Silver Boomers Authors

 

Barbara Baig now lives in rural Maine, after more than two decades as a writing teacher at Harvard Divinity School and other colleges and adult education centers in the Boston area. She continues to develop her innovative approach to teaching writing, while conducting creative writing workshops for adults. She believes that with advancing age comes the opportunity to slow down, to give our attention to the particular place on the planet where we live, and to practice finding words to name and share what we discover there.

Al Basile received the first master’s degree from Brown University’s Creative Writing program. He was the first trumpet player for Rhode Island’s premiere jump blues band Roomful of Blues, and has enjoyed a long collaboration with Duke Robillard, writing songs for and playing on many of his CDs. Al’s work has appeared on film, television, and two Grammy-nominated CDs. He has five solo CDs, including his 2006 release Groovin’ in the Mood Room which reached #14 on the Living Blues airplay chart. His poetry was first published in 2005.

Gary Bloom has been writing articles, poetry, and short stories for more than 25 years, with credits in American Visions, The Educated Traveler, Milwaukee Magazine, The Buffalo News, The Grand Rapids Press, Grit, Cappers, Oasis, High Technology Careers, Players, Clockwatch Review, Black Diaspora, Mankato Poetry Review and other magazines, websites, and newspapers. He grew up during the ’60s in Minneapolis and has Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Mankato State University, Minnesota. After surviving Hurricane Katrina and a long, tedious career as a programmer and database administrator he now writes and fishes full time on the Gulf coast.

Susan Calder is a Calgary writer currently completing a murder mystery novel. Her short fiction has won contests, been published in literary magazines such as Other Voices and Storyteller and been broadcast on Canadian radio. She teaches fiction courses at the Alexandra Writers Centre Society. In the 1960s, Calder was attending high school in Montreal and listening to the Top 40 count-down every Friday afternoon. She viewed The Beatles’ appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show as her coming of age.

Mary Carter grew up in Amarillo and lived most of her adult life in Lubbock. West Texas culture and landscape continue to influence her writing.

SuzAnne C. Cole writes from a studio in the woods in the Texas Hill Country. More than 350 of her poems, essays, short stories and articles have appeared in commercial and literary magazines, anthologies, and newspapers. She was a juried poet at the Houston Poetry Fest in 2003 and 2005 and a featured poet in 2004. She once won a haiku festival in Japan.

Elaine Coleman is a native Texan. An award winning author, Elaine uses her genealogy research in the booksTexas Haunted Forts, Louisiana Haunted Forts and Texas Frontier Foods . She and her husband Jerry are avid antique collectors. When she isn’t playing with her grandchildren, she is usually found writing and listening to the phantoms of the antiques as they breeze through the open air of her ranch office. Elaine and Jerry live in a charming haunted farmhouse on the family farm in Runnels County where their horses and cattle graze. Her website is www.ElainesHaunt.com.

Ginger B. Collins writes short fiction and creative non-fiction. Her work appears in print and online including Volume 1 & 2 of the Scratch Anthology of Short Fiction. Excerpts from her first novel and other published works can be found at www.GingerBCollins.com. Her blog, OFF THE TOP OF MY RED HEAD, applies a past career in sales, marketing, and PR to Ginger’s new role as author, sharing links and writer resources while exploring subjects like social media, agent search, and writer platforms. Find the blog at blog.GingerBCollins.com.

R. Scott Comegys lives in Shreveport, Louisiana, where she is a late-bloomer Boomer. At 55, she is a single mom with two teenagers at home. During the halcyon ’70s and ’80s, she earned degrees from LSU-Baton Rouge, Indiana University-Bloomington, and IIT/Chicago-Kent College of Law. Since 1999, she has worked for the Social Security Administration as a staff attorney. In previous incarnations, she was a teacher, journalist, and law clerk. She has written on a variety of topics, from fiction to legal analysis and looks forward to writing in a quiet retirement setting such as mid-winter Iceland.

