Contributors
Alireza Taheri Araghi is an MA in Ancient Culture and Languages. He is the translator of such works as Richard Brautigan’s Revenge of the Lawn and Samuel Beckett’s Texts for Nothing into Farsi and has published his own collection of short stories, I Am an Old Abacus (in Farsi). He is currently a University of Notre Dame MFA student. His work has appeared in Gloom Cupboard and Re:Visions. He is also interested in photography. His photos have been published in the Spot Literary Magazine, Foliate Oak Review, Battered Suitcase and Fifth Wednesday Journal. He edits the literary website Paragraphiti.
Ned Balbo’s third book, The Trials of Edgar Poe and Other Poems (Story Line Press/WCU Poetry Center), received the 2012 Poets’ Prize, and the 2010 Donald Justice Prize selected by A.E. Stallings. His previous books include Lives of the Sleepers (U. of Notre Dame Press, Ernest Sandeen Prize and ForeWord Book of the Year Gold Medal) and Galileo’s Banquet (Washington Writers’ Publishing House, Towson University Prize). He is also the author of a chapbook, Something Must Happen (Finishing Line Press). He has received three Maryland Arts Council grants, the Robert Frost Foundation Poetry Award, and the John Guyon Literary Nonfiction Prize. “My Father’s Music,” an essay on adoptive identity and ethnicity, appears in Creative Nonfiction‘s anthology of Italian-American prose, Our Roots Are Deep with Passion (Other Press). He teaches at Loyola University Maryland.
Brian Bender is a creative writing student at Western Michigan University.
Eleanor Leonne Bennett is a 15 year old photographer and artist who has won contests with National Geographic, The Woodland Trust, The World Photography Organisation, Winstons Wish, Papworth Trust, Mencap, Big Issue, Wrexham Science, Fennel and Fern and Nature’s Best Photography. She has had her photographs published in exhibitions and magazines across the world including the Guardian, RSPB Birds, RSPB Bird Life, Dot Dot Dash, Alabama Coast, Alabama Seaport and NG Kids Magazine (the most popular kids magazine in the world). She was also the only person from the UK to have her work displayed in the National Geographic and Airbus run “See The Bigger Picture” global exhibition tour with the United Nations International Year Of Biodiversity 2010. Only visual artist published in the Taj Mahal Review June 2011. Youngest artist to be displayed in Charnwood Art’s Vision 09 Exhibition and New Mill’s Artlounge Dark Colours Exhibition. Wesbite: www.eleanorleonnebennett.zenfolio.com
Robert Bradley lives in NYC. He’s making a film called Contemplations of the Saints based on a short story published at Frigg Magazine and The Best of the Web 2010. He has a column at Headlock Press.
Shevaun Brannigan is a student in Bennington’s MFA program. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in such journals as: Lumina, So to Speak, Failbetter, Calyx, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Rattle which nominated her for a Pushcart prize at age 21. She is a graduate of the Jimenez-Porter Writers House at the University of Maryland.
Tatyana Brown is currently ranked fourth in the world of competitive performance poetry after participating in the 2011 Individual World Poetry Slam. She is a writer, educator, and community organizer based in San Francisco, and in addition to touring both coasts as a poet, she has talked teenagers into discovering the mountaintops of British Columbia (in part using Louise Gluck’s The Wild Iris), told stories to captivated Bay Area audiences, and sold instant literature ranging from short fiction to wedding vows as a street vending freelance writer in New York City. Most recently she has begun guest lecturing in university classrooms on the subject of poetry slam as a contemporary American literary tradition specifically, and the rich, vibrant, vital nature of American oral tradition more generally. Tatyana is also a co-host of The Oversocial Mofo Revue, a unique and continuously sold-out variety show in San Jose, along with nationally acclaimed poet David Perez, and she is also the founding director of The Lit Slam (www.thelitslam.com), a live audience-curated literary journal and showcase of some of America’s finest touring poetry talent.
