Print & Online Contributors' Notes, Verse Wisconsin 103
Marilyn Annucci is the author of Luck, (Parallel Press). See Umbrella Journal and Tupelo Press’s April Poetry Project for recent poems. Marilyn came to Wisconsin from Boston for a summer in 1988 (that "summer" lasted five years), and she returned in 1997. She is an associate professor in the Department of Languages and Literatures at the UW-Whitewater.
Linda Aschbrenner has an undergraduate degree in English and an MS degree is library science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For eleven years she edited and published the poetry journal Free Verse (now Verse Wisconsin). In 2001 Aschbrenner founded Marsh River Editions, a publisher of poetry chapbooks. Her own poetry, essays, and short stories have appeared in a number of publications. She was awarded the Christopher Latham Sholes Award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers for her support of Wisconsin writers.
Sharon Auberle has returned to her Midwestern roots after years of living in the Southwest, and she’s very happy to be residing full time in Door County. Besides poetry, photography and paper arts are her passions. Samples may be found on her website, Mimi’s Golightly Café. She is the author of two recent books: Saturday Nights at the Crystal Ball and Crow Ink.
Daniel Bachhuber is a Montessori elementary teacher in the St. Paul Public Schools. He has published poetry in the Iowa Review, Poetry East, The Southern Poetry Review, The Christian Science Monitor and many others, as well as a book, Mozart’s Carriage, from New Rivers Press, 2003. He also writes educational articles for Montessori periodicals.
Danny P. Barbare would like to travel to Wisconsin, never having traveled much out of the South, but loves where he lives.
Judy Barisonzi has been a Wisconsin resident since 1966, and she now lives among the lakes and woods of northwest Wisconsin. Semi-retired from teaching English at the University of Wisconsin Colleges, she gives workshops in creative writing and memoir writing, participates in several local writing groups, and publishes poems in local and national magazines.
Laurel Bastian is the current recipient of the Halls Emerging Artist Fellowship, and her work can be found in Margie, Cream City Review, Nimrod, Puerto del Sol, Tar River Poetry, Anderbo and other journals. She runs a creative writing program in a men's correctional facility near Madison, Wisconsin.
Guy R. Beining has had six poetry books and 25 chapbooks published over the years, and appeared in seven anthologies. He is in the Contemporary Authors Autobiography series, Vol. 30, 1998 (Gale Research). He is also in the Dictionary of the Avant Gardes, 2nd Ed., 2000. Recent publications include chain, epiphany, perspective (Germany), New Orleans Review, The New Review of Literature.
Michael Belongie’s collection, Now Is All We Have, came out in February 2010 as a beautiful handbound edition. Proceeds from that collection will support the environmental work of Holy Wisdom Monastery in Madison, just certified as the highest-rated LEED building in the United States.
B.J. Best is the author of two books of poetry, State Sonnets (sunnyoutside) and Birds of Wisconsin (New Rivers Press, forthcoming), as well as three chapbooks from Centennial Press. He teaches at Carroll University in Waukesha and lives in West Bend. He also serves on Verse Wisconsin's Advisory Board.
James Bettendorf is a retired math teacher who has written poetry for years. His poems have appeared in various places, including Free Verse. His other Wisconsin connection is a sister who lives in Amery.
Jean Biegun writes poems for Woodland Dunes Nature Center in Two Rivers. A retirement transplant from Chicago, she doesn't miss the Big City "C's": cars, concrete, crowds, consumerism, and crime. Kayaking a silent river is her preferred action scene.
CL Bledsoe is the author of two poetry collections, _____(Want/Need) and Anthem. A chapbook, Goodbye to Noise, is available online at www.righthandpointing.com/bledsoe. A minichap, Texas, was recently published by Mud Luscious Press. A short story collection, Naming the Animals, is forthcoming from Mary Celeste. He is an editor for Ghoti Magazine http://www.ghotimag.com. He blogs at Murder Your Darlings.
