David Bassano holds a PhD in Human Rights History and is a human rights activist as well. His stories often focus on questions of truth and falsehood and their consequences. He divides his time mainly between New York City and the Catskill Mountains.
John Breska was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and moved to Upstate New York at the age of thirty-seven where he remained for twenty-three out of thirty years in the magazine printing industry. He is now retired in Southern Mississippi working on shorts stories and poetry.
Bernie Brown is a 63-year-old retiree from Raleigh, North Carolina. Her stories have appeared in several small circulation print magazines and e-zines including Punkin House Digest, All Things Girl, Still Crazy, and Death Head Grin.
Mike Finley is a Pushcart awardee who lives and writes in St. Paul. His most recent project is Zombie Girl, a graphic novel. Proceeds from Zombie Girl go to anti-suicide work in the Twin Cities.
Kori Hennessy is a writer of fiction and non-fiction living in South Minneapolis with her husband and three young children. Her work has appeared in the literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs as well as in the anthology Atheist Voices of MN.
Jamie Lee has had a number of short stories and poetry published in The South Dakota Review, Bellowing Ark, Winds of Change, Heartland, The South Dakota Magazine, and others. Her first novel, Washaka—the Bear Dreamer was a PEN USA finalist. She and her husband have also produced over 70 programs for national public radio, including a 52-part Native Music series entitled Oyate ta Olowan—the Songs of the People.
John-Ivan Palmer's novel, Motels of Burning Madness, was released last year through The Drill Press.
Eric Prochaska last appeared in Whistling Shade in our Winter 2004-2005 issue. He has also had work appear in riverbabble, Amarillo Bay, and elsewhere. His first collection of short stories, This Great Divide, was published by Halo Forge Press in 2006.
Michael Ramberg grew up in Minnesota, and for many years worked in the computer room of a major Minneapolis law firm. His work, including his zombies-in-Korea masterpiece The MZD, is available on amazon.com, or from his website, www.grebmar.net. He currently lives (zombie free) in Mokpo, South Korea, with his wife, two cats, and a dog.
Reva Rasmussen works in Minneapolis as a registered nurse. She has published commentaries in the StarTribune and MinnPost.com, a short story on the BBC World Service, an essay in Writing for a Professional Life: Stories of Technical Communicators On and Off the Job, and a short story in Room of One’s Own.
Tony Rauch is an Architect and Urban Designer living in Minneapolis. He has three collections of funky, jazzy, dreamy stories published, with another to follow in the coming months. He’s been interviewed by the Prague Post and reviewed in the MIT paper The Tech, among many other venues. He is looking for work, so if you know anyone who is hiring, please drop him a line.
Beate Sigriddaughter publishes poetry and prose in online or print magazines an average of once or twice a month, most recently in Metazen, The Rose & Thorn Journal, and Cirque.
Justin Teerlinck is an occupational therapy graduate student in the Portland, Oregon area, where he is learning how to place his writing skills and sense of the absurd in service to people with disabilities. His response to most standardized test questions is, "Meow don't know this theoretical construct. Meow try again please?"
Joel Van Valin is the publisher of Whistling Shade and the author of the fantasy novel The Flower of Clear Burning. For complaints about the literary journal or its writers, please call 1-800-NOTGUILTY.
Marie Sheppard Williams has lived and worked in Minnesota all her life. Currently she cohabits with a very large orange cat named Albert Einstein, and is at work on a new book titled The Magic Stories. She has won many awards for her writing, including two Pushcart Prizes and a Bush Artist Fellowship. Among her publications are The Worldwide Church of the Handicapped, The Weekend Girl, The Soap Game, Stories from the Child, Us, and The Best Cat, a book of poems by Sheppard Williams with illustrations by her daughter, Megan Williams.
John C. Wright is a 1975 graduate of the University of Minnesota. He lives, works and writes in St. Paul, MN.