Michael H. Brownstein has been widely published throughout the small and literary presses. His work has appeared in The Café Review, American Letters and Commentary, Skidrow Penthouse, Xavier Review, Hotel Amerika, Free Lunch, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Pacific Review, Poetrysuperhighway.com and others. In addition, he has nine poetry chapbooks including The Shooting Gallery (Samidat Press, 1987), Poems from the Body Bag (Ommation Press, 1988), A Period of Trees (Snark Press, 2004), What Stone Is (Fractal Edge Press, 2005), and I Was a Teacher Once (Ten Page Press, 2011). He is the editor of First Poems from Viet Nam (2011).
Brownstein taught elementary school in Chicago’s inner city (he is now retired), but he continues to study authentic African instruments, conducts grant-writing workshops for educators, designs websites and records performance and music pieces with grants from the City of Chicago?s Department of Cultural Affairs, the Oppenheimer Foundation, BP Leadership Grants, and others.
Laura A. Ciraolo was born in New York City and has lived and worked there as long as she can remember. Most recently her poems have appeared in The Centrifugal Eye, Orbis #155 (UK), The Cortland Review #49, The New York Quarterly #66, and The Medulla Review. Her poems have also appeared in Agenda (UK), Long Island Quarterly, MiPOesias, The Comstock Review and others in the US, UK and Japan. She was a finalist for the 2010 Bordighera Poetry Prize.
Antonia Clark works for a medical software company in Vermont and co-administers an online poetry workshop, The Waters. Her poems have appeared in Anderbo, Apparatus, The Cortland Review, Eclectica, The Pedestal Magazine, Rattle, Softblow, and elsewhere. She loves French picnics and plays French café music on a sparkly purple accordion.
Sara Crow has been telling stories since before anyone could translate them from babbles. In her formative years her father corrupted her by reading The Hobbit out loud and religiously watching Star Trek with her, which led to a long-held love for story and the fantastic that has carried over into much of her work. Sara is a winner of the Jeanne Lobmeyer Cárdenas Prize in Short Fiction. She resides in Hutchinson, Kansas, with three cats, a poet/lawyer husband, and around 1200 books, most of which live in the same room with her beloved wampa-skin rug (even baby wampas are a nightmare to catch!). She’s racing to complete her first novel before the inevitable zombie apocalypse.
Bryan D. Dietrich is the author of a book-length study on comics, Wonder Woman Unbound, and six books of poems: Krypton Nights, Universal Monsters, Prime Directive, Love Craft, The Assumption, and The Monstrance. He is also co-editor of Drawn to Marvel, the world’s first anthology of superhero poetry.
He has published poems in The New Yorker, The Nation, Poetry, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Paris Review, The Harvard Review, Yale Review, Shenandoah, Open City, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Witness, Weird Tales, and many other journals. Having won The Paris Review Poetry Prize, a “Discovery”/The Nation Award, a Writers at Work Fellowship, the Isotope Editors’ Prize, an Asimov’s Reader’s Choice Award, a Rhysling Award, and the Eve of St. Agnes Prize, Bryan is a five-time finalist for the Yale Younger Poets Series and has been nominated multiple times for both the Pushcart and the Pulitzer.
Bryan lives in Wichita, Kansas with his wife Gina and their son, Nick. Professor of English at Newman University, Bryan grew up watching classic horror movies and dreaming of becoming a comic book artist. He remains conflicted about choosing a tenure-track job over a chance to be an extra in Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks, but is comforted by several facts: the first person to be abducted in Aliens is named Dietrich, the composer for the original Mummy was named Dietrich, and the Kecksburg UFO incident occurred in December of 1965, just before Bryan was born. Further inferences are welcome.
Anthony DiMatteo’s poems have been scattered in recent issues of Cordite Poetry Review, Denver Syntax, Front Porch, Main Street Rag, Smartish Pace, Tar River Poetry etc. When not sailing aground in the Great South Bay or cursing Thoreau on those rainy nights in the wilderness, he professes the mysteries of writing and literature at the New York Institute of Technology. Feel free to leave a trace at his tentsite: anthonydimatteo.wordpress.com
William Doreski teaches at Keene State College in New Hampshire. His most recent collection of poetry is Waiting for the Angel (2009). He has published three critical studies, including Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors. His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in many journals, including Massachusetts Review, Atlanta Review, Notre Dame Review, The Alembic, New England Quarterly, Harvard Review, Modern Philology, Antioch Review, and Natural Bridge.
