Poets

Daniel Anderson “Thistles. Thorns.” "Early Autumn in Tennessee," is the author of three collections of poetry his most recent is Night Guard at the Wilberforce Hotel and is the editor of Howard Nemerov’s Selected Poems. His many awards include fellowships form the National Endowment for the Arts, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts as well as a Bogliasco fellowship. He has received a Pushcart Prize and the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize. Anderson frequently serves as a faculty member at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Oregon.

Bob Arnold "No Tool Or Rope Or Pail" has published numerous collections of poetry and is the editor and Publisher of one of the longest running small presses in the country Longhouse, which publishes remarkable poetry and literature. He lives in Vermont and is a stone builder, having built many stone houses and landscapes. Permission to read poem granted by author.

Grace Bauer’s poems, essays, and stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals. Her most recent book of poems is MEAN/TIME, (University of New Mexico Press, 2017) and a co-edited anthology, Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse (Lost Horse Press). Other books include: The Women At The Well, Nowhere All At Once, Beholding Eye, and Retreats & Recognitions.

“Corsons Inlet” appears in Nowhere All At Once.

“Truth” appears in the book MEAN/TIME.

Jeanne Marie Beaumont "When I am in the Kitchen" holds an MFA in Writing from Columbia University and is the author of four books of poetry. Her first, Placebo Effects, was selected by William Matthews as a winner in the National Poetry Series and published by W.W. Norton in 1997. Her poems have been included in more than three dozen anthologies and textbooks. She won the 2009 Dana Award for Poetry, and also The Greensboro Review literary award for poetry in 2003 and was a finalist for the Writers’ League of Texas Book Award, 2011. From 1992 to 2000, she was co-editor of the literary magazine American Letters & Commentary. She currently teaches at The Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan.

"When I am in the Kitchen" first appeared in Burning of the Three Fires BOA Editions.

Robert Bly "For My Son, Noah, Ten Years Old" "Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter," is a poet, editor, and translator and has authored more than 30 books of poetry. He attended Harvard University and received an M.A. from the University of Iowa. His many awards include a National Book Award for Poetry, a Guggenheim, Rockefeller and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships as well as the Robert Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America. He lives in western Minnesota. Permission to read given by the author.

Sharon Bryan "Foreseeing," "Body and Soul,"is the author of four books of poems, most recently Flying Blind (Sarabande Books,) and Sharp Stars (BOA Editions Ltd.), which was the recipient of the Isabella Gardner Award from BOA Editions. She is also the editor of Where We Stand: Women Poets on Literary Tradition (W. W. Norton & Company), and coeditor, of Planet on the Table: Poets on the Reading Life (Sarabande Books). She has received two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships in poetry and has been a poet-in-residence at The Frost Place in Fanconia, New Hampshire. She lives in Washington State.

Robin Chapman is the author of ten books of poetry, most recently The Only Home we Know (Tebot Bach, 2019) Her many awards include; a Wisconsin Arts Board Literary Arts Fellowship, 2007, Posner Poetry Award From Council for Wisconsin Writers, 2000, 2006; Honorable mention, 2012; Outstanding Achievement in Poetry Award from the Wisconsin Library Association 2008, 2017; Helen Howe Poetry Prize, Appalachia, 2010. She is professor emeritus of Communicative Disorders at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“Mary Laycock,” is copyright by Robin Chapman and originally appeared in Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, 2015, and in her book of poems Six True Things (Tebot Back, 2016) by Robin Chapman.

"The Chaos Theorists Discuss Poetry,” is copyright by Robin Chapman and originally appeared in Verse Wisconsin, 2012, and in the book of poems Six True Things (Tebot Bach, 2016) by Robin Chapman.

Karen Chase "Jam," is the author of two collections of poetry, her first Kazimierz Square, was short-listed for Best Indie Poetry Book of 2000. Her poems, stories, and essays have appeared in many magazines including the Gettysburg Review, The New Yorker and Southwest Review. She was the Visiting Writer at the FDR Homestead, a Fellow at The MacDowell Colony, and at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center. She has received several grants including from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry and the Rockefeller Foundation. She is currently trustee of the Amy Clampitt Fund, whose mission is to benefit poetry and the literary arts. She lives in western Massachusetts. Permission to use poem granted from author.