Robyn Conley, the book doctor, speaks and writes about writing, editing, and marketing what you write. Her latest book,Beyond the Branches: Writing and Scrapping Your Complete Family Tree, is her eleventh book. Others include the only authorized biography of John Grisham, Cartoonists, Meerkats , 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. Learn more at www.RobynConley.com.

Reva Curtiss spends her days on a West Texas ranch penning big stories from the little mundane happenings of life.

Ange Crawford lives in Oregon’s mid-Willamette Valley with her human family and seven animals all rescues from various parts of the United States, including the husband from Florida. Her work appears in magazines, journals, anthologies and newspapers worldwide. She was recently honored by Oregon Writers’ Colony for her nonfiction.

Carole G. Creekmore, a Baby Boomer who grew up in the rural South, is a widow with two adult children, two lovely granddaughters, and her baby, a beloved English Bulldog named Okie. She divides her time between the Atlanta area of Georgia and the mountains of North Carolina. With degrees in English from Wake Forest University, she teaches English and Humanities to make a living, writes poetry and prose for enjoyment, and guides rafts in the summers for fun. Year round, she enjoys traveling, genealogy, amateur photography, and reading.

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. 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, as a tax consultant for more than thirty years, she particularly enjoys the letter-writing contests she occasionally gets into with the IRS!

David Davis is a humorist, cartoonist, writer, and speaker. He grew up in San Antonio, Texas, and currently lives in Fort Worth. Most of his stories draw on his Texas roots, and his “baby-boomer” love of music. Davis is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. His Jazz Cats and Ten Redneck Babies were both named to the Children’s Choice Top 100. Jazz Cats was a finalist for the Texas Golden Spur Award. His satirical Night Before Christmas books are perennial comedy best-sellers. Davis’ “Travels with Grandpaw” is a popular internet comic about old time Texas. David is the author of nine published children’s books and two in the works. His website is www.DavidRDavis.com.

Christina Wos Donnelly has lived on two rivers, the Niagara and the Potomac. She is a founding co-editor of the ejournal Not Just Air and the author of a chapbook, Venus Afflicted: Poems 1999-2002. Her work has appeared in print and internet publications such as Lilliput Review, Slipstream, Stirring, and The 2River View, and in six anthologies, most recently Susan B & Me (Big Kids Publishing, 2006.) She has been an Artvoice Artist of the Week and a featured reader at venues in Buffalo, Baltimore and Washington, DC including the Library of Congress.

Anna Florio is Italian-American. She was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She has lived and worked in New York City all her life, attending Prospect Heights High School and attaining her BA and MS in Education from Queens College. She was a college drop out and didn’t return until she was in her ’40s. She has worked as a waitress, a bookkeeper, an office manager, a real estate salesperson, and a real estate appraiser. Presently she has been teaching English Language Arts in a NYC high school for thirteen years. It is her way of giving back some of what the “Angel in Black” gave her.

Toni Giarnese lives with her sweetheart of thirty-seven years in a Connecticut hill town, far from her humble Italian roots. Until recently, she went to school every year of her life. As both student and teacher, she was equally challenged, terrified and humbled. Of late, however, she coaxes blooms from her flowers, tinkers with kitchen gadgets and socializes in sweaty gyms. Recently she took a class with some guy named Lary Bloom. Now she is a writer. Currently she is working on her next author bio.

Peter D. Goodwin, born in New Jersey, lived (mostly) in England until the age of eighteen. After college in Virginia, he travelled and taught in Europe, Asia and the United States; moved to New York, worked as a playwright; moved to Maryland, bought a boat, and writes poetry while providing succulent treats for wildlife. His poems have been published inSeptember eleven; Maryland Voices; Listening to The Water: The Susquehanna Water Anthology; Rattle, Scribble, Dreamstreets, Lucidity, LunchLines, and Prints.

Ginny Greene likely arrived on Planet Earth with a bluepencil clutched in her fist. Current president of Abilene Writers Guild, her writing life includes years of newspaper lifestyle features, a newspaper column, and a handful of newsletters, including seven years editing the Guild’s newsletter. For fun, Ginny writes poems and works crossword puzzles. She edits everything, even street signage, especially yard sale signs, even in her sleep. She’s happiest seeing her love of words spilled over to her children and grandchildren, including daughter, Karen, also a Silver Boomers editor. While still loving her Northwest hometown, Ginny is at home with Larry near Abilene, Texas and her grown family.

