Contributors' Notes
photo by Katrin Talbot
Linda Aschbrenner is the editor/publisher of Marsh River Editions. She edited and published the poetry journal Free Verse from 1998 to 2009 which now continues as Verse Wisconsin. She lives in Marshfield and is presently lost in the 1950s as she works on a book of family memories with her two sisters, Elda Lepak and Mavis Flegle.
James Babbs is not a real writer but he plays one on TV. He works for the government but doesn’t like to talk about it. He likes getting drunk and writing because both of them can be very intoxicating. He thinks poets should be treated more like rock stars and have swarms of beautiful groupies chasing them wherever they go. His books are available from www.xlibris.com, www.lulu.com &www.interiornoisepress.com.
Alessandra Bava is a translator living and working in Rome. She holds an MA in American Literature. Publishing credits include Poetry Quarterly, elimae, Zouch Magazine & Miscellany and The Anemone Sidecar. Her connections to Wisconsin are her love for the poems of Lorine Niedecker and her youthly infatuation for Little House on the Prairie.
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.
Gerard Beirne was born in Ireland and now lives in Canada . He is a past recipient of The Sunday Tribune/Hennessy New Irish Writer of the Year award. His collection of poetry Digging My Own Grave was published by Dedalus Press, Dublin. His collection Games of Chance: A Gambler’s Manual is forthcoming form Oberon this Fall (2011). He has published two novels and his short story "Sightings of Bono" was adapted for film featuring Bono. http://www.gerardbeirne.com
Michael Belongie, a past president of the WFOP and coeditor of the 2007 Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar has five published collections of poems; his most recent collection, Now Is All We Have, was co-exhibited with selected oils and watercolors of notable nature and wildlife artist, Jonathan Wilde in 2010
Carol Berg’s poems are forthcoming or in Artifice, Pebble Lake Review, Fifth Wednesday Journal, qarrtsiluni,blossombones, and elsewhere. Two chapbooks, Ophelia Unraveling (dancing girl press), and Small Portrait and the Woman Holding A Flood In Her Mouth (Binge Press), are forthcoming. Her website is located here: http://carolbergpoetry.com/wordpress/
Stephen Bett’s latest book of poetry is Re-Positioning (Ekstasis Editions, 2011). A thirteenth book is due to come out: Fits and Starts: New & Selected Poems (Salmon Poetry, Ireland, 2012). His work has also appeared widely in Canada, the U.S., England, Australia, New Zealand, and Finland, as well as in three anthologie, and on radio. These poems are forthcoming in Sound Off: a book of jazz, Thistledown Press, 2013. Visit stephenbett.com.
Lorna Knowles Blake’s first collection of poems, Permanent Address, won the Richard Snyder Memorial Prize from the Ashland Poetry Press. She has been the recipient of a residency from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship from the Sewanee Writers Conference. Ms. Blake teaches creative writing at the 92nd Street Y and serves on the editorial board of Barrow Street. She lives in Cape Cod, New Orleans and New York City.
Kim Bridgford is the director of the West Chester University Poetry Center and the West Chester University Poetry Conference, the largest all-poetry writing conference in the United States. She is the editor of Mezzo Cammin and founder of the Mezzo Cammin Women Poets Timeline Project, which will eventually be the largest database of women poets in the world. Her most recent book is Hitchcock’s Coffin: Sonnets about Classic Films (David Robert Books).
Lisa Marie Brodsky was born in Chicago, IL and moved to Madison, WI in 2001 where she worked at the now-defunct but always remembered Canterbury Booksellers. She received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2005. Parallel Press published her chapbook, We Nod Our Dark Heads, in 2008 and, in 2012, Salmon Publishing will publish her first full-length poetry book, The Sum of Our Burning. Lisa is Wisconsin Director of the Alzheimer's Poetry Project (www.alzpoetry.com) where she reads classic poetry to the elderly population suffering from dementia.
Amanda Mae Brzenk is a student of creative writing at the UW-Madison. She interned with Verse Wisconsin in Spring, 2011, when she worked on this piece.
Retired teacher, editor, and putzer, Gary Busha is working on haiku and the short poem as a way to use language sparingly. He likes to write about his boyhood home north of Oshkosh. He makes a point to attend yearly reunions in the old neighborhood.
Charles Byrne is a poet and philosopher from Illinois, whose recent work includes with a poem forthcoming in Poetry Quarterly. Some of his oldest friends are from Wisconsin—Madison, mostly—and his most recent visit (of many) was to protest in the Capitol last spring.