Nicholas Christopher "Lake Como," is the author of nine books of poems, most recently, Crossing the Equator: New & Selected Poems and On Jupiter Place; seven novels, including A Trip to the Stars and Veronica; and a book about film noir, Somewhere in the Night. He has just completed a new novel and is nearing completion on a new book of poems, The Flame Tree. He lives in New York City.

Barbara Crooker "Praise Song," "Poem for my Birthday," is a poetry editor for Italian Americana, and author of nine full-length books of poetry; The Book of Kells (Cascade Books, 2018) won the Best Poetry Book 2018 Award from Poetry by the Sea and Some Glad Morning is forthcoming in 2019 in the Pitt Poetry Series. Her awards include the WB Yeats Society of New York Award, the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, and three Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships. Her work appears in a variety of anthologies, including Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania, and The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Visit her at www.BarbaraCrooker.com Permission to read poem granted by author.

Bruce Dethlefsen "The Hot Dog Man,"is an American poet and poetry teacher who has published several chapbooks and full length collections. Something Near the Dance Floor (Marsh River Editions, 2003) won the Posner Book-length Poetry Award Honorable Mention from the Council for Wisconsin Writers. Breather (Fireweed Press, 2009), received an Outstanding Achievement Award in Poetry from the Wisconsin Library Association. His work has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2003 and 2009 and he was appointed poet laureate of Wisconsin for 2011-2012. His poetry has also been featured on Garrison Keillor’s Writers’ Almanac. He served as secretary of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets for six years, co-founded the WFOP Chapbook Prize and started Poet Camp. Permission to read poems granted by author.

Stephen J Dobyns "No Map" is an American poet and novelist and has written fourteen poetry collections as well as twenty-four novels. His many awards include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts. His poetry has won numerous accolades including a National Poetry Series selection and a Lamont Poetry Selection and a Melville Cane Award. Several of his novels have been made into films and two of his short stories were selected for Best American Short Stories. He lives in Rhode Island. Permission to read poem granted by author.

Kim Dower, “I Wore This Dress Today for You, Mom,” and “Bottled Water,” City Poet Laureate of West Hollywood (October 2016 – October 2018), has published four collections of poetry, all with Red Hen Press: Air Kissing on Mars, described by the Los Angeles Times as, “sensual and evocative . . . seamlessly combining humor and heartache,” Slice of Moon, called “unexpected and sublime,” by “O” magazine, Last Train to the Missing Planet, “poems that speak about the grey space between tragedy and tenderness, memory and loss, fragility and perseverance,” said Richard Blanco, and Sunbathing on Tyrone Power’s Grave, which Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick, calls exuberant, sexy and sobering.” Nominated for four Pushcart Prizes, Kim’s work has been featured in Garrison Keillor's "The Writer's Almanac," and Ted Kooser’s “American Life in Poetry,” as well as in Ploughshares, Barrow Street, and Rattle. Her poems are included in several anthologies, notably, Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond, (Beyond Baroque Books/Pacific Coast Poetry Series,) and Coiled Serpent: Poets Arising from the Cultural Quakes & Shifts of Los Angeles, (Tia Chucha Press.) She teaches Poetry and Dreaming in the B.A. Program of Antioch University and Wake Up Your Prose for UCLA Extension. You can connect with Kim through her website: www.kimdowerpoetry.com.

David Lee Garrison’s "Bach in the DC Subway" poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and two poems from his book Sweeping the Cemetery were read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac. “Bach in the DC Metro” was featured by United States Poet Laureate Ted Kooser on his website and read on the BBC in London. Garrison won the Paul Laurence Dunbar Poetry Prize in 2009 and was named Ohio Poet of the Year in 2014. He is a retired Wright State University Professor and lives in Oakwood, Ohio.

Maria Mazziotti Gillan is winner of the 2014 George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature from AWP, the 2011 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers, and the 2008 American Book Award for her book, All That Lies Between Us. She is the Founder/Executive Director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College, editor of the Paterson Literary Review, and director of the creative writing program/professor of English at Binghamton University-SUNY. She has published 23 books, including Paterson Light and Shadow (Serving House Books, 2017); What Blooms in Winter (NYQ Books, 2016) and Paterson Light and Shadow (Serving House Books, 2017). Visit her website at www.mariagillan.com .

“Going to the World’s Fair, 1964,” first published in The Silence in an Empty House, New York Quarterly Books, New York NY

“What I Can’t Tell My Son,” is in The Silence in an Empty House, New York Quarterly Books, New York, NY.