Pnina Evental is a free lancer, photographing a variety of subjects. She specializes especially in dance, theater and music ensembles.
Lisa Fink’s poems and criticism have appeared in magazines like Ecotone, Spinning Jenny, Jellyroll, Truck, Rain Taxi Review of Books, and Forklift, Ohio. She teaches writing-centered courses on culture & the environment at the University of Virginia.
Margaret Graber grew up in Valparaiso, Indiana, a city 45 minutes southeast of Chicago. She is a lifelong friend of Lake Michigan, the avocado, and pop-up books. She frequently writes about insects and is currently pursuing her M.F.A. at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.
Joe Hall was born in the woods and is devoted to Cheryl. Black Ocean Press published his first book of poems, Pigafetta Is My Wife, in 2010. With Chad Hardy he wrote The Container Store Vol. I (SpringGun 2012). His poems, fiction, book reviews, and essays have appeared in Gulf Coast, Octopus, HTML Giant, The Colorado Review, Versal and elsewhere.
Steve Harris lives near some battlefields in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, with his wife and three children. His poetry and reviews have appeared in Christian Century, Sojourners, Able Muse, Pif, Perhileon, In Posse Review, La Petit Zine, Melic Review, and many others. He is currently a poetry editor for The Avatar Review.
Hadley Hury is the author of a novel, The Edge of the Gulf (2003), and a collection of stories, It’s Not the Heat (2007). A former film critic and non-profit organization executive, he also served for eight years as chair of the department of English at Hutchison School and as a college counselor there. His short fiction and poetry have appeared in Image, Colorado North Review, and Green Mountains Review.
Collin Hutchison is a freelance writer. A graduate of the University of Houston Creative Writing Program, he teaches English in Houston. His non-fiction has appeared in Artlies and can be found at leoandmunch.blogspot.com. “Waiting for Little Joe” is his first published poem.
Lowell Jaeger teaches creative writing at Flathead Valley Community College in Kalispell, Montana. As founding editor of Many Voices Press, he compiled Poems Across the Big Sky, an anthology of Montana poets, and New Poets of the American West, an anthology of poets from 11 Western states. His third collection of poems, Suddenly Out of a Long Sleep (Arctos Press) was published in 2009 and was a finalist for the Paterson Award. His fourth collection, WE, (Main Street Rag Press) was published in 2010. He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Montana Arts Council and winner of the Grolier Poetry Peace Prize. Most recently Jaeger was awarded the Montana Governor’s Humanities Award for his work in promoting thoughtful civic discourse.
Marci Rae Johnson holds an MFA in Poetry Writing from Spalding University. She currently teaches at Valparaiso University, and is the Poetry Editor for WordFarm press. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Valparaiso Review, Perihelion, The Louisville Review, Phoebe, The Christian Century, Minnetonka Review, Strange Horizons, and 32 Poems, among others. Her first collection of poetry won the 2011 Powder Horn Prize and will be published by Sage Hill Press later this year.
Shelagh Johnson received her MFA in Creative Writing from American University, and now works as an Editorial Assistant in Bethesda, MD. Her work has been published in a number of literary magazines, including apt, The Portland Review, Clackamas Literary Review, The Ampersand, Folio and The Messenger. She lives with her husband in Washington, DC.
Anna C. Kelley has most recently had work published in Epicenters, Midscapes, and Art and Ethos. She teaches writing and literature at a liberal arts university in Dubuque, Iowa, where she is also the director of the Tenth Muse, a journal of prose, poetry, and art. This summer will be Anna’s first as a wife, gardener, and beagle owner. While assembling these factoids, a hornet planted a big stinger into the back of her shoulder and she plans to do the same to a character in her next short story.
