SF2015
Judith Alexander-McGovern is a retired bank portfolio analyst and former Peace Corps language instructor. She lives in Seattle with her husband.
Jeffrey Alfier is winner of the 2014 Kithara Book Prize for his poetry collection, Idyll for a Vanishing River (Glass Lyre Press, 2013). His work has appeared recently in Spoon River Poetry Review, Poetry Ireland Review, and The MacGuffin.
Maren Anderson writes, teaches, and raises alpacas in Oregon. She teaches English at Western Oregon University and novel writing to new authors. She fills her days caring for alpacas, playing with her kids, and reading books that make her laugh. Her novel, Fuzzy Logic, will be released in 2015 by Black Opal Books, and her adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for children will be performed by Apple Box Children’s Theater in July 2015. To find out more, visit Maren’s website at www.marens.com, or follow her on Twitter (@marenster).
Catherine Arra lives in the Hudson Valley in upstate New York where she taught public school English and writing for 34 years. Recent poetry has appeared the Naugatuck River Review, the Perfume River Review, Postcards Poems and Prose. In March, Red Ochre Literature published her first chapbook, Slamming & Splitting.
Shawn Aveningo is a globally published, award-winning poet who can’t stand the taste of coconut, eats pistachios daily and loves shoes … especially red ones! (redshoepoet.com) Shawn’s poetry has appeared in over 80 literary journals & anthologies, including LA’s PoeticDiversity who recently nominated her work for a Pushcart. She’s given birth on two continents, and her three children make her an extremely proud “mama bear”. She was the founder and host of the popular Verse on the Vine poetry series in Folsom, CA. Since moving to Portland to share in the creative life with her soul-mate, Shawn has become the new designer of the VoiceCatcher Journal and has continued to publish poetry books and anthologies via The Poetry Box®.
Wade Bentley lives, teaches, and writes in Salt Lake City. For a good time, he enjoys wandering the Wasatch Mountains and playing with his grandchildren. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Green Mountains Review, Cimarron Review, Best New Poets, New Ohio Review, Western Humanities Review, Subtropics, Rattle, Chicago Quarterly Review, Raleigh Review, Reunion: The Dallas Review, Ilanot Review, and New Orleans Review, among others. A full-length collection of his poems, What Is Mine, was published by Aldrich Press in early 2015.
Beth Bonness grew up in Wisconsin, the eldest of six girls. She moved to the Northwest with her Computer Science degree and her husband, where they raised their three daughters in Portland, Oregon. She fell in love with the beach and enjoyed climbing Mt. Hood, once. After thirty years working in product development and marketing (and one too many acquisitions) she said “good-bye” to high-tech corporate culture…to write.
Robin Cody is the author of Ricochet River and Voyage of a Summer Sun, both of which appear on the Oregon State Library’s “150 Oregon Books for the Oregon Sesquicentennial” list. Voyage of a Summer Sun won the Oregon Book Award for literary nonfiction. Cody has worked as an English teacher, a dean of college admissions, a baseball umpire, and a school bus driver. He lives in Portland.
Clellan Coe is an American writer living in Spain. She’s had essays published in various journals including The American Scholar and New Statesman.
Brittney Corrigan is the author of the poetry collection Navigation (The Habit of Rainy Nights Press, 2012) and the chapbook 40 Weeks (Finishing Line Press, 2012). Her poems have appeared widely in journals and anthologies, and she is the poetry editor for the online journal Hyperlexia: poetry and prose about the autism spectrum. Brittney lives in Portland, Oregon, where she is both an alumna and employee of Reed College.
Gary Devore is an archaeologist and author. He has been a lecturer at Stanford University and the University of California at Santa Cruz and has directed archaeological projects in Italy and the UK. He has written a novel, “Pantheon”, about the Greek gods, a guidebook to the city of Rome, a play about Shakespeare and the Nazis, and is working on a murder mystery set in the Roman Empire. He can be reached at www.garydevore.com.
Joseph Dorazio is a prize-winning poet and author of three volumes of poetry. His latest collection, AS IS, earned an editor’s choice award and was recently recognized by Shelf Unbound book review magazine as a notable volume of verse. Mr. Dorazio lives in Wayne, Pennsylvania.