Margot Brown migrated from Massachusetts to the Midwest to attend Marquette University. Decades later, cleansed of her Boston accent, she still misses the ocean and compensates by putting too much salt on her food. Her poems have appeared widely. Margot lives in northern Illinois with her husband, Michael Morrison, and a four-pawed Hurricane Katrina evacuée, Miss Kitty, whose Louisiana drawl lingers.
Sarah Busse is a co-editor of Verse Wisconsin. Her chapbook, Given These Magics, is out from Finishing Line Press in 2010.
Dan Butterfass received his MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. He divides his time between teaching at a local college in Rochester, MN, and running a company that provides private sightseeing tours for visitors to Mayo Clinic. His poems have appeared in journals such as Great River Review and Cave Wall, and he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2009.
Jeremy Byars’s chapbook, Eyes Open to the Flash, was published in 2008 by Finishing Line Press, and he’s currently working on his first full-length collection. His poems and reviews have appeared in many journals, most recently storySouth, Ariel, Furnace Review, and Heartland Review and are forthcoming in Writer's Bloc, Tidal Basin Review and Stymie Magazine. He has no blood ties to Wisconsin but does have in-laws from nearby and a wife with fond memories of Wisconsin Dells.
John L. Campbell started free-lance writing for business and trade magazines in 1995. His book, Writing in Retirement, explains his evolution into fiction and poetry along with the profiles of thirteen other writers-in-retirement. His latest poetry chapbook is entitled Backstreet Voyeur.
Robin Chapman's most recent book is Abundance (Cider Press). Her poems have appeared recently in Prairie Schooner and Poetry East. She co-edited the anthology of women's poems Love Over 60 (Mayapple Press, 2010).
Sue Chenette is a poet and classical pianist who grew up in Phillips, Wisconsin and has made her home in Toronto since 1972. Her poems have appeared widely. She is the author of three chapbooks: A Transport of Grief, Solitude in Cloud and Sun and The Time Between Us, which won the Canadian Poetry Association’s Shaunt Basmajian Award in 2001. Her full-length collection Slender Human Weight was launched by Guernica Editions in December 2009.
Elizabeth Cleary (Eli) lives in Connecticut and works for a global IT firm. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals, including Off the Coast, and in an upcoming edition of Vermont Literary Review. An avid gardener, Eli loves to watch robins, Wisconsin's state bird, industriously negotiate her lawn early in the morning while she drinks that last cup of coffee before starting for work.
Cathryn Cofell is the author of five chapbooks, most recently Kamikaze Commotion (Parallel Press, 2008). Her latest project is a CD called Lip, poems set to the music of Obvious Dog. Her poetry can be found in places like MARGIE, Oranges & Sardines, NY Quarterly and Wisconsin People & Ideas, where she was selected for the 2008 John Lehman Poetry Award. She is currently on the Advisory Board of Verse Wisconsin. Visit her at www.cathryncofell.com.
Barbara Crooker’s books are Radiance, which won the 2005 Word Press First Book Award and was a finalist for the 2006 Paterson Poetry Prize; Line Dance (Word Press, 2008), which won the 2009 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence; and More (C&R Press, 2010). She enjoyed her time working in Wisconsin when she taught at AllWriters in Waukesha, but mostly, she works from her home in rural northeastern Pennsylvania.
Philip Dacey is the author of ten full-length books of poems, the latest Vertebrae Rosaries: 50 Sonnets (Red Dragonfly Press, 2009). His awards include three Pushcart Prizes, a Discovery Award from the New York YM-YWHA's Poetry Center, and various fellowships. His website is www.philipdacey.com. Over the years, he has given readings of his work in many places/schools in Wisconsin, most recently at the Great Lakes Writers Festival at Lakeland College. He lived for 35 years across the border in Minnesota.
Alice D'Alessio is the author of the biography Uncommon Sense: the Biography of Marshall Erdman. Her poetry book A Blessing of Trees was winner of the 2004 Posner Award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers, and her 2009 book, Days We Are Given, was first place winner in the Earth's Daughters chapbook contest. She is contributing editor to Woodlands and Prairies Magazine.