Michael Cantor is theauthor of Life in the Second Circle (Able Muse Press, 2012,) His poems have appeared widely in such places as Margie, The Atlanta Review, The Dark Horse, The Comstock Review (Pushcart nomination), SCR. He has been a finalist for the Richard Wilbur, Nemerov (twice), Able Muse, Robert Penn Warren and Morton Marr Awards. A chapbook, The Performer, was published by Pudding House Press in 2007, and he won the New England Poetry Club Erika Mumford (2006) and Gretchen Warren (2008) Awards. Visit his website for more information.
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.
Caroline Collins is an assistant professor of English at Quincy University. Her poems have appeared in such places as Fox Cry Review, Wisconsin People and Ideas, and Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies. Her chapbook Presences is forthcoming from Parallel Press.
Elizabeth Cook was born and raised in Madison, WI and cannot contemplate living in any other state. She went to Carroll College in Waukesha, WI, where she discovered her love of poetry. She especially enjoys writing about the beautiful Wisconsin landscape.
Raised in Louisiana, Kevin Cutrer now lives in the Boston area. His poems have appeared most recently in The Cimarron Review, The Dark Horse, The Raintown Review, and The Sugar House Review. He has work forthcoming in The Hudson Review, The Southern Poetry Anthology Volume IV, edited by Paul Ruffin and William Wright; and A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry, edited by Stacey Lynn Brown and Oliver de la Paz.
Ron Czerwien is the owner of Avol's, a used and out-of-print bookstore in Madison, WI. His poems have appeared in a number of print journals as well as on-line. He also hosts the monthly "First Thursday Open Mike Poetry Readings" at Avol's.
C. Dahlen’s short stories, columns, and poetry have appeared in The Wisconsin Review, The Anglican Theological Journal, Play It Again, The Woodsman, The Dachshund Club of America Quarterly, The Lyric, The Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal Poetry and Verse Wisconsin. More of his poetry may be found on the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poetry website (wfop.org). Click on Poet Pages.
Holly Day is a housewife and mother of two. Her poetry has recently appeared in The Oxford American, The Midwest Quarterly, and Slipstream. Her book publications include Music Composition for Dummies, Guitar-All-in-One for Dummies, and Music Theory for Dummies, which has recently been translated into French, Dutch, Spanish, Russian, and Portuguese.
Bruce Dethlefsen plays bass and sings in the musical (he hopes) duo Obvious Dog, the name taken from Wiscosnin Poet Laureate Marilyn Taylor's description of a poem "beyond resuscitation." His most recent collection is Unexpected Shiny Things (Cowfeather Press, 2011).
Carol Dorf's poems have appeared in Sin Fronteras, Spillway, Hip Mama: The Parenting Zine, The Mom Egg, In Posse Review,Moira, A Cappella Zoo, Naugatuck River Review, Feminist Studies, Heresies, Fringe, The Midway, Poemeleon, Runes, and 13th Moon. Her poems have been anthologized in Not a Muse, Boomer Girls, and elsewhere. She has taught in a variety of venues, including a science museum, a large urban high school, as a California-Poet-in-the-Schools and at Berkeley City College. She is poetry editor ofTalking Writing.
Kevin Drzakowski, originally from St. Louis, is an associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. His plays have been performed in Missouri, Michigan, Wisconsin, and New York City. In addition to writing, Kevin acts (poorly) and directs (nearly as badly) for his local community theater.
Greer DuBois is an actress and director, a student in the Dept. of Theatre at Northwestern University, and a poet.
Karl Elder is Poet in Residence at Lakeland College near Sheboygan, where he also facilitates Sheboygan County’s Mead Public Library Poetry Circle. His series of essays in response to prompts from Creative Writing Now appear online athttp://www.creative-writing-now.com/language-poetry.html.
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.
Anna M. Evans is the Editor of the Raintown Review and currently teaches poetry at West Windsor Art Center. Her chapbooks Swimming and Selected Sonnets are available from Maverick Duck Press. She has visited Michigan and Illinois, which she believes are near Wisconsin.
Susan Firer has recent work in Visiting Dr. Williams: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of William Carlos Williams (University of Iowa Press) and The Cento: A Collection of Collage Poems (Red Hen Press).
