Longest Hours Authors

 
 Auguste Margaret Auguste is a school librarian, mother of four and writer from New Jersey. She grew up in Indiana, moved to California for graduate school and to see a new part of life. There she met her husband and moved back to the East Coast. She has written about culture, history, and society for children’s magazines and anthologies. She published her first book on censorship this summer. Writing allows her to express her observations on life and the world at large.
Robert R Sanders | creative robert@robertsandersphoto.com 916.804.9312  Shawn Aveningo is an award-winning poet whose work has  appeared  in  Pirene’s  Fountain,  Tincture  Journal, Featherlit, Convergence, Survivor’s Review, POETZ, and Savage Melodies & Last Call Serenades. Shawn hosts a monthly poetry show in Folsom, California, and has featured in Sacramento, San Francisco, Sausalito, Seattle, and St. Louis, and hopes to entertain audiences in more cities that start with the letter “S.” Shawn’s a Show-Me girl from Missouri, graduated summa cum laude from University of Maryland and is a very proud mother of three. She is also a founding member of the performing group, Poetica Erotica.
Cathy Baker is an award-winning poet who delights in observing God at work in the nuances of life, and sharing those observations through writing, journaling, and blogging. She and her husband live in the beautiful upstate of South Carolina with their answer to the empty-nest syndrome – a pampered pooch named Rupert. Visit Cathy’s blog at www.cathybaker.org.
Francine Baldwin-Billingslea is a New Jersey native who now resides in the Atlanta, Georgia, area. In the last five years she has found a passion for writing and in that time has been published in over 25 anthologies and several magazines and authored an inspirational memoir titled Through it all and out on the other side. Some of her credits include Chicken Soup for the Soul, Whispering Angel Books, Bellaonline, and the new anthology series, Not your Mother’s Books. She is a breast cancer survivor and a second-time-around newlywed who loves writing, traveling, and spending quality time with her loved ones.
Barry Basden lives in the Texas Hill Country with his wife and two yellow Labs. He edits Camroc Press Review and is coauthor of Crack! and Thump: With A Combat Infantry Officer in World War II. He is currently working on a collection of compressed pieces related to war.
Carly Berg enjoys waiting so much that she sometimes declines her turn so that she may enjoy waiting longer. When she is not blissfully waiting in lines and waiting areas around Houston, she can be found waiting here: carlyberg.weebly.com.
Kat Bert is the Executive Administrator for a large hospice company. During her years of dedication, she has seen many things and heard many promises and has been witness to “The Angels Among Us.” This short story is a sketch of the humanity at all our fingertips. Kat has been writing since childhood and has been published in nonfiction works on hospice. Kat currently lives in Southern California with her two dogs, three cats and loving husband.
Jane Blanchard has earned degrees in English from Wake Forest and Rutgers, and she has taught both secondary  and  post-secondary  students.  She  currently divides her time between Augusta and St. Simon’s Island, Georgia. Her poetry has appeared in many journals, magazines, and anthologies in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Marigold Brown is a pen name. Sustained by memories of a long and happy marriage, she is now a full-time caretaker for her husband.
Tanya Bryan is a Canadian writer and poet based in Toronto, Ontario. Her work has appeared in the TOK 4 Anthology, NY      and Misunderstandings Magazine, as well as online at Verse Land, Drunk Monkeys, Underwater New York, and Three Line Poetry. She loves to travel, take photos, and write and draw her experiences, which are often surreal and wonderful.
 callarman32 Judy Callarman lives in Cisco, Texas. She is a retired professor of creative writing and English at Cisco College and a grandmother of eleven perfect children. Her poems and nonfiction have won contests and been published in a number of newspapers and newsletters and in Silver Boomer Books’ This Path, From the Porch Swing, and A Quilt of Holidays; Radix; Passager; Grandmother Earth; and Patchwork Path – Christmas Stocking. She has enjoyed being a Silver Boomer Books guest editor for A Quilt of Holidays and Longest Hours.
 campbell Kathe Campbell lives her dream on a Montana mountain with her mammoth donkeys, a Keeshond, and a few kitties. Three children, eleven grands and three greats round out her herd. She is a prolific writer on Alzheimer’s, and her stories are found on many ezines. Kathe is a contributing author to the Chicken Soup For The Soul and Not Your Mother’s Book series, RX for Writers, magazines and medical journals. kathe@wildblue.net.