Jim Davis is an international professional football player who spent every summer of his youth in Green Lake, WI. He is a graduate of Knox College and currently studying poetry through Yale University. His first collection is forthcoming from Mi-te Press.
Bruce Dethlefsen is one half of the muscial duo, Obvious Dog. Bruce has just finished his six-year stint as secretary of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets.
Robert Ebbe was born in Madison, WI in 1970 and grew up in Fitchburg. He attended Lawrence University in Appleton and then graduated from U.W.-Madison Law School in 1995. He presently resides in Waunakee with his wife, daughter and step-son. “Shadow of Spears” is his first published poem.
Susan Elbe is the author of Eden in the Rearview Mirror (Word Press) and a chapbook, Light Made from Nothing (Parallel Press). Her poems appear or are forthcoming in many journals and anthologies, including Blackbird, diode, MARGIE, North American Review, Ocho, qarrtsiluni, Salt Hill, and A Fierce Brightness: Twenty-five Years of Women's Poetry (Calyx Books). Among her awards are the inaugural Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize (Calyx), the 2006 Lorine Niedecker Award, and fellowships to Vermont Studio Center and Virginia Center for Creative Arts. You can learn more about her and her work at www.susanelbe.com.
R. Virgil (Ron) Ellis lives near Cambridge, Wisconsin, where he and his wife are busy restoring fifty acres of wetland and savanna. He is an Emeritus Professor who taught writing, literature and media at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. For an exploration of his work, see www.poetrvellis.com.
Martin Elster, author of There’s a Dog in the Heavens! is also a composer and serves as percussionist for the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. His poetry has most recently appeared in The Chimaera, The Flea, 14 by 14, Lucid Rhythms, Soundzine, and Yankee Dog. As for Wisconsin ties, he studied at the Hartford Conservatory with Tele Lesbines, former timpanist of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.
Ann Engelman is the President of the Friends of Lorine Niedecker.
Martin Espada has published seventeen books of poems, essays, translations, and edited volumes. His most recent collection of poetry, The Republic of Poetry (Norton, 2006), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Two books are forthcoming: The Trouble Ball (Norton, 2011), a book of poems, and The Lover of a Subversive is Also a Subversive (Michigan, 2010), a collection of essays. His awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship (2006). Visit his website.
Fabu is Madison’s third Poet Laureate. She has a new publication, Poems, Dreams and Roses (2009). In Our Own Tongues will be published by the University of Nairobi Press in 2010 and African American Life in Haiku will be published by Parallel Press in 2011. Her website is www.artistfabu.com.
Douglas Fowler teaches full-time at the University of Wisconsin-Fox Valley and is the author of Condensed Matter and Other States of Mind (Finishing Line Press, 2005). He and his artist wife, Diana Ludwig, make a home in Ohio and split their time between Wisconsin and Ohio.
Bart Galle is a medical educator and visual artist. His chapbook, Everything is True at Once, was published by Passager Press in summer 2010. He is a 2008-2009 Loft Mentor Series Winner in Poetry and the winner of the 2008 Passager Poetry Contest and the Fall 2009 Hollingsworth Prize from White Pelican Review. His poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best New Poets 2009. He was awarded a 2010 Minnesota State Arts Board grant in poetry.
Kathie Giorgio’s stories have been widely published in literary magazines and anthologized in Papier Mache Press, Main St. Rag, Edition Bibliotekos, and in an online and audio anthology by Susurrus Press. She has been the featured author in Women Writers’ ezine. Her work has been nominated for the Million Writer Award and for the Best of the Net anthology. She is the director and founder of AllWriters’ Workplace & Workshop, a creative writing studio. Her novel, The Home For Wayward Clocks, is forthcoming.
Joey Goodall grew up in a small town 20 miles west of Green Bay, went to college at UW-Madison, stayed there for another year, then moved 2000 miles west of Green Bay to Bellingham, WA for a job, where he enjoyed the mountains and the rain for a year, but is headed back to the Midwest (St. Paul, MN) in the fall.
