On Our Own Authors

 
Nina Abnee lives and works in Chicago. She has been in advertising, working at Chicago’s largest agency, Leo Burnett, for more than 25 years. She is the single parent of two adult daughters and two cock-a-poo pups. She is just beginning to write in her spare time and does her best thinking while walking the dogs. She aspires to expand her writing into a book about her new perspective on marriage.
Carol Ayer’s poetry has been published by Poetry Quarterly, Poesia, Every Day Poets, and in previous Silver Boomer Books titles. Her other credits include Woman’s World, The Christian Science Monitor, and several Chicken Soup for the Soul volumes. Carol lives in Northern California, and works as a freelance writer. Visit her website at www.carolayer.com.
Glenda Beall lives in Hayesville, North Carolina, where she teaches writing at her home studio, Writers Circle. Her poetry chapbook, Now Might as Well be Then, was pub­lished by Finishing Line Press three months after her husband’s death in 2009. She has published poetry, non­fiction, short stories and writes articles for newspapers. Her poem, “No Safe Place,” has been published in three online journals and will appear in two anthologies this year. Besides writing and teaching, Beall speaks on the dangers of indoor air pollution in our homes, schools and workplaces. One of her poems was published in Freckles to Wrinkles, a Silver Boomer Books anthology. She blogs at www.Glenda­Council Beall.blogspot.com and www.Profiles And Pedigrees. blogspot. com.
Susanne Braham is an editor for the Publications Office at Columbia University. She began writing poetry as a means of catharsis following the sudden death of her 56-year-old husband in 2002. She has a Bachelor’s degree from Columbia in English and comparative literature and a Master’s degree from Emerson Col­lege in theater education.
Cathy Bryant held many jobs, including civil servant, life model and nanny, before becoming a writer. Now her poems and stories have been published all over the world in magazines and anthol­ogies. In 2009 Cathy was runner-up in the Woman & Home fiction prize; in 2010 she won the Marple Humourous Poetry Prize; in 2011 she was runner-up in several writing contests; and in 2012 she won the Swanezine Poetry Competition. Cathy co-edits Best of Manchester Poets and her collection Contains Strong Language and Scenes of a Sexual Nature came out in 2010. She lives in Manchester, United Kingdom.
Judy Callarman lives in Cisco, Texas. She is a retired professor of creative writing and English at Cisco College and chair of the Fine Arts Division. Her poems and nonfiction have won contests and been published in Silver Boomer Books’ This Path and From the Porch Swing; Radix; Passager; Grandmother Earth; and Patchwork Path – Christmas Stocking. She is a Silver Boomer Books guest editor for the anthology A Quilt of Holidays.
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 Cup of Comfort series, numerous anthologies, RX for Writers, magazines and medical journals. kathe@wild­blue.net.
K. Marguerite Caronna is a teacher, hopefully retiring soon so she can devote more time to her writing projects, including a novel set in a women’s jail, and a script. Her writing life includes Perspec­tives pieces for the local NPR station, a script produced for TV and runner up winner of the Chistell Short Story Writing Contest. She never turns down an opportunity to travel.
Patsy Collins lives on the south coast of England. Her stories and poems have been published in a range of United Kingdom, Irish and Australian magazines including Woman’s Weekly, The Weekly News, Woman’s Day, That’s Life! and My Weekly. Patsy is the author of two novels, Escape to the Country and Paint Me a Picture. She’d like you to visit her blog Patsy-Collins.blogspot.com.
Robyn Conley, the book doctor, speaks and writes about writing, editing, and marketing what you write. Her books include: Insights from the Jobsite published by Eagle Wings Press imprint of Silver Boomer Books; Be Your Own Book Doctor, which gives a checklist of editing tips for writers; and What Really Matters to Me, a journal that helps people discover their goals, and then offers practical tips to make those dreams come true. Her other published titles include a diversity of topics, such as Beyond the Branches, Writing and Scrapping Your Complete Family Tree and Pray the Bible with Paper and Pen. Her biographies include: John Grisham, Cartoonists, Alexander G. Bell, and the juvenile reference books: Meerkats; Depression; Motion Pictures; and The Automobile. Robyn has sold to major magazines, such as The Writer, Writer’s Digest, ABA: Student Lawyer, and a score of others.
