Brian Griffin holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Virginia. His fiction, poetry and essays have been widely published in literary journals and anthologies, and his collection Sparkman in the Sky and Other Stories was chosen by Barry Hannah to receive the Mary McCarthy Prize for Short Fiction. Single Lens Reflex was selected as a finalist for the National Poetry Series’ 2018 competition. He has taught writing at The University of Virginia, Pellissippi State Community College, and the University of Tennessee. He is former Director of Lifespan Religious Education at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee.
John C. Mannone has poems in Anthology of Appalachian Writers XV [Barbara Kingsver], Red Branch Review, Windhover, North Dakota Quarterly, Adanna Literary Journal, Anacua Literary Arts Journal, Number One, Artemis Journal, Poetry South, Red Coyote, Blue Fifth Review, New England Journal of Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine, Baltimore Review, Pedestal, Pirene’s Fountain, and others. He’s a Jean Ritchie Fellowship winner in Appalachian literature (2017) and served as the celebrity judge for the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (2018). He has four poetry collections, and three chapbooks. He’s been nominated for the Pushcart, Rhysling, and Best of the Net awards. He edits poetry for Abyss & Apex and Silver Blade. He’s a professor of physics and nuclear safety consultant teaching mathematics in East Tennessee.
Robert B. Cumming is a writer, editor, and publisher who resides in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He is owner and publisher of the Iris Publishing Group, Inc., a small literary publishing company. He formerly was a research scientist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where he served in several positions for thirty years. He holds two degrees in biology, with minors in geology and mathematics from the University of Florida in Gainesville. He has a PhD (1964) in cytogenetics and cell biology from the University of Texas in Austin, where he pursued post-doctoral work on chromosomal fine-structure and cell culture. He remains involved in science, particularly in genetics, ecology and evolution.
Cumming’s writing in recent years has focused on poetry and essays. He is active in several regional and national writers’ organizations and has been a workshop leader at various writing workshops. He has published poems and essays in many online and print journals. In 1981 he was founding president of the Society for Risk Analysis, a major scientific society, and editor-in-chief of its publication, Risk Analysis, an international, interdisciplinary scientific journal still published in New York.
He has worked at “day jobs” as a teacher (high school through post-graduate university), engineer, field biologist, molecular geneticist, risk analyst, and editor, among others. He has lived in the Appalachian South since 1964.
Mac Gay was born and raised on a 280 acre farm near Newborn, Georgia. He stumbled across contemporary poetry in his mid-twenties and was immediately hooked. Before the discovery occurred, he had already earned two degrees in the sciences at the University of Georgia. Later he obtained another degree in creative writing from Georgia State University. He is the author of 2 other full-length poetry collections: Ghost Hunt, runner-up for Eyewear Publishing’s 2017 Beverly Prize and Our Fatherlessness (The Orchard Street Press, 2021) as well as 4 chapbooks. His chapbook Farm Alarm was runner-up for Texas Review Press’s 2018 Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize and Physical Science won Poems & Plays’ 2003 Tennessee Poetry Chapbook Prize. His work has been anthologized in The Southern Poetry Anthology: Georgia from Texas Review Press and his poems have appeared in numerous magazines including Atlanta Review, Crosswinds, Cutbank, and The American Journal of Poetry. A longtime runner, biker, and hiker, he lives with his wife Jana, their 2 dogs and 4 cats in Covington, Georgia and teaches English at Perimeter College of Georgia State University.
A native Alabamian, Thomas Alan Holmes spent many years on the staff and masthead of The Black Warrior Review while completing his graduate degrees at the University of Alabama. He is co-editor of Walking the Line: Country Music Lyricists and American Culture (with Roxanne Harde, Lexington Books, 2013), Jeff Daniel Marion: Poet on the Holston (with Jesse Graves and Ernest Lee, University of Tennessee Press, 2015), and The Fire That Breaks: Gerard Manley Hopkins’s Poetic Legacies (with Daniel Westover, Clemson University Press, 2020). His research and creative work have appeared in such journals as Louisiana Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, The Connecticut Review, Appalachian Heritage, Blue Mesa Review, Still: The Journal, and Appalachian Journal. He specializes in Appalachian and African American literature as a professor of English at East Tennessee State University. His author photo is by Michelle Joy Handler and is used with permission from her family.