Brian Doyle edits Portland Magazine at the University of Portland, in Oregon. He is the author of six collections of essays, two nonfiction books, two collections of “proems,” the short story collection Bin Laden’s Bald Spot, the novella Cat’s Foot, and the novels Mink River, The Plover, and Martin Marten. He is also the editor of several anthologies, including Ho`olaule`a, a collection of writing about the Pacific islands. Doyle’s books have seven times been finalists for the Oregon Book Award, and his essays have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Orion, The American Scholar, The Sun, The Georgia Review, and in newspapers and magazines around the world, including The New York Times, The Times of London, and The Age (in Australia). His essays have also been reprinted in the annual Best American Essays, Best American Science & Nature Writing, and Best American Spiritual Writing anthologies. Among various honors for his work is a Catholic Book Award, three Pushcart Prizes, the John Burroughs Award for Nature Essays, Foreword Reviews’ Novel of the Year award in 2011, and the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2008 (previous recipients include Saul Bellow, Kurt Vonnegut, Flannery O’Connor, and Mary Oliver)
Jack Estes is the author of the critically acclaimed book A Field of Innocence, a memoir of his service in Vietnam in 1968-69. His articles and essays have appeared in Newsweek, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune and the Oregonian.
Jennifer Foreman is currently working on a full collection of poems that deal with the Grief process. She works for Multnomah County in Aging and Aging Disability Services.
Rick George lives on a remote mountain road in Washington’s Cascade Mountains, and works full-time as an author. He recently finished his debut novel, Drip Torch, and is currently revising a thriller with the working title, Vengeance Burns Hot. His author website is www.rickegeorge.com.
Martha Gies is the author of many short stories and essays published over the last 30 years in literary magazines and anthologies, and of Up All Night (Oregon State University Press, 2004), a portrait of Portland told through the stories of 23 people who work graveyard shift. For many years she taught creative writing for Marylhurst University and the graduate writing program at Lewis & Clark. Today Gies teaches two workshops each year in Portland and an annual workshop abroad called Traveler’s Mind. She is an activist for low-income housing and human rights.
Debra Gwartney is the author of Live Through This, a memoir that was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and co-editor of Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape. She has published in many journals and magazines, most recently Tin House and Brevity, and teaches in the Pacific University MFA in Writing Program. Debra lives with her husband, Barry Lopez, in Western Oregon.
Lois Harrod’s 13th and 14th poetry collections, Fragments from the Biography of Nemesis (Cherry Grove Press) and the chapbook How Marlene Mae Longs for Truth (Dancing Girl Press) appeared in 2013. The Only Is won the 2012 Tennessee Chapbook Contest (Poems & Plays), and Brief Term, a collection of poems about teachers and teaching was published by Black Buzzard Press, 2011. Cosmogony won the 2010 Hazel Lipa Chapbook (Iowa State). She is widely published in literary journals and online ezines from American Poetry Review to Zone 3. She teaches Creative Writing at The College of New Jersey. Read her work on www.loismarieharrod.org.
David Hathwell is a former English teacher living and writing in the Bay Area. He has degrees in English, from Stanford and Columbia, as well as an advanced degree in music theory, from CUNY, and is now a piano student at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. His poems appear in Driftwood Press, The MacGuffin, Slant, Measure, and Raintown Review, and online at Cider Press Review, Blast Furnace, Angle, and Cordite Poetry Review.
Christa Kaainoa is a writer, rock climber, feminist, activist, and life enthusiast. She teaches middle school English at Catlin Gabel School in Portland, Oregon. Her poetry has been featured in VoiceCatcher: a journal of women’s voices and visions and Poeming Pigeons.
Jill Kelly, PhD, is an editor, author, and painter. She lives in Portland, Oregon, where she works as a text and developmental editor and coach for writers and other creatives. Her three cats, Frannie, Evie, and Mr. Sam, do all the chores so she can be creative 24/7.
Roisin Kelly was born in Northern Ireland but has mostly lived south of the border in the Republic. After completing her MA in Writing at the National University of Ireland, Galway, she moved to Cork City where she continues to live and write. Her work has been published in journals such as The Stinging Fly, Southword and The Interpreter’s House. In 2014 she won second and third place in the Red Line Poetry Competition and the Dromineer Poetry Competition respectively, and was shortlisted for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award. Her work is forthcoming in the Raving Beauties Anthology (Bloodaxe 2015) and in a future issue of Poetry.
Jennie Kiffmeyer loves stories! She has been awarded numerous honors for her writing including two grants from the Indiana Arts Commission and has had plays performed in Chicago, New York, and Indiana. Past performance venues include the Washington, D.C. Folk Festival, the National Cathedral, Indiana Historical Society, IndyFringe Theatre and the Richmond Civic Theatre. Currently, Jennie is working on an MFA in Creative Writing at Pacific University.