Becky Haigler is retired after 24 years of teaching Spanish and Reading in Texas public secondary schools. As an Air Force wife, she lived in Spain, Germany, Japan, Hawaii, New Mexico, and Texas. Her poetry has appeared in national and regional periodicals Her short stories for adolescents have been published by several denominational publishing houses. Two of her magic realism stories are included in the anthology Able to… ( NeoNuma Arts Press, 2006.) Becky currently resides in Shreveport Louisiana with her husband Dave Haigler. She is the mother of two daughters and grandmother of three granddaughters.

Cathy C. Hall lives in metro Atlanta. Her humorous essays have appeared in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Our Town Magazine, Cup of Comfort for Dog Lovers and this fall in Chicken Soup for the Tea Lovers Soul . Her award-winning short stories have appeared in several anthologies.

Joan Upton Hall, former English teacher, is now a freelance author, editor, writing instructor, and speaker. Her manual, Rx for Your Writing Ills and “Demystifying Writers’ Demons” column, carried by various newsletters, have helped countless writers. She has been a newspaper columnist (travel and humor) and has published short stories and articles in magazines as diverse as Texas Highways, American Jails, and ByLine writers’ magazine. Think that’s a split personality? Her books run from historical nonfiction to urban fantasy and the paranormal, sample chapters and other items offered on her website: www.joanuptonhall.com/books.htm.

Susan Helwig grew up on a Canadian dairy farm just outside Neustadt, Ontario. Her work has appeared in various literary magazines and anthologies, most recently Idea Factory Magazine and Canadian Woman Studies . Her first collection, Catch the Sweet , was launched in 2001. Her second book, Pink Purse Girl, came out in the fall of 2006. She lives in Toronto, Canada, where she serves on the board of directors for the Draft Reading Series.

Frances Hern grew up in Birmingham, England and moved to Calgary in 1973, where she writes prose and poetry for children. Her travels and family life provide a wealth of material for both poetry and prose. Unable to memorize lists of facts and dates, she didn’t enjoy studying history in school. Now she finds it more relevant to life than she thought at the age of fifteen. Her third book, Arctic Explorers , about the search for the Northwest Passage, is part of the Amazing Stories series by Altitude Publishing Canada Ltd.

Linda Oatman High is the author of 21 books, the most recent being The Hip Grandma’s Handbook . She offers writing workshops throughout the world, and is available for presentations at schools, conferences, and meetings.www.lindaoatmanhigh.com.

Perry Higman grew up on the coast and inland range country of the western United States and in rural Mexico. He has taught Spanish at Eastern Washington University for 36 years, and traveled the rest of the country and much of the world. His passions are climbing and ski mountaineering. A horseshoer for fifteen years, he feels perhaps more cowboy than professor. His son Jesse, injured in a car crash in 1983, is now a successful artist in Seattle. Jesse is in a wheel chair.

Juleigh Howard-Hobson’s work has recently appeared in or will soon appear in Mezzo Cammin, The Barefoot Muse, SCR, Mobius, Snakeskin,Shatter Colors Literary Review, The Raintown Review, The Quarterly Journal of Food and Car Poems, Contemporary Rhyme and Poem, Revised (Marion Street Press) among other places. She was a finalist for the 2006 Morton Marr Poetry Prize . Born in the early ’60s, she acknowledges that her own rear-section of the baby boom, whose defining years were more punk rock than Woodstock, is getting old enough to go silver.

Jo Anne Horn-Burks is a self-proclaimed dabbler. She dabbles in writing, oil painting, playing piano and says she has just enough talent to keep herself amused. She worked as a secretary in various fields before remarrying in 1975. She attended The University of Texas at San Antonio for two years before relocating to Lake Brownwood, Texas. For twelve years, she worked, along with her husband, as an EMT with their volunteer fire department.