Carole Creekmore, a Baby Boomer who grew up in North Carolina, is a widow with two adult children, two grand­daughters, and an English Bulldog. With degrees in English from Wake Forest University, she teaches English, Creative Writing, and Humanities at Georgia Perimeter College in the Atlanta area. She enjoys writing, traveling, genealogy, photography, and new adventures.
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 six 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!
Gail Denham’s short stories, poetry, news articles, nonfiction, and photos have appeared for over thirty years in numerous magazines, books, anthologies, and on calendars and brochures. Denham has released three poetry chapbooks and leads writing workshops. Currently, poetry takes the forefront in her work. Although Denham thanks God she has not experienced widowhood, friends deal with that grief. It’s Denham’s wish to console and offer hope. “Gone? Not Really” was written for Denham’s Aunt Esther after her dear husband, Uncle George, passed away suddenly. Aunt Esther takes this poem out frequently, reads it, and remembers.
Cathy Douglas lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where she works at a metaphysical shop and lives with one of her two grown sons. She enjoys writing a little bit of everything: poems, short stories, articles for the store newsletter and other nonfiction. She also has several novels in various stages of disrepair. When she isn’t working or writing, you’ll usually find her outside – running, biking, kayaking, or just messing around in he­r garden. Her website is cathydouglas.net.
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 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.
Milton P. Ehrlich is an eighty-year-old psychologist who has published numerous poems in periodicals such as the Antigonis Review, Toronto Quarterly Review, Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow, Shofar Literary Journal, Dream Fantasy International, Christian Science Monitor, and The New York Times.
Terri Elders, LCSW, lives near Colville, Washington. She’s a frequent contributor to anthologies, with over fifty pieces of creative nonfiction appearing in books such as Chicken Soup for the Soul, Thin Threads and God Makes Lemonade. She currently is a co-creator and editor for Publishing Syndicate’s new anthology series, Not Your Mother’s Book. A public member of the Washington State Medical Quality Assurance Commission, Terri received UCLA’s 2006 Alumni Award for Community Service for her work with Peace Corps. She’s lived in Belize, Guatemala, Dominican Republic and Seychelles. She blogs at atouchoftarragon.blogspot.com.
Sharon Ellison is a medical office manager who enjoys singing, playing piano and spending time with her grand­children. In her spare time, she enjoys writing and has been published in Pro­ceedings and Nostalgia magazines, as well as in four other Silver Boomer Books anthologies.
James Escher, a poet in East Central Illinois, is struggling to get a handle on aging gracefully. His work has most recently appeared in the Pitkin Review and is scheduled to appear in upcoming issues of the Lost & Found Quarterly. He balances writing with father­hood, husbandhood, working­hood, and exhaustedhood.
Gretchen Fletcher’s poems in her second chapbook, The Scent of Oranges: poems from the tropics, are set in South Florida where she lives and suffers from wanderlust. Fortu­nately, poetry allows her to travel for readings, book signings, and award ceremonies, the most exciting of which was in Times Square where she read her winning poem in the Poetry Society of America’s Bright Lights/Big Verse com­petition.
Anna Florio is a retired high school language arts teacher. When it looked like cancer was going to win the battle her husband was fighting she retired to stay home with him. She has a daughter and two grandsons. She reluctantly joined the widows club in November of 2011. Like many members of this club she lost her best friend when she lost her husband. This loss prompted her to write as a way of expressing her emotions. Anna was born in Brooklyn, lived over twenty years in Queens, and now lives on Long Island.
Angie Francis found herself suddenly single at fifty, after the unexpected death of her husband of thirty years. Determined to make a new life, she left her job as nonprofit administrator, bought a ramshackle beach house on seven acres of land on the Chesapeake Bay, and began to study nonfiction writing. Her first book, Wide Water View: Rebuild­ing a Life on the Chesapeake Bay, is a memoir in progress. Ms. Francis now makes her home in Colorado, where she continues to study nonfiction writing and spends weekdays at her best job ever – part time nanny to grandsons Boyd and Zach.
Lavania Fritts, a native of Arkansas, honed her artistic skills in Bartlesville, Oklahoma as director of a summer arts program for teens. Performing with various choral and theatre groups, she has also served on several boards supporting the arts. Never content with one medium, Lavania is also a jewelry designer, painter, and partner in a construc­tion company. One of her oil paintings currently graces the label of a very fine wine. Mother of two girls and a grand­mother of three, she is following in the footsteps of a long line of storytellers. Putting the spoken word into print has become a passion in this next chapter of her life.