carr Fern G. Z. Carr is a member of The League of Canadian Poets, a former Poet-in-Residence, lawyer and teacher. She composes poetry in five languages and has been published extensively world-wide from Finland to Mayotte Island (Mozambique Channel). A winner of national and international poetry contests, she has had her poetry set to music by a Juno-nominated musician. Carr was recently featured online in the arts section of Canada’s national newspaper, The Globe and Mail. She also has had the honour of having her poem “I Am” chosen by the Parliamentary Poet Laureate as Poem of the Month for Canada. www.ferngzcarr.com
Mary Carter is a playful Texas poet who declines to take herself or her work too seriously. She is the younger alter ego of a somewhat plodding and pedantic writer who would dance like no one was watching if she weren’t so clumsy.
 GEDSC DIGITAL CAMERA Al Carty was once a Californian but is now happily transplanted in the high plains of New Mexico. He grows garlic and chilis and roams the piñon-juniper hills and writes about the thoughts he finds there. He has been romancing the Muse for a long time. Sometimes she dances for him and sometimes she hides among his thoughts. Since he discovered that rewriting makes her smile (as well as editors,) his stories and poems have been accepted by Menda City Review, 5th Story Review, Written Word, Cause and Effect Magazine, Sage of Consciousness, Silver Boomer Books, and others.
Christensen(1) Madonna Dries Christensen lives in Sarasota, Florida, with her husband. Three times nominated for the Pushcart Prize, she pens a monthly column for Extra Innings and writes about disabilities (and abilities) for Unique Me Magazine. Her stories have appeared in Silver Boomer Books’ From The Porch Swing; The Harsh And The Heart; and A Quilt Of Memories. She’s the author of Swinging Sisters; Masquerade: The Swindler Who Conned J. Edgar Hoover; Dolls Remembered; Toys Remembered; and the memoir In Her Shoes: Step By Step. www.madonnadries christensen.com
Jennifer Clark lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Her first book of poems, Necessary Clearings, will be published by Shabda Press in 2014. Failbetter, Main Street Rag, Solo Novo, Paper Crow, Fiction Fix, and Dogs Singing: A Tribute Anthology (Salmon Press) are a few of the places that have made a home for her writings. Her recently completed manuscript for middle schoolers is patiently waiting for the right agent.
 clegg Beth Lynn Clegg, Houston, Texas, is an octogenarian who  began  her  writing  career  after  retiring  from  other endeavors. She has been published in Silver Boomer Books, A Cup of Comfort books,Texas Poetry Calendars, a variety of anthologies, magazines, newspapers, and elsewhere. Her essay “American Democratic Ideas and Practice” won third place in a 2002 Bryan Writers Annual Essay and Poetry Contest and is in the archival collection of The George Bush Presidential Library and Museum. She enjoys cooking, gardening, reading, church activities, any time with family, friends, and two spoiled cats, Molly and Tex.
 Miner's Beach, Lake Superior Terry Cobb resides with her husband on a farm in north central Missouri, where she gardens, write, and photographs whatever catches her eye. Her short stories have appeared in Bylines 2010 Writer’s Calendar, Downstate Story E-zine (2012), Well Versed 2013 Anthology, and she has devotionals that will be published in the Fall 2013 issues of The Upper Room and The Secret Place. Her gardening blog is at whatsinyourgarden.wordpress.com.
 cole SuzAnne C. Cole is a retired college instructor, wife, mother,  and  grandmother.  She  and  her  husband  havetraveled and hiked the world, including Iceland, China, Nepal, Panama, Peru, Chile, Australia, New Zealand, Britain, Ireland, Argentina, and Russia. Her essays have been published in Newsweek, the Houston Chronicle, San Antonio Express-News, The Baltimore Sun, Personal Journaling, Front Porch Review, and Troika as well as many anthologies. She writes in a studio in the woods in the Texas Hill Country. She’s pleased to have had works published in five previous Silver Boomer Books anthologies.
