View Contributors` Bios - Fifth Wednesday Journal

CONTRIBUTORS
KIM ADDONIZIO’s fifth poetry collection, Lucifer at the Starlite,
was recently released in paperback. She is a founding member of
Nonstop Beautiful Ladies, a word/music project. Find her online at
www.kimaddonizio.com.
PHILIP APPLEMAN has published nine volumes of poetry, including
New and Selected Poems, 1956-1996 (University of Arkansas Press,
l996); three novels, including Apes and Angels (Putnam, l989); and
has edited half a dozen nonfiction books, including the widely used
Darwin (Norton Critical Editions), and Thomas Malthus’s Essay on
the Principle of Population (Norton Critical Editions). His poetry and
fiction have won many awards, including a National Endowment for
the Arts Fellowship, the Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society
of America, the Friend of Darwin Award from the National Center
for Science Education, and the Humanist Arts Award of the American
Humanist Association. His work has appeared in scores of publications,
including Harper’s Magazine, The Nation, New Republic, New York
Times, Paris Review, Partisan Review, Poetry, Sewanee Review, and
Yale Review.
ELEANOR LEONNE BENNETT is a sixteen-year-old
internationally award-winning artist. Her photography has been
published in the Telegraph, The Guardian, the BBC News website,
and on the cover of books and magazines in the United States and
Canada. Her art is also globally exhibited. She is published in the
Life Is a Bed of Roses book for Macmillan Cancer and in the CIWEM
Environmental Photographer of the Year 2011 book.
FRANK BERGON is the author of four novels and the editor of
the Penguin Classics Journals of Lewis and Clark. He has published
journalism and photographs about the Zapatista revolution in Chiapas,
Mexico. His most recent novel is Jesse’s Ghost.
JAMES CARPENTER began writing fiction after retiring from the
affiliated faculty of The Wharton School where he taught computer
programming and system design. His stories have appeared in a
number of journals, including Fiction International, The Long Story,
and Chautauqua Literary Journal.
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CAMILLE T. DUNGY is a 2011 American Book Award winner
and the author of three books, including Smith Blue and Suck on the
Marrow. She is the editor of anthologies including Black Nature: Four
Centuries of African American Nature Poetry and From the Fishouse:
An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate,
Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great. Professor in the creative
writing department at San Francisco State University, Dungy’s honors
include an NEA Fellowship, two NAACP Image Award nominations,
and two Northern California Book Awards.
JIM ELLEDGE’s most recent books are H, a collection of prose
poems, and Who’s Yer Daddy? Gay Writers Celebrate Their Mentors
and Forerunners, coedited with David Groff. His A History of My
Tattoo won the Lambda Literary Award in poetry. He directs the MA
in professional writing program at Kennesaw State University and
lives in Atlanta.
PETRA FORD grew up in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, and currently lives in
Chicago with her son, photographing everything that passes in front of
her camera lens. Days are usually spent shooting lifestyle, fashion, and
beauty photography, but her true passion lies in finding and capturing
life’s un-posed, unseen moments. This is her fifth appearance in
Fifth Wednesday Journal. Her work has also been published in INK
Magazine and Chicago Special Parent and has been shown at Calmer
House Gallery, MaNa Gallery, Gahlberg Gallery, and Wings Gallery.
View more of her work at www.petraford.com.
MELISSA FRATERRIGO’s short story collection The Longest
Pregnancy was selected by Livingston Press for the Tartt First Fiction
Award. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in a variety of literary
journals and anthologies, including the Massachusetts Review, Arts &
Letters, Puerto del Sol, and Northwest Review. Fraterrigo lives with
her husband and daughters in West Lafayette, Indiana, and is currently
working on a novel in stories.
JOHN GALLAHER is the author of four books of poems, most
recently Your Father on the Train of Ghosts, coauthored with G.C.
Waldrep (BOA, 2011). He lives in rural Missouri and coedits The
Laurel Review and The Akron Series in Contemporary Poetics.
BECKIAN FRITZ GOLDBERG is the author of six books, most
recently Reliquary Fever: New and Selected Poems (New Series,
Fifth Wednesday Journal • 235
2010). She teaches in the MFA program at Arizona State University
and watches endless reruns of NCIS.