Brent Goodman is the author of three poetry collections, most recently The Brother Swimming Beneath Me (Black Lawrence Press, 2009). His poems have appeared in Poetry, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Zone 3, Gulf Coast, Court Green, and elsewhere. www.brentgoodman.info
Alena Hairston’s received her MFA from Brown University. A 2004 Poetry Fellowship recipient from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, a 2006 finalist for the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award, and a 2007-09 Cave Canem Fellow, she’s an English Instructor at Solano College in Fairfield, CA. The Logan Topographies was a Selected Winner for Bear Star Press’ Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Award. The collection won Persea Books’ Lexi Rudnitsky Memorial Prize for Poetry.
Derrick Harriell received an MFA in Creative Writing from Chicago State University and is currently a dissertator in English at the UW-Milwaukee where he teaches creative writing. His poems have appeared in various journals, including The Cream City Review, Reverie, and Lamplighter Review and are forthcoming in Main Street Rag. He is a poetry editor for The Cream City Review. His first collection of poems, Cotton, is scheduled for publication (Willow Books- Aquarius Press) in the Fall of 2010.
Jerry Hauser has published 17 chapbooks in recent years and has published many more poems in journals of poetry and literature over a 25-year period. Currently, he is finishing a book of poems under the title of A Stir of Seasons.
Keesia Hyzer has lived in Madison, Wisconsin for over 30 years raising a family and teaching English. In 2008 she retired from Madison West High School after 28 years, giving her expanded time to play with words. “Jobs I Once Had” is her first published poem.
Beth Ellen Jack belongs to multiple writing groups, including the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets. Her poems have appeared in multiple venues, including Echoes, The Writer’s Journal, The Writer, and she is proud to announce she will be included in the 2011 WFOP calendar.
Oritsegbemi Emmanuel Jakpa was born in Warri, Nigeria, and currently lives in Ireland. He studied at the University of Lagos and the University of Iowa. He obtained an MA from Waterford Institute of Technology. His poetry has been published widely. He has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes three times. And he received the Yeat's Pierce Loughran Scholar Award in 2008.
Nancy Jesse taught English at Madison West High School before retiring in 2005. She grew up on a dairy farm in Barron County, moving to Madison in 1968 to attend the University of Wisconsin. She has published both prose and poetry and presently lives in Madison with her husband Paul.
Jeffrey Johannes is an artist, poet, and cartoonist. His work has been published in Modern Haiku, Rosebud, Wisconsin Academy Review, Graphic Classics, English Journal and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He lives in Port Edwards, WI with his poet/musician wife, Joan.
Joan Wiese Johannes was born near Horicon Marsh. Her poems have been widely published and won numerous awards. Her chapbook Sensible Shoes was the 2009 winner of the John and Miriam Morris Memorial Chapbook Contest sponsored by the Alabama Poetry Society. She lives in Port Edwards with her poet husband, Jeffrey.
Judy Kaber was born in Brooklyn, New York, and moved to Maine 38 years ago. She teaches fourth grade at Troy Central School. Her poems have been published in a number of journals, both print and electronic. She once taught a boy named Paul, from Madison, Wisconsin, and he remembers her as an outpost of sensibility in an often chaotic life.
Martha Kaplan grew up in Seattle, has lived in Minneapolis, Houston and Chicago, and now lives in Madison. Her poetry is influenced by the vicissitudes of landscape, natural and human, and the impact of one on the other. She has published with Branch Redd Review, Möbius, The Poetry Magazine, and Hummingbird, and has poetry forthcoming in Blue Unicorn.
Khristian E. Kay is a storyteller: a teacher/poet. While his work appears political and often satirical he utilizes the words as metaphorical rubber bullets: painful and bruising and only lethal at close range. He is a long time resident of "Lake Country" Wisconsin and prefers cruising Wisconsin's Rustic Roads for poetic inspiration. Visit his website for more info.