Christine Collier is married, the mother of three and grandmother of eight, and lives in upstate New York. She is the author of eight books, including a four-book mystery series, The Writer’s Club, Mystery is our Shadow, Christmas at Cliffhanger Inn, and Something Borrowed, Something Blue. Her newest book is Solve a Cozy Mystery – 35 Mini-Mysteries with Solutions. Life stories from Christine have been published in anthology books by Guideposts, Patchwork Path, Adams Media, HCI Ultimate Books, Write Integrity Press, Chamberton Publishing, and knowonder!
credit: Rose-Marie Lillian Carlos Colón is the author of Haiku Elvis: A Life in 17 Syllables (or Less) by Laughing Cactus Press as well as twelve poetry chapbooks. His work was recently anthologized in The Southern Poetry Anthology: Volume IV: Louisiana (Texas Review Press, 2011), Haiku 21 (Modern Haiku Press, 2011), and Haiku in English (W.W. Norton, 2013). Eleven of his poems have been reprinted in The Red Moon Anthology, which yearly collects the best English-Language haiku and related works. Colón has published more than 900 poems in a variety of magazines including Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Journal of Poetry Therapy, Writer’s Digest, and Louisiana Literature. He is also one of the poets featured in Tazuo Yamaguchi’s Haiku: Art of the Short Poem, a DVD documentary. Follow Haiku Elvis on Twitter @ccolon423.
darnaLL Barbara Darnall, the daughter of a high school English teacher and a West Texas lawyer and rancher, has been surrounded by words all her life and grew up telling stories and writing scripts for her playmates to perform. She graduated from Baylor University with B.A. and M.A. degrees in drama, and taught at the college level for several years. Immediate past-president of Abilene Writers Guild, she writes poetry, articles, and personal narratives, and has written and directed numerous short dramas for her church. She has copyedited one book and several manuscripts, and has published stories and poems in seven previous Silver Boomer Books anthologies. As a tax consultant for more than thirty years, she particularly enjoys the letter-writing contests she occasionally gets into with the IRS!
 dodge Elsi Dodge is a single, retired, Boulder, Colorado, teacher who travels with her dog and cat in a thirty-foot RV, co-leads a Bible study, works with a church youth group, and advocates for families struggling with the special ed system. Blog at www.RVTourist.com/blog.
Dowis June Rose Dowis reads, writes, and resides in Shreveport, Louisiana. A love of nature, a heart for the underdog, and a slice of everyday life find their way into her poetry that is divided equally between contemporary style and haiku. Her essays have been published in Birds & Blooms, Appleseeds, Byline, and Shreveport Voices. Her poetry has been published in Ouachita Life, Acorn, A Hundred Gourds and anthologies, From the Porch Swing, This Path, The Harsh and the Heart, and Harbingers of Hope in Hard Times. She was also a winner of the Highway Haiku Contest in Shreveport, with her haiku gracing a billboard.
 dycus Carolyn Dycus is a retired district court administrator, active volunteer, bookaholic, and lifetime journaler. Her varied works have included on-line devotional contracts, and even a True Story magazine article. She lives out her love of children’s literature through years of reading to eleven grandchildren, and her love of history by serving as a docent to schoolchildren at a Texas frontier museum. She also advocates for women and children in developing countries through a local non-profit organization. Her daily challenge and focus is carving out quiet time for writing.
 ellison Sharon Ellison is a medical office manager and freelance writer who lives in Abilene, Texas, with her blonde Pekingese, Judah. She has been published in several previous Silver Boomer Books anthologies as well as Proceedings and Nostalgia magazines. She has three grandchildren nearby and two far away. Along with writing, she enjoys reading, singing, playing piano, and traveling.
  Renee Emerson teaches poetry at Shorter University. She has her MFA from Boston University and is the author of three chapbooks, most recently Where Nothing Can Grow (Batcat Press). Her work has appeared in literary magazines such as 32 Poems, Indiana Review, and Christianity & Literature.
Estelle-Bialek Wendy Estelle-Bialek has resided most of her life in Southeastern Connecticut. However, she is currently enjoying a nomadic lifestyle living full-time in an RV while traveling throughout the United States with her husband. After spending nearly two decades in the world of administrative services, including a stint as a content writer for a web design firm, she ultimately ignited her writing career as a full-time reporter for a local weekly newspaper. Once the initial fear of knowing her work would be read by thousands of subscribers each week subsided, she was hooked. Today she uses her time traveling the country to write short stories and plans to publish her first novel in the fall of 2013. You can follow Wendy along on her travels as she writes about her gypsy lifestyle at www.AmericanGypsyGibberish.com
 faust Wayne Faust has had over 35 stories published in various places, including in Norway and another in Australia. He authored a full length, non-fiction book called Thirty Years Without A Real Job, recounting his experiences as a full-time music and comedy performer, which is still his full-time job. You can find out more about Wayne on his website at www.waynefaust.com, where you can read some of his fiction for free online and listen to funny songs.
 ford Dare Freeman Ford is author of Don’t Make Me Turn this Bus Around, chronicling her adventures as a teenage bus driver in Anson County, North Carolina. Her work has appeared in several Southeast regional publications and anthologies. A retired teacher specializing in special needs students, she lives in Hendersonville, North Carolina.