Joy Gaines-Friedler teaches creative writing for non-profits in the Detroit area including Springfed Arts Literary Arts program and Common Ground – a mental health core provider service. Both her poetry and prose are widely published in literary magazines includ­ing, RATTLE, The New York Quarterly, Driftwood and others. Her first book of poetry Like Vapor was published by Mayapple Press, 2008. Visit her website: www.joygainesfriedler.com – and yes, the tiger is real.
Elaine L. Galit is an award-winning freelance writer. Her work has appeared in anthologies such as Chicken Soup for the Volunteer’s Soul, Women Forged in Fire, and Chicken Soup for the Working Woman’s Soul. She also co-authored three travel books and taught writing at the University of Houston – Cinco Ranch. As a featured author at a Texas Book Festival in Austin, she attended an author’s coffee at the Governor’s Mansion with Governor and Mrs. Rick Perry. Her more than 150 magazine and online and photo credits include Writer’s Digest, Cowboy Sports and Entertainment Magazine, Neighborhood America.com, Hous­ton Generation Magazine, and Woman’s World.
Stephen Gallup’s disabled grown son inspired his mem­oir, What About the Boy? Please visit fatherspledge.com for details. After losing his first wife to cancer, Stephen remarried and is now trying to be a good parent to a preteen girl and a boy in kindergarten.
Patricia L. Goodman is a widowed mother and grand­mother. She spent her career raising, training and showing horses with her orthodontist husband, on their farm in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. She now lives on the banks of the Red Clay Creek in Delaware, where she enjoys hiking, photography and spending time with her family. Her poetry has been published in journals and online and she is putting the finishing touches on her first book. Much of her inspira­tion comes from the natural world she loves.
Peter D. Goodwin divides his time between the streets and vibrant clutter of New York City, and the remnants of the natural world along Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay. His poems have been published in the anthologies September eleven; Maryland Voices; Listening to The Water: The Susquehanna Water Anthology; Alternatives To Surrender; Wild Things – Domestic and Otherwise; This Path; and From The Porch Swing as well as in various journals, including Rattle, Mem­oir(and), River Poets Journal, Dela­ware Poetry Review, Yellow Medicine Review, Twisted Tongue, Poetry Monthly, Main Street Rag, and Anon.
Lian Gouw’s moving poems meticulously choreograph the journey of caring for her ex-husband during his battle with cancer. From the initial shock of diagnosis, through the painful settling with the past, the focus on what is truly important emerges from her heartfelt poems. Anyone who has wrestled with resolving an ambivalent relationship and gone through the struggle of helping someone find as peaceful a death as possible will find echoes in Gouw’s words and images. She is the author of Only A Girl, an historical novel, published in English and Indonesian. See more at her website www.liangouw.com.
Judy Lee Green, Tennessee-bred and cornbread-fed, is an award-winning writer and speaker whose spirit and roots reach deep into the Appalachian Mountains. She has been published hundreds of times and received dozens of awards for her work. She often writes about her large colorful family, remembering humble beginnings as the source for much of her inspiration. Her work can be found in many publications including Now and Then: The Appalachian Magazine, Pas­sager, The Rambler, Anthology of New England Writers, Christian Woman, Southern Arts Journal, Relief, Ultimate Christian Living, and various anthologies and seasonal collections. She is a Chicken Soup writer.
Alice King Greenwood has been writing poetry, stories, articles, and music since taking early retirement from school teaching more than twenty-five 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 twelve great-grands. Her writings have appeared in nearly five dozen publications.
Becky Haigler is a founding partner in Silver Boomer Books and author of the short story collection Not so GRIMM: gentle fables and cautionary tales. Retired from teaching Spanish in Texas public schools, Becky follows her husband Dave wherever his work takes him. She is a mother and grandmother and dabbler in arts and crafts of various kinds, though she prefers the term “Renaissance woman.”
CJ Heck is a published poet, writer, blogger and children’s author who lives in Pennsylvania with her partner, Robert Cosmar, also an author. She has three married daughters and nine grand­children. CJ writes poetry for both children and adults, fiction and nonfiction short stories, memoirs, and essays. She also maintains a website for children and writes three blogs, one dedicated to Vietnam veterans – CJ is a Vietnam War widow. Her second book, a sequel, will be published next month. A prolific writer, CJ is working on her tenth children’s book, a book of poetry, and a collection of short stories.