Dana Gioia "Places to Remember," is an American Poet and writer, critic, as well as a businessman with an MBA from Stanford Business School. He has published five books of poetry and three volumes of literary criticism as well as opera libretti and over two dozen literary anthologies. He has served as a commentator on American literature for BBC Radio and as a classical music critic for San Francisco magazine. He became the California State poet Laureate in 2015 and teaches at the University of Southern California. He divides his time between Los Angeles and Sonoma County California. Permission to read poems granted by the author.

Twyla M. Hansen served a five-year term as Nebraska State Poet from 2013 to 2018, is a co-director of the website Poetry from the Plains: A Nebraska Perspective, and has conducted readings and creative writing workshops through Humanities Nebraska since 1993.

Her newest book of poetry, Rock • Tree • Bird (The Backwaters Press 2017), won both the 2018 WILLA Literary Award for Poetry from Women Writing the West and the 2018 Nebraska Book Award for Poetry from the Nebraska Center for the Book.

She has six previous books of poetry, and her writing is published in the Academy of American Poets (poets.org), Poetry Out Loud Anthology, Prairie Schooner, Midwest Quarterly, Organization & Environment, Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, and many more.

“August 12 in the Nebraska Sand Hills Watching the Perseids Meteor Shower,” was first published in Potato Soup (The Backwaters Press 2003) which won the 2004 Nebraska Book Award for Poetry.

Robert Hedin "The Old Liberators" was born in Red Wing Minnesota and is the author, translator and editor of twenty-four books of poetry and prose including his most recent At the Great Door of Morning: Selected Poems and Translations published by Copper Canyon Press. He has taught at various universities and was the Poet in Residence for twelve years at Wake Forest University. His many awards include the William Stafford Award from the Washington Poetry Association, the Branford P Millar Memorial Prize in Poetry as well as was a fellow for the National Endowment of the Arts for several years. He lives in Frontenac Minnesota. He co-founder of the largest residential artist retreat in the upper Midwest the Anderson Center at Tower View. Permission to read poem granted by author.

C. G. Hanzlicek "Moment" "Egg," received his his M.F.A. from the Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa and is the author of seven books of poetry. His collection Stars was the winner of a Devins award and his translation work has won him the Robert Payne Award from the Columbia University Translation Center. He teaches at California State University, Fresno.

Michael Hettich (Winner of Nov. poetry contest) "The Legacy," is the author of twelve poetry books and as many chapbooks, his most recent collection is titled, To Start an Orchard. He holds a Ph.D. in English and American Literature from University of Miami, an MA in Creative Writing and Literature from University of Denver, and a BA in English from Hobart College. He has been published in numerous journals and anthologies including Ploughshares, Poetry East and Orion. His many awards and honors include: three Florida Individual Artist Fellowships; a Florida Book Award; The Tampa Review Prize; The David Martinson-Meadowhawk Prize; The Swan Scythe Prize; The Tales Prize and the Yellowjacket Press Prize for Florida Poets. He lives in North Carolina. Learn more at michaelhettich.com

Bob Hicok "Calling Him Back from Layoff," is the author of nine books of poetry, his most recent is Hold (Copper Canyon Press 2018.) His work has received three Pushcart Prize nominations and his book The Legend of Light received a Felix Pollak Prize and was chosen as an American Library Association’s Booklist, Notable Book of the Year. Elegy Owed was shortlisted as a National Book Critics Circle Award. He has received two National Endowment of the Arts Fellowships and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is a Professor of Creative Writing at Virginia Tech.

Catherine Abbey Hodges "January Song," is the author of In a Rind of Light, forthcoming from Stephen F. Austin State University Press in February 2020. Her previous full-length collections are Raft of Days (Gunpowder Press 2017) and Instead of Sadness (Gunpowder Press 2015), the latter selected by Dan Gerber as winner of the Barry Spacks Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared widely and been featured on The Writer’s Almanac and Verse Daily. Catherine teaches English at Porterville College in California’s San Joaquin Valley, co-coordinates California Poets in the Schools for Tulare County, and collaborates with musician and labyrinth-maker Rob Hodges. Learn more at www.catherineabbeyhodges.com. Permission to use granted by quthor.

“January Song,” is from Instead of Sadness (Gunpowder Press 2015) first published in Connotation Press.