Crystal Hurdle read from her Hughes and Plath inspired collection, After Ted & Sylvia: Poems as Guest Poet at the 75th International Sylvia Plath Symposium at the University of Oxford in Oct. 2007. She teaches Creative Writing and English at Capilano College in North Vancouver, BC. The poems included in Silver Boomers are from a manuscript entitled Toward. Crystal’s poetry has been published widely in Canadian journals, including Canadian Literature, Fireweed, The Dalhousie Review , and The Capilano Review, of which she was Fiction Editor in the late eighties, and on whose Board of Directors she currently sits.

Roscky Ann Jarman was born in North Carolina about 1812, getting to Texas to make her great-great-great granddaughter, a Silver Boomers editor, a sixth generation Texan. Having raised six children she’s devoted to family, and her ghostly presence enjoys watching over the editing and suggesting cute little poems to fill interstices. She’s probably in Coryell County, Texas, but nobody’s seen her lately.

Michael Lee Johnson lives in Chicago, Illinois after spending 10 years in Edmonton, Alberta Canada during the Viet Nam era. He is a freelance writer and poet. He is heavily influenced by Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Irving Layton, and Leonard Cohen. He is a member of Poets & Writers, Inc. and the Directory of American Poets & Fiction Writers. He has over 250 poems published in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Africa, India, and the United Kingdom. Mr. Johnson’s poetry book The Lost American: From Exile to Freedom was published with iUniverse Publishers in 2007.

Terrence J. Kandzor lives on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound where he writes part-time. His non-fiction entry, ” My Next Story” was published in In the Spirit of Writing anthology, 2005. It was also recognized as a winner in the annual competition sponsored by the Whidbey Island Writers Association. Kandzor writes literary stories that have a touch of the unexpected.

Mary Krauss is a retired middle school teacher and is happy to have time to create poetry and prose instead of correcting it. Traveling and involvement in community theater are also some of her favorite new pastimes. She has two wonderful children, two grandchildren and two grand puppies all of whom live in Wisconsin and are forced to listen to her writings.

Elizabeth Kurecka is a purchasing agent for a small city outside Fort Worth, Texas. She is also the current Treasurer for the North Texas Professional Writers’ Association. Her short fiction has been published in Concho River Review, Broomstick, and Thema . She has also had creative nonfiction published in Beyond 50, Under the Clock Tower , and Amarillo Bay.

Jackson Lassiter grew up the youngest of seven brothers in the hills of Wyoming. After struggling through youth, puberty, early adulthood, and mid-life crisis, he says that writing finally allowed him to find peace in the world. His work has appeared in various print venues including Harrington Gay Men’s Literary Quarterly, Apocalypse Literary Arts Magazine, South Loop Review, The Binnacle, Bylines, Heartland Review and elsewhere. Google him to discover his substantial web presence. Or contact him at LuckyJRL@hotmail.com 

Janice Levy writes children’s books and adult fiction for magazines and anthologies that sell all over the world. Her work has been published in Glimmer Train, Iowa Review, Alaska Quarterly, Quarterly West, Chattahoochee Review, New York Stories, Mid-America Review, North Dakota Quarterly,Hawaii Review, Prism International, Rosebud Magazine, and The Sun,to name just a few. She has won the Writer’s Digest Magazine Competition for best literary short story three times. She has written ten children’s books. Four are in Spanish; another in Japanese. Her books make you laugh and think a bit. Levy says, “When I write for children, I pretend I’m a child. When I write for adults, I’m still a child; I just have bigger parts.” Her website isJanicelevy.com.

John Merrick was born in Bolivia and spent most of his life in Nova Scotia. He always wanted to write but kept putting it off while he raised a family and practiced law. Realizing that youth does not return and there is a finite time to do what is really important, he is finally devoting time to write in the hope of writing well. He has two great sons, a wonderful daughter and a “once in a lifetime” wife. He has also produced several short stories that have recently been published in the Ezine “Big Pond Rumour” and in ” Toward The Light : Journal of Reflective Word & Image.”

