Issue 22: Up in the Air

Single Issues > 2011 > Issue 22: Up in the Air > Contributors’ Notes

Contributors’ Notes

Karina Borowicz’s forthcoming book, the Bees are waiting, was selected by Franz Wright for the 2011 Marick Press Poetry Prize. Her work has also appeared in Agni, Poetry Northwest, and the Southern Review.

Micah Bloom lives in Minot, North Dakota, and has shown work nationally and internationally. More of his work can be viewed at www.micahbloom.com. This morning he read Galatians 6, drank Lotus tea, and dodged ice patches on his bicycle commute.

David Bogus was born in Fall River, Massachusetts, and holds an MFA from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a BFA from the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. He is currently assistant professor at Texas A&M International University. Upcoming exhibitions include a solo exhibit at Casper County Community College and group shows include “The Chromatic Edge” at NCECA Seattle and “Materials: Hard & Soft” at the Greater Denton Arts Council in Denton, Texas. He writes: “My ceramic process has recently shifted to a focus on slip cast objects—creating identical multiples of objects often taken from real life found objects to create a trompe l’oeil effect. The contents of my work are derived from memories that continue to reveal themselves by offering revelations about life through seemingly coincidental events.”

Rob Cook is a social dropout trapped in New York City’s East Village. He edits and publishes Skidrow Penthouse and works hard to fight back the dirt and cockroaches secreted by his tenement apartment. His latest book is Last Window in the Punk Hotel and recent work has appeared in the Bitter Oleander, Fence, Mudfish, Versal, Pear Noir! and Bomb (online).

At Westmont College, Paul Delaney teaches American literature, contemporary drama, Irish literature and Shakespeare. He takes Westmont students to plays throughout southern California and (every other year or so) the British Isles. He is the author of Tom Stoppard: the Moral Vision of the Major Plays (London: Macmillan; New York: St. Martin’s Press). Tom Stoppard in Conversation, which he edited, was the first of several volumes of interviews with playwrights published by the University of Michigan Press, a series to which he has also contributed Brian Friel in Conversation.

When not writing poetry, James Dickson keeps himself busy by teaching English and creative writing at Germantown High School, just outside of Jackson, Mississippi. He lives with his wife, Greer, and their son, James. In June, he completed his MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. The South is a wonderful place to write—things move a touch slower here (he’ll refrain from making the obvious joke about his students being slow, too), and it gives writers a chance to take note. Some of his poems appear in Stirrings, English Journal, Burnt Bridge, and Bosphorus Art Project Quarterly. However, it should be noted that his list of rejections is much more impressive.

Deja Earley’s poems and essays have previously appeared in journals like Measure, Arts and Letters, Borderlands, and Diagram, and several of her poems were recently included in Fire in the Pasture: 21st Century Mormon Poets. She married the man she writes about in “Virgin” after all, and they moved to the Boston area, where they live with three bickering cats. They are slightly less complicatedly in love. She works as a development editor at Bedford/St Martin’s Press.

Bryce Emley graduated from the University of Central Florida in 2011 with a BA in creative writing. He’s an editorial assistant of the Florida Review, Managing Editor of 12:51, and a substitute teacher/ marketing executive by day. More of his work can be found in Pleiades, Slipstream, on EmpriseReview.com, and elsewhere.

Dave Harrity is a traveling teacher who conducts workshops for churches, seminaries, and other religious institutions about using poetry as a devotional practice for spiritual formation and growth. His poem “To Mark the Place” is a tribute to a close friend who recently retired as the chaplain of Asbury Seminary in Kentucky. Living in Louisville with his wife and kids, he enjoys working with his hands—gardening, doing home improvement projects, and, when time permits, making artwork from scraps of metal, wood, and other ‘junk’ found in his garage.

Sally Rosen Kindred’s first poetry book is No Eden (Mayapple Press, 2011), and her poems have appeared recently in Diode. She is currently obsessively reading the poems of Jack Gilbert, Paula Bohince, and Lisa Russ Spaar. After reading Peter Pan to her sons this spring, she’s writing poems about Wendy Darling.