Erin Keane has strained her eyes to see Wisconsin from the Michigan side of the great lake. In high school, she visited Milwaukee on a school trip and learned how warm and delicious Miller beer can smell during the brewing phase. She lives and writes in Louisville, where she directs the InKY Reading Series. She is the author of two collections of poetry, The Gravity Soundtrack and Death-Defying Acts.
Claire Keyes is the author of The Question of Rapture. Professor Emerita at Salem State College, she has also written The Aesthetics of Power: The Poetry of Adrienne Rich, newly published in paperback in 2009 by the University of Georgia Press. Her poems and reviews have appeared in Calyx, The Valparaiso Review, and The Women's Review of Books, among others.
Don Kimball is the author of two chapbooks, Journal of a Flatlander (Finishing Line Press 2009) and Skipping Stones (Pudding House Publications 2008). His poetry has appeared in The Formalist, The Lyric, The Blue Unicorn, and various other journals and anthologies, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Mignon Ariel King is a third-generation New Englander who has had a public library card since age 5. An alumna of Simmons College and former adjunct professor of English, Ms. King edits two online journals. Her first collection is The Woods Have Words (Ibbetson Street Press, 2009). For more information and a list of publications, visit her blog: www.mignonarielking.wordpress.com.
Jane E. Kocmoud has lived in Wisconsin for almost forty years, first as an elementary school teacher in West Allis, and then as a grandmother, international traveler, volunteer, photographer, and poet in Sheboygan, where her son and his family live.
Robyn Kohlwey is a current resident of Grafton, Wisconsin, and recently graduated from Carroll University in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Her work has recently appeared in Arbor Vitae, Anthills V and Nerve Cowboy.
Michael Kriesel has won both the WFOP Muse Prize and the Lorine Niedecker Award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers. Books include Chasing Saturday Night (Marsh River Editions); Feeding My Heart To The Wind and Moths Mail The House (sunnyoutside press); and Soul Noir (Platonic 3way Press). He’ll be the featured poet for the 2010 Great Lakes Writers Festival at Lakeland College and has work forthcoming in North American Review, Rattle, Antioch Review, Crab Creek Review and Alaska Quarterly.
Jim Landwehr was born and raised in St. Paul, MN, and now lives and works in Waukesha as a Geographic Information Systems Analyst. Jim writes creative non-fiction, memoir, and poetry and is currently enrolled in the All Writers writing workshop (www.allwriters.org).
Jackie Langetieg was a runner-up in the 2003 and 2004 Wisconsin Academy Review poetry contest and served as co-editor with Alice D'Alessio of the 2004 WFOP Calendar. She received the 1999 Excellence in Poetry Award from the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters and the 1999 Jade Ring for poetry. Her chapbooks are White Shoulders (Cross+Roads Press 2000), Just What in Hell is a Stage of Grief and Confetti in a Silent City.
Nick Lantz is the author of two books of poetry, We Don't Know We Don't Know and The Lightning That Strikes the Neighbors' House. He was a Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and he is the 2010-2011 Emerging Writer Lecturer at Gettysburg College.
Peg Lauber divides her time and activities between Eau Claire and New Orleans. She and Sandy Lindow edited the 2011 Wisconsin Poets' Calendar this year.
Elda Lepak spent most of her life in Wisconsin. After retiring, she moved to the warmer climate of North Carolina where she spends her time writing with a weekly poetry group and perfecting her photography in a mentored camera club. Her work has appeared in Free Verse, The Main Street Rag, Wolf Tales, and two anthologies, Empty Shoes and Look Both Ways.
MaryEllen Letarte has roots in Wisconsin that still tug at her. Her dad was born in Pepin, and matriculated at the University of Wisconsin. She occasionally teaches poetry to children in after-school programs and to adults enrolled in ALFA-Adult Learning in the Fitchburg Area.
Emille Lindemann is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she is co-poetry editor of Cream City Review. Emilie's chapbook, Dear Minimum Wage Employee: You Are Priceless, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press.
Carl Lindner has lived in Wisconsin since 1965, having spent 4 years in Madison earning his Ph.D. in American literature, and the next 38 years as a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside.
