Douglas E. Self
Douglas Self is a father, a poet, and a USMC, U.S. Army Reserve, and Iraq War Veteran who resides in Lexington, Kentucky. He has a bachelor's degree in English & Creative Writing from Southern New Hampshire University, and an audio/video engineering trade school certificate from the Lexington School for the Recording Arts. His hope for this collection is that it inspires other military/combat veterans to seek help.
Douglas E. Self is the author of:
Mark Russell Brown
Mark Russell Brown (1963-2011), from Louisville, Kentucky, received his MFA from the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing. His work can be found in
The Louisville Review,
BloodLotus,
Bloom, as well as in
Bigger Than They Appear: Anthology of Very Short Poems. He was a long-standing member of the Green River Writers.
Mark Russell Brown is the author of:
Khairi Hamdan
Poet, writer and translator Khairi Hamdan was born in 1962 in the city of Dier Sharaf, on the West Bank of the Jordan River. In 1967, his family emigrated to Jordan, where he lived until 1982. Since then, Khairi Hamdan has lived and worked in Bulgaria. He is the author of a number of books published in Bulgarian and Arabic, most recently the novel
Chestnut Gardens and the poetry collection
The Water Lilies of Memory. Hamdan translates poetry and prose between Arabic and Bulgarian and has been awarded several international honors for his translations, as well as for his original work
Khairi Hamdan is the author of:
Wendy Jett
Wendy Jett is a long time fitness instructor, decoupage nerd, Improv junkie and loves to write. She is a born and raised Kentucky girl and now calls Lexington home. Mom to two humans, Kayla and Stevie, and one canine, Lola Jolene, she does the best she can every day! Some days she does better than others.
Wendy Jett is the author of:
Meg Files
Meg Files is the author of the novels
Meridian 144 and
The Third Law of Motion,
Home Is the Hunter and Other Stories,
The Love Hunter and Other Poems,
Writing What You Know, a book about taking risks with writing, and a poetry chapbook,
Lit Blue Sky Falling. Her stories and poems have appeared in publications including
Fiction, Writers' Forum,
Oxford Magazine,
The Tampa Review,
Miramar, and
Crazyhorse. She has been a Bread Loaf fellow and the James Thurber Writer-in-Residence at The Ohio State University. She has taught creative writing at colleges and universities, including Pima College, where she directed the Pima Writers' Workshop. She directs the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards and Masters Workshop.
Meg Files is the author of:
Carol Mauriello
Carol Mauriello lives near The Daniel Boone National Forest in Olive Hill, Kentucky with her husband, Joe. She is a native of Kentucky who returned to her home state after living in New York and New Jersey for 25 years. She is retired from teaching English at Morehead State University. Her stories, poems, essays, and novels expand over a wide variety of experiences and locales. She has written one unpublished novel and is currently at work on a novel about a young man in recovery from a schizoaffective illness, and who has chosen to live in a New Jersey Beach town.
Carol Mauriello is the author of:
Mark Lee Webb
Mark Lee Webb is a poet, photographer, and musician. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte. He has published several poetry chapbooks, and his work has appeared in literary journals such as
Ninth Letter,
Reed,
Columbia Journal,
Aeolian Harp, and many others. His photography has been selected in several juried exhibitions, such as WideOpen 2020. The Penn Review used two of his photographs for the covers of their 2019 issue. Mark is also a jazz drummer, playing regularly with The JMB Band. He makes his home in Louisville, Kentucky with his wife, folk musician Molly McCormack.
Mark Lee Webb is the author of:
Tina Parker
Tina Parker is the author of two previous poetry collections,
Mother May I and
Another Offering. Her current work springs from historical research into the lives of women labeled as "other"—whether that be witch, insane, or hysterical. Tina grew up in nearby Bristol, Virginia, and now lives in Berea, Kentucky. To learn more about her work, visit www.tina-parker.org, or follow her on Instagram @tetched_poet.
Tina Parker is the author of:
Sonja de Vries
Sonja de Vries has worked in the ArtsThrive program for eight years now. She is a published poet, filmmaker and queer social justice activist. She grew up believing in the power of poetry to heal the spirit and mind, but only saw that truly materialize through doing this work with traumatized populations.
Sonja de Vries is the author of:
Christopher McCurry
Christopher McCurry grew up right outside of Lexington, Kentucky in the small town of Paris. In the seventh grade he entered one of his poems in a contest and won a medal. He's since lost the medal but still remembers the poem. His poetry has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and featured on NPR's
On Point as a Best Book of 2016 for his chapbook of marriage sonnets
Nearly Perfect Photograph. A graduate of the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College and a high school English teacher, he spends his time playing board games, skateboarding, and going on adventures with his daughter Abra. In 2015, Christopher co-founded Workhorse, a publishing company and community for working writers. He believes everyone should write poems and that everyone can.
