Cullen Bailey Burns' book, Paper Boat, was published by New Rivers Press in 2003 and received a New Voice Commendation from the Minnesota Humanities Commission for best first book of poetry. Her past awards include a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Fellowship and a Pushcart Prize nomination. Her poems are forthcoming or have appeared recently in The Denver Quarterly, RHINO, The Melic Review, and many other magazines. She lives in Minneapolis and teaches at Century College. If you'd like to read more about Cullen, check here.
Bonnie Jo Campbell's short story collection Women & Other Animals (University of Massachusetts Press, 1999) won the Associated Writing Programs short fiction award, and her story "The Smallest Man in the World" was awarded a Pushcart Prize. Her new novel Q Road was named a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers book and is now out in paperback. She currently lives in Kalamazoo. To see Bonnie's website, click here.
James D'Agostino has a collection titled Nude with Anything forthcoming from New Issues Poetry and Prose, 2006. He is currently teaching at Southeastern
Missouri
University.
Darren DeFrain's novel is The Salt Palace, New Issues Press, 2005. His fiction, prose, and essays have appeared in Chicago Quarterly Review, Gulf Coast, and The Cimarron Review, and his screenplay, No Moon, is currently being negotiated. His past awards include a Pushcart nomination. He is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin. For more information about Darren and to read samples of his work, go here.
Gerry LaFemina is the author of several collections of poetry including Graffiti Heart, The Window Facing Winter, and, most recently, The Parakeets of Brooklyn, which received the 2003 Bordighera Prize and was published in a bilingual edition of English and Italian. His book of prose poems, Zarathustra in Love, was released in 2001. The editor of Controlled Burn, his recent work appears in Many Mountains Moving, Mid-American Review, and Seneca Review. He lives in Northern Michigan with his wife, the poet Mary Ann Samyn.
Lisa Fishman is the author of Dear, Read (Ahsahta Press, 2002) and The Deep Heart's Core is a Suitcase (New Issues Press, 1996). Her poems appear in recent issues of Colorado Review, American Letters and Commentary, Elixir, and elsewhere. She teaches at Beloit College. To read an interview and see some of Lisa's work, click here.
Jonathan Johnson's first poetry collection, Mastodon: 80% Complete, was published in 2001 by Carnegie Mellon University Press, and his nonfiction book, Hannah and the Mountain: Notes Toward a Wilderness Fatherhood, was published by the University of Nebraska Press in their American Lives Series. His poems appear in the current or in forthcoming issues of Southern Review, Ploughshares, North American Review and various other magazines. They have also appeared in the Best American Poetry, American Poetry: The Next Generation and Poetry Thirty: Thirty Something American Poets anthologies. He curently teaches in the Inland Northwest Center for Writers and University Honors programs at Eastern Washington University, where he was named Graduate Faculty of the Year for 2002-2003. To read one of Jonathan's poems, click here.
Brad Land is the author of the bestselling memoir, Goat. His work has been published in numerous magazines and literary journals. His debut novel, Songs to Learn and Sing, is forthcoming from Random House, and a film based on Goat is scheduled to go into production in 2006. For more information about Brad, go here.
Lisa Lenzo's collection Within the Lighted City (University of Iowa Press, 1997) received the Iowa Short Fiction and the John Simmons Short Fiction Award. She currently lives in Saugutuk, Michigan. To read Lisa's short story "Burning," click here.
David Dodd Lee's first collection, Downsides of Fish Culture, was released by New Issues Poetry & Prose in 1997. His second book, Arrow Pointing North, was published by Four Way Books in 2002, and his third, Abrupt Rural, by New Issues Poetry & Prose in 2004. He currently teaches at IU South Bend and is the editor of Shade, an annual anthology of poetry and fiction. To read some work by David, go here.
Liesel Litzenburger's essays and stories have appeared in numerous literary journals, magazines, and anthologies. Carnegie Mellon University Press published her first collection of short stories, Now You Love Me, in 2001. Currently an Assistant Professor of English at Central Michigan University, she teaches graduate and undergraduate creative writing. Lisa has also taught writing at several other colleges and universities, including the University of Michigan, and held a position as Acting Chair of the Creative Writing Program at the Interlochen Arts Academy. Her novel, The Widower, is forthcoming from Random House.
