Contributor Bios
 


CHRISTOPHER MARTIN is the author of the poetry chapbook A Conference of Birds (New Native Press 2012), which Don Hendershot of the Smoky Mountain News praised as “tight and timely; what poetry is about—in the now while brushing eternity.” Some of Chris’s poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Shambhala Sun, Ruminate Magazine, Thrush Poetry Journal, Drafthorse, Still: The Journal, Buddhist Poetry Review, Adventum, Poecology, The Museum of Americana: A Literary Review, Loose Change Magazine, Revolution House, Pale Ale Press, American Public Media’s On Being blog, and elsewhere. His poems “Revelation on the Cherokee County Line” and “Antidote to Narcissus” were selected to appear in the Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume V: Georgia, due out fall 2012 with Texas Review Press. His poem “Marcescence,” published as a broadside by Thrush Press in October 2012, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Chris is the founder and editor-in-chief of the online literary magazine Flycatcher and is a contributing editor at New Southerner, where he writes the monthly blog Kairos and Crisis on race, religion, and social justice in the South. He is pursuing a Master of Arts in Professional Writing at Kennesaw State University, where he was recognized as the Outstanding Graduate Student of the Year for 2012 – 2013. Chris lives with his wife and their two young children in the northwest Georgia piedmont, in an old house between the Allatoona Range and Kennesaw Mountain. His poetry collection Starting from Kennesaw, as yet unpublished, was recently named a finalist in the Texas Review Press Breakthrough Prize: Georgia. You can find him online at www.christopher-martin.net.


JESSE BREITE currently lives and teaches high school in Atlanta, Georgia. He was raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, and considers it his home. His work has been published in Prairie Schooner, Prick of the Spindle, Slant: A Journal of Poetry, Toad, and Main Street Rag. Jesse enjoys spending time with his wife, Emily, and attempts to write a bit each night.


J. SCOTT BROWNLEE is a Writers in the Public Schools Fellow at NYU. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Hayden’s Ferry Review, RATTLE, Ninth Letter, Tar River Poetry, Boxcar Poetry Review, Front Porch, Pebble Lake Review, and elsewhere. Involved with several literary journal start-ups, he was the managing editor and co-founder of both Hothouse and The Raleigh Review. A poet-of-place, Brownlee writes primarily about the people and landscape of rural Texas. His book-length work, County Lines, was named a Semifinalist for the 2012 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.


JOHN DAVIS JR. is an award-winning Florida poet. His work has been published in literary journals internationally, including recent pieces in Touch: The Journal of Healing (http://www.thelivesyoutouch.com)and Dead Mule School of Southern Literature (http://www.deadmule.com). He serves as English Department Chair for the Vanguard School of Lake Wales, Florida, and is currently a MFA in Creative Writing student at the University of Tampa.


C. MICHAEL DOWNES is an undergraduate student at Lee University, where he also writes for the university’s Office of Public Information. He was recognized as one of four outstanding authors published in Nota Bene, with receipt of the 2011 Nota Bene Reynolds Scholarship. His work has appeared in The Lee Review, Cleveland Daily Banner, Haggard & Halloo and will appear in Doxa and Clapboard House. His stage play, Loving Fire, was recently featured at Lee University’s Fringe Fest.


ELISE GREGORY's had previously been published by various journals including Hubbub, Verse WI, Redactions, and the strange fruit. She most recently published a chapbook of poems through Finishing Line Press.


KAREN PAUL HOLMES divides her time between Atlanta and the North Georgia mountains. Publishing credits include Poetry East, Atlanta Review, Caesura, Avocet, Your Daily Poem, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review and the upcoming Southern Poetry Anthology, Vol. 5, Georgia (Texas Review Press). A former VP-Communications at ING, Karen now leads a kinder, gentler life as a freelance writer and poet. She founded/hosts a poetry critique group in Atlanta and Writers’ Night Out in Hiawassee.


BRENDA KAY LEDFORD is a member of North Carolina Writer's Network, North Carolina Poetry Society and listed with A Directory of American Poets and Fiction Writers. Her chapbooks, Shew Bird Mountain and Sacred Fire were printed by Finishing Line Press. She received the Paul Green Multimedia Award from North Carolina Society of Historians for these collections.


KATHLEEN BREWIN LEWIS is an Atlanta writer whose prose, poetry, and prose poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Weave, Boston Literary Magazine, The Prose-Poem Project, Deep South Magazine, Constellations: A Journal of Poetry and Fiction, Loose Change, Slice of Life, and The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume V: Georgia (Texas Review Press). A graduate of Wake Forest University and the Master of Arts in Professional Writing program at Kennesaw State, she is also the Senior Editor of Flycatcher: A Journal of Native Imagination


AL MAGINNES's most recent collection is Inventing Constellations (Cherry Grove Collections, 2012). He has recent or forthcoming poems in American Literary Review, Sugar House Review, Terrain.org, Miramar and many others. He lives in Raleigh NC and teaches at Wake Technical Community College.


JAMES OWENS lives in New Carlisle, Ind. Two books of his poems have been published: An Hour is the Doorway (Black Lawrence Press) and Frost Lights a Thin Flame (Mayapple Press). His poems, reviews, translations, and photographs have appeared widely in literary journals, including recent or upcoming publications in The Cortland Review, The Cresset, Poetry Ireland, and The Chaffey Review. He walks in the dunes along the southern shore of Lake Michigan and watches the waves and the gulls.


WILLIAM L. RAMSEY is an Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of History and Philosophy at Lander University.


HENRY SPOTTSWOOD was born in Mobile, Alabama. Some of his poems deal with childhood, wartime, and nature. In the 1940s and 1950s, Spotswood spent summers with his mother's grandparents on an old family farm in Mississippi, before electricity arrived in 1953. He went on to attend Georgia Tech, and in 1963 joined the busines faculty at Western Kentucky Univ, where he stayed until 1972. He now lives in Cincinnati.

TIM SUERMONDT is the author of Trying to Help the Elephant Man Dance (The Backwaters Press, 2007) and Just Beautiful from NYQ Books, 2010. He has published work in Poetry, The Georgia Review, Blackbird, Able Muse, Prairie Schooner, Bellevue Literary Review, Stand Magazine (U.K.) and has poems forthcoming in The James Dickey Review, Gargoyle, and Hamilton Stone Review, among others. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.


MATTHEW WIMBERLEY grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. He served as an assistant poetry editor at the Raleigh Review and currently is studying poetry in New York University's MFA program. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Windhover, Literary Laundry, Monongahela Review, Connotation Press where his poems were introduced by Dorianne Laux, and various other journals. He has two dogs and spent March and April of 2012 driving across the country and back. Matthew resides in Brooklyn.


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