Kehaunani Hubbard started writing poems when she was eight years old, fashioning them after her favorite author, Shel Silver­stein. Originally encouraged by her second grade teacher she continues to write many decades later. Now she focuses primarily on personal essays or creative nonfiction, which are submitted to the lucrative market of literary journals. She currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
Mary Cleary Krauss is a retired middle school teacher and is pleased to be a part of Silver Boomer Books publica­tions. She previously appeared in Silver Boomers, From the Porch Swing, and The Harsh and the Heart. She writes her life stories and poetry and is busy enjoying retirement.
Frieda W. Landau is a semi-retired writer and a photo­grapher. She and her husband, Alan, who was also a writer and photo­grapher, worked together specializing in military topics. Their work has appeared in Newsweek, US News & World Report, and similar worldwide publications. After he died, most untimely, on Christmas Day, 2004, she started writing poetry. Her first collection came out in October, 2011. When she’s not writing poetry, she’s working on a science fiction novel and taking care of sixteen teddy bears and five plot bunnies.
Meta E. Lee is a retired school librarian. She held jobs in both Chicago and Ft. Lauderdale. Recently widowed, Meta shares her home with a Rhodesian Ridgeback and a frisky cat. She enjoys spending time with her eleven grand­children and three great grandchildren. Since her retirement Meta has been involved in creative writing. Her works, short stories and poetry, have been published in a variety of literary magazines. Meta is an active member of the Broward County Storytellers’ Guild. She performs for children as well as adults. Her repertoire includes original works as well as traditional tales.
Maura MacNeil is the author of the poetry chapbook A History of Water (Finishing Line Press, 2007). Her poetry and prose has appeared in numerous publications and has been anthologized in The Breath of Parted Lips: Voices from the Frost Place, Volume II (CavanKerry Press), and Shadow and Light: A Literary Anthology on Memory (Monadnock Writers Group). She is co-founder and editor of Entelechy International: A Journal of Contemporary Ideas. Nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize, she lives in New Hampshire and is a professor of writing at New England College.
Marissa McNamara is an English professor in Atlanta, Georgia. She works to convince students that words, as poems or songs or essays, can be powerful. She writes poetry because she needs to convince herself that she is real. She writes poetry because she wants to convince others that they are real, too. Marissa has work in publications including RATTLE, StorySouth, and Future Cycle.
Peggy Muir is a Mainer retired from teaching anthro­pology, American Studies, and women’s studies at secondary and univer­sity levels. Peggy and her artist husband Bryce wrote about art, the Iles-de-la-Madeleine, Quebec (where Peggy did fieldwork on women’s work), maritime culture, and their 29,000 mile US tour (www.american­sabbatical.com). Her challenges as a widow in­clude solo sailing the sloop Bryce built, and nurturing the local arts center started in his spirit (www. merrymeetingarts­center.org). Her greatest joys are her son, daughter-in-law, grandboy, friends, walks, reading, art, gardening, sailing.
Sheryl L. Nelms is from Marysville, Kansas. She gradu­ated from South Dakota State University in Family Relations and Child Development. She has had over 5,000 articles, stories and poems published, including Bluebonnets, Boots and Buffalo Bones, from Laughing Cactus Press imprint of Silver Boomer Books and thir­teen other individual collec­tions of her poems. She is the fiction/ nonfiction editor of The Pen Woman Magazine, the National League of Ameri­can Pen Women publication and a recent Push­cart Prize nominee.
Linda O’Connell is a widely published inspirational writer and poet. Her work appears in several Silver Boomer anthologies, Chicken Soup for the Soul books, Sasse, Reminisce Maga­zine, and more. She finds humor in every­day living. Positive thinking helps her get through each day. lindaoconnell. blogspot.com.
Karen O’Leary is a wife, mother, nurse, and freelance writer from West Fargo, North Dakota. She has published poetry, short stories, and articles in a variety of venues including Sketchbook, Poems of the World, The Shine Journal, Haiku Pix, From the Porch Swing, and The Journal of Christian Nursing. In 2011, she released her first book of poetry, Whispers. Writing is a blessing in her life.
Helen Padway has poetry in ezines and print publications. Recent print publications include Verse Wisconsin and Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar. Theater trained, she worked both in television and radio writing and performing. After a hiatus for marriage and children (five), in widowhood she picked up her pen again. She is active in the Wisconsin Poetry community and continues to study to perfect her craft, attending workshops throughout the USA. She is part of The Sparks and the Hartford Avenue Poets. She believes that poets tell the truth, foresee the future and make the world a better place.