Yvette Viets Flaten’s great-grandfather homesteaded in Barron County, Wisconsin in the years immediately following the Civil War, and those roots have proven fascinatingly strong as she researches the location of his 160 acres.
William Ford has two books, The Graveyard Picnic (Mid-America Press, 2002) and Past Present Imperfect (Turning Point, 2006). Two chapbooks, Allen & Ellen and Descending with Miles, were published by Pudding House in 2010. His good friend, Paul Zimmer (poet and editor), lives in Crawford County. They roam around the Kickapoo River and hit the high spots of Soldiers Grove.
Russell Gardner, Jr. grew up on a central WI farm, lived in many states as an adult, and is back in Wisconsin. Writing poetry (and prose) since college, he also does mixed media visual art and helped originate and then coordinate the Epidemic Peace Imagery project featured in Free Verse #99/100.
David Graham has taught writing and literature at Ripon College in Ripon WI since 1987. He is the author of six collections of poems, most recently Stutter Monk (Flume Press), and an essay anthology co-edited with Kate Sontag: After Confession: Poetry as Autobiography (Graywolf Press).
Elise Gregory has published in various literary journals including Hubbub, Stoneboat, Echoes, and Fine Madness. Her chapbook is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.
Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas is a six-time Pushcart nominee and a 2010 Best of the Net nominee. She is the author of seven chapbooks with her latest collection of poems, Epistemology of an Odd Girl, forthcoming from March Street Press. She lives in the High Country, near the base of the Sierra Foothills. According to family lore, she is a direct descendent of Robert Louis Stevenson.
David Gross lives in the foothills of the Illinois Ozarks. His work has been included in numerous literary and small-press journals and in four anthologies. He is the author of four chapbooks of poetry. The most recent, Pilgrimage, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2009.
Kenneth P. Gurney lives in Albuquerque, NM, USA with his beloved Dianne. He edits the anthology Adobe Walls which contains the poetry of New Mexico. His latest book is This is not Black & White. To learn more visit http://www.kpgurney.me/Poet/Welcome.html.
Matthew Haughton is the author of the chapbook, Bee-coursing Box (Accents Publishing). His poetry has appeared in a myriad of journals including Appalachian Journal, Now & Then, Still, Stirring, The Meadowland Review, and The James Dickey Review.
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.
Tim Hawkins has lived and traveled widely throughout North America, Southeast Asia and Latin America, where he has worked as a journalist, technical writer, communications manager, and teacher in international schools. He currently lives in his hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan. His writing has appeared in numerous print and online publications, most recently in Blueline, Eunoia Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, The Midwest Quarterly, The Shit Creek Review, and Underground Voices. He was nominated by Four and Twenty for a 2012 Pushcart Prize, and has poems forthcoming in Eclectica and The Smoking Poet.
Karla Huston is the author of six chapbooks of poetry, most recently, An Inventory of Lost Things(Centennial Press, 2009). A broadside is forthcoming from Page 5. Her poems, reviews and interviews have been published widely. Her poem “Theory of Lipstick,” originally published in Verse Wisconsin #101, was awarded a Pushcart Prize.
Elizabeth Iannaci is a widely published and anthologized Los Angeles-based poet who mistrusts men who keep their hats on in the house. She earned her MFA in Poetry from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and recently was a finalist for the 2009 New Letters Literary Award. She served for five years as co-director of the Valley Contemporary Poets, has appeared at countless venues in the United States, Slovenia, and Paris, France, has one son and prefers paisley to polka dots. You would like her.
Peter Joel is a Wisconsin native, which immediately gives him one thing in common with “Fighting Bob” La Follette, Bon Iver, and the legend of the Waukesha Kangaroo. It also leaves not much else in common with the afore-mentioned trio. He currently lives outside the US.
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.
Many of Erna Kelly’s poems are based on people and places in Wisconsin but some are based on people and places from the East and West Coasts, places she lived before moving to Wisconsin. When she isn’t writing poetry, she is writing prose about seventeenth-century poets. Her own poetry, however, is based in the present.
Lawrence Kessenich grew up in Wisconsin and has a large extended family there. His poetry has been published in magazines such as Poetry Ireland,Cream City Review, and Atlanta Review. His poem "Angelus" won the Strokestown International Poetry Prize in Ireland. His essay about his Waunakee-bred father was published in the anthology This I Believe: On Love. His play Ronnie's Charger, set in Wisconsin, won the People's Choice Award in a national competition.