JEFF GUNDY has recent work in The Sun, Cincinnati Review, MidAmerican Review, Image, and Georgia Review. His fifth book of
poems, Spoken Among the Trees (Akron, 2007), won the Society of
Midland Authors Poetry Award. He was a 2008 Fulbright lecturer in
American studies and poet in residence at the University of Salzburg.
SUSAN HAHN is the author of nine books of poetry and two produced
plays. Her first novel, The Six Granddaughters of Cecil Slaughter, will
be published in fall 2012. Among her awards for writing are several
Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards and Fellowships, the George
Kent Award from Poetry, the Society of Midland Authors Award in
poetry, a Jeff Recommendation, Pushcart Prizes, and a Guggenheim
Fellowship.
MARK HALLIDAY teaches at Ohio University. His fifth book of
poems, Keep This Forever, was published in 2008 by Tupelo Press.
JAMES HARMS is the author of eight books of poetry, including
What to Borrow, What to Steal (Marick Press, 2011) and Comet
Scar (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2012). His awards include
a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the PEN/Revson
Fellowship, and three Pushcart Prizes. He is professor of English
at West Virginia University and director of the low-residency MFA
program in poetry at New England College.
JANICE N. HARRINGTON’s Even the Hollow My Body Made Is
Gone won the A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize and the Kate Tufts Discovery
Award. Her latest book is The Hands of Strangers: Poems from the
Nursing Home (BOA, 2011).
THEODOSIA HENNEY can usually be found up a tree, inside a
book, or both. Her work has appeared in the Allegheny Review, Vestal
Review, Ghost Ocean Magazine, Damselfly Press, and Ozone Park
Journal.
DAVID HERNANDEZ has published two books of poetry and
numerous anthologies. He’s received grants and recognition from
the Illinois Arts Council and Chicago’s Office of Fine Arts. In 1987
he was commissioned to write a poem commemorating Chicago’s
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one hundred fiftieth birthday. He often performs his poetry to the
accompaniment of his band Street Sounds.
BOB HICOK’s latest book is Words for Empty and Words for Full
(Pitt, 2010). In 2012, Luxbooks will release a German translation of
his previous collection, This Clumsy Living (Pitt, 2007).
TONY HOAGLAND’s latest collection, Unincorporated Persons
in the Late Honda Dynasty, was published by Graywolf Press in
2010. His previous collection, What Narcissism Means to Me, was a
finalist for the National Book Critics Award in poetry in 2004. Donkey
Gospel received the James Laughlin Award. His recognitions include
the Jackson Poetry Prize, the O.B. Hardison Award, and the Mark
Twain Award for humor in American poetry. He currently teaches in
the graduate writing program of the University of Houston and in the
Warren Wilson MFA program.
B. J. HOLLARS is the author of Thirteen Loops: Race, Violence and
the Last Lynching in America, and the editor of You Must Be This
Tall to Ride (Writer’s Digest Books, 2009), Monsters: A Collection of
Literary Sightings (Pressgang, 2012), and Blurring the Boundaries:
Explorations to the Fringes of Nonfiction (University of Nebraska
Press, 2012).
RICHARD JONES is the author of several books of poems from
Copper Canyon Press, including Apropos of Nothing and The Correct
Spelling and Exact Meaning. The editor of Poetry East, he teaches at
DePaul University in Chicago.
ALLISON JOSEPH lives and writes in Carbondale, Illinois, where
she directs the MFA program in creative writing at Southern Illinois
University. Her latest book is My Father’s Kites (Steel Toe Books,
2010).
KATHLEEN KIRK is the author of Selected Roles (Moon Journal
Press, 2006), Broken Sonnets (Finishing Line Press, 2009), Living on
the Earth (Finishing Line Press, 2010), and Nocturnes (Hyacinth Girl
Press, 2012). Her work has appeared previously in Fifth Wednesday
Journal, where it was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and in a variety
of print and online journals, including Blue Fifth Review, The Common
Review, Poems & Plays, and Poetry East.
