About Our Contributors

Taylor Bond is a writer and photographer currently based out of Seoul.

Chuck Boyer is a curmudgeon living in Minneconsin where he busts his butt 24/7 in the retired industry and has learned that what makes the sea enchanting is the land it touches.  He does not have a dog. Or a cat. But he is married, so don't go getting any ideas.

Jeff Burt lives in California with his wife amid the redwoods. He has work in The Monarch Review, The Atticus Review, Litbreak, and won the 2017 Cold Mountain Review Poetry Prize.

Chet Corey was born and raised in Minneapolis. He has lived for years alongside Bush Lake in Bloomington, MN.  His poetry appears in the  most recent or current issue of Coe Review, Shark Reef, Stoneboat, and Studio One.

Gannon Daniels teaches English in the Los Angeles area community colleges. Her poetry has been seen in California Quarterly, Cimarron Review, RATTLE and other publications. The Occupy­ing Water is her first book.

Mary Davini lives in North Saint Paul with her husband and three young daughters. In addition to writing poetry she enjoys cooking, gardening, running, and a comfy couch with a snuggly dog. Her work has also appeared in Talkin' Blues Literary Journal and Saint Paul Sidewalk Poetry.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of seven poetry collections, most recently A Fire Without Light (2017, Nixes Mate Books).  His eighth collection Two Towns Over was recently selected the winner of the Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and is due out March 2018.  He is the Manag­ing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology and Ovenbird Poetry.  He is currently living in Colum­bus, Ohio with his wife and children.

Fred Farris has also published a book of fiction stories titled  Kaleidoscope Views Anthology. His other prose has appeared in Rosebud Literary Magazine, Gulf Coast Stories, Kansas City Voices, Mysteries of the Ozarks, and  Afternoon Tales of the South. He lives in Kansas City.

Mike Finley is a Pushcart winner, and author over 200 books of various kinds, and 100 provoca­tive videos. His latest work is the book Suffering Cats, available for download on http://issuu.com/mike_finley. In recognition of this work, Mike was awarded the 2010 KPV Kerouac Award, a life­time achievement honor.

Mary Louise Kiernan Hagerdon's poetry has appeared in The Delmarva Review, Pudding Maga­zine, Common Ground Review, Broad River Review, Metropolitan Diary in The New York Times and elsewhere.  Winner of the 2015 Adult Poetry Prize awarded by Tempe Public Library and Ari­zona State University, Mary Louise is hard at work on a first poetry collection.

Justin Hyde lives in Iowa where he works as a parole officer.

Lizzie Klaesges' essays and reviews can be found in Rain Taxi, Brevity Blog, The Critical Flame, and The Summit Avenue Review. She is a graduate of the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul and currently resides in Minneapolis.

Gordon Ommen, a finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2007, is cur­rently working on his first full-length collection. He lives with his wife and two dogs in Bear Lake, Minnesota.

John-Ivan Palmer's literary work has been widely anthologized and has appeared in Pushcart Prizes, Fortean Times, Exquisite Corpse, Nth Position, Book Happy and others. His journalism and interviews have appeared in large circulation newspapers like the San Francisco Examiner and Milwaukee Journal as well as underground shock culture publications. He is author of the novel Motels of Burning Madness. John-IvanPalmer.com.

Matt Peckham lives in the Twin Cities, where he writes and gardens. His poetry has been awarded the John R. Mitchell Academy of American Poets Prize and the John Engman Writing Prize, and it has been featured in Murphy Square: Literary and Visual Arts Magazine. An aspiring English teacher, Matt has worked for The Echo student newspaper and for the Augsburg Univer­sity Writing Center.

Alexandros Plasatis is a Greek ethnographer who writes fiction in English, his second language. His stories have or are due to appear in UK and American anthologies and magazines such as Meat For Tea, Meridian, Aji, Adelaide, Unthology, Overheard: Stories to Read Aloud, Crystal Voices, and blaekk.  He has a PhD in Creative Writing and is a volunteer at Cities of Sanctuary, where he helps find and develop new creative talent within the refugee and asylum seeker com­munity in Leicester, UK. He is currently completing his first book, a novel-in-stories.

Brenton Rossow is a filmmaker, poet, and musician, who has returned to Perth, Western Austra­lia after 14 years in South East Asia. He recently produced a feature length documentary called Shanghainese Parklife: Cultivating the Taoist body.

Carol Rucks is the author of the poetry collection Evidence of Rain. She lives in Minneapolis.

Laurie Sewall's poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Colorado Review, Poet Lore, Perma­frost, Minnesota Review, Cimarron Review, and Hayden's Ferry Review, among other publications. She lives and teaches in Iowa.

William Snyder has published poems in The Southern Review, Poet Lore, Folio, and Southern Humanities Review among others. He was the co-winner of the 2001 Grolier Poetry Prize, winner of the 2002 Kinloch Rivers Chapbook competition; The CONSEQUENCE Prize in Poetry, 2013; the 2015 Claire Keyes Poetry Prize. He teaches writing and literature at Concordia College, Moor­head, MN.

Matthew J. Spireng's full-length books are What Focus Is and Out of Body, which won the 2004 Bluestem Poetry Award. He is an eight-time Pushcart Prize nominee.

Bart Sutter is the only writer to win the Minnesota Book Award in three different categories—poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction. His most recent collection is Nordic Accordion: Poems in a Scandinavian Mood published by Nodin Press. Sutter has had four verse plays pro­duced, and he often performs as one-half of The Sutter Brothers, a poetry-and-music duo.

Justin Teerlinck is an occupational therapist in the Tacoma, Washington 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. His recently released second novel, The Grand Dissolute, is a time travel story set in St. Paul in 1998. He enjoys cooking, but not as much as drinking.

Greg Watson's work has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. His latest col­lection is All the World at Once: New and Selected Poems. He is co-editor with Richard Broderick of The Road by Heart: Poems of Fatherhood, forthcoming from Nodin Press.

Jay Wilkinson was a lawyer and then found out there was a poet inside. He lives in St. Paul and learned about wild rice, manoomin (one of several spellings), from his colleague, Patricia Bel­langer.  Pat was a Leech Lake member who was a founder of the American Indian Movement and international environmental advocate who shared her stories and passion for justice with him and others.  Pat's family sells the real thing at Northland Visions, 861 E Hennepin Ave.  Suite 130, Min­neapolis, MN.