Patricia Cochran Murrell taught English for eighteen years in public high schools and has been for ten years on faculty at Louisiana Tech University, Barksdale Air Force Base Program. In the 80s, kids in tow, she spent two summer sessions at the Bread Loaf School of English in Vermont (but was unable to accomplish a yoga headstand in the Robert Frost meadow.) She lives in the country in Benton, Louisiana, with her husband sharing a Brady bunch of six children, nine grandchildren, and a hand-me-down Labrador.

Sheryl L. Nelms is from Marysville, Kansas, and graduated from South Dakota State University with a Bachelor of Science in Family Relations and Child Development. She has had over 4,500 poems, stories and articles published. Some of the magazines, anthologies and textbooks that have used her work are: Reader’s Digest, Modern Maturity, Kaleidoscope, Capper’s, Grit, Country Woman, Poetry Now, Cricket, Strings, This Delicious Day, The American Anthology, Girls To The Rescue and Men Freeing Men. Twelve collections of her poems have been published.

James Nolan was born in Wisconsin, the fourth of six boys. In his ’70s college days, he first published funny letters to the editor. Through the decades, James has published personal essays and poetry in regional publications, including the Wisconsin Academy Review. He is currently rewriting a book manuscript about his two trips to New York City to audition his Stupid Human Trick, The Drinking Juggler, for the LATE SHOW with David Letterman. He appeared on the show in February, 2004.

Linda O’Connell is an accomplished multi-genre writer. She has been a preschool teacher for thirty years. Her positive upbeat attitude and sense of humor make the bumps in life a little more tolerable.

 

Carl Palmer professional hobbyist, full time Papa and hospice volunteer, spends his spare moments submitting flash fiction stories and poetry to magazines around the world. Over 100 literary journals worldwide have published his works, including publications in Scotland, England, France, Germany, Algeria, India, Australia, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand and the United States, with selected poetry translated into Arabic, Hindi and French. www.myspace.com/carl_papa_palmer.

James Penha, native New Yorker, lives in Jakarta, Indonesia. Among the most recent of his many published works are an article in English Journal ; fiction at East of the Web and The Hiss Quarterly; and poems in Heliotrope , atShampoo.com and in Only the Sea Keeps: Poetry of the Tsunami (Bayeux Press ). No Bones to Carry , a volume of Penha’s poetry, has recently appeared from New Sins Press. Penha edits a website for current-events poetry at www.newversenews.com. His website is www.jamespenha.com.

Patty Pickard has lived for the last 40 years with her husband on a dirt road where they have raised vegetables and four children. He is now a judge and she is a teacher and a writer. Their life has been like those well-nourished pole beans she made up in 1964. Thank goodness.

Kenneth Pobo‘s newest book of poems, Glass Garden , will be published by WordTech Press in 2008. His work appears in Indiana Review, Nimrod, Windsor Review, Forpoetry.com, Mudfish , and elsewhere. He is fifty-three years old and grew up in Villa Park, Illinois, but now resides with his partner and three cats and a billion plants in Pennsylvania. He teaches Creative Writing and English at Widener University. Catch his radio show, “Obscure Oldies,” on Saturdays from 6-8 pm EST at WDNR.com.

Kerin Riley-Bishop is the baby of a Boomer. She moved to Texas in 2003 with her then 6 year-old son. An inexhaustible wanderlust paired with an artist’s eye for beauty have led her cross-country several times and through some of America’s most beautiful landscapes. Such sights have given her incredible fodder for her writing, photography, and other artistic endeavors. Her writing reflects a deep spirituality and respect for nature. She is a current member of the Abilene Writer’s Guild and the Abilene Wordshop Poetry group, and also acts as the promotional guru for both groups. She is currently working on a photo-poetry journal project, as well as on her first novel. She resides in West Texas with her partner and their two children.

