Claire Bateman has published eight books of poetry: The Bicycle Slow Race (Wesleyan, 1991), Friction (Eighth Mountain, 1998), At the Funeral of the Ether (Ninety-Six Press, 1998), Clumsy (New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2003, and Leap (New Issues, 2005), Coronology (a chapbook, single long poem, Serving House Books, 2009), Coronology (and other poems) (Etruscan Press, 2010), and Locals (Serving House Books, 2012). She has been awarded Individual Artist Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Tennessee Arts Commission, and a Surdna Fellowship. Claire has taught at Clemson University and Chattanooga State University, and at summer writing conferences such as Bread Loaf and Mount Holyoke.

Roberta Bienvenu is a poet, painter, and former teacher. Over the years, she has published poems, essays and reviews in many journals, among them Poetry, Ploughshares, Crazyhorse, Antioch Review, and New England Review. Recently, she was awarded Shenandoah’s Carter Prize for her essay Bartleby the Scrivener Occupies Wall Street. She lives in northern Vermont.

Duff Brenna is the author of nine books, including The Book of Mamie, which won the AWP Award for Best Novel; The Holy Book of the Beard, named “an underground classic” by The New York Times; Too Cool, a New York Times Noteworthy Book; The Altar of the Body, given the Editors Prize Favorite Book of the Year Award, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and also received a San Diego Writers Association Award for Best Novel 2002. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts award, Milwaukee Magazine’s Best Short Story of the Year Award, and a Pushcart Prize Honorable Mention. His work has been translated into six languages. His memoir, Murdering the Mom, is forthcoming from Wordcraft of Oregon, June 2012.

Supriya Bhatnagar is Director of Publications for The Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP). Her MFA in Nonfiction is from George Mason University. She has published a short story in Femina, a leading English magazine in India, and "Color," a chapter from her memoir, and then there were three..., in Perigee, and “Shattered,” another chapter, in Artful Dodge.     

Barbara Froman received early training in music at the Juilliard School’s preparatory division before going on to earn degrees in Music Composition at Ithaca College and Northwestern University. She was the Director of Mundelein College's Creative Writing Program, taught Literature and Creative Writing at National-Louis University, and acted as a consultant to National's graduate program in Written Communication. She is the author of published essays and poetry, has placed in screenwriting competitions, and was nominated for a Fringe First at the Edinburgh Fringe. She continues to compose music as well as work on a number of new writing projects.

Angela M. Graziano's essays, poems and interviews have appeared in multiple print and online publications including Apple Valley Review, Ariel, Damselfly Press, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Lost, Portal Del Sol, The Sylvan Echo, and Talking Writing, among others. Additionally, her writing has earned her an artist grant from the Vermont Studio Center, where she was a writing resident in the summer of 2010. She has been involved in editing and research for popular web publications including Design*Sponge and print publications such as In Style and In Style Weddings. She has a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English from the University of Vermont and a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Creative Nonfiction Writing from Fairleigh Dickinson University. She lives, writes and teaches in Morristown, New Jersey.

P. K. Harmon is the Founding Editor of Al in Aelon Kein: the Marshall Islands Literary Review and former theatre director and Humanities professor of the College of the Marshall Islands. A graduate of Ohio University’s Program in Creative Writing, he was recently Visiting Professor of Creative Writing for the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. He is currently a writing professor at the University of Guam. He has had individual poems published recently in Riverwind, The Marshall Islands Journal, and the Laurel Review.

Steve Heller is best known for his novel The Automotive History of Lucky Kellerman, a selection of both Book-of-the-Month Club and the Quality Paperback Book Club, which also received the Friends of American Writers First Prize Award for the best published book of fiction or nonfiction related to the Midwest. His second novel, Father's Mechanical Universe, was published in 2001 by BkMk Press. Winner of many distinctions for his short fiction and creative nonfiction, Heller's short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and national anthologies, and twice have received O. Henry Awards. He has also received an Individual Fellowship Grant in Fiction from the National Endowment for the Arts. What We Choose to Remember from Serving House Books will be his first published collection of creative nonfiction.

Greg Herriges began writing professionally in his twenties with an investigative report on gangs for The Chicago Tribune Magazine, “Inherit the Streets.” Soon afterward, he met with his literary hero, J.D. Salinger at Salinger’s home in Cornish, New Hampshire, a meeting that resulted in his first national publication, a profile/interview with the iconic author. It decided Herriges to turn to fiction writing, and years later inspired his book-length JD: A Memoir of a Time and a Journey (Wordcraft of Oregon, 2006). He is the author of novels, short stories, and articles, as well as a series of literary DVD documentaries, including Thomas E. Kennedy: Copenhagen Quartet, and the award winning TC Boyle: The Art of the Story. His short works have appeared in Story Quarterly, The Literary Review, The South Carolina Review, The Encyclopedia of Beat Literature, and Great Britain’s Popular Music and Society and World Wide Writers. He is currently a professor of English at William Rainey Harper College in Palatine, Illinois.