M. Elizabeth Forest was a modern dancer who taught children the joy of movement and creative expression. She wrote poetry as a young woman and was published in her college arts journal. While living in New York, her career evolved to massage therapy and later, nursing. She is married and has raised three daughters. Stricken with chronic Lyme disease for more than ten years, she began writing fiction to express her creativity. She is a Lyme survivor now working toward publication in order to share her life’s experience with others. She lives with her husband in New Hampshire.
 Credit: Jonathan Bean Rosie Garland was born in London to a runaway teenager and has always been a cuckoo in the nest. An eclectic writer and performer, ranging from singing in cult gothic band The March Violets, to twisted alter ego Rosie Lugosi the Vampire Queen, she has five solo collections of poetry and is winner of the DaDa Award for Performance Artist of the Year and a Poetry Award from the People’s Café, New York. She also won the Mslexia Novel competition in 2012, and her debut novel The Palace of Curiosities was released in March 2013 by HarperCollins. http://www.rosiegarland.com.
Nancy Gauquier loves to travel. She grew up in Massachusetts, and has lived in Vermont, Oregon, New York City, Seattle, and East Sussex, England. Her stories have been published in the U.S., Canada, England, and New Zealand. She now lives in central coastal California.
 GEIL Sarah Geil is currently pursuing degrees in English and psychology at Shorter University in Rome, Georgia. Her poetry has been published in the university’s literary magazine, The Chimes. In a different vein of publication, her research on birth order and academics has appeared in a Harvard scientific journal.
 GEDSC DIGITAL CAMERA Marian Gowan, a graduate of Tufts University, discovered personal writing after retiring to Hendersonville, North Carolina, from western New York, following her thirty-year career in a large corporation. She is author of Notes from the Trunk, a memoir of her mother’s life from 1920 to 1940, published by Old Mountain Press (www.oldmp.com/mariangowan.htm). Her work has appeared in several Southeast regional publications and anthologies.
Alice King Greenwood has been writing poetry, prose, and music since taking early retirement from teaching school thirty years ago. She draws her material from multifaceted personal experiences in travel, community involvement, and most importantly, life with her large family of five children, twelve grandchildren, and thirteen great-grands. Her compositions have won numerous awards and have appeared in more than four dozen publications.
Becky Haigler is a founding partner in Silver Boomer Books, a contributer to all the SBB anthologies and the author of not so GRIMM: gentle fables and cautionary tales, a collection of magic realism stories from Laughing Cactus Press. She is retired from teaching Spanish in Texas public schools and now resides in St. Louis, Missouri.
Amanda Hamilton was born in Columbia, Missouri, in 1990. She holds a BFA in Creative Writing from Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri. She was recently engaged to her boyfriend of four years, and they plan to marry in May 2014. She can play a mean accordion and a decent ukulele. Her work has previously been published in CC&D  Magazine,  Foliate  Oak  Literary  Magazine, The Evansville Review, Menda City Review, Northwind Magazine, Echo Ink Review and See Spot Run.
Haiku Hannah is an observer, admirer, and would-be practitioner of modern English haiku. Until she takes the craft more seriously, she will remain anonymous.
Dixon Hearne, a Louisiana native, teaches and writes in southern California and Mississippi. He has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize and earned the 2010 Creative Spirit Award-Platinum, for Plantatia, a collection of 34 short stories. His work has appeared in several Silver Boomer Books anthologies, as well as Louisiana Literature, Wisconsin Review, New Plains Review, Mature Living and many other magazines and journals. Hearne was a guest editor for A Quilt of Holidays, Silver Boomer Books’ seventh anthology. His Native Voices, Native Lands published by Laughing Cactus Press came out in September, 2013. He is presently at work on new poetry and short story collections.