Sandra Larson has seen her poetry published in numerous journals such as The Atlanta Review and magazines such as Studio Potter. Naomi Shihab Nye nominated her for a Pushcart Price as did the editors of the The Literary Bohemian. She has three chapbooks to her credit, Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens and Over a Threshold of Roots, both published by Pudding House Press, Columbus Ohio and Calendar Poems, a self-published chapbook. As a poet perched near the 45th northern parallel, she is drawn to writing about the landscape of home and her travels.
Cheryl Latuner has published a poetry chapbook, Soon They Will Fly—A Meditation at Fitzgerald Lake, and a memoir, Baby at My Breast—Reflections of a Nursing Mother. Her poems have appeared in journals, such as The Comstock Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review and Tar River Poetry. Her current project is entitled The Phenology Club, based on a year-long series of outings with the Hitchcock Center for the Environment in Amherst, Massachusetts. She lives in Northampton, Mass, and teaches literature at a Waldorf high school.
Barbara Lee is a freelance writer who focuses on regional history and the natural world. Born near Washington’s Hanford Nuclear Site, she is a longtime resident of Eugene, Oregon. Each fall, Barbara works as a volunteer in Yellowstone National Park, and this past spring, in southern Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Her stories have appeared in Montana Outdoors, Yellowstone Quarterly, Oregon Coast Magazine, and other publications.
Sherri Levine is a poet and short fiction writer. She earned her BA in English with a focus in poetry at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, where she studied with Robert Pinsky and Barry Goldensohn. She earned her MA in English Literature and a TESOL Certificate at Portland State University. Sherri teaches English as a Second Language at Portland State University and Portland Community College. Her short fiction has been recently published in Sassafras Literary Magazine. She left the cold, harsh winters of upstate New York, and can now be found happily walking in the Portland rain without her umbrella.
Margaret Malone’s work has appeared in The Missouri Review, Oregon Humanities Magazine, Coal City Review, Swink, Nailed, latimes.com, and elsewhere, including recently the Forest Avenue Press anthology The Night, and the Rain, and the River. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Oregon Arts Commission and Literary Arts, two Regional Arts & Culture Council Project Grants, and residencies at The Sitka Center and Soapstone. A Dangerous Writers alumnus, Malone has a degree in Philosophy from Humboldt State University and has taught creative writing as a visiting artist at Pacific Northwest College of Art. She lives with her husband filmmaker Brian Padian and two children in Portland, where she co-hosts the artist and literary gathering SHARE.
Carolyn Martin is blissfully retired in Clackamas, Oregon where she gardens, writes and plays with creative friends. Her poems have appeared in a number of publications including Stirring, Persimmon Tree, Antiphon and Becoming: What Makes a Woman. Her second poetry collection, The Way a Woman Knows, was released in February 2015 by The Poetry Box, Portland, Oregon
Liz Nakazawa has been a freelance writer since 1984 and has published numerous articles on a variety of subjects such as health, gardening, education, architecture, the environment, and small businesses. Her articles have appeared in The Oregonian, Oregon Business Magazine, and the Christian Science Monitor. She has also published in Psychology Today, American Health and Fitness Magazine, and Northwest Travel.
Marisa Petersen is a retired teacher who taught Spanish in New Mexico, New York and Oregon, and English in Romania.
Paulann Petersen, Oregon’s sixth Poet Laureate, has six full-length books of poetry, most recently Understory from Lost Horse Press. She was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and received the 2006 Holbrook Award from Oregon Literary Arts. She serves on the board of Friends of William Stafford, organizing the January Stafford Birthday Events.
Kate Ristau is an author and folklorist. She writes young adult and middle grade fiction, along with grammar primers that won’t make you cringe. Her YA novel, Shadowgirl, was published by Lycaon Press in May. In her ideal world, magic and myth combine to create memorable stories with unforgettable characters. Until she finds that world, she’ll live in Portland, Oregon with her husband, her son, and her dog. If you can’t find her there, you can find her at kateristau.com.
Andrew Michael Roberts is the author of the poetry collections good beast from Burnside Review Books and something has to happen next from University of Iowa Press. He lives with his wife Sarah in Portland, Oregon, where he works as a cardiac nurse and frequents the library by bicycle.
Penelope Scambly Schott received the Oregon Book Award for her verse biography of Puritan dissenter Anne Hutchinson, A IS FOR ANNE. Her most recent book is HOW I BECAME AN HISTORIAN. Penelope lives in Portland and Dufur, Oregon where she teaches an annual poetry workshop.
