Peter Derk lives, writes, and works as a librarian in Northern Colorado. By his estimate, he's doing a passable job on two out of those three things. "The Way Woody Tells It"
Donald Dewey has published 31 books of fiction, nonfiction, and drama, including widely translated biographies of James Stewart and Marcello Mastroianni, and a history of American political cartooning, The Art of Ill Will. His two latest books were published in June-a biography of the trainer Ray Arcel (Ray Arcel-A Boxing Biography) and the novel Wake Up and Smell the Bees. "Uncle Ralph" pdf
Tammy Dietz is a writer, instructor, instructional designer, and editor. Her work has appeared in various anthologies and literary journals including Bringing Light to Twilight, a critical examination of the Twilight book series, and The Legendary Online Journal. She is the nonfiction editor of Silk Road Literary Review and lives with her husband and children near Seattle. "Everything I Know I Learned from Shoplifting" pdf
Murray Edwards pretends to be an agricultural commodity trader when he's not pretending to be a West Texas rancher. His first book of short fiction, Looking for Lucy Gilligan, won a silver quill award and was named one of the ten best Texas books for 2009. "No More or Less a Man" and "Practical Joke"
Jesika Feather is a mother, teacher, writer, and community organizer who lives in Eugene, Oregon. She enjoys living closely with brilliant, zany individuals and then writing about the ensuing rigmarole. You can find some of this in Communities Magazine or on her blog at: http://jesmamasmusings.blogspot.com/. "Two Seasons in Paradise with Joe Hollis" pdf
Merlin Flower is an independent artist and writer. Visit him at twitter: https://twitter.com/merlinflower "Untitled" (image)
Wilmer Frey lives on a small farm in New Hampshire. He is the former editor of the online publication Earthstorys. "Reflections of My Mother" pdf
Louis Gallo’s work has appeared in Glimmer Train, Missouri Review, Southern Review, New Orleans Review, Baltimore Review, Portland Review, storySouth, and Sojourn, among many other journals and anthologies. He teaches at Radford University. "Once" pdf
Nancy Graham lives in Colorado. Employed for many years in corporate America, she now writes full time, mentors a high-risk high school student, and serves on the board of the Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver. Graham has degrees in English and Political Science. "In Formation" pdf
KJ Hannah Greenberg has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize twice, helps out as an Associate Editor at Bound Off and at Bewildering Stories, and has two new books launching, a full-length poetry collection, A Bank Robber's Bad Luck with His Ex-Girlfriend (Unbound CONTENT), and an assemblage of short fictions, Don't Pet the Sweaty Things (Bards & Sages Publishing). "Perimenopause and Scanned Documents" pdf
Kimberly Hamilton lives in the beautiful Gunnison Valley of Colorado. When her dogs and husband aren't vying for her attention (food), she does laundry. And writes, from time to time. She is a student in the mainstream and genre fiction graduate program at Western State College. "Night Mare"
Aimee Henkel studied fiction and poetry at New York University, Manhattanville's MFA program, and the Sleepy Hollow Writer's project. In a previous life she was a corporate communications professional, published anonymously in national and local newspapers and trade journals. In her current incarnation as a writer of fiction and poetry, she has been published in Poetry Motel, Beginnings, and most recently, Sleet.com. "Strange Truths" pdf
Jane Hertenstein is a blogger, memoirist, tightrope walker, and blender of blended genres. She is not to be trusted. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in: Hunger Mountain, Rosebud, Word Riot, Flashquake, Steam Ticket, The Write Room, Frostwriting, Cantaraville, Fiction Fix, Six Minute Magazine, and Tonopah Review. She is the author of the books Beyond Paradise, Orphan Girl, and Home Is Where We Live. Visit her blog at: http://memoirouswrite.blogspot.com/ "How I Met My Husband" pdf
Amy Herting is a busy mom of three from Colorado who loves to write stories, copywriting, and show scripts in her spare time. When not chasing kids around and writing, she also sings/performs in a ladies barbershop chorus of 150 and a quartet called Déjà vu. "Sleep Baby, Sleep" pdf
Christina Holzhauser was raised in a town of 85 along the Missouri river. Since leaving home she's worked as a ranch hand, a pee collector at a nuclear plant, a histology technician, an archaeologist, and an expert hiking boot fitter. While living in a cabin with no running water in Fairbanks, Alaska, she earned her MFA in nonfiction as well as the right to say she's put on her coat to use the outhouse in the middle of the night, seen the northern lights, and watched the sun never set. Currently, she lives in Columbia, Missouri with her wife and son. She teaches Basic English and Creative Writing at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. "Good Dance Music" pdf