 Johnson Carolyn T. Johnson, a former banker and now freelance writer from Houston, Texas, writes from the heart, the hurt, the heavenly, and sometimes the hilarious. Life has provided many twists and turns over the years, but she subscribes to the advice of a popular Lee Ann Womack song, and when she gets the chance to sit it out or dance, she dances. Her work can be found in The Houston Chronicle and The Austin American-Statesman newspapers, as well as Chicken Soup for the Soul, the Whispering Angel series, Publishing Syndicate and numerous other anthologies and e-zines
Karpinska Janina Aza Karpinska achieved an M.A. in Creative Writing & Personal Development at Sussex University in 2006,  and  won  first  prize  in  the  Cannon  Open  Poetry Competition the following year. As Ms. Merized, she produced her own weekly community radio show of poetry; prose; music; and an audio book: The Haunted Woman, by David Lindsay (no longer in print). She is one of the usual suspects in I.D. Parade, a local Am Dram Company. She is also an artist and iconographer.
 leggett Charles Leggett is a professional actor based in Seattle, Washington. Recent publications include Bottle Rockets, The Centrifugal Eye, and Big Pulp. Others include 2012 Pushcart nominations by Kansas City Voices and The Golden Sparrow Literary Review. His long poem “Premature Tombeau for John Ashbery” is an e-chapbook in the Barnwood Press “Great Find” series, and his play, The River’s Invitation, was featured at Seattle’s Theatre Off Jackson as part of its inaugural Solo Performance Festival, “SPF 1: No Protection!” in March 2007.
Kim Lehnhoff is a wife, mother of three, stepmother of three, grandmother of eight and tech writer. She has been published  in  Mozark  Press’  anthologies  A  Shaker  of  Margaritas: Hot Flash Mommas and A Shaker of Margaritas: Cougars on the Prowl. Kim is President of the Writers’ Society of Jefferson County, and a member of St. Louis Writer’s Guild and Saturday Writers in St. Peters, all chapters of the Missouri Writers Guild. She enjoys spending time with family, reading, blogging, and taking roads to see where they go. Kim blogs at The Ratio of Failures, ratiooffailures.blogspot.com
 Lopez Lisa Marie Lopez has had publications in The Storyteller Magazine and in various anthologies including The Book of Mom and The Spark, Volume One. She completed a course at Long Ridge Writers Group in 2012 where she was lucky enough to have author Lou Fisher as her mentor. She’s had eight publications since and credits wonderful and inspirational Lou for making her a better writer. Lisa lives with her husband in Concord, California.
 mann Melody was born as a young child and has lived her entire life. She currently lives with a Mann and has borne four Mann children. When not helplessly proofreading every billboard and cereal box she encounters, she earns a wage as a Tech Editor heroically rescuing dangling participles. She blames her career path entirely on her first grade teacher, Mrs. Campanella, who blithely inflicted literacy on over 35 unsuspecting children that year. Growing up in a military family, Melody spent untold hours waiting in one form or another, in one assignment after the other. A book or puzzle magazine was a more faithful companion than any pet could ever be and always spoke her language. She was delighted to pass the skill of waiting on to her four children. (One of whom still regularly causes her mother to practice late into the evening.) Having ingested a multitudinous amount of alphabet over the years, Melody thought it was high time to regurgitate.
Laura Matheson is just another mom, two little ones in tow, pencil at the ready, and camera in hand. Originally from the Canadian west coast, she now lives in rural Saskatchewan with her boys, her husband, and their two crazy English Springer Spaniels, and teaches communications and technical writing at Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and Technology.
John A. McColley lives in a vortex of worlds, characters, machines and language, constantly dragging images and forms out of the storm onto canvas, paper or computer screen to share them with others and give them new life. When not wrestling with words, he cranks dials and makes sparks at his local hackerspaces and searches the wilds of New Hampshire for semi-precious stones with his fiancée.
 mohr Anthony J. Mohr writes from his home in southern California. His essays, memoirs, and short stories have appeared  in  or  are  upcoming  in,  among  other places, California Prose Directory – 2013; Chicken Soup for the Soul – True Love; The Christian Science Monitor; Eclectica; The MacGuffin; War, Literature & the Arts; Workers Write! Tales from the Courtroom; Word Riot; and ZYZZYVA. He has appeared in Freckles to Wrinkles, This Path, and Flashlight Memories. His hobbies include hiking, travel, horseback riding, reading, and improv theater.