Marie Loeffler is a Wisconsin poet, violinist, and private violin instructor who spends most of her free time practicing, writing, reading, and creating. Her poetry publications are current or forthcoming in Echoes, the WFOP Spring 2010 Museletter, and the 2011 Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar.
Ross Losapio is a New Jersey native and graduate of Loyola University Maryland where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Writing and English. He will be enrolled in the MFA program at Virginia Commonwealth University beginning in the fall of 2010. His poetry has formerly been published in Soundings East, Italian Americana and, most recently, in the Fall 2009 issue of Interrobang?! Magazine. He has also self-published a chapbook of poems entitled The Measure of Healing.
Jeri McCormick, a Madison poet and long-time teacher of writing in senior centers and Elderhostel, recently co-edited Love Over 60: An Anthology of Women's Poems (Mayapple Press). Salmon Poetry in Ireland will publish her next book of poems.
Louis McKee has had poems recently in APR, 5 AM, Pearl, Rattle, Paterson Poetry Review, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy. Near Occasions of Sin, a selected poems, was published by Cynic Press, and Adastra Press has issued Marginalia, a collection of his translations of medieval monastic poems from the Old Irish. A resident of Philadelphia, he spent a short time in Milwauke in, grad school at Marquette.
Bruce McRae is a poet/musician with hundreds of publications around the world. His first book, The So-Called Sonnets, is appearing in the fall via Silenced Press. For more poems and music, his website is www.bpmcrae.com.
Julie L. Moore is the author of Slipping Out of Bloom (WordTech Editions) and the chapbook, Election Day (Finishing Line Press). Moore is a Pushcart Prize nominee and recipient of the Rosine Offen Memorial Award from the Free Lunch Arts Alliance in Illinois, the Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize from Ruminate, and the Judson Jerome Poetry Scholarship from the Antioch Writers' Workshop. Learn more about her work at www.julielmoore.com.
Richard W. Moyer is 79 years old. He obtained his AB in English at Harvard College in 1953, an MH from University of Richmond in 1976, and an MA in English from Temple University in 2000. His poems are widely published, and he has one chapbook and one book of selected poems to his credit.
Ralph Murre is a recovering Wisconsin farm boy who has taken to poetry instead of plowing, since the pay rate is about the same, and the females involved tend to be human rather than Holstein. His books to date are Crude Red Boat (Cross+Roads Press) and Psalms (Little Eagle Press). He also admits to occasional blogging at the Arem Arvinson Log.
Christian Nagle has published poetry, essays, translations, interviews and prose fiction in Esquire, The Paris Review, Southwest Review, Partisan Review, New England Review, Kyoto Journal, Quick Fiction, and many other magazines. His first collection of poems, Flightbook, will be published by Salmon Poetry (Ireland) in English and Japanese. One of his best friends, poet Christopher Bakken, is from Madison.
Lorine Niedecker (1903-1970) grew up on Blackhawk Island, just outside Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. Except for brief stays in New York, Madison, and Milwaukee, she lived her entire life on the banks of the Koshkonong River. Her reputation as a poet has grown steadily in the years since her death.
Cristina M. R. Norcross is a freelance writer and poet living in Oconomowoc, WI with her husband and their two sons. She is the author of Land & Sea: Poetry Inspired by Art, The Red Drum and Unsung Love Songs. Visit her website at www.FirkinFiction.com.
Robert Nordstrom is a poet, free lance writer, and school bus driver living in Mukwonago, Wisconsin. He used to think that the nine-month school year was instituted to give teachers and students a break. Now he understands that it's actually for the mental health of the bus drivers.
Kenneth Pobo has a new online chapbook called Fitting Parts (Philistine Press). He lived in Wisconsin for six years as a graduate student attending the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Now he and his partner vacation in Wisconsin’s Vilas County every spring.
Diana Randolph attended Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin, and now resides in Drummond. She's been a professional artist for thirty years, teaches continuing education art classes in her community and at the School of the Arts at Rhinelander. For more information please visit www.dianarandolph.com.