Christopher McCurry is the author of:
Katerina Stoykova
Katerina's poetry collection
How God Punishes came out in English in 2017 from Broadstone Books. The original Bulgarian version (2014, ICU press) won the Ivan Nikolov National Poetry Prize. Katerina is editor and translator of
The Season of Delicate Hunger: Anthology of Contemporary Bulgarian Poetry (Accents, 2014). For six years, Katerina hosted the literary show Accents on WRFL 88.1FM, Lexington, recording hundreds of hours of conversations with poets and writers from around the world. Katerina acted the lead roles in independent feature films
Proud Citizen and
Fort Maria, directed by Thom Southerland, and was co-writer for
Proud Citizen. The film received a number of festival awards, including Best of the Fest, Audience Favorite and two special acting awards for Katerina's performance.
Katerina Stoykova is the author of:
Audrey Rooney
Audrey Rooney, three times a Kentucky resident, now living in Lexington, recalls a life filled with words. Her mother was a published poet active in Cleveland, where Audrey was born in 1938. An October baby, she heard "October's Bright Blue Weather" every birthday and learned her alphabet sitting on the living room floor perplexed by gold letters on Britannica spines: RAYN to SAAR, SARS to SORC. Her dad promised her a dollar for memorizing them all and she did. As a journalist she has published in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and Kentucky. She is a trained soprano and her watercolors and drawings hang in collections in this country and abroad.
Audrey Rooney is the author of:
Frank X Walker
Multidisciplinary artist and Danville, Kentucky native Frank X Walker is the former Poet Laureate of Kentucky and Professor in the department of English and the African American and Africana Studies Program at the University of Kentucky. The founding editor of
Pluck! The Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture is a Cave Canem Fellow, co-founder of the Affrilachian Poets, and the author of seven collections of poetry, including
Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers, winner of the 2014 NAACP Image Award for best poetry collection. The Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry recipient is the originator of the word, Affrilachia, and wholly committed to deconstructing and forging a new definition of a pluralistic Appalachia.
Frank X Walker is the author of:
Roberta Beary
Roberta Beary is the haibun editor of
Modern Haiku; she tweets her photoku @shortpoemz. Her book
The Unworn Necklace was named a William Carlos Williams Finalist by the Poetry Society of America in 2008, the First such honor for a book of haiku. A frequent judge of haiku and haibun contests, she travels worldwide to give workshops
on the art of the short poem. Her poetry is featured in the reference work
A Companion to Poetic Genre (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) and in
the anthology
Haiku In English The First Hundred Years (Norton, 2013).
Roberta Beary is the author of:
Barbara Goldberg
Barbara Goldberg is the author of four prize-winning books of poetry, including
The Royal Baker's Daughter, winner of the Felix Pollak Poetry Award. She is the translator of
Scorched by the Sun, poems by the Israeli poet Moshe Dor. The two selected and translated four anthologies of contemporary Israeli poetry. Goldberg received two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as awards in translation, fiction and speechwriting. Her poems appear in
Best American Poetry, Paris Review, Poetry and elsewhere, Goldberg is the series editor of the Word Works' International Imprint.
Barbara Goldberg is the author of:
A. Molotkov
Born in Russia, A. Molotkov moved to the US in 1990 and switched to writing in English in 1993. Published or accepted by
The Kenyon Review, Mad Hatters Review, 2River, Perihelion, Word Riot, Identity Theory, Pif, and many more, Molotkov is winner of New Millennium Writings and Koeppel fiction contests, and a poetry chapbook contest for his
True Stories from the Future. He co-edits
The Inflectionist Review and serves on the Board of Directors of Oregon Poetry Association. Molotkov's new translation of a Chekhov story was included by Knopf in their Everyman Series.
A. Molotkov is the author of:
Lynnell Edwards
Lynnell Edwards is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently
Covet (Red Hen Press, 2011). Her short fiction and book reviews have also appeared widely in such literary journals as
Pleiades, American Book Review, New Madrid, and
The Connecticut Review. She is Associate Professor of English at Spalding University, and prior to that, a faculty member at Concordia University in Portland, Oregon. Lynnell is a graduate of Centre College, the center of the glass-blowing universe in Kentucky.
Lynnell Edwards is the author of:
Lori A. May
Lori A. May writes across the genres, road-trips half the year, and drinks copious amounts of coffee. Her writing has appeared in publications such as
The Atlantic, Writer's Digest, Brevity, Midwestern Gothic, and
The Writer. Her editorial roles have included working with Kaylie Jones Books,
Creative Nonfiction, and other independent presses. She is also the founding editor of
Poets' Quarterly. Lori is a graduate of the Wilkes University MFA program, where she was awarded the Norris Church Mailer Fellowship. She teaches in the University of King's College creative nonfiction MFA program and is a frequent guest speaker at writing conferences and residencies across North America.