Mark Hummel is a novelist and essayist and is the editor of bioStories. He and his wife live near the confluence point of the Snake, Salt, and Greys rivers in western Wyoming south of Jackson Hole. "Becoming His Hands" ; "Someone to Lean On"
A substitute teacher in Blackfoot, Idaho, Jona Jacobson is known at one school as "Avatar" and at another as "The Teacher Formerly Known to Have Tattoos." Due to one parental protest ("She'll recruit our children into tattooed legions!"), she now has to cover up from head to toe and teaches in "white-face." When she isn't dealing with cosmetics or children, Jona lives with her NonHusband of fifteen years, two cats, and hordes of tree-eating elk and deer. "Handguns and Healing"
Vanessa Jo King grew up in Oakland, California and Boulder, Colorado, and currently lives in Salt Lake City, Utah . She (finally) received her bachelor's degree from Westminster College in 2010, and has yet to use it in any practical way (aside from planning some pretty awesome weddings). She has a herd of obnoxious animals including a lovable dog named Cricket and two very destructive cats. In her spare time, Vanessa likes to set her hula hoop on fire and read books. Sometimes concurrently. "Grace and the Process of Letting Go" pdf
Ruth Lehrer is a writer and sign language interpreter living in western Massachusetts. Her poems and fiction have been published in Meat for Tea and Wordgathering. She received third prize in the 2009 Hampshire Life Short Story Contest and Honorable Mention in The Binnacle 8th Annual Ultra Short Competition. She is currently seeking a publisher for her first novel, I Love You More Than Cinnamon Toast. "Childhood Concrete" pdf
Adrienne Lindholm lives in Alaska where she works in public lands conservation. She's the author of A Journey North: One Woman's Story of Hiking the Appalachian Trail and is at work on a collection of essays about life in the Alaskan wilderness. Just One Summer pdf
Natasha Lvovich is a writer and scholar of second language acquisition and bilingualism. she teaches at CUNY and divides her loyalties between academic and creative writing. She is an author of a collection of autobiographical narratives, The Multilingual Self, and a number of articles and essays. Her creative nonfiction recently appeared in the academic journals Life Writing and New Writing, in the anthologies Lifewriting Annual and Imagination and Place, and in many literary magazines, including Post Road, Paradigm Journal, Nashville Review, and Two Bridges. Her piece, "Balakovo", was nominated for a 2011 Pushcart Prize. "The Sounding Board" pdf
Rebecca Marks' qualifications include a wicked under-bite that yielded a pronounced lisp, a laundry list of allergies that necessitated years of shots and an addiction to antihistamine, a Jewish heritage that provides a boisterous family and an overflow of neuroses and sarcasm, and most expensively, a nearly completed Bachelor's degree in English. Her work will be appearing in an upcoming issue of The Inconsequential and has been featured in The Portland Review. "Fortune Cookies" pdf
A graduate of San Diego State University, Jenean McBrearty was raised in Southern California where she taught sociology and political science for military education programs and wrote for newspapers in the Imperial Valley. She was a social science/history book reviewer for Choice Magazine; a columnist for the Lexington Herald-Leader; and has been published in Teaching for Success, Static Movement, Wherever It Pleases, and the Main Street Rag 2011 Anthology, Altered States. She won Eastern Kentucky University's English Department Award for Graduate Non-fiction in 2011, and is an MFA Creative Writing candidate. "Mexicali Mamas" pdf
Hank Merrell is a retired mason who now lives in Clearwater, FL. He plays a decent trombone, regards himself as a poor but enthusiastic landscape painter, and is working on several short pieces about his experiences in and immediately after the Vietnam War. "Under the Eagle's Wings"
Sheila Morris was born and raised in rural Grimes County, Texas and describes herself as an essayist with humorist tendencies. She is the author of two memoirs, Deep in the Heart-A Memoir of Love and Longing and Not Quite the Same. She and her partner Teresa live with their four dogs in South Carolina and Texas. Visit her at: http://www.writersheilamorris.com/. "Of Faith and Hope" pdf "The Photo Finish" pdf
Samina Najmi teaches multiethnic U.S. literature at California State University, Fresno. She has written scholarly articles on race, gender, and war in American literature and edited or coedited three books. A late bloomer, she discovered the rewards of more personal kinds of writing in 2011 when she stumbled into a CSU Summer Arts course that taught her to see. Samina was raised in Pakistan and England, and now lives with her husband and two children in the San Joaquin Valley, eight thousand miles away from her mother. "She Leaves Me, She Leaves Me Not" pdf
