Susan O’Dell Underwood directs the creative writing program at Carson-Newman University in Jefferson City, Tennessee. Besides two chapbooks (From and Love and Other Hungers) her poems, essays, and stories have appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies, including Oxford American, North Carolina Literary Review, Southern Humanities Review, Crab Orchard Review, and The Southern Poetry Anthology. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a PhD in English from Florida State University. The first chapter of her novel Genesis Road won the Tennessee Arts Commission Grant for Literature. She and her husband, artist David Underwood, run Sapling Grove Press, devoted to underserved writers, artists, and photographers in Appalachia. For more information visit: susanodellunderwood.com and saplinggrovepress.com.
Lana K. W. Austin’s poems and short stories have recently been featured in Mid-American Review, Sou’wester, The Chariton Review, Columbia Journal, Zone 3, Appalachian Heritage, The Pinch, The New Guard, Switchback, Bloodroot, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Southern Women’s Review, and others. Born and raised in rural Kentucky, Austin studied creative writing at both Hollins University and the University of Mary Washington as an undergraduate and has an MFA from George Mason University (2008). Her chapbook, In Search of the Wild Dulcimer, is from Finishing Line Press (2016). Austin has lived in England, Italy, and Washington, DC, but she currently resides in Alabama, where she is an adjunct instructor in the English department at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Also a journalist, Austin has written for numerous newspapers and magazines.
For more information visit: https://www.lanakwaustin.com/
Connie Jordan Green lives on a farm in Loudon County with her husband Dick, a retired engineer. Her weekly column for the Loudon County News Herald is in its 40th year. She writes stories for young people, poetry, and novels (The War at Home and Emmy, both reissued by Tellico Books, an imprint of Iris Publishing Group, both originally published by Margaret McElderry Books, Macmillan, now Simon Schuster). The novels received various awards: The War at Home was placed on the ALA List of Best Books for Young Adults, both books were selected by the New York City Library as Books for the Teen Age, The War at Home was nominated to the 1991-92 Volunteer State Book Award Master List, and Emmy was selected as a Notable 1992 Children’s Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies.
Her poetry has appeared in numerous publications and has won many awards. She has two chapbooks from Finishing Line Press, Slow Children Playing and Regret Comes to Tea. Her full-length collection, Household Inventory, received the Brick Road Poetry Press Award in 2013. She was the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the East Tennessee Hall of Fame for Writers and was honored by the Arts Council of Oak Ridge. She does volunteer teaching for the Oak Ridge Institute of Continued Learning (ORICL), and frequently leads writing workshops.
Robert Lee Kendrick grew up in Illinois and Iowa, but now calls South Carolina home. After earning his M.A. from Illinois State University and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina, he held a number of jobs, ranging from house painter to pizza driver to grocery store worker to line cook. He now lives in Clemson with his wife, and their dog. His poems appear in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, Tar River Poetry, Louisiana Literature, The Cape Rock, and elsewhere.
Born in Nicholson, Georgia in 1924, the daughter of a rural farmer and a mail carrier, Lewis attended Georgia State College for Women (1943-1946) where she joined in the work for women’s rights, civil rights, and social justice. With a Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky, she has taught Appalachian Studies and lectured widely at regional colleges and universities, made films with Appalshop Film Studios, organized health clinics through Highlander Center, organized exchanges of American and Welsh coal miners and southern African and American women entrepreneurs. She is a teacher, theorist, activist, and public intellectual, with numerous awards and honorary doctoral degrees from Emory and Henry College and Wake Forest Seminary.
Helen Lewis has published hundreds of articles, monographs and reviews, and a number of important books in regional scholarship. Her most recent publication is her collection of writings and commentary, with contributions by notable scholars, which shaped the field of Appalachian Studies: Helen Matthews Lewis: Living Social Justice in Appalachia (Patricia Beaver and Judith Jennings, eds.) University Press of Kentucky, 2012.
Nellie Goodwin received her MFA from the Goddard College Writing Program. She has published poetry in The Comstock Review and The Aurorean. She is a member of poet Susan Donnelly’s workshop “Class Act Poets.” She lives and writes in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
C. Ann Kodra grew up in the Adirondack Mountains of New York. She now lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, with her husband. Her poetry and short stories have appeared or are pending in journals and anthologies, including Birmingham Arts Journal, Blueline, Cavalier Literary Couture, Common Ground Review, Cutthroat (online), drafthorse, MOTIF (vol. 1 & 3), Now & Then, Peacock Journal, Prime Mincer, Red Truck Review, RHINO, Roanoke Review, Still Crazy, Still: The Journal, The Medulla Review, The Saranac Review, Yemassee, and others. She is a contributing editor for New Millennium Writings and an associate editor for MSI Press.
Jamie Elliott Keith, a graduate of Mount Holyoke College and the University of Tennessee, spent many years in the business world writing IT application specifications, procedural and training manuals, and large corporate contracts. She lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she now volunteers and writes where the muses lead her. Her poems have appeared in Tule Review, Rust+Moth, The James Dickey Review, The Cape Rock, and other journals. She co-edited the anthology Familiar Landscapes, Iris Press, 2015. This is her first chapbook.
Corey Mesler has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Five Points, Good Poems American Places, and Esquire/Narrative. He has published 9 novels, 4 short story collections, and 5 full-length poetry collections, and a dozen chapbooks. He’s been nominated for the Pushcart many times, and 2 of his poems were chosen for Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. With his wife he runs a 142 year-old bookstore in Memphis. He can be found at https://coreymesler.wordpress.com.
J.P. Dancing Bear is the author of nine other collections of poetry, most recently, Inner Cities of Gulls (2010) winner of a PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles National Literary Award, and Conflicted Light (2008) both published by Salmon Poetry and the award winning, What Language (Slipstream, 2002). His poems have been published in over a thousand publications and anthologies including: Shenandoah, Mississippi Review, Natural Bridge, DIAGRAM, No Tell Motel, Third Coast, Cimarron Review, Poetry East, North American Review, Atlanta Review, Verse Daily, Poetry International, Marlboro Review, Hotel Amerika, Slipstream; In a Fine Frenzy: Poets Respond to Shakespeare; Red, White, and Blues: Poets on the Promise of America and many others. He is editor for the American Poetry Journal and Dream Horse Press and host of Out of Our Minds a public radio show featuring America’s finest contemporary poets.
www.jpdancingbear.com