Mark Hillringhouse's poems, interviews, articles, essays, book reviews and translations have appeared in: the American Poetry Review, American Poetry, Columbia, Hanging Loose, the Literary Review, the Little Magazine, New American Writing, the New Jersey Monthly, the New York Times Book Review, and many others. He has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has won the Chester H. Jones National Poetry Competition, and three fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. [author photo by Christopher Lovi]

Steve Kowit is the author of several collections of poetry including The Dumbbell Nebula (Heyday Books), The Gods of Rapture (City Works Press), and The First Noble Truth (University of Tampa Press). He is the editor of the anthology The Maverick Poets and the author of one of America’s most popular books on writing poetry: In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet’s Portable Workshop. He is the recipient of a National Endowment Fellowship in Poetry, two Pushcart Prizes, and several other awards. Kowit teaches at Southwestern College and lives in the back country hills near the Mexican border with his wife and several companion animals. His poetry has been widely anthologized.

Liam Mac Sheóinín is publishing his first novel novel with Serving House Books. He has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations and contributed fiction to numerous publications such as The Burning Bush and The Abiko Annual.


Thomas McCarthy was born in Mallow, Co. Cork Ireland and educated there and in Dublin. He has lived in France and Ireland and now lives in Peterborough, UK His stories have been published in PEN New Fiction 1 & 2; Sunk Island Review; Paris Transcontinental; The Literary Review; Cimarron Review; New Irish Writing; The Irish Press; StoryQuarterly. A collection of stories, The Last Survivor, was published in 1985. Citron Press published a novel, A Fine Country, in May 2000. A further collection of stories, Finals Day & Other Stories, was published in October 2002. His essay "At Least You'll Never Starve" is in the collection Writers on the Job, published by Hopewell Publications in the USA in 2008. Another essay “Breakfast in Brighton is in the anthology The Book of Worst Meals, which was published by Serving House Books in 2010. At present, he is at work on another novel, Flannery's World, and a trilogy of linked stories called Morning Has Broken.

David Memmott has published five books of poetry, a novel and a story collection. His poem, “Where the Yellow Brick Road Turns West,” was a finalist for the 2010 Spur Award from Western Writers of America. The Larger Earth: Descending Notes of a Grounded Astronaut was selected as one of 150 best poetry books for 150 years of Oregon statehood by Poetry Northwest and Oregon State Library. He is a Fishtrap Fellow, a recent Playa resident and recipient of three Fellowships for Publishing from Literary Arts, Inc., for his work as editor and publisher of Wordcraft of Oregon, LLC. He recently completed a new novel, Canned Tuna, and is looking for a publisher. He is also managing editor of Phantom Drift: A Journal of New Fabulism. He lives in La Grande, Oregon, with his wife, Sue, and two yellow labs. Photo by Sue Memmott

Elisabeth Murawski received the 2010 May Swenson Poetry Award for her collection Zorba’s Daughter, which will be published by the Utah State University Press. She is the author of Moon and Mercury and a chapbook, Troubled by an Angel. Her poetry has appeared in The Yale Review, The New Republic, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Ontario Review, The Literary Review, Field, Chelsea, Southern Review, Margie, and others. Her poem “Abu Ghraib Suggests the Isenheim Altarpiece” won the 2006 Ann Stanford Prize. She was awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship in 2008. She resides in Alexandria, VA.

Susan O'Neill spent a year as an Army nurse in Viet Nam during the war. This is her first book. She has published short fiction and non-fiction in an eclectic variety of magazines, newspapers, anthologies, internet and audio media, and co-edits Vestal Review, a literary magazine for "Flash" fiction. She lives in Brooklyn.

Rita Signorelli-Pappas has been writing and publishing poetry for over twenty years. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Shenandoah, Poetry Northwest, Southwest Review, Prairie Schooner, Southern Poetry Review, Chelsea, The Literary Review, and Poet Lore, among other journals. Her poetry has also appeared on the websites Verse Daily and Poetry Daily. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she was a finalist for the 2008 May Swenson Award, and she received the 2008 Italian Americana Award in Fiction. She has been a regular reviewer for Small Press Review and The Women's Review of Books, and she currently reviews poetry for World Literature Today.

Lars Rasmussen is a man of many parts: He has owned and managed an antiquarian bookshop in the center of Copenhagen, The Booktrader, for over twenty years now. As a publisher, he has issued excellent and rare works on South African jazz, golf and other topics as well as a CD recording series which includes both jazz and many of the greatest living poets in Denmark. And he has published many books of his own stories, not to mention his annual Christmas journal containing fiction, poems, essays, and art by many of his customers — and he does have some impressive customers who include writers, musicians, artists, singers, actors, journalists, professors, and most of all — readers.