LeeAnn Olivier is a poet and essayist whose work has recently appeared in Stone Highway Review, damselfly press, Sojourn, SWAMP, Jelly Bucket, and Illya's Honey. A Ph.D. student at the University of Texas at Dallas, she is currently working on her creative dissertation-a collection of poems exploring myth, magic, and a Louisiana childhood. Olivier teaches English full-time at Tarrant County College and lives in Fort Worth with her partner John and their canine children: Eddie, Oscar, and Bijou. "Love Like Saltwater" originally appeared in damselfly press. "Love like Saltwater" pdf
Todd Outcalt is the author of twenty-five books in six languages including Before You Say "I Do", Candles in the Dark, and The Best Things in Life Are Free. His short work has graced the pages of publications such as American Fitness, Newsweek, The Christian Science Monitor, Cure, Brides, and For the Bride (where he also wrote a column for grooms). Two of his articles on breast cancer have also won prizes. In addition to writing Todd enjoys kayaking, hiking, and lifting weights-but he no longer competes in bodybuilding competitions! He lives in Brownsburg, Indiana with his wife and is hard at work-always!-on his next book and essay. "No Gut, No Glory" pdf
John Palen's poems have been published in little magazines and journals for more than 40 years. Mayapple Press brought out his Open Communion: New and Selected Poems in 2005 and his first collection of short fiction, Small Economies, in 2012. A retired journalist and journalism educator, he lives in Central Illinois. "Artisanal Journalism" pdf
Kathleen Patton grew up in rural New York nestled in the heart of the Catskill Mountains. She earned her BFA in Creative Writing at UNC Wilmington, and currently lives in Florida. Kathleen draws her inspirations from the mountains she grew up in and her experiences as a military dependent and sister during Operation Iraqi Freedom. "Slide" pdf
Dorothy M. Place lives in Davis, California where she tends her bonsai trees and writes. She has published three short stories, one of which won first prize in the Mendocino Coast Writers short story contest as well as the Estelle Frank Fellowship. "The Ouija Board" pdf
Dreama Pritt, Marshall University alumna and current member of the MU English Department, is a Maier Award-winning and AWP 2013 Intro Journals Project-nominated author whose publishing credits include Et Cetera and Christianity Today's SmallGroups.com. Her essay,"Remembering a Legend" was highlighted as part of a Creative Nonfiction Panel at the 2012 COLA Research and Creativity Conference. pdf
Cherri Randall is currently Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, Johnstown. She has a PhD in English Literature from the University of Arkansas where she also holds an MFA in Creative Writing. Her work has appeared in Mid-America Poetry Review, Lake Effect, So to Speak, Paper Street Press, Permafrost Review, Paddlefish, The Potomac Review, storySouth, Blue Earth Review, and Sojourn. An essay will be published in the anthology Impact, (Telling Our Stories Press) and a novel, The Memory of Orchids, (Cyber Wit) in winter 2011. She has green eyes, fiery red hair, and arms spattered with freckles. She lives with two daughters, a Chihuahua named Zora (for Zora Neale Hurston), and high hopes for the future. "Motif"
Heather Rick is a New England-based writer with a Midwestern heart. An art school drop-out, she is currently churning through the bowels of community college in the cultural wasteland of north-central Massachusetts. She is suspicious of writers with fancy degrees and believes in the power and importance of fucking up. She is currently working on a nonfiction book about her own fuck-ups. "There's No Place like a Stranger's Floor" pdf
Garrett Rowlan is a retired substitute teacher with the Los Angeles Unified School District. He has published about 40 stories, essays, and poems, most recently in Map Literary and the Cafe Irreal. "TOPPS, 1959" pdf
Cathy Roy grew up in Northern California and now resides in Colorado. Her first novel Tasty Girl, about the mythical San Francisco radio station KTST (a.k.a. - Tasty), came out in the summer of 2010. She writes humor, paranormal, and food reviews. Visit her at: http://www.cathyroy.com/ "Finding Henry Miller"
Kirsti Sandy is an English professor at Keene State College in Keene, New Hampshire, a town that once held the world record for having the most lit jack-o-lanterns in one place. She has published essays in the online journal of Freerange Nonfiction, Freshly Hatched, and in several academic journals and books. She recently purchased a pair of "Roller Derby" brand skates for her two-year-old daughter. "Unnecessary Lessons" pdf
Amanda Forbes Silva received her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2012. When she is not writing, she teaches fourth graders, a population that offers her an abundance of creative material. "Tabloids"
Professor Emeritus of English at Ohio Northern University, Claude Clayton Smith is the author of a novel, two children's books, and four books of creative nonfiction. He is co-editor/translator of The Way of Kinship, an anthology of Native Siberian literature (University of Minnesota, 2010). His latest book is Ohio Outback: Learning to Love the Great Black Swamp (Kent State University Press, 2010). A native of Stratford, Connecticut, he holds a BA from Wesleyan, an MAT from Yale, an MFA from the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, and a DA from Carnegie-Mellon. His work has been translated into five languages. "Pre-Med Primer: 1960" pdf