Mattie Smith is a teacher, Pushcart-nominated poet, and documentary filmmaker from Lexington, Virginia, where she lives with her husband and ten children. Recently, Finishing Line Press nominated her poetry chapbook, Mother Chaos: Under Electric Light, for a Library of Virginia Literary Award, and Ruminate editors nominated “To a Fishing Father” for a Pushcart Poetry Prize. Her work appears in Dappled Things, Dark Matter, Floyd County Moonshine, and Red Earth Review. She lives at the foot of Little House Mountain in Lexington, Virginia, where she raises her ten children with her helpful husband.
Steven Ray Smith’s poems are forthcoming in The Yale Review, Southwest Review, Slice, Pembroke Magazine, Aethlon, and The Rio Grande Review. He has published poems in The Kenyon Review, Grain, Puerto del Sol and others, and is currently president of a culinary school in Austin where he lives with his wife and children.
Peter Serchuk was born and raised in New York. He attended college and graduate school in the Midwest before stumbling on a career in the advertising business, working in Detroit, St. Louis, New York and Los Angeles. His poems and review-essays have appeared in a variety of journals including Boulevard, Poetry, American Poetry Review, Hudson Review, Denver Quarterly, North American Review, New York Quarterly, Poet Lore, Texas Review, South Carolina Review and many others. Additionally, a number of his poems have been anthologized, most recently in Against Agamemnon: War Poetry (WaterWood Press) and The Best American Erotic Poems 1800 to the Present (Scribners). He is the author of two collections: Waiting for Poppa at the Smithtown Diner (University if Illinois Press) and All That Remains (WordTech Editions). He lives in Los Angeles.
Steve Theme is an award-winning author and journalist whose work has appeared in Alaska magazine, WORK Literary Magazine, The Seattle Times, and various trade publications and metro daily newspapers. In 2010, Theme won the Oregon Writers Colony Short Story Award for nonfiction. His new memoir, Asphalt Asylum, Hitchhiking the Paths of Change, will be released by Halyard Press in October.
Robert Vivian is the author of The Tall Grass Trilogy–The Mover Of Bones, Lamb Bright Saviors, and Another Burning Kingdom, in addition to the novel Water And Abandon. He’s also written two books of meditative essays, Cold Snap As Yearning and The Least Cricket Of Evening. Several of his plays have been produced in New York City and his monologues have been published in the Best Monologues series. His essays, poems, and stories have been published in Harper’s, Georgia Review, Creative Nonfiction, Alaska Quarterly, Ecotone, and dozens of other journals. He teaches at Alma College in Michigan and has taught several times at various universities in Turkey, especially in Samsun, Turkey. He’s currently at work on a collection of dervish essays called Mystery My Country.
Sarah Brown Weitzman, a Pushcart Prize nominee, has been widely published in hundreds of journals and anthologies including POET & CRITIC, ART TIMES, THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, RATTLE, MID-AMERICAN REVIEW, EKPHRASIS, ABRAXAS, THE WINDLESS ORCHARD, POET LORE, POTOMAC REVIEW, POEM, etc. Sarah received a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. A departure from poetry, her fourth book, HERMAN AND THE ICE WITCH, is a children’s novel published by Main Street Rag.
Stephen Whitney is a poet, essayist and fiction writer whose work has appeared in African American Review, Exhibition, Poetry Corners, Black Scholar, Third World Communications, Reed and USA Today. He has received awards and recognition from L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future and Writer’s Haven Bright Side Poetry.
Evan Morgan Williams has been published in literary magazines from Antioch Review to Zyzzyva. His prize-winning short story collection Thorn is his first book.
Eric Witchey has made a living as a freelance writer and communication consultant for over 24 years. In addition to producing many corporate non-fiction titles, he has sold more than 90 short stories and four novels. His stories have appeared in nine genres and on five continents, and he has received recognition from New Century Writers, Writers of the Future, Writer’s Digest, The Eric Hoffer Prose Award program, Short Story America, The Irish Aeon Awards, and other organizations. His How-To articles have appeared in The Writer Magazine, Writer’s Digest Magazine, and other print and online magazines. When not teaching or writing, he spends his time fly fishing or restoring antique, model locomotives.
Matthew Woodman teaches writing at California State University, Bakersfield. His poems have appeared in recent issues of Unsplendid, Jab, Empty Mirror, Gris-Gris, Cactus Heart, and The Brasilia Review [Brazil].