Claire Keyes is the author of two poetry collections: The Question of Rapture and Rising and Falling. Her poems and reviews have appeared in Tattoo Highway, Prairie Schooner and The Newport Review, among others. Although a resident of Marblehead, MA, she took a memorable drive through lake-filled Wisconsin in the first car she ever owned.
Athena Kildegaard lives in Morris, Minnesota, on the prairie. Her books are Rare Momentum and Bodies of Light, both from Red Dragonfly Press, and Cloves & Honey, Nodin Press. In her first year of marriage she lived in southern Minnesota and her husband in Chicago, and they traveled many times across Wisconsin full of eagerness.
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.
Alan S. Kleiman's poetry has appeared in The Criterion, Camel Saloon, Fringe, The Montucky Review, Pyrta, and other journals. His chapbook, Grand Slam, is forthcoming from Crisis Chronicles Press. He lives in New York City and works as an attorney.
Michael Kriesel's poems have appeared in North American Review, The Progressive and Rattle. He's written reviews for Small Press Review andLibrary Journal, and he has won both the WFOP Muse Prize and the Lorine Niedecker Award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers. He’s been nominated for nine Pushcart Prizes. Books include Chasing Saturday Night (Marsh River Editions); Feeding My Heart To The Wind and Moths Mail The House (sunnyoutside press).
J. Patrick Lewis’s first book of poems—Gulls Hold Up the Sky—was published in October 2010 by Laughing Fire Press. He has published 75 children's picture and poetry books with Knopf, Athenenum, Creative Editions, National Geographic, and others. His poems have appeared in Gettysburg Review, New England Review, New Letters, and many others. He was recently named the 2011-2013 U.S. Children's Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation.
Lyn Lifshin has published over 120 books and edited 4 anthologies. Most recently: All the Poets Who Have Touched Me, Living and Dead; All True: Especially the Lies, and forthcoming from New York Quarterly Books: A Girl Goes Into the Woods. www.lynlifshin.com
Barbara Lightner is a 73-year old shameless agitator, retired. She grew up in rural Tennessee among sharecroppers and cotton magnates, hard scrabble farmers and aristocrats. Writing poetry in law school became her escape from the intolerable burden of injustice by law. Her poetry has appeared in Verse Wisconsin, Poesia, the Table Rock Review, New Verse News, Occupy Poetry, and the anthologies Letters to the World and So You Want to be a Memoirist. The Wisconsin People & Ideas/Wisconsin Book Festival 2012 Poetry Contest awarded her both a third place and an honorable mention for two of her poems.
Melissa Lindstrum was born in Milwaukee and lived there most of her life. Though she’s spent the last four years in other time zones, she is back in Wisconsin, working and eating lots of cheese in Madison.
Emilie Lindemann lives in Manitowoc County with her dairy-farmer husband. Her chapbook, Dear Minimum Wage Employee, was recently released from Dancing Girl Press. Emilie holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and teaches at Silver Lake College.
Presently Sandra Lindow is intrepid enough to attempt teaching English language learners to use the Unreal Conditional: If she had not been shoveling snow Feb. 29, she would not have broken her ankle.
Amit Majmudar is a novelist, poet, and diagnostic nuclear radiologist. He writes and practices in Dublin, Ohio, where he lives with his wife and twin sons. His first novel, Partitions, was published by Holt/Metropolitan to wide acclaim, with featured reviews in The Wall Street Journal and
NPR’s All Things Considered. His first poetry collection, 0', 0', was released by Northwestern in 2009. His second poetry collection, Heaven and Earth, was awarded the Donald Justice Prize for 2011. His second novel, The Abundance, is forthcoming in early 2013. More information is available at www.amitmajmudar.com.
Charlotte Mandel is winner of the 2012 New Jersey Poets Prize. She has published seven books of poetry, the most recent, Rock Vein Sky from Midmarch Arts Press. Other titles include two poem-novellas of feminist biblical re-vision—The Life of Mary and The Marriages of Jacob. An independent scholar, she has published essays on the role of cinema in the life and work of poet H.D. She recently retired from teaching poetry writing at Barnard College Center for Research on Women.Please visit her website at: www.charlottemandel.com.
Lisa McCool-Grime bought Pamela Sneed's book, Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom Than Slavery, at A Room of One's Own Bookstore while attending a college conference in Madison more than a decade ago. Some of Lisa's poems can be found in Splinter Generation, PANK, Solo Novo and elsewhere. Her collaborative work can be read at Poemeleon and elimae. Tupelo press awarded one of her poems first place in their Fragments of Sappho contest.