Dariusz Klimczak was born in Sieradz (Poland) 1967. He has been taking photos for 25 years. Nowadays, in a photograph he is looking for a mood, metaphysics, universal symbols, that touch emotions. He is interested in creative photography – manipulated, but in a measures of reason. He uses colour only when he finds it really necessary for a photo. Website: http://photo.net/photos/Dariusz%20Klimczak
Richard Krawiec’s second book of poems, She Hands me the Razor, (title poem nominated for a Pushcart Prize) was published by Press 53. His first book of poems, Breakdown, was a Finalist for a minor award. His poetry and fiction appear in dozens of literary magazines, including Shenandoah, sou’wester, many mountains moving, Witness, Cream City Review, Florida Review, West Branch, Connotation, NC Literary Review, etc. In addition to poetry, he has published 2 novels, Time Sharing and Faith in What?, a story collection, And Fools of God, and 4 plays. He has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the NC Arts Council(twice), and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. He teaches Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced online Fiction Writing for UNC Chapel Hill, for which he won their Excellence in Teaching Award in 2009. He is founder of Jacar Press, a Community Active publishing company.
Lori Lamothe’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Blackbird, Barn Owl Review, eclectica, failbetter.com, Linebreak, Mostly Fiction, Psychic Meatloaf, MiPOesias and other magazines. She has also published a chapbook, Camera Obscura (Finishing Line) and has new work in the speculative fiction anthology Corpus Pretereo (Escape Collective Publishing). Her blog, Diary in Irregular Ink, can be found at inkdiary.blogspot.com.
Terence Lane is currently working on his MFA in Writing and Literature from SUNY Stony Brook Southampton. He writes about what’s close to him, frequently demonstrating the impact of place on people. He has published short fiction in The Southampton Review. Originally from Cooperstown he now lives in Montauk, NY.
Robert Lietz is the author of eight published collections of poems, including Running in Place (L’Epervier Press,). At Park and East Division ( L’Epervier Press,) The Lindbergh Half-century (L’
Roy Mash is an electronics technician living in Marin County, California. He holds a BA in English from University of Michigan, an MA in Philosophy and an MS in Computer Science from San Francisco State University. His poetry has appeared in: AGNI Online, Atlanta Review, Barrow Street, The Evansville Review, Nimrod, Poetry East, and RHINO, among others.
Frank Matagrano is the author of I Can Only Go as Fast as the Guy in Front of Me (Black Lawrence Press). His poems have appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, Many Mountains Moving, Ninth Letter, Cimarron Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Rhino Magazine and Gargoyle, among others. He currently lives in Chicago, Illinois.
Rachael Mayer was born and raised in New York City. She received her BA in English composition from Beloit College and her master’s degree in social work from New York University. Her poetry has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Chattahoochee Review, The Hiram Review, Hudson Valley Echoes, and Affilia. Ms. Mayer lives with her husband and three children in Montclair, New Jersey.
Tim Mayo’s poems and reviews have appeared in Atlanta Review, Avatar Review, 5 AM, Poetry International, Poet Lore, Web Del Sol Review of Books, Verse Daily, Verse Wisconsin and The Writer’s Almanac among many other places. His first full length collection The Kingdom of Possibilities was published by Mayapple Press in 2009. He has been twice nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology, three times for a Pushcart Prize, and has also been chosen as a top finalist for the Paumanok Award. He is on the author selection committee of the Brattleboro Literary Festival.
A financial journalist by day and a writer by night, Meghna Pant’s short stories have been published in over a dozen literary magazines, including Eclectica, EGO, QLRS, Every Day Fiction, Six Sentences, Muse India, Reading Hour, Pothi and DifferSenses. One-and-a-Half Wife – Meghna’s debut novel – has been long-listed for the Cinnamon Press Novel Writing Award and selected as a Top Ten Finalist in WordHustler’s Literary Storm Novel Contest.
Bitten by wanderlust, Meghna Pant stayed in various cities around India, before she found a home in Mumbai. From here she went on to live in Zurich, Singapore and New York City, and is currently based in Dubai.
You can follow her on twitter @MeghnaPant. To know more about her novel, please visit: http://www.facebook.com/
Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. For more information, including his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” and a complete bibliography, please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.