Kathleen McGookey's collection of prose poems, Whatever Shines (2002), is part of the Marie Alexander Poetry Series, published by White WIne Press. Her work has been widely anthologized in The Party Train: A Collection of North American Prose Poetry (New Rivers Press, 1995), The Best of The Prose Poem: An International Journal (White Pine Press, 2000), and New Poems from the Third Coast: Contemporary Michigan Poetry (Wayne State, 2000). Her works appears in Boston Review, Epoch, The Laurel Review, The Prose Poem: An International Journal, and Quarterly West. She has taught courses in literature and creative writing at Hope College and the Interlochen Center for the Arts. To read more on Kathleen, go here.
Julie Moulds's collection The Woman with the Cubed Head was released by New Issues Poetry and Prose in 1998. She has taught Children's Literature at several universities and currently teaches creative writing to children. To read the title poem to her collection, go here.
Howard Norman's most recent work is a collection of nonfiction travel essays titled, My Famous Evening: Nova Scotia Sojourns, Diaries, and Preoccupations. He has published three collections of storytelling from the Far North: The Wishing Bone Cycle, Where the Chill Came From, and Northern Tales: Traditional Stories of Eskimo and Indian Peoples. His novels The Northern Lights and The Bird Artist were finalists for the National Book Award. He has written children's books, radio plays, and a collection of short stories, Kiss in the Hotel Joseph Conrad. Other works include the novels The Haunting of L. and The Museum Guard, and the short story collection, The Chauffeur: Stories .He teaches in the MFA program at the University of Maryland and divides his time between Washington D.C. and Vermont.
John Rybicki's poems and stories have appeared in North American Review, Field, Bomb, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Quarterly, as well as in numerous anthologies. His first book of poems, Traveling at High Speeds (New Issues Poetry and Prose) appeared in 1996, and his latest collection, Yellow-Haired Girl with Spider (March Street Press), was published in 2002. He currently teaches creative writing to inner-city children in Detroit, and serves as a guest lecturer at schools throughout the country. To read a poem by John, go here.
Sarah Jane Smith's book No Thanks and Other Stories was released by New Issues Poetry and Prose in 2001 Her short stories have appeared in Blue Mesa Review , Other Voices , The Madison Review , Third Coast , Passages North , New England Review and others. Two of her stories received Pushcart Prize nominations and "No Thanks" was re-nominated by Joyce Carol Oates. She has taught at numerous schools and universities, including the Santa Fe Community College in New Mexico and the South Miami School of the Arts. She currently teaches at the University of Wisconsin Stevens-Point.
Chris Torockio is the author of Presence ( St. Andrews Press, 1999 ). His stories have appeared in The Antioch Review, Denver Quarterly, The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, New Orleans Review, Willow Springs, and numerous other journals. In 2003 and 2004 he received Special Mention in the Pushcart Anthologies, and he has been awarded grants from the
Connecticut
Commission on the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, and the Vermont Studio Center. He lives in
Connecticut
with his wife, Halle, and son, Giovannie, and teaches at Eastern
Connecticut
State University. To read Chris's story "Speaking in Tongues" go here.
Kellie Wells' short fiction collection, Compression Scars, won the Flannery O'Connor Award and was published by the University of Georgia Press in 2002. That same year, she received the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award, and in 2003 Compression Scars won the Great Lakes Colleges Association's New Writers Award for fiction. Her novel Skin , her dissertation at WMU, will be published in 2006 by the University of Nebraska Press, as part of their new Flyover Fiction Series. She currently teaches in the creative writing program at Washington University in St. Louis and is at work on a second novel, Fat Girl, Terrestrial. To read an interview with Kellie where she discusses her experience at WMU and teaching in the Prague Summer Program, go here.
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley's most recent collection of poetry, Becoming Ebony (Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), received second place honors in the Crab Orchard Review Award Series in Poetry. Her first book, Before the Palm Could Bloom: Poems of Africa (New Issues Poetry and Prose, 1998), retells her experiences in the Liberian civil war. She currently teaches creative writing and literature at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. To read more about Patricia and read some of her work, go here.