Lori A. May is the author of:
Tom C. Hunley
Tom C. Hunley is an associate professor of English at Western Kentucky University and the director of Steel Toe Books. Among his previous books are
The Poetry Gymnasium (McFarland & Company, Inc., 2012);
Annoyed Grunt (Imaginary Friend Press, 2012);
Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 2010, Gold Invitational Series);
Octopus (Logan House, 2008, Winner of the Holland Prize);
Teaching Poetry Writing: A Five-Canon Approach (Multilingual Matters LTD., 2007, New Writing Viewpoints Series);
My Life as a Minor Character (Pecan Grove, 2005, winner of a national chapbook contest);
Still, There's a Glimmer (WordTech Editions, 2004); and
The Tongue (Wind Publications, 2004). He divides his time between Kansas and Oz.
Tom C. Hunley is the author of:
Morgan Adams
Morgan Adams was born and raised in a bookstore in Lexington, Kentucky and wrote her own first "book" at the age of five. She graduated from Berea College and earned her M.F.A. in poetry from Indiana University. Her work often draws upon myth, folklore, and family history.
Morgan Adams is the author of:
Tina Andry
tina andry is a writer/poet. she has had her work published in
bigger than they appear: anthology of very short poems. she is originally from new orleans, louisiana but currently resides in lexington, kentucky with her two children. she is fond of spiders and secret pacts. she really enjoys being herself.
Tina Andry is the author of:
Sarah Freligh
Sarah Freligh is the author of
Sort of Gone (Turning Point Books, 2008). Her work has appeared in
The Sun,
Rattle,
Brevity,
Barn Owl Review,
Cimarron Review,
Iowa Woman,
Third Coast,
Tar River Poetry, and
Painted Bride Quarterly and on Garrison Keillor's "Writer's Almanac." Among her awards are a 2009 poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a poetry grant from the Constance Saltonstall Foundation in 2006, and an Artist's Exchange grant from the New York State Council for the Arts in 1997. She is a visiting assistant professor of English and creative writing at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York.
Sarah Freligh is the author of:
Suchoon Mo
Suchoon Mo is a Korean War veteran and a retired academic living in the semiarid part of Colorado. He received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, and taught at the University of Detroit and Colorado State University. He is the author of a number of scholarly papers and articles. His poems have been published in
The Battered Suitcase,
The Bitter Oleander,
BlazeVOX,
Dissident Editions,
epiphany,
Hobo Camp Review,
Journal of Truth and Consequence,
Lucid Rhythms,
Mad Hatters' Review,
Message in a Bottle,
The Muse,
The Ranfurly Review,
Segue,
Spillway Review,
The Tower Journal and others. His music compositions have also appeared in a number of publications.
Suchoon Mo is the author of:
Patty Paine
Patty Paine is the author of
Feral (Imaginary Friend Press),
Elegy & Collapse (Finishing Line Press), and co-editor of
Gathering the Tide: An Anthology of Contemporary Arabian Gulf Poetry (Garnet Publishing & Ithaca Press). Her poems, reviews, and interviews have appeared in
Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts, The Atlanta Review, Gulf Stream, The Journal and many other publications. She is the founding editor of
Diode Poetry Journal, and is an assistant professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University Qatar where she teaches writing and literature, and is assistant director of Liberal Arts & Sciences.
Patty Paine is the author of:
Frederick Smock
Frederick Smock is associate professor of English at Bellarmine University, where he received the 2005 Wyatt
Faculty Award. He has published four previous collections of poems with Larkspur Press. He is also the author of
Craft-talk: On Writing Poems, and
Pax Intrantibus: A Meditation on the Poetry of Thomas Merton. His poems have appeared in
The Antioch Review,
The Hudson Review,
The Louisville Review,
The Merton Journal (UK),
Poetry East,
Trajectory, and other journals.
Frederick Smock is the author of:
Greg Pape
Greg Pape is the author of nine books, including
Border Crossings,
Black Branches,
Storm Pattern (University of Pittsburgh Press),
Sunflower Facing the Sun, winner of the Edwin Ford Piper Prize (University of Iowa Press), and
American Flamingo, winner of a Crab Orchard Open Competition Award (Southern Illinois University Press). His poems have been published widely in such magazines and literary reviews as
The Atlantic,
Iowa Review,
The New Yorker,
Northwest Review, and
Poetry. He has received the Discovery/The Nation Award, two National Endowment for the Arts Individual Fellowships, the Pushcart Prize, the Richard Hugo Memorial Poetry Award, and his poems have been featured on NPR and read by Garrison Keillor on The Writers' Almanac. He teaches at the University of Montana, and in the Brief-residency MFA program at Spalding University. Greg served as Poet Laureate of Montana from 2007 to 2009.