Jay Hopler "Meditation on Ruin," was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1970, and he has earned degrees from New York University, The Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars and The Iowa Writers' Workshop. He is the author of two books of poetry and two anthologies and has published in numerous journals. His other awards include a Whiting Writers' Award and a Rome Prize in Literature from the America Academy in Rome. He is a professor of English at the University of South Florida. Permission to read granted from author.

Mark Irwin "Woolworths" "My Father's Hats," is the author of nine collections of poetry, his most recent is, A Passion According to Green (2017.) His poems have appeared in numerous literary journals. He has received four Pushcart Prizes, Fellowships from the: National Endowment for the Arts, The Colorado and Ohio Art Council, Fulbright Foundation, and Lilly and Wurlitzer Foundations, as well as a James Wright Poetry Award and two Colorado Book Awards. He is an associate professor of English at the University of Southern California.

"Woolworths" originally appeared in Quick, Now, Always. BOA Editions, 1996.

"My Father's Hats" originally appeared in Bright Hunger. BOA Editions, 2004

Richard Jones “Scars,” “Certain People,” has published more than a dozen collections of poetry. The Blessing: New and Selected Poems, published by Copper Canyon Press, (in which “Certain People” first appeared) won the Midland Authors Award and Country of Air won the Posner award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers. His most recent collection is Stranger on Earth. He has been the editor of the esteemed Poetry East for nearly forty years and teaches at DePaul University in Chicago. Permission to use poems granted by author.

Robert Kinsley "Reunion," "A Walk Along the Old Tracks," has authored two collections of poems: Endangered Species and Field Stones both from Orchises Press. He was born and raised on a dairy farm in northern Ohio. He taught at Ohio University and was an Associate Editor of The Ohio Review for many years. He has retired an lives with his wife in Englewood Florida. Permission to use granted by author.

Greg Kosmicki "The Lucky Ones," Waking up My Daughter," is a poet and retired social worker and is the author of four books and eight chapbooks of poetry and his poems have appeared in numerous prestigious magazines and journals. His most recent collection of selected poems, Leaving Things Unfinished: Forty-some Years of Poems is forthcoming in 2020 from MWPH in Fairwater, WI, Tom Montag editor. He received artist’s fellowships from the Nebraska Arts council in 2000 and 2006 and two of his poems were featured on Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. He founded The Backwaters Press in 1997, which he now serves as Editor Emeritus. He lives in Omaha Nebraska. Permission to use granted by author

Steve Kronen's "That Your Hands Are Graceful and Kind," "In the Kitchen," collections are Homage to Mistress Oppenheimer (Eyewear), Splendor (BOA), and Empirical Evidence (University of Georgia Press). His work has appeared widely in the US and the UK. His many awards include an NEA, three Florida Individual Artist fellowships, the Cecil Hemley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, the James Boatwright Poetry Prize from Shenandoah magazine, and fellowships from Bread Loaf, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conferences. He received an MFA from Warren Wilson College. Steve works as a librarian in Miami where he lives with his wife, novelist Ivonne Lamazares. His website is www.stevekronen.com.

Dorianne Laux’s "Psalm," "What I Wouldn't Do,"fifth collection, The Book of Men, was awarded The Paterson Prize. Her fourth book of poems, Facts About the Moon won The Oregon Book Award and was short-listed for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Laux is also the author of Awake; What We Carry, a finalist for the National Book Critic’s Circle Award; Smoke; as well as a fine small press edition, The Book of Women. She is the co-author of the celebrated text The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry. Only As the Day is Long: New and Selected, was released by W.W. Norton in early 2019. She is a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets.

Permission to read “Psalm,” and "What I wouldn't Do," granted by the author and The Field Office, Vaughan Ashlie Fielder, Founder.

Jim Lewis "looking for myself," "the smell of a well-worn saddle," is the author of a full-length poetry book a clear day in October, and a chapbook, every evening is December. He is a nurse practitioner as well as part time photographer and artist and lives in California. A second collection of poems is soon to be published by Kelsay Books. Permission to read granted by author.

April Lindner "The Trip to Brooklyn Misremembered as a Roller Coaster Ride" is the author of two collections of poetry, her first Skin, was winner of the Walt McDonald First Book Prize from Texas Tech University Press. She is also the author of three young adult novels and has edited several anthologies. She is professor of English at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. Permission granted from author to read poem.

