Spring 2009 Issue - Contributor Bios

BRADLEY BAZZLE teaches and studies at Indiana University.  Before that, he wrote and performed sketch comedy in New York City with Trophy Dad (www.trophydad.com), whose videos have appeared on Fuse TV, as well as the VH1 and MTV websites.  His fiction appears in Opium 7. He also writes plays and screenplays.

BRYAN VAN DER BEEK is a commercial and editorial photographer. His images have appeared in publications such as Newsweek and The Washington Post. Currently, he is a staff photographer at The Straits Times in Singapore.

B. J. BEST holds an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. His work has appeared recently in Cream City Review, North American Review, and Quarterly West. His chapbooks Mead Lake, This, and Crap are available from Centennial Press, and a third, Drag: Twenty Short Poems about Smoking, is forthcoming.

JAMES BEST lives in Brooklyn, New York.  He graduated from NYU’s Creative Writing Program and is working on his first collection of poetry.   His work has been published or is forthcoming in RATTLE, Slipstream, and Freefall.

BILL BROWN lectures part-time at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University. He is the author of four collections of poems and three chapbooks. His new collection, Late Winter, is available from Iris Press. His recent work appears in English Journal, Prairie Schooner, Borderlands, RATTLE, Appalachian Journal, Connecticut Review, The North American Review, and Atlanta Review.

MATTHEW BURNS is a doctoral student in Creative Writing at Binghamton University and a co-editor for Harpur Palate. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Signatures, Bloodstone, The Georgetown Review, Paddlefish, and others.

TODD DAVIS teaches creative writing, environmental studies, and American literature at Penn State University’s Altoona College. His poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, won the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize, and recently appeared in The Iowa Review, The Gettysburg Review, Indiana Review, and Green Mountains Review. He is the author of three books of poems, The Least of These (Michigan State University Press, forthcoming), Some Heaven (Michigan State University Press, 2007), and Ripe (Bottom Dog Press, 2002) His work has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac and in Ted Kooser’s newspaper column, American Life in Poetry.

THERÉSE HALSCHEID’S latest book, Uncommon Geography, received a Finalist Award for the Paterson Poetry Book Prize. She was awarded a 2003 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. In winter of 2008, she taught in White Mountain, Alaska. For many years, the author has been house-sitting and writing on the road. This mobility has helped her to sustain her writing life. Visit www.theresehalscheid.com to learn more.

JENNY HANNING is from Maine, but she lives in Austin, Texas. Her stories and poems have appeared in Harpur Palate, Shenandoah, Third Coast, and other publications.

PATRICK HICKS is a dual citizen of Ireland and the United States, as well as the author of four poetry collections, most recently Finding the Gossamer (Salmon Poetry, 2008). His work has appeared in scores of international journals including Ploughshares, Utne Reader, Tar River Poetry, Glimmer Train, The National Catholic Reporter, Natural Bridge, and Nimrod. He has been a Visiting Fellow at Oxford, and he has been nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize. He lives in South Dakota.

BRAD JOHNSON is an associate professor at Palm Beach Community College, Florida, and has two chapbooks, Void Where Prohibited and The Happiness Theory, available at www.puddinghouse.com.

ROBERT LUNDAY is the author of Mad Flights (Ashland Poetry Press, 2002). He lives with his wife and son in Bastrop, Texas.

MICHAEL S. MORRIS was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, and has lived in Sonoma, California, for 28 years. His work has appeared in over 55 literary journals and anthologies. Morris is the award-winning author of two novels, one book of short stories, and nine collections of poetry. In 2007, Happy Rock Publications published his collection of poetry, A Juke Joint Played In. In 2008, Minotaur Press published A Wink Centuries Old as a chapbook. They will also publish Morris’ upcoming collection, Tales from Bohemia.

TOMAS MUNITA is a freelance photographer based in Santiago, Chile. In 2005, he worked as the Associated Press Chief Photographer for Afghanistan. His images have garnered awards from the International Center of Photography, POY, World Press Photo, and Leica. Visit www.tomasmunita.com to see more of his work.

DAVID NIXON is a professor of English at Palm Beach Community College and has conducted creative workshops there since 1985. He also plays drums and sings in the band, Planet. In 1993, he produced and co-directed a world premiere of Csaba Laszloffy’s The Heretic. His translations of Nhu Thuong’s poetry from Vietnamese into English have appeared in Florida Viet Bao. Some students say his classes can resemble jazz performances.