Emily Loretta Robinson ‘s “Shadow People” about the after hours Jazz haunts in the French Quarter of New Orleans which kept the spirit of the City alive post-Katrina will appear in New Millennium Writings this August. Ms. Robinson has published in Literary Adagio and Second Wave, two Greenwich Village publications, where she has given many readings of her work in neighborhood cafes and clubs, her favorites being the Cornelia Street Cafe and The Knitting Factory. Ms. Robinson is a graduate of Northwestern University’s School of Speech and lives in Manhattan with her husband.

Barbara B. Rollins lives in Abilene, Texas, a judge who writes while waiting for lawyers. Her children’s books include the novel Syncopated Summer and a forensic series Fingerprint Evidence, Ballistics, Cause of Death, and Blood Evidence. Her work has appeared in Byline, Kidz Ch@t, R*A*D*A*R, and Off the Record, an anthology of poetry by lawyers.The past president of Abilene Writers Guild maintains the group’s website as well as those of other nonprofits besides her www.SharpWriters.com. Like many Baby Boomers, she shares her husband with two dogs while worrying about aging parents, two sons, and daughters-in-law.

Lori Romero has served as Artistic Director of Friends & Artists Theatre Ensemble in Los Angeles. She currently resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is co-founder of Cezanne’s Carrot (www.cezannescarrot.org). Ms. Romero’s first chapbook, Wall to Wall , was published by Finishing Line Press. Her short story, “Strange Saints,” was a semifinalist in the Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award and her short screenplay won the Manhattan Short Film Festival’s Scripts and Screenplay Competition. Her work has appeared in more than sixty journals and anthologies. She has been nominated for a second Pushcart Prize.

Matthue Roth is a performance poet and novelist. He has filmed for HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and toured nationally and internationally. His first novel, Never Mind the Goldbergs , was published in 2005 by Scholastic/PUSH; his second, Candy in Action, is due out in November, 2007. He keeps a secret journal at www.matthue.com.

Bobbye Samson still presides over criminal cases during the day and goes home to Gary each night in rural West Texas. Her grown sons iron their own shirts, though their wives claim they do it backwards. She continues to vent by writing poems and essays.

Jan Burak Schwert moved to Seattle 25 years ago and served as a University of Washington administrator for more than two decades, though she was born in New York City. She travels widely and likes to wake up each day not knowing what will happen. Jan hopes to inspire others to navigate unconventional journeys through independent travel. Her writing has appeared in the Seattle Times, the San Antonio Express-News, Journal Newspapers, Travelers Tales.com andBedandbreakfast.com Report . Her blog appears at janschwert.blogspot.com.

M. Carolyn Steele retired from a commercial art career to pursue a love of writing. History, especially the Civil War and Native Americans, captures her imagination. She has won numerous writing awards and has stories published in several anthologies. Combining her knowledge of storytelling and genealogy, she presents programs designed to inspire others to preserve their family legends.

B.E.Stock studied creative writing at Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Sarah Lawrence College and the West Chester Form & Narrative Conference, is widely published in literary magazines, and has featured and hosted at numerous venues in New York City including Jane’s, The Alterknit, Poetry Forum and Belanthi Gallery. Mellen Poetry Press awarded her a prize and published her long poem, “Sally Jordan”, in its Three Women: Touching the Boundaries of Life Orbis magazine in England awarded her a prize and published her sonnet, “Christina’s World.” She also won numerous prizes from the World Order of Narrative and Formalist Poets.

Kathie Sutherland is a Canadian poet, essayist and workshop facilitator. Kathie offers practical journaling tools for finding and nurturing innate creativity and special soul gifts. She brings 15 years of creative writing experience and a lifetime of soul diving to her workshops on journaling and self-discovery. Her prose has been published in Outside of Ordinary: Women’s Stories of Transformation, WestWord , membership magazine of the Alberta Writers Guild, as well as in Canadian Grandparent The Toronto Globe & Mail and The Edmonton Journal.

Carly Svamvour is a writer, crossword constructor, publisher, online forum host, gardener, meditator whatever she is “in the zone” for at any given time. She is also the dearly beloved wife of Jeff, with whom she makes her home in the west end of Toronto, Canada.

