Stuart Friebert received a Ph.D. at U. Wisconsin—Madison in German Language & Literature in 1958. He taught at Mt. Holyoke College (1957-59), and Harvard University (1959-61), before settling at Oberlin College in 1961. With help from colleagues, he founded Oberlin’s Creative Writing Program and directed it until retiring in 1997. He co-founded Field Magazine, and later, the Field Translation Series/Oberlin College Press. He has published thirteen previous collections of poems. Among them, Funeral Pie co-won the Four Way Book Award in 1997, and Floating Heart won the Ohioana Book Award for poetry in 2015. He has also published ten volumes of translations. With David Young, he has co-edited two anthologies, The Longman Anthology of Contemporary Poetry and Models of the Universe: An Anthology of the Prose Poem. With David Young & David Walker, he co-edited A Field Guide to Contemporary Poetry & Poetics. He has also published a textbook edition of Max Frisch’s Als der Krieg zu Ende war. Having started to write prose in 2000, he has published a number of stories and memoir-pieces, which are collected in a volume entitled The Language of the Enemy, forthcoming from Black Mountain Press. He has also published numerous critical essays and reviews, held an N.E.A. Fellowship in poetry, and received a number of awards for poems and translations over the years.
Matt Urmy studied poetry as an undergraduate at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, then earned his MFA at Spalding University in Louisville, KY. He is a musician and recording artist, as well as a successful technology entrepreneur. He has also spent years studying the healing arts with a family of Maori healers from New Zealand. He lives and works in Music City, Tennessee.
Austin Kodra lives in Cambridge, MA, where he works as a recruiter in the tech industry. He received his MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and his writing has appeared in The Adroit Journal, Harpur Palate, Superstition Review, Connotations Press: an Online Artifact, Prime Number Magazine, Valparaiso Fiction Review, and elsewhere.
Michele Poulos is an award-winning poet, screenwriter, and filmmaker. Her chapbook, A Disturbance in the Air, won the 2012 Slapering Hol Press competition, and her poetry has been anthologized in Best New Poets 2012 (chosen by Matthew Dickman) as well as The Southern Poetry Anthology. She has published poetry and fiction in such journals as The Southern Review, Smartish Pace, Crab Orchard Review, Sycamore Review, and many others. Her essays and book reviews have been published in Blackbird, 32 Poems, and Stone Canoe, and her screenplay, Mule Bone Blues, won the 2010 Virginia Screenwriting Competition. She holds an MFA degree in poetry from Arizona State University, and an MFA in fiction from Virginia Commonwealth University; earlier, she earned a BFA in filmmaking at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Recently, she has produced and directed a feature-length documentary film titled A Late Style of Fire about the poet Larry Levis.
www.michelepoulos.com
Richard Lyons has taught literature and creative writing for more than two decades at Mississippi State University. Lyons is a former winner of the “Discovery” Award from The Nation and the 92nd Street YHMA in New York City and the Lavan Younger Poet’s Prize from the chancellors of the Academy of American Poets in New York City. His other collections include These Modern Nights, Hours of the Cardinal, and Fleur Carnivore. Born in Boston, he hails from the Mid-South where he lives with his wife and his cats.
Amy Wright is the author of two poetry books, one collaboration, and six chapbooks, including the prose collection Think I’ll Go Eat a Worm. Most recently her essays won first place in two contests, sponsored by London Magazine and Quarterly West. She has also received two Peter Taylor Fellowships to the Kenyon Review Writer’s Workshop, an Individual Artist Grant from the Tennessee Arts Commission, and a fellowship to Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her essays appear or are forthcoming in Brevity, Fourth Genre, Georgia Review, Ninth Letter, Waveform: Anthology of Women Essayists, and elsewhere.
For more information, visit: www.awrightawright.com
Writer Victoria Hubbell, Ph.D. enjoys both conducting research and talking to people. As a result, she writes oral histories about fascinating people, places, and events.Writer Victoria Hubbell, Ph.D. enjoys both conducting research and talking to people. As a result, she writes oral histories about fascinating people, places, and events.
Her most recent book Blood River Rising (Iris Press, October 2016) tells the story of two white families who become unwitting pawns of the Ku Klux Klan.
Hubbell’s previous book A Town on Two Rivers, the history of a small town in the Ozarks, was based on over one hundred interviews combined with other historical texts. In 2015, Rowan and Littlefield published her chapter on storytelling and its effect on culture in their textbook Jim Hensen and Philosophy.
As a teacher, Dr. Hubbell has helped writers of all ages and at all stages of the writing process, although her favorite area is teaching composition at the college and adult levels. She is available for presentations to civic and educational groups, discussions for book clubs, and workshops at writers’ conferences. Please visit her website at www.victoriaphubbell.com for details as well as to view additional pictures from the Thompson and Crismon families and possible questions for discussion.
In accordance with both Hadley Thompson and Fred Crismon’s wishes and knowledge, half of Hubbell’s net proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to the Salvation Army in Missouri.
Judith Duvall has been passionate about writing since producing her first poem, a masterpiece in crayon, at age four. Her poetry has appeared in two anthologies from the Knoxville Writers’ Guild poetry groups: Bleeding Hearts and Familiar Landscapes, published by Tellico Books. Duvall’s work also appears in MOTIF Vol.3: All the Livelong Day and Kudzu Literary Journal. Her poem “In the Presence of Trees” won second place in Kudzu’s 2010 national poetry competition. Her fiction has been included in three anthologies by Greyhound Books and in the 2012 Knoxville Writers’ Guild anthology, A Tapestry of Voices. A graduate of the University of Tennessee, Duvall currently lives near English Mountain and the shores of Douglas Lake in Jefferson County, Tennessee.
Tina Barr’s books include Green Target (2018), winner of the Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize and the Brockman-Campbell Award, Kaleidoscope (Iris Press, 2015), The Gathering Eye (Tupelo Press Editor’s Prize), & 3 award-winning chapbooks. Her fellowships include the National Endowment for the Arts, The Tennessee Arts Commission, The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and The MacDowell Colony. Her poems have been published in Alaska Quarterly Review, American Book Review, The Atlanta Review, Crab Orchard Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Harvard Review, Louisiana Literature, Texas Review, Zone 3 and elsewhere.
She co-edits and founded The Shining Rock Poetry Anthology & Book Review: http://www.shiningrockpoetry.com
www.tinabarr.com
Lisa Coffman grew up in East Tennessee and currently lives on California’s Central Coast—two locales that inspire and color her work. She has received fellowships for her poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and Bucknell University’s Stadler Center for Poetry. Her first collection of poetry, Likely, won the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize from Kent State University Press. Her work has appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies, including Myrrh, Mothwing, Smoke: Erotic Poems; Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia; A Fine Excess: Fifty Years of the Beloit Poetry Journal; and the forthcoming Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume VI: Tennessee. An excerpt from her nonfiction manuscript in progress, “No Business, Tennessee,” received the 2010 Ingrid Reti Nonfiction Prize. She teaches at the California State Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo and lives in nearby Los Osos with her husband Joe and daughter Jenna.
lisacoffman.com