SUSAN RICH is the author of Cures Include Travel. Her book The Cartographer’s Tongue/Poems of the World won the PEN USA Award for Poetry and the Peace Corps Writers Award. “Different Places to Pray” won the Times (of London) Literary Supplement Award for 2008. Recent poems will appear in the Antioch Review, Harvard Review, and Poetry International. Her next collection, The Alchemist’s Kitchen, is due out from White Pine Press.

DALE ROCHE is a freelance writer and translator. She has lived in France for more than 25 years. Roche obtained an MA in Literature and Linguistics at the University of Paris VII. She is working on her first collection of poetry, The Oceans Between Us.

LINWOOD D. RUMNEY is an MFA candidate at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches and works as the poetry editor of Redivider. His work has appeared in Quercus Review, The Aurorean, and several online journals.

DANIELLE SELLERS is originally from Key West, Florida. She has an MA from Johns Hopkins University and an MFA from Ole Miss. Her poems have appeared in River Styx, Subtropics, The Cimarron Review, Poet Lore, Poetry Southeast, and elsewhere. She won The Madison Review’s Phyllis Smart Young Prize and was a semi-finalist for the “Discovery”/The Nation prize. She’s currently a lecturer at Clemson University.

SARAH SEYBOLD earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Oregon. Her poetry and fiction are published or forthcoming in ZYZZYVA, Harpur Palate, North Dakota Quarterly, Portland Review, South Dakota Review, and others. She lives with her husband in Portland, Oregon.

GLENN SHAHEEN is a native of Nova Scotia now living in Texas, where he co-edits the journal NANO Fiction. Recently, he graduated the University of Houston’s MFA program. His writing has appeared in Subtropics, Zone 3, and The Laurel Review. 

DAVID SHATTUCK was born and spent most of his life in Texas, where he received an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of North Texas. He currently lives among the pine trees of Eastern Washington and is an MFA candidate at Eastern Washington University. He enjoys jumping from heights too high, biting off more than he can chew, and making mountains out of molehills.

D. JAMES SMITH’S poems and stories have appeared recently in The Malahat Review, New Millennium Writings, and The Notre Dame Review. He has received an Edgar Allan Poe Award and an NEA fellowship in poetry. Smith’s books include the novel, My Brother’s Passion (Permanent Press, 2004) and two collections of poems, The Dead Ventriloquist (Ahsahta Press, 1995) and Sounds The Living Make (forthcoming, Lewis-Clark Press, 2009).  He has also published four novels for teens (DK, 1999; Atheneum, 2005, 2006, 2008).

FREDERICK SMOCK chairs the English Department at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky. His most recent books are Craft-talk: On Writing Poetry and Pax Intrantibus: A Meditation on the Poetry of Thomas Merton.

IRA SUKRUNGRUANG’S work has appeared in North American Review, Witness, The Sun, and numerous other literary journals. He is the co-editor of What Are You Looking At? The First Fat Fiction Anthology (Harvest Books 2003) and Scoot Over, Skinny: The Fat Nonfiction Anthology (2005). He is the creative nonfiction editor of Sweet: A Literary Confection (www.sweetlit.com) and teaches creative writing at University of South Florida.

ERIN RUZICKA TRONDSON lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband and daughters. She is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she continues to study Creative Writing. Her poetry is forthcoming in journals such as Connections and So to Speak.

ERIK TUTTLE is a poet and photographer from Girdler, Kentucky. Tuttle is an active member of the Hindman Writers Workshop and the Appalachian Stud- ies Association. He is also the Editor of Wind: A Journal of Writing & Community, Kentucky’s longest running literary magazine. 

ELIZABETH VOLPE is the author of Brewing in Eden, winner of the 2007 Robert Watson Poetry Award from Greensboro Review/Spring Garden Press. Her poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Connecticut Review, Crab Orchard, River Styx, storySouth, RATTLE, roger, Cave Wall and The MacGuffin, and can be heard on the audio site From the Fishouse. She won The Briarcliff Review 2004 Poetry Contest, the 2006 Metro Detroit Writers Contest, the 2008 Juniper Prize from Alligator Juniper, and was nominated for Best New Poets 2008.

JOSEPH VOTH is a writer living in San Diego, California. He has work forthcoming in the following journas: The South Carolina Review, Epicenter, The Eleventh Muse, and The Roanoke Review. Joseph teaches in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing at San Diego State University.

SAM WILSON lives in California where he sells bicycle parts for a living.  His fiction recently appeared or is forthcoming in The Sun, Connecticut Review, Canteen, and Red Cedar Review.  He is an MFA student at Queens University of Charlotte.