Gene McCormick’s most recent poetry/short story collections are Tanya, Queen Of The Greasy Spoon (2009), and Rain On The Sun (2008). He has had ten books published, a mix of poetry, short stories, non-fiction, and lives just south of Verse Wisconsin in Wayne, Illinois.
James Scannell McCormick holds a doctorate in creative writing-poetry from Western Michigan University. His works have appeared in CutBank, The Lucid Stone, SLANT, Rattapallax, and most recently in Unsplendid. He’s been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize. He currently lives and teaches in Rochester, Minnesota.
Shane McCrae is the author of Mule (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2011), and two chapbooks, One Neither One (Octopus Books, 2009) and In Canaan (Rescue Press, 2010). His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in The Best American Poetry 2010,Fence, Agni, Denver Quarterly, Esque and others. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in English at the University of Iowa.
Richard Merelman writes poems because language is the only medium through which he can hope to achieve beautiful expression. Poems of his have appeared in Main Street Rag and Measure. Recent poems have appear in Bumble Jacket Miscellany and Verse Wisconsin. He taught political science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison until 2001.
Mary Meriam’s poems have appeared recently in The New York Times, Poetry Foundation, American Life in Poetry, Measure, and Mezzo Cammin. She is the author of The Countess of Flatbroke and The Poet's Zodiac, and the editor of Lavender Review. Her barber's wife is from Wisconsin.
Chloe Yelena Miller is a writer and writing coach who blogs at chloeyelenamiller.blogspot.com.
Ellen Miller-Mack has an MFA in Poetry from Drew University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in 5 A.M., Valparaiso Poetry Review, Rattle, Rumpus and Bookslut. She co-wrote The Real Cost of Prisons Comix (PM Press) and is a nurse practitioner/primary care provider at a community health center in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Julie L. Moore is the author of Slipping Out of Bloom (WordTech Editions) and Election Day (Finishing Line Press). In addition, her manuscript, Scandal of Particularity, was a finalist for the 2011 FutureCycle Press Poetry Book Prize and a semi-finalist for the 2011 Perugia Press Prize. A Best of the Net and two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Moore has won the Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize from Ruminate and received the Rosine Offen Memorial Award from the Free Lunch Arts Alliance. Her poetry has appeared previously in Verse Wisconsin as well as in Alaska Quarterly Review, American Poetry Journal, Atlanta Review, CALYX, Cimarron Review, The Missouri Review Online, The Southern Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Verse Daily. You can learn more about her work at www.julielmoore.com.
Bob (Robert) B. Moreland has a doctorate in biochemistry and works in biomedical/clinical research. He has published poems in Verse Wisconsin, the South Dakota Review, Towards the Light, Rope and Wire and several anthologies. He has coauthored two books of poems. Bob resides with his wife Rebecca in Carol Beach near Lake Michigan in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin.
Jamie Lynn Morris is a poet. Her work is available on Lulu.com.
Annabelle Moseley is founder and editor of String Poet (http://www.stringpoet.com/), the journal of poetry and music. She appears regularly in such journals as Mezzo Cammin, The Lyric, and The Seventh Quarry. She is the author of A Field Guide to the Muses (Finishing Line Press, 2009) and her full-length poetry book, The Clock of the Long Now, was published in February 2012 from David Robert Books. The first Walt Whitman Birthplace Writer-in-Residence, Moseley is also the winner of an Amy Award from Poets & Writers. As a small child, she loved to pretend she was Laura Ingalls living in the "Big Woods" of Wisconsin; fashioned a bonnet from a scarf; and for a few weeks, answered only to "Laura."
Megan Muthupandiyan was born and raised in Wauwatosa, where she joyfully returned to raise her own family. Mid summer, every year, finds her in her garden with tea lights and electric-yellow lemonade,welcoming back the fireflies to the city named for them.
James B. Nicola has had over two hundred poems appear in a score of publications including Tar River, the Texas Review, The Lyric, and Nimrod. A stage director by profession, his book Playing the Audience won a CHOICE Award. He also won the Dana Literary Award for poetry, was nominated for a Rhysling Award, and was a featured poet at the New Formalist in 2010. This is his fourth appearance in VW.
Mary O’Dell’s knowledge of Wisconsin consists merely of her best friend's husband's dentist, who lives somewhere there, and whom they visited there some years ago. But it does sound like a lovely, clean place to live.