Richard Reiss began his professional writing career at the Piscataway-Dunellen Review, a Forbes newspaper, for which he wrote and was recognized by the New Jersey Press Association for his humor column, "Reiss’s Pieces." Over the next twenty five years he developed his skills as a professional fundraiser working primarily for colleges and universities. During that period he also wrote extensively about creating a family through adoption, and the joys and challenges of being adoptive parents. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, ADDitude Magazine, Perigee Literary Journal, and in the anthology, Upstart Crows II: True Stories, published by Wide Array Press. In 2008 Reiss collaborated with director and lyricist, Martin Charnin, to create the musical revue Love is Love. He is a lifetime resident of New Jersey where he lives with his wife and three children.

Carole Garibaldi Rogers is a journalist, oral historian, and poet. For more than 30 years, she has published numerous articles and essays in national newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times and America. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of small-press journals and in anthologies. She has a Master of Arts degree in theology. This is her eighth book. She and her husband live in Morristown, New Jersey.

Timothy Schell is the winner of the Mammoth Book Award for Prose for his novel The Drums of Africa (2007) and is the co-author of Mooring Against the Tide: Writing Fiction and Poetry (Prentice Hall, 2007) and the co-editor of the anthology A Writer’s Country (Prentice Hall, 2001). His fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Award and he was the winner of the Martindale Award for Long Fiction. He teaches literature and writing at Columbia Gorge Community College in Hood River, Oregon. The Memoir of Jake Weedsong was the 2010 Finalist for the AWP Award for the Novel. Photo by Maya Schell.

Per Šmidl lived for two years in Wagon 537 at Christiania. Then he moved to Paris, then California and when he got back to Denmark he wrote the bestseller Chop Suey. Many years as a political dissident in Prague followed after the publication in Denmark of his book The Victim Blood of Welfare in 1995. The book challenged the role and freedom of the individual in the welfare state. Some of the previous publications by Per Šmidl includes the novel Mathias Kraft, 1999, and the essay ”Ytringsfrihed," which means “Freedom of Speech,” 2006. .

Donna Baier Stein’s writing has appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Kansas Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, Washingtonian, and many other journals and anthologies. She has been a Finalist in the Iowa Fiction Awards and received the PEN/New England Discovery Award for Fiction, a Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars Fellowship, Bread Loaf Scholarship, a grant from the New Jersey Council of the Arts, prizes from the Poetry Council of Virginia, two Pushcart nominations, and an Honorable Mention in the 2013 Allen E. Ginsberg Poetry Awards. Her poetry chapbook Sometimes You Sense the Difference was published in 2012. Donna was a Founding Editor of Bellevue Literary Review and founded and currently publishes TIFERET. She is also an award-winning direct response copywriter. www.donnabaierstein.com.

Gladys Swan is the author of seven books of fiction, including her collection of stories News from the Volcano (University of Missouri Press, 2000). Her novels include Carnival for the Gods (Vintage, 1986) and Ghost Dance: A Play of Voices (Louisiana State University Press, 1992), and her other story collections are On the Edge of the Desert, (University of Illinois Press, 1980), Do You Believe on Cabeza de Vaca (University of Missouri Press, 1991), Of Memory and Desire (Louisiana State University Press 1989), A Visit to Strangers (University of Missouri Press, 1996), and A Garden amid Fires [BkMk Press, 2006]. She is also a widely published poet and a painter.

Susan Tekulve's short fiction collection, My Mother's War Stories, was published by Winnow Press (Austin, Texas). Her nonfiction, stories and poems have appeared in Shenandoah, New Letters, Best New Writing 2007, The Indiana Review, Denver Quarterly, Puerto del Sol, Prairie Schooner, New Letters, Beloit Fiction Journal, Crab Orchard Review, The Literary Review, Webdelsol, Black Warrior Review and The Kansas City Star. She has been awarded scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the Sewanee Writers' Conference. An associate professor of English at Converse College in South Carolina, she is completing a novel. Savage Pilgrims, her Serving House Books collection, includes short stories and lyric interludes that roam from suburban America to the trellised landscapes of Western Europe, exploring the revelations of love and fear in characters thrust into fierce journeys.

William Zander has published poetry in many periodicals (e.g., Beloit Poetry Journal, Crazy Horse, Defined Providence, Light, New Letters, New York Quarterly, Nimrod, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, Rattapallax, South Dakota Review, Yankee, et al.) and one book of poems, Distances, from Solo Press (long out of print). He is a contributing editor of The Literary Review and has retired from teaching at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, N.J.