Allan Peterson’s next book, Fragile Acts, is forthcoming as the second in the new McSweeney’s Poetry Series. His last book is As Much As from Salmon Press, 2011. Other books are All the Lavish in Common (2005 Juniper Prize), Anonymous Or (Defined Providence Prize 2001) and five chapbooks, notably Omnivore, winner of the 2009 Boom Prize from Bateau Press. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and The State of Florida, and was invited to read his work at the 2010 Cuisle International Poetry Festival in Limerick, Ireland. Wesbite: www.allanpeterson.net
Born in Kerala, South India in 1971, Shelton Pinheiro has been writing poems while working in advertising. His poem #50 has been published in the February 2011 issue of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. The predominant concerns of his poems are about the often unnoticed incidentals and the in-betweens of urban life. Mostly titleless, his poems, like most things that matter, are numbered. He writes about poetry and life at shelspace.com. He lives and works in the city of Kochi in India.
Elicia is currently getting her Master’s in International Conflict Resolution in Portland, OR. She has been writing poetry since a young age, capitalizing on heartache since teenage-Dom, and is now solving wars–one poem at a time. She won second place in a poetry slam once and thoroughly enjoyed being an editor of a college lit magazine for a few terms. She prefers Anne Sexton over Sylvia Plath and has learned a lot from Derrick Brown (friend and leader in performance poetry). She has spent the past six months living and working in Cyprus and traveling around Europe. This is the first time her poems have been published.
John Repp’s most recent collection is Big Conneautee (Seven Kitchens Press, 2010). Individual poems appear in recent issues of Hayden’s Ferry Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Crazyhorse, and The Journal.
William Robinson has a BA in Creative Writing from Concordia University and is currently enrolled in the University of British Columbia’s Optional-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing. His work has been published in numerous print and online journals, including carte blanche, SNReview, Verbsap, The Furnace Review, CellStories, Scrivener Creative Review, Poetry/Fiction in Motion, blinking cursor, Talking Writing (featured writer August 2011), Crack the Spine (featured writer May 2012) and Blood Lotus.
His short story “To Whom Nothing Whatever Was to Happen” was a finalist for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Intro Journals Award from Vermont College, and carte blanche submitted his story “Storm Chasers” to the Journey Prize for “Best of Canada” consideration. He has also created and patented his own commercial line of artistic poetry products based on the Dada movement.
Anabela Sequeira is a traveller who enjoys taking photos. Travel is her way of life and she feels that photography is an amazing tool to register this way of life. Website: http://photo.net/photos/Anabela
Danny Earl Simmons is an Oregonian and a proud graduate of Corvallis High School. He is a friend of the Linn-Benton Community College Poetry Club and is an active member of Albany Civic Theater. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming in various journals such as Summerset Review, Boston Literary Magazine, Gold Man Review, Burning Word, Toe Good Poetry, and Pirene’s Fountain.
Sarah J. Sloat grew up in New Jersey, and now lives in Germany, where she works for a news agency. Her previous jobs include teaching, dog sitting, canvassing for NOW, and reading magazines on tape for the blind. Her poems have appeared in Bateau, Linebreak, DMQ Review and Court Green, among other publications. Her chapbook Excuse me while I wring this long swim out of my hair was published in 2011, and another, Homebodies, is due from Hyacinth Girl Press in 2012.
Gerald Solomon was born in London and studied English Literature at Cambridge University. After a short spell as sales assistant at a bookshop in London’s Charing Cross Road he worked as a producer at the BBC. Subsequently becoming engaged in education, he helped found General Studies courses at Hornsey College of Art, and this led eventually to an enjoyable period teaching poetry courses at Middlesex University. He retired early in order to paint and write. His poems have appeared in numerous magazines in the USA and UK as he prepares his first collection. He is married, with four children, and lives in Manhattan.