Barbara Strauss lives and writes outside Boston. Her work has received Honorable Mention in the Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers, and was published in the inaugural issue of technicolor Magazine. She also has a story forthcoming in The Mustard Seed Risk. She veered from fiction to write "Bearings," about her actual grandparents. In addition to writing, she's big into yoga. "Bearings" pdf
Clementine Till spends the majority of her life at very particular table in a very particular café where they begin brewing Earl Grey the second she walks in the door. She counteracts this substantial caffeine intake by consuming equal amounts of water and, consequently, borrows the bathroom key so often that they've begun nodding her admittance to the "employees only" area where she retrieves the key herself. "Blood Sisters" pdf
Eric Torgersen, born on Long Island, has spent the last 42 years in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. He is Professor of English, emeritus, at Central Michigan University. His newest collection of poems is Heart. Wood. (Word Press, 2012). His essays have appeared in Gettysburg Review, Hudson Review and other places. His website is http://www.erictorgersenpoet.com/
Kristin Troyer is an undergraduate student at Cedarville University, pursuing interests in music, theatre, and writing. Whether you call her a bookworm or a nerd, listening to and telling stories have been an important part of her life since she was small. This is her first publication. "Black and White and Red All Over" pdf
Michelle Valois teaches writing and humanities at a community college in central Massachusetts. She lives in Florence (Mass, not Italy, alas) with her partner and their three children. Her writing has appeared in TriQuarterly, Moon Milk Review, Florida Review, Pank, Brevity, Fourth Genre, North American Review, and Hayden's Ferry Review, among others. "Yellow Raincoats" pdf
Jean Venable was a writer/producer for NBC Network News for 25 years in the Documentaries division and spent the last seven years of her career with the TODAY Show. Now retired from NBC, she writes from Poughkeepsie, NY where she lives with her second husband. She has one sone, who is a cameraman for News 12, Westchester, and seven stepchildren. pdf
Janna Vought is an MFA graduate student at Lindenwood University in Saint Charles, Missouri. She attends school online from her home in Colorado Springs, Colorado where she lives with her husband, two daughters, and two dogs. Her nonfiction has appeared in Imperfect Parent Magazine. She also has poetry featured in The Rusty Nail and The Eagle Literary Journal, and fiction published in Ideagems Tough Lit V and Tough Lit VI. "The Razored Edge" pdf
Elizabeth Stainton Walker is completing her M.A. in English at the University of Arkansas, where she also works as the English Department secretary. Her story, "Detritus," was published on the MonkeyBicycle website. She and her husband are both great dressers. "All the Way Through to the End" pdf
Jono Walker is a writer and book review blogger who moonlights as an advertising executive and marketing consultant. He lives in Pennsylvania with his wife Julia, their big weedy garden, a couple of poorly behaved dogs, and his trusty fly rod. Visit his blog at http://www.jonosbookreviews.com/ "Little Drops of Mutual Recognition" pdf "My Mother's Marbles" pdf
Julie Whitlow is a professor in the English Department at Salem State University. She was raised in New Orleans and now lives in Salem, MA with her partner, Olga, and their two daughters. Her academic specialty is ESL/Applied Linguistics and she has been working on research about how gays and lesbians refer to and introduce themselves in a variety of social situations. "When a Wife Just Isn't a Wife"
Melissa Wiley is a freelance food and culture writer living in Chicago. When not minding her Ps and Qs, she seizes every opportunity to remove her shoes and walk barefoot with half-painted toenails through airport security in pursuit of global opportunities to dance, draw, laugh, and gape. She also volunteers as a literacy tutor and endangers children's lives when flying her kite at full mast along the beach. "Accordions" pdf
Linda C. Wisniewski shares an empty nest with her retired scientist husband in Bucks County PA. A former librarian, she teaches memoir workshops and speaks on the healing power of writing. Her credits include the Christian Science Monitor, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Rose & Thorn, Mindprints, and other literary magazines as well as several anthologies. Linda's memoir, Off Kilter, was published in 2008 by Pearlsong Press, and she has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website is http://www.lindawis.com/. "You Have to Eat Lunch" pdf