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JEFF KNORR is the author of the three books of poetry, The Third
Body (Cherry Grove Collections, 2007), Keeper (Mammoth Books,
2004), and Standing Up to the Day (Pecan Grove Press, 1999). His
other works include the coauthored Mooring Against the Tide: Writing
Poetry and Fiction (Prentice Hall, 2005); the anthology A Writer’s
Country (Prentice Hall, 2000); and The River Sings: An Introduction
to Poetry (Prentice Hall, 2003). His poetry and essays have appeared
in North American Review, Barrow Street, Connecticut Review, Red
Rock Review, The Journal, and Like Thunder: Poets Respond to
Violence in America (University of Iowa).
CLINT McCOWN has published four collections of poetry and four
novels since his teenage days as President Eisenhower’s yard boy
in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He has also worked as a screenwriter
for Warner Brothers and as a creative consultant for HBO television,
and has received an Associated Press award for his investigations
of organized crime. He heads the MFA program at Virginia
Commonwealth University and teaches in the Vermont College of
Fine Arts low-residency MFA program.
JOE MENO is a fiction writer and playwright who lives in Chicago.
A winner of the Nelson Algren Literary Award, a Pushcart Prize, and
a finalist for the Story Prize, he is the bestselling author of five novels
and two short story collections, including The Great Perhaps, The
Boy Detective Fails, and Hairstyles of the Damned. He is a professor
in the fiction writing department at Columbia College Chicago. His
forthcoming novel, Office Girl, will be released in July 2012.
ROGER MITCHELL’s newest book is The One Good Bite in the
Saw-Grass Plant: A Poet in the Everglades. He edits poetry for the
e-zine Hamilton Stone Review, and lives at the back of a field of
inveterate grasses.
ACHY OBEJAS is the author of the critically acclaimed novels
Ruins (Akashic Books, 2009), and Days of Awe (Random House,
2001). Her poetry chapbook This Is What Happened in Our Other
Life (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2007) was both a critical favorite
and a bestseller. She edited and translated into English Havana Noir
(Akashic Books, 2007), a collection of crime stories by Cuban writers
on and off the island. Her translation into Spanish of Junot Díaz’s
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead, 2009)/La Breve y
Maravillosa Vida de Óscar Wao (Vintage/Mondadori) was a finalist
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for Spain’s Esther Benítez Translation Prize. She is a member of the
editorial board of In These Times, the editorial advisory board of the
Great Books Foundation, and a blogger for WBEZ.org.
BAYO OJIKUTU is the author of the novels 47th Street Black and
Free Burning. He has won the Great American Book Award and the
Washington Prize for Fiction. His short work has earned a Pushcart
Prize nomination and appeared in various journals, anthologies, and
media forums, including ACM, Other Voices, Chicago Magazine,
The Reader, the Akashic Press Chicago Noir collection, and the
forthcoming (2012) short fiction collection Shadow Show, a tribute
to the legacy of Ray Bradbury. Ojikutu has taught creative writing
with various institutions. The author, his wife, and son currently live
in Chicago.
PETER ORNER was born in Chicago and is the author of three
widely praised books: Esther Stories (Houghton Mifflin, 2001),
The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo (Little, Brown, 2006), and
Love and Shame and Love (Little, Brown, 2011). Orner is also the
editor of two books of nonfiction, Underground America and Hope
Deferred: Narratives of Zimbabwean Lives (McSweeney’s). His
work has appeared in Paris Review, Atlantic Monthly, Granta, and
Best American Stories, and has been awarded two Pushcart Prizes.
A 2006 Guggenheim recipient, Orner has also been awarded a
Lannan Literary Foundation Fellowship and the Rome Prize from the
American Academy of Arts and Letters. Orner is a faculty member at
San Francisco State University.
MIKE PETRIK studied English and biology at St. Lawrence
University and creative writing at the University of Memphis. He is
now writing, teaching, and studying in Columbia, Missouri, where he
lives with his wife, poet and writer Bethany Petrik.
MARY QUADE is author of the poetry collection Guide to Native
Beasts (Cleveland State University Poetry Center). Her essays also
appear this year in West Branch, Grist, and Flyway: Journal of Writing
and Environment. She teaches creative writing at Hiram College in
Ohio.
KEITH RATZLAFF’s books of poetry are Then, a Thousand Crows;
Dubious Angels: Poems After Paul Klee; Man Under a Pear Tree;
and Across the Known World. His poems and reviews have appeared
in The Cincinnati Review, The Georgia Review, The Journal, New
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England Review, The Threepenny Review, Arts and Letters, Colorado
Review, and The North American Review. His awards include the
Anhinga Prize for Poetry, the Theodore Roethke Award, a Pushcart
Prize, and inclusion in Best American Poetry 2009. He teaches writing
and literature at Central College in Pella, Iowa.