Carl Palmer, twice nominated for the Micro Award in flash fiction and thrice for the Pushcart Prize in poetry, is from Old Mill Road in Ridgeway, Virginia. Carl now lives in University Place, Washington. MOTTO: Long Weekends Forever.
Linda A. Panczner hopes to inspire the students she teaches at the University of Toledo that there’s more to writing than essays and reports. Free-lance writing reaches into the heart and probes the soul, frees the unexpressed, and gives form to those elusive insights that just have to be pronounced. She has been published in newspapers, magazines, and anthologies.
Carol Faulkner Peck taught at University of Maryland for over thirty years, was Writer/Composer-in-Residence at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC, and has con­ducted Artists-in-Education poetry workshops in schools since 1971. She also works with at-risk teens, hospice patients, and prison inmates. Her publications include From Deep Within: Poetry Workshops in Nursing Homes, “I Ain’t Gonna Wrote No Pome!”, two children’s musicals, and several articles and poems in Christian Science Monitor, Michigan Quarterly Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, South Coast Journal, Little Patuxen Review, and other journals. She was widowed in September 2011, and is experiencing healing through writing.
Joan Peronto is a transplanted mid-westerner having graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She worked as a reference librarian for thirty years and has been published in Crossing Paths, an anthology of western New England poets, The Berkshire Review, The Berkshire Sampler, Hummingbird and The Rockford Review.
Mary Pfeiffer, an author from her teens when she wrote a weekly newspaper column, taught English and now teaches memoir writing at Collin College. She speaks to groups about memoirs, sharing her writings. Her “Persim­mon Seeds,” was included in Ten Spurs, the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Confer­ence’s top ten selections, pub­lished by the University of North Texas. She has roots in Missouri where her extended family still lives but calls herself Texan, having lived there long enough to raise two daughters and retire from a teaching career.
Carol McAdoo Rehme’s own life was altered witnessing her mother’s brave journey through widowhood. An award-winning author and editor, Carol writes prolifically about small moments with large impacts, moments common to us all. She is the co-author of five gift books. Learn about her newly-released biography, Finding the Pearl, at rehme.com.
Penny Righthand grew up in New York, went to school in Michigan, studied creative writing in Washington State, and settled in Oakland, California. She writes a nonfiction column for the professional journal Advisor Today. She has a busy financial advising practice, coaches her three grandsons in various sports, and travels widely. Most of her writing is in hundreds of notebooks and computers in her home. She has been a widow for four years.
Stella Rimmer is 73 years old and has been weaving her way through the web of widowhood for many years. Having always enjoyed writing she has kept a diary since the age of nine, which served as a vehicle in which to express herself and record the various stages of her life. She recently joined a creative nonfiction writing group, inspiring her to write essays on various themes and presently she is working on the story about her late husband’s two heart transplants, which she hopes to complete in the not-too-distant future.
Barbara B. Rollins, writer, editor and publisher with Silver Boomer Books, takes advice from her sons when they are right and explores what she chooses – her favorite activity being hugging twin grandsons. Her Eagle Wings Press books A Time for Verse – Poetic Ponderings on Ecclesiastes and A Cloud of Witnesses – Two Big Books and Us, added to a series of juvenile forensic books and the young adult novel Syncopated Summer, make this anthology the fourteenth book bearing her name.
Lessa Roskin and husband Michael raised their three children in Israel. She enjoyed her fruitful career as a speech and language pathologist. After her husband died she began to express her bereavement through poetry. She has organized support groups for widows in the Jerusalem area.
Helen Ruggieri has a new book of poems called Butterflies Under A Japanese Moon from Kitsune Press. She had an essay about learning to use the library in Flashlight Memories.
Wayne Scheer has been nominated for four Pushcart Prizes and a Best of the Net. He’s published stories, poems and essays, in print and online, including Revealing Moments, a collection of flash stories, published by Thumbscrews Press. (issuu.com/pearnoir/ docs/revealing_ moments) Wayne lives in Atlanta and can be contacted at wvscheer@aol.com.
Molly Seale holds an MFA in Theatre from The University of Texas, Austin and has most recently taught in the University Honors Program at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, teaching Death Onstage and Anatomy of Loss: Death and Dying, Grief and Grieving. She is a passionate writer of plays, poems, fiction and nonfiction.