Peter Mitchell Lawniczak writes: “The hardest thing for me to do is talk about myself. So many other subjects are so much more enriching that I hate to waste words discussing what I consider to be a constant. I live blessed by abundant family and friends. I have body, mind, and possess an unlimited energy for the process of creating art. I have to finish school. The roots of my intrigue are transparent in anything I write, whatever the subject, one will see that everything is motivated by love and the expression of this is limitless. This is my first publication.”

Sarah Hulyk Maxwell currently resides in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and is learning all about Cajun cooking and warm winters. Originally from Pennsylvania, Sarah is studying in the Deep South for her MFA in poetry at Louisiana State University. She and her husband are enjoying married life, despite the occasional spat over who does the dishes. As of now, no babies are on the way, despite Sarah’s mother assuming that all good news will turn out to be baby news. Her work may be found in Muse & Stone and ConnotationPress.com: an Online Artifact.

Jason Myers grew up in the Cumberland Valley of Maryland. His proximity to Washington, D.C., cultivated an early appreciation for both culture and politics. He once stood in line for four hours in thirty-degree weather to see a special exhibit of Vermeer at the National Gallery. He also endured similar conditions to witness James Brown lying in state at the Apollo. He studied with Mary Oliver at Bennington College, Philip Levine at New York University, and is currently a Master of Divinity student at Emory. He lives in Atlanta, where he walks to worship at Ebenezer Baptist Church.

Amanda Leigh Rogers lives in Abington, Pennsylvania, with her husband and three sons and teaches writing and theater at Bryn Athyn College. She loves poetry not only as an art form, but also as a spiritual practice, one that invites writer and reader to move between states of quiet presence and energetic expression. Her creative goal is always to serve the poem and love the reader. Her work has appeared in various literary and general interest magazines.

James Silas Rogers is a lifelong resident of Minnesota—for fifty- nine cold years now—where he is director of the University of St. Thomas Center for Irish Studies. He edits the multidisciplinary journal New Hibernia Review, an academic quarterly that also publishes essays, memoirs, and new poems. He’s published his creative nonfiction in various periodicals, including South Dakota Review, New Letters, and ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, and is wrapping up a mixed-genre book on cemeteries and sacred space; the working title is Notes From Places Near the Dead. His poems have appeared in numerous publications, among them Nimrod and Poetry East, and in the chapbook Sundogs (Parallel Press, 2006).

Claudia M. Stanek grew up in Depew, New York, a town once centered in the manufacture of railroad parts. She received an MFA from the Writing Seminars at Bennington College. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming in Redactions: Poetry and Poetics, Euphony, Red Wheelbarrow, and the Briar Cliff Review, among others. Her poem “Housewife” was selected by composer Judith Lang Zaimont as the inspiration for a commissioned libretto for the Eastman School of Music’s 2009 Women in Music Festival. She was awarded a 2010 writer’s residency in Bialystok, Poland, which allowed her to explore a new sense of place in the context of how Poland has evolved since her ancestors emigrated to the United States. She lives and writes in East Rochester, New York, where she and her rescued pets enjoy viewing newly planted birches.

Nancy Teague lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, with her husband of forty-two years. She has two sons and four grandchildren. Nancy has been shown her work in juried art fairs across the country and recently won ‘Best of Show’ in the October 2010 Bold Brush online competition and ‘Award of Merit’ in the National Oil and Acrylic Painter’s Society “Best of America 2010.” Her paintings hang in private and corporate collections across the United States. Nancy writes: “It is amazing how the power of light on objects can cause the everyday, flawed, or time-worn to reflect new life or significance. Someone once said, ‘Stand still and look until you really see.’ I hope the viewers will do just that with my work, discovering and enjoying—and then carry this ‘looking’ into their days. Often we are in a hurry or even denial, not realizing the difference light can make in the details of everyday or flawed life.”

Tracy Youngblom has been writing poetry for longer than she has been gardening, but both those things drive and define her. Her first chapbook of poems, Driving to Heaven, was published in 2010 by Parallel Press, and recent poems have appeared in Aethlon, Turtle Quarterly, The Cortland Review, and Emprise Review. Work is forthcoming in New York Quarterly and Weave Magazine. Besides teaching English at Anoka-Ramsey Community College, she runs, blogs, cooks, and enjoys her husband and three sons (when they come home to visit).