Claire Bateman has published five 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) 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.

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.     

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.

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 is forthcoming from 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.

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.

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 of 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), and 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 forthcoming 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.