DONALD REVELL is the author of eleven collections of poetry,
most recently of The Bitter Withy (2009) and A Thief of Strings (2007),
both from Alice James Books. He is a professor of English and creative
writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
NATANIA ROSENFELD teaches modern English literature and
creative nonfiction at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, where she
lives with her husband, two cats, and a dog. She is the author of a
critical book, Outsiders Together: Virginia and Leonard Woolf, and
has published her poems, stories, and essays in many journals. Her
prose poem “Bodies” received an Illinois Arts Council Literary Award
in 2007. Her hobbies are reading, sleeping, eating, and reading.
J. ALLYN ROSSER’s most recent collection of poems is Foiled
Again. In 2010-11 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. She
currently teaches in the creative writing program at Ohio University,
where she edits New Ohio Review.
DAVE SCHULTZ, songwriter, singer, musician, and writer, grew
up on the North Side of Chicago and in a small coal mining town in
rural Illinois. A graduate of Southern Illinois University, he lives near
Chicago with his wife and daughter. He performs regularly, and his
day gig is with Hanson/Lakland Musical Instruments, a guitar and bass
manufacturer, where he is the shop manager for their pickup division.
For music and additional information, visit www.purplehank.com.
BETSY SHOLL’s most recent book is Rough Cradle (Alice James,
2009). She teaches in the MFA program of Vermont College of Fine
Arts and was Poet Laureate of Maine from 2006 to 2011.
MARC KELLY SMITH is creator/founder of the international
Poetry Slam movement. As stated in the PBS television series The
United States of Poetry, a “strand of new poetry began at Chicago’s
Green Mill Tavern in 1987 when Marc Smith found a home for the
Poetry Slam.” Since then, performance poetry has spread throughout
the world, exported to over a thousand cities large and small. Smith
continues to host and perform every Sunday night at the Green Mill
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in Chicago to standing-room-only crowds. He currently directs
Chicago’s Speak’Easy Ensemble, an innovative performance poetry
troupe. He counseled and collaborated with Mark Eleveld to create
Spoken Word Revolution Volume One and Spoken Word Revolution
Redux, and coauthored with Joe Kraynak Take the Mic and Stage a
Poetry Slam (Sourcebooks). His collection of poems Crowdpleaser
and his CDs It’s About Time, Quarters in the Juke Box, and Love and
Politics are available through his website www.slampapi.com.
CHRISTINE SNEED has a creative writing MFA from Indiana
University, was a French major at Georgetown University, and has lived
in Chicago and Evanston, Illinois, since 1998. She teaches creative
writing courses for DePaul University, Northwestern University, and
Roosevelt University. Her story collection, Portraits of a Few of the
People I’ve Made Cry, won AWP’s 2009 Grace Paley Prize in Short
Fiction, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, first
fiction category, and has been chosen as the recipient of Ploughshares’
2011 first book prize, the John C. Zacharis Award. Her stories have
appeared or are forthcoming in Best American Short Stories 2008, The
PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2012, Ploughshares, Southern Review,
Massachusetts Review, New England Review, Notre Dame Review,
and a number of other journals.
ASHLEY STROSNIDER hails from Kentucky and Tennessee, where
she worked at summer camps, libraries, and bookstores. She currently
serves as editor of Yemassee at the University of South Carolina, where
she is a James Dickey Fellow pursuing an MFA in poetry. Her poetry
and fiction have recently appeared in decomP, Word Riot, Unsplendid,
and DOGZPLOT, with nonfiction forthcoming in dislocate.
VICTORIA BARRAS TULACRO teaches English at Chaffey
and Riverside Colleges. She was born and raised in the Wrightwood
Mountains of Southern California, where she still resides with her
lovely family. When she is not grading papers or writing short stories,
she is feverishly working on her first novel.
DEAN YOUNG’s newest collection is Fall Higher (Copper Canyon,
2011). His Elegy on Toy Piano was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His
work has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts,
the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Academy
of Arts and Letters. He’s currently the William Livingston Chair of
Poetry at the University of Texas at Austin.
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