Debra Marquart "Even on a Sunday Drive," "Kablooey is the Sound You'll Hear," is a Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University and Iowa’s Poet Laureate. A memoirist, poet, and performing musician, Marquart is the author of six books including an environmental memoir of place, The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere and a collection of poems, Small Buried Things: Poems. Marquart’s short story collection, The Hunger Bone: Rock & Roll Stories drew on her experiences as a former road musician. A singer/songwriter, she continues to perform solo and with her jazz-poetry performance project, The Bone People, with whom she has recorded two CDs. Marquart’s work has been featured on NPR and the BBC and has received over 50 grants and awards including an NEA Fellowship, a PEN USA Award, a New York Times Editors’ Choice commendation, and Elle Magazine’s Elle Lettres Award. The Senior Editor of Flyway: Journal of Writing & Environment, Marquart teaches in ISU’s interdisciplinary MFA Program in Creative Writing and Environment and in the Stonecoast Low-Residency MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine. Her next book, Gratitude with Dogs Under Stars: New & Collected Poems, is forthcoming from New Rivers Press in 2021. “Kablooey is the Sound You’ll Hear,” can be found in the anthology, Bullets into Bells: Poets & Citizens Respond to Gun Violence. Eds. Brian Clements, Alexandra Teague, and Dean Rader. Beacon Press, 2017: 112-113.

“Kablooey is the Sound You’ll Hear,” can be found in the anthology, Bullets into Bells: Poets & Citizens Respond to Gun Violence. Eds. Brian Clements, Alexandra Teague, and Dean Rader. Beacon Press, 2017: 112-113.

Debra Marquart is a Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University and Iowa’s Poet Laureate. A memoirist, poet, and performing musician, Marquart is the author of six books including an environmental memoir of place, The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere and a collection of poems, Small Buried Things: Poems. Marquart’s short story collection, The Hunger Bone: Rock & Roll Stories drew on her experiences as a former road musician. A singer/songwriter, she continues to perform solo and with her jazz-poetry performance project, The Bone People, with whom she has recorded two CDs. Marquart’s work has been featured on NPR and the BBC and has received over 50 grants and awards including an NEA Fellowship, a PEN USA Award, a New York Times Editors’ Choice commendation, and Elle Magazine’s Elle Lettres Award. The Senior Editor of Flyway: Journal of Writing & Environment, Marquart teaches in ISU’s interdisciplinary MFA Program in Creative Writing and Environment and in the Stonecoast Low-Residency MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine. Her next book, Gratitude with Dogs Under Stars: New & Collected Poems, is forthcoming from New Rivers Press in 2021. “Kablooey is the Sound You’ll Hear,” can be found in the anthology, Bullets into Bells: Poets & Citizens Respond to Gun Violence. Eds. Brian Clements, Alexandra Teague, and Dean Rader. Beacon Press, 2017: 112-113.

Matt Mason "The Thin Line of What I know," is the Nebraska State Poet and Executive Director of the Nebraska Writers Collective. He runs poetry programming for the State Department, working in Nepal, Romania, Botswana and Belarus. Mason is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize for his poem “Notes For My Daughter Against Chasing Storms” and his work can be found in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry. The author of Things We Don’t Know We Don’t Know (The Backwaters Press, 2006) and The Baby That Ate Cincinnati (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2013), Matt is based out of Omaha with his wife, the poet Sarah McKinstry-Brown, and daughters Sophia and Lucia. Permission to read granted from author.

Joseph Mills "How You Know," "We've Had This Conversation Before," is a faculty member at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and holds the Susan Burress Wall Distinguished Professorship in the Humanities and was honored with a 2017 UNC Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching. He has degrees in literature from the University of Chicago (B.A.), the University of New Mexico (M.A.), and the University of California-Davis (Ph.D). His work includes poetry, fiction, drama, and criticism. He has published six volumes of poetry with Press 53: Exit, pursued by a bear; This Miraculous Turning, Sending Christmas Cards to Huck and Hamlet; Love and Other Collisions; Angels, Thieves, and Winemakers, and Somewhere During the Spin Cycle .

With his wife, Danielle Tarmey, he researched and wrote two editions of A Guide to North Carolina's Wineries (John F. Blair, Publisher). He has also edited a collection of film criticism entitled A Century of the Marx Brothers (Cambridge Scholars Publishing). He won the 2017 Rose Post Creative Nonfiction Competition sponsored by the North Carolina Writers Network for his essay, "On Hearing My Daughter Trying to Sing Dixie." In 2015, he won the North Carolina Roanoke-Chowan Award for Poetry for This Miraculous Turning.

“How You Know,” first appeared in Love and Other Collisions published by Press53.