Joseph Reich is a social worker therapist who works out in the state of Massachusetts, a displaced New Yorker who misses most of all the Thai food, Shanghai Joe's in Chinatown, the fresh smoothies on Houston Street, and bagels and bialy's of The Lower East Side. He has a wife and son, and when they all get a bit older, he hopes to take them back to play, to pray, to contemplate in the parks and playgrounds of NYC.
Georgia Ressmeyer has twice won grants in creative writing from the Wisconsin Arts Board, and is the author of two short novels. Her poetry has appeared widely in journals and magazines. Her chapbook, Today I Threw My Watch Away, is out from Finishing Line Press in 2010.
Harlan Richards grew up on the west side of Madison, and earned his BS in business administration from UW-Platteville. He has written nonfiction and fiction, and is now learning to write poetry. He is currently a guest of the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.
Erik Richardson is a schoolteacher and freelance writer in Milwaukee. Recent work has appeared in Arbor Vitae, Sein und Werden, and Wisconsin People & Ideas (forthcoming). He won the 2009 Gahagan Prize in Poetry and publishes a modest poetry journal for young people: Signs & Wonders.
Lou Roach, former social worker and psychotherapist, lives in Poynette. Her poems have appeared in a number of small press publications, including Main St. Rag, Free Verse and others. She has written two books of poetry, A Different Muse and For Now. She continues to do free-lance writing, although poetry is her favorite thing to do.
Richard Roe, a retired Legislative Analyst and Editor, began writing poetry in his mid-30s and has kept at it ever since. A preacher's kid who has lived in Ohio and New Jersey, he has a background in history and economics. His most recent book is Knots of Sweet Longing. His work has appeared recently in three anthologies: Writing by Ear: An Anthology of Writing About Music, Jukebox Junction USA, and River Poems.
Edwin Romond’s most recent book of poetry is Dream Teaching (Grayson Books). His work has appeared widely and been featured on NPR. He has received fellowships from the NEA, the New Jersey State Arts Council, and the Pennsylvania State Arts Council. Romond went to college in Wisconsin and fell in love for the first time walking his girlfriend home on South Porter Ave. in Waukesha. Now retired, he lives in Wind Gap, PA with his wife and son.
G. A. Scheinoha dislikes bio notes precisely because they are pretentious. Maybe this comes from a grounded Wisconsin background. Or just his view: the writer isn’t as important as the poem. Still, if you must have his curriculum vitae, recent bylines include Avocet, Conceit, Echoes, Fox Cry Review and Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar 2010.
E.P. Schultz lives in the Driftless area of southwestern Wisconsin. His work has appeared in Atlanta Review, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Chronogram, Rosebud, and Inkwell Magazine, among others, and he is the recipient of a 2010 Contributing Editor’s Pushcart Nomination. He is the founding president of The Driftless Writing Center.
Judith Sepsey began writing when she retired about ten years ago. She has been published in The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Echoes, Free Verse, and elsewhere.
A lifelong resident of Wisconsin, Kathleen Serley enjoys all of our seasons: spring gardening, summer beach combing, fall hiking and winter snow shoeing. She teaches English.
Thomas R. Smith lives in River Falls, Wisconsin, and is a Master Track instructor in poetry at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. His most recent collections are Kinnickinnic (Parallel Press), and a new book, The Foot of the Rainbow, is now available from Red Dragonfly Press. He posts blogs and poems on his web site at www.thomasrsmithpoet.com.
Barry Spacks earns his keep teaching writing and literature at UC Santa Barbara, California, after many years doing the same at M.I.T. He’s published poems widely in journals paper and pixel, plus stories, two novels, ten poetry collections, and three CDs of selected work.
Matthew Stolte began practicing concrete & visual poetry July 1998 in Madison, Wisconsin. Poems about Work are drawn & painted on 8.5” X 11” card stock. A variety of stencils are used with acrylic paint to print letters & images including refrigerator magnets, found “stencils” from broken car parts & cookie cutters. The visual poems employ concrete & shape poetry.