Claudia Mundell has a Border War in her writing. She grew up in Kansas, but her work life has been in Missouri. She has many memories from each state that work their way into her fiction. After raising a family and teaching, she now writes for pleasure – and maybe for profit someday. Her work has appeared in MidRivers Review, Yellow Medicine Review, Rosebud, TEA, Good Old Days, Romantic Homes, and in several anthologies. http://claudiapagebookie.blogspot.com
Sheryl L. Nelms is from Marysville, Kansas. She graduated from South Dakota State University. She has had over 5,000 articles, stories and poems published, including fourteen individual collections of her poems. She is the fiction/nonfiction editor of The Pen Woman Magazine, the National League of American Pen Women publication; a contributing editor for Time Of Singing, A Magazine Of Christian Poetry; and a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee.
Karen O’Leary is a writer and editor from West Fargo, North Dakota. She has published poetry, short stories, and articles in a variety of venues. In 2011, she released a book of her poetry called Whispers... In 2012, she edited Snippets…, an anthology of poetry from 73 writers across the world. Both books were published by APF Publisher and are available at www.lulu.com. Karen is currently the editor of an online poetry community called Whispers, whispersinthewind333.blogspot.com. She would enjoy hearing from writers and readers at gksm@cableone.net
 GEDSC DIGITAL CAMERA Martha O’Quinn currently lives in Hendersonville, North Carolina. She writes poetry and creative nonfiction. Her work has appeared in a number of anthologies from Old Mountain Press in Sylva, North Carolina, as well as regional publications including wnc-woman and three anthologies edited by Celia Miles and Nancy Dillingham. Born in North Carolina, Martha has lived in five different Southern states and her writing reflects her true southern heritage. She is a mother of two, grandmother of four, and great-grandmother of one.
 palmer Carl “Papa” Palmer, twice nominated for the Micro Award in flash fiction and thrice for the Pushcart Prize in poetry, has been published in five previous Silver Boomer Books anthologies. He grew up on Old Mill Road in Ridgeway, Virginia, and now lives the good life in University Place, Washington. MOTTO: Long Weekends Forever.
podlipec Patricia Podlipec taught first grade for over two decades. After retirement she and her husband moved from Wisconsin to Hendersonville, North Carolina, where she enjoys many activities, including writing poetry. Her poems have appeared in Kakalak, Clothes Lines, WNC Woman, Heart Journal, The Great Smokies Review, and Women’s Spaces Women’s Places.
Carol McAdoo Rehme has survived The Waiting Place in countless ways with four children and ten grandchildren. A veteran freelance editor and award-winning writer, she is the author of numerous books. Her latest projects – a biography/memoir, Finding the Pearl and a delectable gift book, Fundamentally Female – were released in 2012.
Penny Righthand grew up in New York, went to nursing school in Michigan, studied creative writing in Washington State, and settled in Oakland, California. She worked as a journalist, but for the past 25 years has had a busy financial advising practice. She writes a column for the professional journal Advisor Today and had a piece in the Silver Boomer Books anthology On Our Own – Widowhood for Smarties. She works with her three grandsons on their pitching, dribbling and sometimes on joint writing projects. She’s waiting to channel the next great American flash fiction.
Barbara B. Rollins, writer, editor, and publisher with Silver Boomer Books came to book crafting after careers as teacher,  Christian  educator,  typesetter,  legal  secretary, lawyer, and judge. She started writing books while waiting for lawyers, and Longest Hours is the seventeenth book with Barbara B. Rollins on the cover. She writes a daily recovery poetry blog at EagleWingsPress.com/daily.
 Microsoft Word - 2-14-11 updated photo - from David Axelrod.doc Ruth Sabath Rosenthal is a New York poet, well published in literary journals and poetry anthologies throughout the United States and internationally. In 2006, Ruth’s poem “on yet another birthday” was nominated for a Pushcart prize. Ruth has a book of poems titled Facing Home and Beyond that can be purchased from barnesandnoble.com; amazon.com; or from Ruth via e-mail: ruthspoems@aol.com. She also has two poetry books forthcoming: little, but by no means small and Food: Nature vs Nurture. For more about Ruth, please feel free to “Google” her, and visit her website www.ruthsabathrosenthal.moonfruit.com.