“We’ve Had This Conversation Before,” first appeared in This Miraculous Turning published by Press53.

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Ph.D., "All Those Birds Flying Off That Tree," the 2009-13 Kansas Poet Laureate is the author of 23 books, including Miriam's Well, a novel; Everyday Magic: A Field Guide to the Mundane and Miraculous, and Following the Curve, poetry. Her previous work includes The Divorce Girl, a novel; Needle in the Bone, a non-fiction book on the Holocaust; The Sky Begins At Your Feet, a bioregional memoir on cancer and community; and six poetry collections, including the award-winning Chasing Weather with photographer Stephen Locke. Founder of Transformative Language Arts, Mirriam-Goldberg also leads writing workshops widely and coaches people on writing and right livelihood through the arts. You can find out much more about her at www.CarynMirriamGoldberg.com

Robert Morgan "Working in the Rain," was born in Hendersonville North Carolina and is a poet, novelist and short story writer. He has been awarded a Guggenheim fellowship and a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship as well as awarded the James G Hanes Poetry prize by the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He is currently a Kappa Alpha Professor of English at Cornell. Permission to read poem granted by author.

Linda Pastan "The Happiest Day" "To a Daughter Leaving Home," has published 15 books of poetry throughout her distinguished career the two most recent titles are Insomnia and Traveling Light. She served as Poet Laureate of Maryland from 1991 to1995 some of her many awards include a Pushcart Prize, Dylan Thomas Award, the Bess Hokin Prize, the Di Castagnola Award, the Maurice English award the Charity Randall Citation and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. She was a recipient of a Radcliffe College Distinguished Alumnae Award. She lives in Maryland.

Marge Piercy "To be of use," is a poet and novelist born in Detroit. She was educated at the University of Michigan and Northwestern and is the recipient of four honorary doctorates. She has published numerous books of poetry as well as seventeen novels and is a recipient of the Arthur C Clarke Award. More information can be found at Margepiercey.com.

Liz Rosenberg "All Those Hours Alone In The Dark" "Susquehanna," is an American poet, novelist, and children’s book author. She has several collections of poetry published including The Fire Music which was a winner of the Agnes Lynch Starret Prize her most recent collection is titled Demon Love. She has also edited a number of prize-winning anthologies of poetry for young readers. Her children’s book reviews appear monthly in The Boston Globe. She is a professor of English at Binghamton University. Permission to read poem granted by author

Lawrence Raab "My Life Before I Knew It" Lawrence Raab is the author of nine collections of poems, including What We Don’t Know About Each Other (Penguin, 1993), which was a winner of the National Poetry Series and a finalist for the National Book Award, The History of Forgetting (Penguin, 2009), and Mistaking Each Other for Ghosts (Tupelo, 2015), which was longlisted for the National Book Award, and named as one of the Ten Best Poetry Books of 2015 by The New York Times. A collection of his essays, Why Don’t We Say What We Mean? appeared in 2016, and his most recent collection of poems, The Life Beside This One (Tupelo Press), was published in the fall of 2017. He taught literature and writing at Williams College since 1976, where he is now the Harry C. Payne Professor of Poetry Emeritus. Permission to read poem granted by author.

Faith Shearin "My Mother's Van,"is the author of five books of poetry: The Owl Question, The Empty House, Moving the Piano, Telling the Bees, and Orpheus Turning. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including the Alaska Quarterly Review and Poetry East, and has been read aloud by Garrison Keillor on The Writer's Almanac. She is the recipient of the May Swenson award and has received awards from The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, The Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her work also appears in The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary Poets and Good Poems, American Places. She lives in West Virginia.

“My Mother’s Van,” from Darwin’s Daughter (Stephen F. Austin University Press 2018)

Charles Simic "Summer Morning" is a Serbian-American poet born in Belgrade who didn’t speak English until age 15. His poetry books have earned a Pulitzer Prize, an International Griffin Poetry Prize, as well as earned two Pulitzer Prize finalists. He was recently the recipient of the 2011 annual Frost Medal for his lifetime achievement in poetry. (Simic is Professor Emeritus at the University of New Hampshire, where he has taught since 1973.)

Permission for use granted by the author.