Greg Pape is the author of:
Bobby Steve Baker
Bobby Steve Baker was born in Ontario, Canada in 1951, but has lived and practiced cosmetic surgery in Lexington, Kentucky for many years. He holds an MFA degree in Poetry from National University and has published in various literary journals, including
Ann Arbor Review,
Boston Literary Magazine, and
Grey Sparrow Journal. In 2009, his poetry in
tinfoildresses was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Bobby grew up in a home where poetry was ever-present but began to write seriously only in the past few years.
Bobby Steve Baker is the author of:
Nana Lampton
Nana Lampton earned a BA in English literature at Wellesley, and an MA at the University of Virginia, and she attended programs at the Harvard Business School. In 2004, she received an MFA in Writing from Spalding University. Nana has also studied drawing and painting at the Corcoran School of Art and the Louisville Visual Art Association. Nana's other publications include the books
Snowy Owl Gathers in Her Trove, and
Moon with the Sun in Her Eye. Her art and poetry have been exhibited at the Chapman Friedman Gallery in Louisville, Kentucky, and the Northwoods Gallery in Land O' Lakes, Wisconsin, among others.
Nana Lampton is the author of:
Matthew Haughton
Matthew Haughton was born in Colorado in 1977. At an early age, his family returned to eastern Kentucky, where his lineage stretches back over a century in the region. Matthew is a graduate of the University of Kentucky. Most recently, he was a finalist in the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning's Next Great Writer Competition. His poetry has appeared in literary magazines such as
Kentucky Monthly,
Still: The Journal, and
The Heartland Review. This is his first published collection of poems. He lives and works as an artist and educator in Lexington Kentucky.
Matthew Haughton is the author of:
E.C. Belli
E.C. Belli is a poet and translator. Her translation of
I, Little Asylum, a short novel by Emmanuelle Guattari, was released by Semiotext(e) for the 2014 Whitney Biennial, and
The Nothing Bird, her translation of some selected poems by Pierre Peuchmaurd, appeared with Oberlin College Press (Fall 2013). She is the recipient of a 2010 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in
VERSE, AGNI, Colorado Review, Guernica, Gulf Coast, The Antioch Review, and
FIELD. Work in French has appeared in
Europe: revue littéraire mensuelle and
PO&SIE (France), among others. She is an editor at Argos Books.
E.C. Belli is the author of:
Barry George
Barry George is a regular contributor to leading international haiku journals. His poems have been published in Japanese, French, German, and Romanian translations; and have appeared in the anthologies
A New Resonance 2: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku and
The New Haiku, as well as seven of the annual Best Haiku collections published by Red Moon Press. A recipient of the 2009 AWP Intro Poets Awards, he has also won numerous Japanese short-form competitions, including the Gerald R. Brady Contest and
The Mainichi Daily News Contest. He has twice been a featured poet at the Robert Frost Poetry Festival in Key West. A graduate of Spalding University's MFA in Writing program, he lives and teaches in Philadelphia.
Barry George is the author of:
Jude Lally
Jude Lally writes and recites poetry as an outlet for his creative needs and as a means of enlightening, inspiring, engaging and entertaining listeners. Fortunately, Jude's main source of inspiration in his writing is easily accessible; unfortunately, so many places in the world are not: in 1998 Jude was diagnosed with a rare, degenerative neuromuscular disease called Friedrich's Ataxia. Jude received a BA in Business Administration in May of 2006. Jude is a member of the poetry group Poezia, occasionally attends The Poet's Supper and the Artcroft writer's group outside of Carlisle, KY, and is a regular presenter at the Holler Poets series events.
Jude Lally is the author of:
Cathy Perkins
LeTonia Jones
Dean Crawford
Jennifer Litt
Yvonne M. Johnson
Ludmil Todorov
Toni Ann Johnson
Karen Schubert
Leatha Kendrick
B. Elizabeth Beck
Pat Williams Owen
Jay McCoy
Bianca Bargo
Curtis L. Crisler
Brandel France de Bravo
Emily R. Grosholz
Eric Scott Sutherland
T. Crunk
Nettie Farris
Jeremy Paden
Matthew Minicucci
E. K. Mortenson
James Doyle
Andrew Merton
Thom Ward
Richard Taylor
Bianca Spriggs
Dan Nowak
Barbara Sabol
J. Kates
Brian Russell
Jim Lally