Bobbye Samson hangs around, watching the ups and downs, triumphs and oops, of Silver Boomer Books, occasionally contributing a piece or two, just to keep the pot stirred. Her work is in Flashlight Memories, Silver Boomers, and The Harsh and The Heart.
schuelke Neva Schuelke was born and raised in the portion of northern California referred to as “Silicon Valley.” Neva now resides in southern Arizona – where she belongs. Writing has been a primary form of self expression since childhood. She discovered the short story form in her sophomore year of high school. Studying biology and, later, psychology in college, she has worked off and on as a natural science docent/educator and writer, dabbling in poetry from time to time. Mary Oliver and Billy Collins are two of her favorite poets. Journaling is a daily practice. She currently lives with a dog and two cats (all rescues) who like to help with gardening, crocheting and knitting projects. She still occasionally fantasizes that she will one day write the “great American novel,” but the exact plot has not revealed itself – yet.
Elizabeth Schultz lives in Lawrence, Kansas, following retirement from the English Department of the University of Kansas, where she was Chancellor’s Club Teaching Professor. She remains committed to writing about the people and the places she loves, in academic essays, nature essays, and poems. These include Herman Melville, her mother, and her friends, the Kansas wetlands and prairies, Michigan’s Higgins Lake, Japan, where she lived for six years, oceans everywhere. She has published several books, and her scholarly and creative work appears in numerous journals and reviews.
 Skolnik Fred Skolnik was born in New York City and has lived in Israel since 1963. His novel The Other Shore (Aqueous Books, 2011) is an epic work depicting Israeli society at a critical juncture in its recent history. His stories, essays and poems have appeared in around eighty journals, including TriQuarterly, Gargoyle, The MacGuffin, Minnetonka Review, Los Angeles Review, Prism Review, Words & Images, Literary House Review, Underground Voices, Third Coast, and Polluto. He is also the editor in chief of the 22-volume second edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica, winner of the 2007 Dartmouth Medal.
J.J. Steinfeld, Canadian fiction writer, poet, and playwright, lives on Prince Edward Island, where he is patiently waiting for Godot’s arrival and a phone call from Kafka. While waiting, he has published fourteen books, including Should the Word Hell Be Capitalized? (Stories, Gaspereau Press), Would You Hide Me? (Stories, Gaspereau Press), An Affection for Precipices (Poetry, Serengeti Press), Misshapenness (Poetry, Ekstasis Editions), and A Glass Shard and Memory (Stories, Recliner Books). His short stories and poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and periodicals internationally, and over forty of his one-act plays and a handful of his full-length plays have been performed in Canada and the United States.
Deborah Straw is the author of two published books of nonfiction and a college writing and literature instructor. She is also a wife, daughter, friend, and animal lover.
John Vicary is an author from Michigan. He’s been published in various anthologies and magazines, starting with his first poetry efforts in the fifth grade. He’s been the featured author at The Petulant Poetess and a ten-time winner of Brigit’s Flame. He lives in the country with his spouse, five kids, six cats, two dogs, and a partridge in a pear tree.
Steliana Cristina Voicu graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Economic Cybernetics, Statistics and Informatics from Petroleum-Gas University of Ploieşti (Romania) in 2010, and in 2012 she received a Master’s degree in Business Support Databases from the same institution. Her Romanian poetry and short prose have received awards in various contests and her poems have been published in Romanian anthologies. Her haiku have been published in Ginyu Haiku Gallery, Diogen – pro kultura magazin, Ploc! and Asahi Haikuist Network. Her haiku sequence – cold moon – received 3rd place in the Diogen International Winter Haiku Competition 2012.
 WELCH Lois Kaskel Welch grew up in Delphos, a small town in northeast Ohio. She wrote, between the fall of 2006 and the spring of 2009, more than 35 short stories about her life. She was encouraged and supported by her teacher and fellow classmates at Writers and Books in Rochester, New York. Lois wrote about her early memories of life during the Great Depression, her family’s experiences in World War II, and her life as a young mother in post-war America. Lois and her daughter, Joyce Welch Nimick, were busy editing the stories into a book when Lois became ill and passed away on March 9, 2009. Her book – Kaskel Family Memories – was published in 2011.
B.J. Yudelson is a retired writer for not-for-profit agencies. Her essays have appeared in Colere, Eclectica Magazine, Forge, The Griffin, Jewish Action, The Jewish Georgian, The Legendary, Slow Trains, Tiny Lights, and in two previous Silver Boomer anthologies, Flashlight Memories and A Quilt of Holidays. She is currently working on a memoir. When not writing, she paddles her solo canoe, travels with her husband to out-of-the-way places, visits her nine grandchildren on two coasts, and is a volunteer reading tutor in a Rochester, New York, school.