Hal Sirowitz "New Sheets,""No More Birthdays," is an internationally known poet and the author of five books of poetry. His work has been translated into thirteen languages and published in magazines and anthologies. He received the Nebraska Book Award for Poetry, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. He is also the former Poet Laureate of Queens, New York. Hal has appeared on MTV’s Spoken Word Unplugged; Lollapalooza; Edinburgh’s Fringe Festival; the Helsinki International Poetry Festival; PBS’s Poetry Heaven; NPR’s All Things Considered and many others. Garrison Keillor has read many of Hal’s poems on NPR’s Writer's Almanac. He is a retired New York City public school teacher and lives in Philadelphia.

Michael Skau’s "Childrens's Hour,"poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Me and God was published by Wayne State College Press and two chapbooks by Word Tech Editions. He was awarded the 2013 William Kloefkorn Award for Excellence in Poetry. He has published articles on Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Richard Brautigan, Burroughs, and Corso, as well as books on Ferlinghetti and Corso. He is an emeritus professor in the Department of English at the University of Nebraska Omaha, where he taught for 37 years.

Floyd Skloot's poetry and prose have won three Pushcart Prizes, the PEN USA Literary Award, and been included in Best American Essays, Best American Science Writing, Best Spiritual Writing, and Best Food Writing. Poets & Writers named him "One of 50 of the Most Inspiring Authors in the World." His books include the memoirs In the Shadow of Memory and The Wink of the Zenith: The Shaping of a Writer's Life (University of Nebraska Press); the poetry collections The End of Dreams, The Snow's Music, Approaching Winter, and Far West (all from LSU Press, ), and the novel The Phantom of Thomas Hardy (University of Wisconsin Press). He lives in Oregon with his wife, Beverly Hallberg. Skloot's daughter Rebecca is the author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Crown, 2010). They co-edited The Best American Science Writing 2011 (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2012).

“O’Connor at Andalusia,” first appeared in The End of Dreams LSU Press 2006. Permission to read poem granted by LSU Press.

“At Last,” first appeared in Far West LSU Press 2019. Permission to read poem granted by LSU press.

Charlie Smith "Fortune," is the author of seven novels and seven books of poetry including Red Roads, which was chosen for the National Poetry Series and received the Great Lakes New Poets Award. His many awards include the Aga Khan Prize, the Levinson prize, the J. Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in New York City and Key West.

Larry Smith is a native Midwesterner, born and raised in a working-class family in the industrial Ohio River Valley. In 1965 he graduated from Muskingum College in Ohio. He worked in the steel mills that summer before moving to Euclid, Ohio where he taught high school and wife Ann began working as a nurse. He earned degrees at Kent State University (M.A. and Ph.D), and was there when the riots and shootings of students occurred. In 1970-1971 he and Ann and their daughter Laura moved to Huron, Ohio, where he began teaching at Firelands College of Bowling Green State University. Son Brian (1970) and daughter Suzanne (1975) were born in Huron. In 1980 he was a Fulbright lecturer in American Literature in Sicily. He is the author of eight books of poetry, two books of memoirs, six books of fiction, two literary biographies of authors Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Kenneth Patchen, and two books of translations from the Chinese with co-translator Mei Hui Huang. His photo history of his hometown Mingo Junction appeared recently in the Images of America Series. Two of his film scripts on authors James Wright and Kenneth Patchen have been made into films with Tom Koba and shown on PBS.

As a professor of English and humanities at Firelands College (1970-2010) he has taught writing and literature and served as director of The Firelands Writing Center, a cooperative of writers. As director of the literary publisher, Bottom Dog Press, Inc., he has edited over 65 books and carried into publication some 210 titles of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. In addition, Smith has been a reviewer for American Book Review, Parabola, Small Press Review, Choice, The San Francisco Review of Books, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohioana Quarterly, Heartlands, and the New York Journal of Books. He is a requested presenter at various writers conferences in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and West Virginia. His poetry has been featured on American Public Media's Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor. His recent publications include the memoir The Thick of Thin: Memoirs of a Working-Class Writer and The Pears: Poems. He enjoys playing guitar and doing meditation at the Converging Paths Meditation Center in Huron, Ohio.

Joyce Sutphen "Living in the Body," "The Aunts," is an American poet and currently a Professor of English at Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter Minnesota. She has published four poetry collections, the first Straight Out of View, won the Barnard Women’s Poets Prize, and a subsequent collection won the Minnesota Book Award. She was named Minnesota’s Poet Laureate in 2011 and has received a McKnight Artist Fellowship and a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship. Permission to read poem granted by author.