Marian Kaplun Shapiro is the author of a professional book, Second Childhood (Norton, 1988); a poetry book, Players In The Dream, Dreamers In The Play (Plain View Press, 2007), and two chapbooks: Your Third Wish, (Finish­ing Line, 2007); and The End Of The World, Announced On Wednesday (Pudding House, 2007). She practices as a psychologist, and is a member of the Cambridge Friends Meeting. Having had the good luck to choose a great hus­band at age twenty, she has been married for 52 years, and is the mother of two and grandmother of five. A resident of Lexington, she is the winner of about forty poetry prizes. She was named Senior Poet Laureate of Massachusetts in 2006, in 2008, in 2010, and 2011.
Aline Soules’ work has appeared in journals, ezines, and anthologies such as 100 Words, Literature of the Expanding Frontier, and Variations on the Ordinary. The Size of the World was co-published with The Shape of the Heart by Plain View Press. Meditations on Woman was published by Anaphora Literary Press in 2011. Poems from her chapbook Evening Sun: A Widow’s Journey appeared in Kaleidowhirl, Reed, Shaking Like a Mountain, The Houston Literary Review, and others. Her blog is at alinesoules.wordpress.com.
Julie Stuckey grew up in Pennsylvania, graduated from the University of Delaware with a degree in Business/ Philosophy concentration and currently lives in upstate New York. She is especially drawn to writing that is firmly rooted in the imagery of the natural world and has had numerous poems published online, in print journals and in anthologies. Several of her poems have received Finalist or Honorable Mention in various contests.
Marian Veverka received her BFA in Creative writing at the age of 47. She has written novels, short stories and creative non-fiction. Her most recent poetry has appeared in Barefoot Review, Curio, Moondance Magazine, Verse Wis­ consin, Camel Saloon and the anthology Bigger than they Appear. In 2006 she became a widow after 52 years of marriage. She is the mother of six children and many grand­children and great grandchildren. She lives in the country and enjoys writing about the natural world.
Phyllis Wax, a Pushcart nominee poet, lives and writes in Milwaukee on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. Her poetry has appeared in Out of Line, Ars Medica, Verse Wisconsin, Your Daily Poem, The New Verse News, Naugatuck River Review, A Prairie Journal, as well as other journals and anthologies, both print and online. Her work was included in exhibitions of “Threaded Meta­phors: Text & Textiles,” collaborations between five poets and five fiber artists. Travel, nature and the news provide much of her inspiration. She may be contacted at poetwax@yahoo.com.
Patricia Wellingham-Jones is a former psychology researcher and nurse, also a writer and editor, published widely in journals, anthologies and Internet magazines, including HazMat Review, Ibbetson Street, Edgz and Wicked Alice. She has a special interest in healing writing and leads a writing group at a cancer center. She writes for the review department of Recovering the Self: a journal of hope and healing. Among her ten chapbooks are Don’t Turn Away: poems about breast cancer, End-Cycle: poems about caregiving, Apple Blossoms at Eye Level, Voices on the Land and Hormone Stew.
Jane Willingham, born in 1930, is a pianist, a poet, and a storyteller. Before moving to Maryland in 1997 she taught literature and composition in a Texas community college for 25 years. She is active in her church and in Annapolis Senior Center. She has an Australian Terrier, Lulu, a cat, Lucy, one son in Annapolis, another in Washington state, and four grandchildren.
Laura Madeline Wiseman has a doctorate from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where she teaches English. She is the author of five chapbooks, including Branding Girls (Finishing Line Press, 2011) and She who Loves Her Father (Dancing Girl Press, 2012). Her poetry has appeared in Margie, Feminist Studies, Poet Lore, Cream City Review, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review and elsewhere. Her prose has appeared in Arts & Letters, Spittoon, Blackbird, American Short Fiction, 13th Moon, and elsewhere. Her reviews have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Valparaiso Poetry Review, 42Opus, and elsewhere. www.LauraMade­lineWiseman.com.
Charlotte Wolf sixteen years ago left beautiful Bucks County, Pennsylvania for the even more compelling Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Several writing classes and critique sessions later, and much to her delight, her short stories and poems have been published in local anthologies, journals, and magazines.
Thelma Zirkelbach was a romance author until her husband’s death propelled her from the romance genre to creative nonfiction and poetry. She is a speech-language pathologist in private practice, working with young children who have speech, language and reading disabilities. A voracious reader, she belongs to two book clubs, enjoys cooking, traveling and spending time with her grand­daughter. She lives in Houston with two cats to keep her company.