Thom Tammaro lives in Moorhead, Minnesota. He is the author of three collections of poems: Holding on for Dear Life When the Italians Came to My Home Town , and Minnesota Suit . He is co-editor of Visiting Frost: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Robert Frost Visiting Walt: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Walt Whitman , and Visiting Emily: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Emily Dickinson , winner of a Minnesota Book Award. He also co-edited Imagining Home: Writing from the Midwest and Inheriting the Land: Contemporary Voices from the Midwest , both recipients of Minnesota Book Awards.

Lisa Timpf lives rurally near Everett, Ontario. She enjoys observing nature, walking her dogs in the woods, quilting, and creative writing. A former sports writer, she has written one non-fiction book, St. George’s Lawn Tennis Club: The First Hundred Years . Her poetry has been published in The Country Connection as well as Canadian Stories.

Meredith Trede is one of the founding publishers of Toadlily Press. Her chapbook, Out of the Book, was inDesire Path, the inaugural volume of The Quartet Series. Journals that have published her work include Blue Mesa Review, Gargoyle, Heliotrope, The Paris Review and Runes. She has been a librarian, taught writing, French, Spanish and ESL, and worked for a social services agency. She returned to a career as a management consultant after a sabbatical for an MFA at Sarah Lawrence College. She has had residency fellowships at Ragdale, Saltonstall, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Virginia and France.

Suellen Wedmore, Poet Laureate emerita for the small seaside town of Rockport, Massachusetts, has been published in Green Mountains Review College English The Ledge , and others. Her work has been awarded first place in theWriter’s Digest rhyming poem contest, and her chapbook Deployed was selected as winner of the Grayson Press annual contest. After 24 years working as a speech and language therapist in public schools, she retired to enter the MFA Program in Poetry at New England College, graduating in 2004.

Jim Wilson is a veterinarian in private practice for 31 years who seven years ago began treating his poetry seriously and saving it. He now has four published books: Distillations of a Life Just Lived , 2002; Coal to Diamonds , 2003; Taking a Peek , 2004; and Down to Earth Poetry , 2006. He’s been published recently in Border Senses U.T. El Paso, Concho River Review Angelo State University, The Desert Candle Sul Ross State University, Spiky Palm Texas A & M University at Galveston, and won sweepstakes in the Cisco Writer’s Club annual contest for 2007. He says, “I write about everyday events every day.”

Ellen Withers is an insurance fraud investigator by day and a freelance writer by night. She is the editor of SIU Today Magazine , dealing with international fraud awareness, and a regular contributor to Life In Chenal Magazine, Ozarks Farm and Neighbor-Arkansas and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Tales of the South , an anthology of Arkansas writers, andEchoes of the Ozarks , an anthology of stories chosen from the members of the Ozarks Writers League, have featured her work.

Christopher Woods is the author of a novel, The Dream Patch , about a smalltown Texas family in the 1940’s. His other books include a prose collection, Under a Riverbed Sky (Panther Creek Press,) and a collection of stage monologues for actors, Heart Speak (Stone River Press). His plays have been produced in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York . He lives in Houston and in Chappell Hill, Texas with his wife, Linda.

Audrey Wyatt has worked in various arts notably acting, teaching and creating children’s theater curricula. Now she bases her writing, including a television sitcom, on her experiences. Her stories often feature strong-willed, quirky women. One of Audrey’s essays appears in the anthology Letters To My Mother. Her novel Poles Apart , was awarded second place in The Sandy competition of Crested Butte Friends of the Library, as well as a semi-finalist in the international Summer Literary Seminars annual fiction contest. She has published several other short stories and essays in various venues. Audrey founded Bay State Writers and teaches Creative Writing in continuing education classes.

 


Richard Culwell, cover artist, learned all the best stuff from mom, Boomer Judy Pearl Culwell. He attended art classes with her at the ripe old age of four, keeping up with the class. Using his own degree in digital graphic design, Richard won an ADDY for graphic design work done for the Abilene Reporter-News (Texas.) The award winning photographer, painter, sculptor, writer…earns his daily bread by tattooing.