Notes on Contributors

After returning from Vietnam, Barry Ballard took up formal study at Texas Christian University in the fields of Religion and Philosophy. Ballards poetry has most recently appeared in The Connecticut Review, The Apalachee Review, Puerto del sol, and Phoebe. His most recent collection is Plowing To The End of the Road (Finishing Line Press, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize).

Robert Barminski writes poems and stories about rivers, rocks, and river people. He teaches and practices geology as an art. A recovered river guide and long time caretaker of the Marks Ranch in Monterey County his poems have been published in the Homestead Review, Monterey Poetry Review, and the Boatman's Quarterly Review. He won second place in the 2005 Poetic Voices/Voices Poetica competition.

Katherine Brewer’s work has appeared in Alden and Zeniada. Brewer is currently studying poetry at Johns Hopkins University, where she has worked with Greg Williamson and John Irwin.

Richard Dinges Jr. has an MA in literary studies from the University of Iowa. He works at an insurance company as a business systems manager. His work has been seen in Lullwater Review, Edgz, ONTHEBUS, Poetalk, and Obsessed with Pipework.

Martin Dodd won short story contests at Hartnell College in 1966 and 1967. He then pursued a career in community service. After retirement, Martin resumed creative writing in 2002. Since then, he contributed poetry and short stories to an anthology: The Barmaid, The Bean Counter, And The Bungee Jumper (2003); he placed second in Central Coast Writers (California) Contests (2003, 2004); he placed fourth in Writer’s Digest 2004 Annual Writing Contest (mainstream fiction); his poetry appeared in Chicken Soup For The Recovering Soul (2004); and his short stories have appeared in The Homestead Review (Fall 2004 & Spring 2005). Martin can be reached at gopumps@aol.com.

Allison Joseph lives, teaches and writes in Carbondale, Illinois, where she’s part of the creative writing faculty at Southern Illinois University. Her collections of poetry include Imitation of Life (Carnegie Mellon, 2003) and Worldly Pleasures (Word Press, 2004). Her fiction has appeared in Confluence, which awarded her its annual fiction prize in 2004 for her story “Tabernacle.”

Elizabeth Kerlikowske is an English instructor at Kellogg Community College in Battle Creek, Michigan.Recently her work has appeared in Diagram, The Pedestal, ReDivider, Primavera, Pebble Lake Review, Poesia, Folio, and So To Speak as winner of their 2004 poetry competition. Her chapbook of prose poems called “The Shape of Dad” is forthcoming from March Street Press. She’s also the president of a nonprofit organization called Friends of Poetry, Inc. who run a contest each year, The Poems That Ate Our Ears, and paint a winning poem as a mural on a downtown building in Kalamazoo.

Jennifer Lagier Fellguth, Ph.D., is an instructor at Hartnell College and California State University, Monterey Bay. Her work has been published in anthologies, journals and e-zines throughout the U.S. and Italy. Her books include Coyote Dream Cantos (Iota Press, 1992), Where We Grew Up (Small Poetry Press, 1999), Second-Class Citizen (Bordighera, Inc., 2000). Jennifer's newest book, The Mangia Syndrome, was published this year by Pudding House Publications.

James Maughn was born on December 9th, 1608 in Cheapside, England. His father, John Maughn Sr. (1562? – 1647), moved to London around 1583 having just been disinherited for concealing his Protestantism by his devout Catholic father, Richard Maughn, who was a wealthy landowner in Oxfordshire. Maughn was originally destined to a ministerial career, but his independent spirit led him to give up this career. He matriculated at Christ's College, Cambridge in 1625 and studied there for seven years before he graduated Master of Arts cum laude on July 3, 1632. Upon graduating from Christ’s College, Cambridge, in 1632 Maughn undertook six years of self-directed private study in both the ancient and modern disciplines of theology, philosophy, history, politics, literature and science, in preparation for his prospective poetical career.

Brian Minturn is a part-time student in the Writer’s Workshop at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, that is, when he can afford to pay for the classes. In the meantime, Mr. Minturn works as a transportation-planning officer for a large producer of standby energy sources. He has been lucky enough to find a job that allows time for writing, which he considers to be his “real” job.

Maggie Mieske is a student at Central Michigan University perusing a secondary teaching degree in Spanish and English with consideration I creative writing. She has three children, one granddaughter, and lives quite happily in her empty nest with her farrier husband Nelson and their dogs and horses.

Russell Rowland is a Connecticut Yankee in New Hampshire’s Lace Region. He is a three-time Pushcart nominee with poems accepted by nearly ninety journals. He drinks Moxie and lives without television.

Maria Garcia Tabor was a colonial American woman, who wrote a vivid description of three months she spent living with Native Americans. Her short book, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Ms. Maria Garcia Tabor, is considered a seminal work in the American literary genre of captivity narratives. Maria Garcia Tabor lived in Lancaster, Massachusetts where she was the wife of a minister. During King Phillip’s War her house came under attack and she was taken captive, along with three of her children. For three months, she was forced to accompany her captors as they trekked through the forest, under what she describes as horrible conditions, as her captors attempted to elude the English army. She describes the odyssey as twenty distinct "Removes," until she was finally reunited with her husband. The text of her narrative is replete with verses and references describing conditions similar to her own.

G.M. Weger lives in Salinas with her husband and two kids. She recently won 2nd place in the Central Coast Writer's Fall Fiction Contest for Hope Janitorial. She's had stories published in various places online and in print in the three years since she got serious about her craft and began working with a local fiction writer who eventually became her writing mentor. During the daytime hours, G.M. works as a writer/editor for the Department of Defense, but it's her reclusive other world of dark imaginings that fill the pages of her short stories and first novel, Planet Ord - a mainstream women's thriller set in the haunting place of a deserted army base, Fort Ord.

Fredrick Zydeck is a teacher of creative writing and theology for many years, first at UNO and later at the college of Saint Mary. Zydeck has published seven collections of poetry and his work has appeared in The Antioch Review, The Chattahoochee Review and Cimmaron Review, to name a few. Most recently, he has accepted the post of editor for the Lone Willow Press chapbook series. Zydeck has in excess of 800 publishing credits which include personal essays, fiction, academic articles, plays, poems and an occasional review. This, in Zydeck’s own words, makes him, “incredibly prolific or incredibly old”.