, is the author of 18 books and ten volumes of poetry. His latest book of poems, The Architecture of Language, (Coffee House Press, 2006), was recipient of the 2007 Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement. He received the 2003 Milt Kessler Poetry Award for Transcircularities: New and Selected Poems (Coffee House Press, 2002), selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the ten best books of poetry published in 2002. His new book of poems, Errançities (Coffee House Press), will be published in February 2012. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, San Diego and was the first official Poet Laureate of the State of California. He has been awarded three American Book Awards: for Snake-Back Solos, poems, 1980: for Miles: The Autobiography, Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe, 1990: and a 2010 Lifetime Achievement Award for Sustained Literary Excellence. He is also the author of Miles and me (The University of California Press, 2000); the co-author of The Pursuit of Happyness, with Chris Gardner (Harper Collins, 2006); and the editor of James Baldwin: The Legacy (Simon & Shuster, 1989). Troupe received a 1991 Peabody Award for co-producing and writing the Miles Davis Radio Project that aired on NPR. A movie on Miles Davis based on his memoir Miles and me, for which he wrote the screenplay, is scheduled for release in fall 2012. Currently he is the Editor of Black Renaissance Noire, published at The Institute of African-American Affairs at New York University and lives with his wife, Margaret, in Harlem, New York.

Diane Hueter Warner

Originally from Seattle, Diane Hueter (married name is Warner) has lived in Lubbock, Texas, for over 15 years.  She works in the special collections library, where she oversees a collection of manuscript materials from contemporary writers on nature and place.  She has two grown daughters and one grandson.  Her poems have appeared in Iron Horse Literary Review, Clackamas Literary Review, Blueline, The Fourth River, PMS, and Comstock Review, among others.

Faye Rapoport Despres is a graduate of the Solstice MFA Creative Writing program at Pine Manor College.  Her personal essays have been published or are upcoming in Ascent, Hamilton Stone Review, Prime Number Magazine, Eleven Eleven, damselfly press, and International Gymnast Magazine.  A short essay titled “The Diversion” won an Honorable Mention in the Writer Advice Fourth Annual Flash Prose Contest.  In addition, the Oct./Nov. 2010 issue of The Writer’s Chronicle includes an interview she did with Michael Steinberg, author of the memoir Still Pitching and founding editor of the literary journal Fourth Genre.  Previous publications also include a short story titled “B.B.” and several poems, including “Ode to My Car,” which was published in the former online journal Void Magazine.

Gro Flatebo lived in Australia for nearly two years.  She has an MFA from the Stonecoast Program in Maine but worked in the environmental field for over twenty years.  She has published in the New Madrid Journal, the South Dakota Review, the Boston Literary Magazine, The Collagist, and the anthology Flash Fiction 2012.  An assistant editor for Fifth Wednesday Journal, Gro also reviews books for Kirkus Reviews.  The coast of Maine is her home now.

James J. Garrett is an enrolled  member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Tribe in South Dakota and currently works in extension outreach and research in the Land Grant program at Ft. Berthold Community College in New Town, ND. He holds a doctorate degree from Colorado State University in Rangeland Ecosystem Science.

David Hoag left Montana forty-five years ago, pulled tours of duty during the Cold War in North America and Europe with the USAF, and worked for a time in the high-tech industry. Now resettled in the Madison Valley, Montana, he enters a new world of creative writing with his first published essay, “Wild River.” He’s a graduate of Montana State University and USC.

Julian Hoffman was born in England and grew up in Canada. In 2000, he and his partner moved to the Prespa Lakes in northern Greece where they began an organic small-holding. His writing has recently appeared, or is forthcoming, in Terrain.org, Southern Humanities Review, Kyoto Journal, Flyway, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Wild Apples, and The Redwood Coast Review, among others. His essay, 'Faith in a Forgotten Place,' is the winner of the 2011 Terrain.org Nonfiction Prize. 'The Wood for the Trees' is from the book manuscript, The Small Heart of Things. You can catch up with Julian at www.julian-hoffman.com

Suzanne Kehm is a proud member of the Board of Directors for "The Backwaters Press."  She received an Individual Artist Fellowship from The (amazing!) Nebraska Arts Council and her work has appeared in the following spectacular little journals with remarkable, hard working editors: "The Montreal Review," "The Battered Suitcase," and "Thumbnail."  The Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts provided a fine writing residency that got her pistons firing, and forever, she lives in the hope that John Neihardt and Black Elk weren’t making it up when they proclaimed, “Hold fast….there is more!  There is more!” 

I have enjoyed writing since I was a boy, raised in HArlem NYC by both my parents. My parents are worldly people ,and proud Black people. After graduating college as a computer engineer, I find myself back in the arts, moreover. I try to challenge myself to write in any genre but I only hope that my work is enjoyed, more than praised.

David A. Rintoul is the Associate Director of the Biology Division at Kansas State University. He received his Ph.D. in Biology from Stanford University in 1977, and has published more than 60 articles in scientific journals, on topics ranging from membrane lipid-protein biophysical interactions to fat metabolism in marmots and in birds. “Grus” is his first published work of creative nonfiction. He is an avid nature photographer and birdwatcher, and has been observing or researching sandhill cranes for the last couple of decades. He lives in Manhattan, Kansas with his partner, Elizabeth Dodd.

The Rev. Dr. Lew Kaye-Skinner is a native Nebraskan.  The U.S. Federal Census for 1900 lists all four sets of his great-grandparents in Nebraska.  After living in the four corners of the state, he has Nebraska dirt in his veins and soul. He has pastored several small churches, and for nearly twenty years, he has taught writing in colleges and at UNL. The son in this essay is planning his wedding for the spring 2012; we’re hoping for no blizzards.

  Karla Stover graduated from the University of Washington with honors in history. She has been writing for more than twenty years.  Locally, her credits include the Tacoma News Tribune, the Tacoma Weekly, the Tacoma Reporter, and the Puget Sound Business Journal. Nationally, she has published in Ruralite, and Birds and Blooms.  Internationally, she was a regular contributor to the European Crown and the Imperial Russian Journal.  In addition, she writes two monthly magazine columns. In 2008, she won the Chistell Prize for a short story entitled “One Day at Appomattox.”  Weekly she talks about local history on KLAY AM 1180, and she is the advertising voice for three local businesses.  Her book, Let’s Go Walk About in Tacoma came out in August 2009. 

Valerie Lee Vierk was born in Kearney, Nebraska, and has lived in Ravenna most of her life.  She started writing as a young child.  She has published three non-fiction books, and a novel soon to be published by Treble Heart Books.  Valerie has worked at University of Nebraska at Kearney since 1984 as an office associate.  She earned her B.A. in English with a minor in history from UNK in 1996.  She is a 23-year member of the Nebraska Writers Guild. “In the Grasp of a Cyclone” documents her maternal grandfather’s experience of being picked up by a cyclone in May 1906.

Xu Xi (www.xuxiwriter.com) is the author of nine books of fiction and essays. Her most recent novel Habit of a Foreign Sky (Haven Books, 2010) was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize and a new story collection Access: Thirteen Tales will be published in 2011 by Signal 8 Press. Other titles include an essay collection Evanescent Isles: from my City- Village (Hong Kong University Press) and Overleaf Hong Kong: Stories & Essays from the Chinese, Overseas (Chameleon Press). She is currently Writer-in-Residence at City University of Hong Kong where she directs the first low-residency MFA in Asia, and the only one anywhere that specializes in Asian writing in English.

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