Judy Swann’s work has appeared in Lilliput, Danse Macabre, Tongues of the Ocean, and Tilt Poetry Magazine, as well as other print and online venues. Her work at The Waters has been repeatedly honored by the judges at the InterBoard Poetry Competition. She is an Iowan who lives in gorgeous Ithaca, NY.
Richard Swanson lives in Madison, Wisconsin where he reads, gardens, and writes. His previous volume was Men in the Nude in Socks (Fireweed, 2006). His latest book is Not Quite Eden (Fireweed Press).
Marilyn L. Taylor is serving as the Poet Laureate of Wisconsin for 2009 and 2010, and enjoying every minute of it. Her award-winning poems have appeared in dozens of anthologies and journals, including Poetry, The American Scholar, Measure, Valparaiso Review, and The Formalist. Her sixth and latest collection, titled Going Wrong, was published by Parallel Press in July of 2009. She is also a Contributing Editor for The Writer magazine, where her articles on poetic craft appear bimonthly.
Jeanie Tomasko is a home health nurse who loves to write, take walks, and birdwatch, and she thinks everything is prettier in Fall. She is the author of a forthcoming chapbook, Tricks of Light (Parallel Press 2011).
Steve Tomasko lives in Middleton with his wife, Jeanie, 3 kids, 2 cats, some uninvited fleas and probably a few more life forms he doesn’t know about unless he peeks in the corners and under the couch.
Kohl Trimbell recently graduated from UW-Madison with an English Degree. Currently, she is working full-time at a non-profit organization and is soon hoping to go back to graduate school for Creative Writing. “My Grandmother’s Skin” is her first published poem.
Erik Tschekunow is an assistant professor of English at Silver Lake College in Manitowoc, WI, and resides in Sheboygan. He holds an MFA from Emerson College in Boston, MA. His poems have most recently appeared in Tar River Poetry and Arsenic Lobster.
Diane Unterweger’s poems have appeared in Free Verse, Luna Creciente, and UWM's Eat Local/Read Local program. She is currently working on a series of poems about Houdini.
Wendy Vardaman, author of Obstructed View (Fireweed Press 2009), is a co-editor of Verse Wisconsin. Visit wendyvardaman.com.
Philip Venzke grew up on a dairy farm near Colby, Wisconsin and is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point. A fervent zymurgist, his fermentations take many forms. His poems and translations have appeared widely–most recently in Echoes, 2011 Wisconsin Poets' Calendar, and Sheepshead Review.
Lisa Vihos worked for twenty years as an art museum educator and is now the Director of Alumni Relations at Lakeland College. Her poems have appeared previously in Verse Wisconsin, and in Free Verse, Lakefire, Wisconsin People and Ideas, Seems, and Big Muddy. She resides in Sheboygan and maintains a weekly blog.
Caleb Whitney is a father, husband, self-employed landscape gardener, fire instructor, and assistant fire chief.
Marilyn Windau was nurtured on Big Bend farms, in raspberry patches in Fremont, by blue gills from Green Lake, and from books in Madison. Graduating from UW- Madison, she married a civil engineer from Wauwatosa and raised three daughters in Appleton and Sheboygan Falls. She teaches art to elementary school children in Oostburg.
Scott Winkler grew up on a dairy farm in Gillett, attended St. Norbert College in DePere, and did his graduate work at UW-Milwaukee. The Wide Turn Toward Home (a collection of seven short stories and the title novella, nearly all of which are set in Wisconsin) was published in 2008 by Pocol Press. His work has appeared in publications ranging from Elysian Fields Quarterly to The Journal of Popular Culture. Scott and his wife, Martha, are parents to two beautiful daughters, and they reside in Casco, Wisconsin.
Catherine Young raises plants and children in southwest Wisconsin. She is saving the world by hanging laundry nearly every day, just like her mama did.
Lisa Zimmerman is an antiques dealer, book collector, and poet. She lives and writes in the Northwoods. Founding member of the five-year-old Eagle River Writers Group, Lisa was first published in Free Verse.