S. D. Stewart reads and writes in a cramped city, even while his mind roams open spaces. He is formerly a dishwasher and currently a librarian. Mostly, though, he walks in the woods and watches birds. His writing has appeared in various print and online publications. Website: http://www.thoughtworm.com
Nora Sturges received a B.A. in studio art from Bowdoin College, and an M.F.A. in painting from Ohio University. She has exhibited her work widely in solo shows at the Second Street Gallery in Charlottesville, the Lancaster Museum of Art, the Bachelier-Cardonsky Gallery in Connecticut, Miami University of Ohio, Ventura College, Spaces in Cleveland, School 33 in Baltimore, and the 1708 Gallery in Richmond, among others. Her group exhibitions have included Civilian Art Projects in Washington, DC, the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, The Painting Center in New York City, Antioch College, Manhattanville College, Denison University, Maryland Art Place in Baltimore, and Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien in Berlin, Germany. Sturges lives in Baltimore, Maryland, where she is Professor of Art at Towson University. www.norasturges.com
Yermiyahu Ahron Taub is the author of three poetry collections, Uncle Feygele (Plain View Press, 2011), What Stillness Illuminated/Vos shtilkayt hot baloykhtn (Parlor Press, 2008; Free Verse Editions series), and The Insatiable Psalm (Wind River Press, 2005). Please visit his web site at www.yataub.net.
Sarah Tibbling studies English in the paradoxical countryside of Northern New Jersey. She enjoys poetry and cats.
Eric Van Hoose teaches English and tutors students in the Writing Center at The University of Cincinnati–Blue Ash College. His literary criticism and stories have appeared in The Black Scholar, Poydras Review, and the online journal Squawk Back. He is currently working on more short stories.
Alinda Wasner’s work has appeared in Fresh Water: Women Writing About the Great Lakes (a Michigan Best Book), New Millennium Poets, Passages North, Wayne Review, Wittenberg Review, Blue Lake Review, Corridors, Comstock Review, UpStreet, Paint Creek Press, Outsider Writers, Inkwell, The MacGuffin, Up the Staircase, The Detroit Free Press, Detroit Metro Times and Michigan Natural Resources, among others.
Winner of the Tompkins Prize for Poetry, Fiction and Essay, Alinda has also won an Amelia Press Award, the Wittenberg Poetry Award, a Mr. Cogito Press Award, an Archives Bookstore Poetry prize, a Port Aransas Poetry Slam prize, MacGuffin prize, a Chicago Poetry Center juried award, a 2007 Prague Writer’s scholarship, and was semi-finalist in the 2010 Paumonok Poetry Prize (winner was Mary Jo Bang, finalists were Kathleen Spivak and Ellen Bass), a finalist in the 2010 Atlanta Review International Poetry Award, and has recently been nominated for the 2011 Best of the Net award. She won second place in the 2012 Cork Ireland Munster Poetry Center poetry prize. There were 2000 contestants.
Listed in Poets and Writers, Wasner has given readings in Prague, Detroit, Flint, Ann Arbor, Chicago, Port Aransas, TX, Port Sanilac, Louisville, KY, Springfield and Columbus, OH, and Lansing, MI. She has also appeared on WDET, the Ntozake Shange show.
Her work has been translated into Greek and appears in the latest version of Khoros, an authoritative journal of Greek Tradition, Dance and the Arts.
A chapbook, Departures/Arrivals was published by ML Liebler’s Ridgeway Press.
Wasner lives and writes in Deckerville and Beverly Hills, Michigan.
John Sibley Williams is the author of six chapbooks, winner of the HEART Poetry Award, and finalist for the Pushcart, Rumi, and The Pinch Poetry Prizes. He has served as Acquisitions Manager of Ooligan Press and Publicist for various presses, and holds an MFA in Creative Writing and MA in Book Publishing. Some of his over 200 previous or upcoming publications include: Bryant Literary Review, The Chaffin Journal, The Evansville Review, RHINO, Rosebud, Ellipsis, Flint Hills Review, and Poetry Quarterly.
Wright Williams is a filmmaker, writer, and visual artist from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He loves outsider art, strong drinks, and walking in the seedy parts of town. He runs the site http://Pink-Films.com and wants to be your friend on Facebook.
David Wright’s poems have appeared over the years in Image, Ecotone, Artful Dodge, and Avatar Review, among others. In 2003, he published A Liturgy for Stones (Cascadia) and received an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship for Poetry. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from Ashland University and has taught writing and literature at Wheaton College, Richland Community College and the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.