Marilyn L. Taylor "I Know a Bank Where the Wild Thyme Grows," Ph.D., former Poet Laureate of the state of Wisconsin and the city of Milwaukee, is the author of eight poetry collections. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Able Muse, Measure and Light, and Raintree Review, among many other journals and anthologies. She was recently awarded the Margaret Reid Poetry Prize for verse in forms, and was a finalist for the X.J. Kennedy Parody Contest, the Howard Nemerov Sonnet award, and the 2017 Lascaux Review prize. She also edited the recent anthology titled "Love Affairs at the Villa Nelle" (Kelsay Books, 2018). Taylor currently serves on the editorial staffs of Verse-Virtual and Third Wednesday poetry journals. Permission to read poem granted by

Diane Thiel is the author of ten books of poetry and nonfiction, including Echolocations, Resistance Fantasies, and Winding Roads, among others. Thiel's work has appeared in many journals, Poetry, The Hudson Review, and the Sewanee Review and is re-printed in over sixty major anthologies. Her awards include a PEN award, an NEA International Literature Award, the Robinson Jeffers Award, the Robert Frost Award, the Nicholas Roerich Award, and she was a Fulbright Scholar. Thiel received her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Brown University and is Professor of English and Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies at the University of New Mexico. With her husband and four children, Thiel has traveled and lived in Europe, South America, Asia, and Australia, working on literary and environmental projects.

“The First Sea,” from Diane Thiel’s forthcoming poetry collection, first appeared in The Burden of the Beholder from The Press at Colorado College.

Phoebe Sparrow Wagner (formerly Pamela Spiro Wagner) is an author and poet who suffers from schizophrenia, complicated by narcolepsy and CNS Lyme disease. She has completed two collections of poetry Learning to See in Three Dimensions, Green Writers Press, and We Mad Climb Shaky Ladders, Cavankerry Press 2009 the later which was a finalist for Foreword review’s Poetry Book of the Year. She also co-authored with her sister, Divided Minds: Twin Sisters and their Journey through Schizophrenia (St. Martin’s Press, 2005) which won the National NAMI Outstanding Literature Award and was a finalist for the Connecticut Book Award. Her poem, “The Prayers of the Mathematician,” won first prize in the BBC International Poetry Contest. She lives in Brattleboro Vermont.

“The Prayers Of The Mathematician first appeared in We Mad Climb Shaky Ladders, Cavankerry Press 2009.

Connie Wanek "Abstract," "Amaryllis," is the author of four books of poetry and one book of short prose. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Atlantic Monthly, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Quarterly West, Poetry East, Prairie Schooner, and Missouri Review. She co-edited, with Joyce Sutphen and Thom Tammaro a comprehensive historical anthology of Minnesota women poets, called To Sing Along the Way (New Rivers Press, 2006) Her many awards include the Willow Poetry Prize, the Jane Kenyon Poetry prize and Ted Kooser, Poet Laureate of the United States (2004-2006) named her a Witter Bynner Fellow of the Library of Congress for 2006.

She lives with her family in Deluth, Minnesota, where she has worked at the public library and as a restorer of old homes.

“Abstract,” and “Amaryllis,” first appeared in Rival Gardens: New and Selected Poems, 2016, University of Nebraska Press.

Baron Wormser "January," earned his BA from Johns Hopkins and did graduate work at the University of California-Irvine and the University of Maine. He has published numerous collections of poetry a memoir and two books on poetry. He served as Poet Laureate of Maine from 2000 to 2006 and spent many years visiting hundreds of schools and libraries throughout Maine teaching and reading. He has received fellowships from Bread Loaf, the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He lived off the grid for many years and now has settled in Vermont with his wife and works at The Frost Place in Franconia New Hampshire. Permission to use granted by author.

Adam Zagajewski “Balance,” "Self-Portrait 1945," is a Polish poet, novelist, translator and essayist. He has published fourteen books of poetry, eight of them in English translation and numerous essays and prose. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship, won the 2004 Neustadt International Prize for Literature considered a forerunner to the Nobel Prize in Literature, won the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award and the 2017 Princess of Asturias Award for Literature. He is considered one of the leading poets of Generation of ‘68’ of the Polish New Wave and is one of Poland’s most prominent contemporary poets. Zagajewski used to teach poetry workshops as a visiting lecturer at the School of Literature and Arts at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow as well as a creative writing course at the University of Houston. He currently is a faculty member at the University of Chicago and a member of its Committee on Social Thought.