Angela Alaimo O’Donnell teaches English and is associate director of Fordham University’s Curran Center for American Catholic Studies. She wrote and performed Melvilliana at the Metropolitan Theatre in New York’s East Village as part of a festival of plays devoted to Herman Melville’s novels. Her most recent book, Saint Sinatra & Other Poems (2011), has been nominated for the Arlin G. Meyer Prize in Imaginative Writing. Previous books include Moving House (2009), and two chapbooks, Mine (2007) and Waiting for Ecstasy (2009). Her poems have appeared in a number of journals, including St. Katherine Review, The Nepotist, and Valparaiso Poetry Review. O'Donnell was a finalist for the Foley Poetry Award and the Mulberry Poets Award, and her work has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Web prizes.
Annie Parcels, Menominee, Michigan, has Wisconsin roots dating back to the 1800's when her French and Algonquin great-grandparents came to Oconto. Her writing has appeared in Wisconsin People and Ideas, The Writer, and several publications of the Wisconsin Poets' Calendar.
Elmae Passineau, Wausau, is a retired English teacher and principal. She has published three poetry chapbooks, On Edge, Beloved Somebodies, and Things That Go Bump in the Night.
Kenneth Pobo won the 2011 Qarrtsiluni poetry chapbook contest for his manuscript called Ice and Gaywings, published in fall 2011.
Zara Raab lives in Berkeley, but she grew up on the North Coast, where her ancestors farmed, raised cattle and harvested tan oak. Her poems appear in River Styx, Crab Orchard Review, Evansville Review, and elsewhere. Her most recent book is Swimming the Eel (David Robert Books, 2011). Her reviews and essays appear in Redwood Coast Review, Poetry Flash, Critical Flame, Valparaiso Review, Poet Lore, and elsewhere.Visit her website for more information.
Monica Raymond is a playwright and poet, and her work has been recognized by the Massachusetts Cultural Council in both fields. Her play The Owl Girl, a parable about Israel/Palestine, won the Peacewriting Award, the Castillo Theater prize in political playwriting, and a Clauder Competition Gold Medal. A to Z won the 2011 Ruby Lloyd Apsey Award for plays about race. She has been a MacDowell Colony Fellow and a Jerome Fellow at the Playwrights’ Center, and has taught writing and interdisciplinary arts at Harvard, CUNY, and the Boston Museum School. She works with CASA (Creative Action and Subversive Arts) at Occupy Boston, and is in her twelfth year of trying to live a carbon neutral life in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Doug Reed grew up in Richmond, VA, and graduated with a degree in theatre from Goshen College. After a brief stint as a starving actor in Chicago, he found himself adrift with a wife and children and
looking for a place to settle. Based on an offhand remark by a friend, he and the family stopped temporarily in Dane County while they decided on a place to live. That was over fifteen years ago. They're still here. Doug, his wife Deanna, and their two kids live in Stoughton and are all active in Madison-area theatre.
Moira Richards lives in South Africa and hangs out here: http://www.darlingtonrichards.com and here: http://www.redroom.com/author/moira-richards. She, with Norman Darlington of Ireland, edits and publishes the annual Journal of Renga & Renku.
Ron Riekki's teeth hurt and he can't wait until he gets health insurance again. He's also proud to have been in Verse Wisconsin previously. (And more people should listen to The Mummers!)
Jenna Rindo’s work has recently appeared in Crab Orchard Review and is forthcoming in Calyx, Crab Creek Review, and Blood and Thunder: Musings on the Art of Medicine. She lives in rural Wisconsin with her family and small flocks of Shetland sheep and Rhode Island Red hens. She teaches English to Hmong, Kurdish, Vietnamese and Spanish students.
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 freelance writing, although poetry is her favorite thing to do.
Born in Ohio in 1941, Richard Roe came to Wisconsin from New Jersey in 1966. He is happily retired from being a Research Analyst for the Wisconsin Legeslative Reference Bureau. He is even more happily married with 2 daughters and 3 grandchildren. He began writing poetry in the mid-1970s on a whim which sometime later became a compulsion. A music lover, he sometimes plays music as he reads his poems. If he could start over, he would like to sing in opera, especially the rôles of Figaro in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro and Boris in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov.