Award-winning wordsmith Rhea “RheaSunshine” Carmon is a force that weaves passion, purpose, and power into poetry. For twenty years, RheaSunshine has traveled the nation, sharing her gift of the spoken word and facilitating self-expression, liberation, and healing. This art form has led her to touch lives at universities and educational institutions as well as civic engagements and festivals. She has opened for such artists as Nikki Giovanni, Macy Gray, and Saul Williams and the world constantly expands to make room for her gift.
Rhea “RheaSunshine” Carmon is the creator and Executive Director of the 5th Woman Cohort, which explores the stories of women. Regardless of race, women share the same experiences, fears, joys and more. The 5th Woman Cohort allows the participants to examine their various backgrounds without social and political barriers. Recently named the Poet Laureate of Knoxville, RheaSunshine strives to touch hearts and inspire people to share their own stories. She has published four chapbooks and has recorded three audio CDs. Her fourth book, Through the Clouds, explores her battle with Multiple Sclerosis. Not motherhood, MS, or any obstacle can slow this Renaissance woman down. As she has stated in her writing, she still has poems that she hasn’t even written yet.
Sue Weaver Dunlap lives deep in the Southern Appalachian Mountains near Walland, Tennessee, where she and her husband Raymond live and work a mountain farm. Here, among the bear, turkeys, deer, and pets, she writes poetry, fiction, and memoir. Her poems have appeared in Appalachian Journal, Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Appalachian Heritage, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, and Southern Poetry Anthology, among other anthologies and journals. Her poetry has won several awards. Dunlap retired from teaching in 2012 and has since taught poetry classes, done free-lance editing, and volunteered with Tennessee Mountain Writers and Mountain Heritage Literary Festival. Her chapbook entitled The Story Tender was released by Finishing Line Press in 2014 and her full collection entitled Knead in 2016 by Main Street Rag.
Karen Salyer McElmurray’s Surrendered Child: A Birth Mother’s Journey, was an AWP Award Winner for Creative Nonfiction. Her novels are The Motel of the Stars, Editor’s Pick by Oxford American, and Strange Birds in the Tree of Heaven, winner of the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing. Her nonfiction work has been a recipient of the Annie Dillard Award for Essay, the New Southerner Award and the Orison Anthology Award for Creative Nonfiction. She has co-edited, with poet Adrian Blevins, an essay collection called Walk till the Dogs Get Mean. Wanting Radiance, her newest novel, was released in April 2020 from University Press of Kentucky. McElmurray teaches in the Low Residency Program at West Virginia Wesleyan College and as part-time Associate Professor at Gettysburg College.
KB Ballentine received her MFA in Poetry from Lesley University, Cambridge, MA. She has participated in writing academies in the United States and Europe, and she holds graduate and undergraduate degrees in English.
She currently teaches high school theatre and English and adjuncts for a local college. She also conducts writing workshops throughout the United States.
Published in numerous literary journals and anthologies, KB was a finalist for the 2006 Joy Harjo Poetry Award and a 2007 finalist for the Ruth Stone Prize in Poetry. KB received the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Fund Award in 2006 and 2007. She was an Opera Omaha finalist in 2008, a 2014 finalist for the Ron Rash Poetry Award, and received the Libba Moore Gray Poetry Prize in 2016.
Learn more about KB Ballentine at www.kbballentine.com.
Janisse Ray is an American author whose work often grapples with the beauty, intricacy, and heartbreak of the biosphere. Red Lanterns is her second book of eco-poetry. She has published five books of literary nonfiction, including the acclaimed Ecology of a Cracker Childhood and The Seed Underground. Ray lives and works in coastal Georgia.
For more information, visit www.janisseray.com