Margaret Rozga is a lifelong resident of Wisconsin. Her book Two Hundred Nights and One Day features poems about the 1967-68 open housing marches in Milwaukee and was named an outstanding achievement in poetry for 2009 by the Wisconsin Library Association. She blogs about social justice and poetry at benupress.com/For-Words.
Marybeth Rua-Larsen lives on the south coast of Massachusetts and teaches part-time at Bristol Community College. Her poems, essays, flash fiction and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in The Raintown Review, The Shit Creek Review, 14 magazine (UK), The Poetry Bus (Ireland) and The Nervous Breakdown. She is a Poetry Editor at The Newport Review, a book reviewer at New York Quarterly and was recently named winner in the Poetry category for the 2011 Over the Edge New Writer of the Year Competition in Galway, Ireland.
G. A. Saindon is 62. His wife, children and grandchildren are the most important part of his life. He lives with his wife on five acres in northeast WI. Chickens, geese, egrets, orioles and owls keep him tuned in. He writes when he can.
Terri Saul has had recent work in shows at Mythos Gallery in Berkeley, and Workspace Gallery in San Francisco. She currently has a one-person show up at Meal Ticket Cafe in Berkeley. You can see more of her work on her website.
Terry Savoie has been published in more than a hundred and fifty literary journals, anthologies and small press publications, including Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, The Iowa Review and The North American Review.
Andrew Schilling is 28 years old and currently hanging around Marshfield, WI, working construction.
Robert Schuler has been trying to write for fifty years. His fifteenth collection of poems, The Book of Jeweled Visions, has recently been published by Tom Montag’s MWPH Books, PO Box 8, Fairwater, WI 53931. Price: $12.50 plus $1.50 postage.
Matt Schumacher recently completed a Ph.D. in English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and serves as poetry editor for a magazine of New Fabulism named Phantom Drift. He’s published two collections of poetry, Spilling the Moon and the Fire Diaries.
Nancy Scott is an artist and writer, author of five books of poetry and managing editor of U.S.1 Worksheets, the journal of the U.S.1 Poets’ Cooperative in New Jersey. She grew up west of Chicago, and attended summer school at the University of Wisconsin. Years later her son graduated from there. Visit her website.
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.
Jo Simons is a native New Yorker but has lived in Wisconsin since 1986. Like so many others, she came here to go to school and never left. She’s a piano teacher and Music Together teacher. She began writing poetry very recently as her vital 94-year old father began to decline.
Kathryn Smith received her MFA from the Inland Northwest Center for Writers at Eastern Washington University, where she helped edit Willow Springs. Her poems have appeared in Rock and Sling, Redactions and Third Coast. She has a cousin in Wisconsin and once got lost there on her way to a wedding. She lives in Spokane, Washington.
Lester Smith works days as a writer and technologist for Sebranek Inc., Write Source, UpWrite Press, and Thoughtful Learning, a group of educational publishers based in Burlington, Wisconsin. Evenings and weekends he’s the president of WFOP (www.wfop.org), designs hobby games and Web sites, and publishes other writers under the imprint of Popcorn Press. Visit him at www.LesterSmith.com.
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, now available from Red Dragonfly Press. He posts blogs and poems on his website at www.thomasrsmithpoet.com.
Autumn Stephens is the author of the Wild Women series of women's history and humor, and the editor of two anthologies of personal essays, Roar Softly and Carry a Great Lipstick and The Secret Lives of Lawfully Wed Wives. She has written for The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, and many other publications. She is co-editor of The East Bay Monthly and conducts expressive writing workshops for people living with cancer.
Jeanine Stevens was raised in Indiana. Her mother was born and raised in Wisconsin. Her poems have appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Tipton Poetry Review, and Pearl, among others. Her collection, Sailing on Milkweed, includes the poem, "Milwaukee," and will be published by Cherry Grove Collections.
Richard Swanson lives in Madison but gardens at his summer cabin near Muscoda. Fireweed Press published two of his earler works: “Men in the Nude in Socks” (2006) and “Not Quite Eden” (2010). He's finishing a chapbook of poems on pop culture.
Nancy Takacs lives in Wellington, Utah, and in Bayfield, Wisconsin. Her third book of poetry, Juniper, was recently published by Limberlost Press: www.limberlostpress.com She is the recent recipient of the first-place poetry award, in the Utah Arts Council’s Original Writing Contest; and the 2010 winner of the Kay Saunders Memorial Award in the WFOP Triad Contest. A former wilderness studies instructor and creative writing professor, she has done poetry workshops in prisons, schools, and senior citizen centers for the past decade.
Katrin Talbot’s Freeze-Dried Love is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press and St. Cecilia’s Daze was published by Parallel Press. Her poetry has appeared on many napkins, paper towels, and in many journals and anthologies, and she’s been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes in poetry. She combines her poetry with her photography and music in many ways, including multi-media classical music concerts and her photo essay of Schubert’s Winterreise: A Winter Journey in Poetry, Image, and Song, which was published as a coffee table book and CD by the University of Wisconsin Press, and received an American Library Association's 2003 Best of the Best of the University Presses. Her photography has been used by many organizations, including the Metropolitan Opera, Santa Fe Opera, and Lincoln Center, and has appeared in the New York Times.
Elizabeth Tornes has published a chapbook, Snowbound (2011), and poems in many journals including The New Republic, American Poetry Review, Missouri Review, and Ploughshares. She lives in Lac du Flambeau, Wisconsin, and has also published a book of Ojibwe oral histories, Memories of Lac du Flambeau Elders (UW Press, 2004).
Charles Trimberger is a creative writer who lives and works in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He takes advanced poetry courses at the UW-Milwaukee and is an assistant editor for the Cream City Review, the UWM literary magazine.
Diane Unterweger lives and writes in Nashotah, Wisconsin. Her poems have appeared in Sugar House Review, Luna Creciente, Verse Wisconsin, and the 2012 Wisconsin Poets' Calendar.
Milla van der Have wrote her first poem at 16, during a physics class. She has been writing poetry and fiction ever since. Milla lives and works in Utrecht, The Netherlands. She has no relationship with Wisconsin yet. Visit her blog.
Wendy Vardaman, wendyvardaman.com, is co-editor of Verse Wisconsin and Cowfeather Press, and Poet Laurete (with Sarah Busse) of Madison. She works for The Young Shakespeare Players and likes to watch, and write poetry about, performance.
Angie Trudell Vasquez has been the featured poet of the Latina Monologues for the last three years and has had several poems published. Her book, The Force Your Face Carries, published under her own label sold out, the second edition is available online at www.artnightbooks.com and through Milwaukee's Woodland Pattern Book Center.
Philip Venzke grew up on a dairy farm near Colby, Wisconsin (where Colby Cheese was invented). A fervent zymurgist, his fermentations take many forms. His most recent poems have appeared in Echoes, Sheepshead Review, Illumen, and Right Hand Pointing.
Marian Ververka’s poems have been published in A Prairie Journal, Poetry is Living in the Firelands, Pirene’s Fountain, Up the Staircase, and Smoking Magazine.
Michael Vignola is a poet and co-editor of the new journal Kenning, an online journal dedicated to bridging the divide between so-called "page" poetry and so-called "spoken word" poetry by including a recording of the poet reading his or her work with every poem publish. In his free time he is a student at the University of Delaware. He lived briefly in London several years ago, and one of his roommates was from Madison, Wisconsin.
The poems of Lisa Vihos have appeared in numerous small journals. She has one chapbook, A Brief History of Mail(Pebblebrook Press), with a second, The Accidental Present, soon to appear from Finishing Line Press. She was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is an associate editor of Stoneboat literary journal and an occasional guest blogger for The Best American Poetry. She lives in Sheboygan.
Timothy Walsh’s awards include the Grand Prize in the Atlanta Review International Poetry Competition and the Kurt Vonnegut Fiction Prize from North American Review. He authored a book of literary criticism, The Dark Matter of Words: Absence, Unknowing, and Emptiness in Literature and two chapbooks, Wild Apples (Parallel) and Blue Lace Colander (Marsh River). He is an Assistant Dean at UW-Madison.
Pediatrician Kelley White worked in inner-city Philadelphia and now works in rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in journals including Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her most recent books are TOXIC ENVIRONMENT (Boston Poet Press) and TWO BIRDS IN FLAME (Beech River Books.) She received a 2008 PCA grant. She is addicted to American Girl Dolls from Pleasant Company in Middleton, Wisconsin and hopes to write the first American Boy Doll books.
David Yezzi’s latest book of poems is Azores, a Slate magazine best book of the year. He is editor of The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets and executive editor of The New Criterion. His verse plays On the Rocks and Dirty Dan and Other Travesties were produced by Verse Theater Manhattan at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York. He is currently writing a biography of the poet Anthony Hecht for St. Martin’s Press.
