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MICHAEL BLAKE
is the author of Dances With Wolves, the 1986
novel whose screenplay (which he also wrote) led to one
of the most popular movies in history, and earned him
the 1991 Academy Award. Based in southeaster Arizona,
he's written six other books, including Airman
Mortensen (1991), Marching to Valhalla
(1997), The Holy Road (2001), Indian Yell (2006), Twelve the King (2009)
and his 2002 autobiography, Like a Running Dog.
Michael has won many awards, including the Environmental
Media Award, Golden Quill, American Library Association
award and Eleanor Roosevelt award.
MAGGI DEROSA
is a highly popular open mic poet on the San Diego
poetry circuit and on YouTube, and one of the top young
poets in Southern California. She has been featured at,
among other major groups, the Sunset Poets and Drunk
Poets Society. The author of The Fool Is King
(2008), she has been published in a number of literary
journals, the poetry website Poetry Through The Ages,
and numerous blogs.
MARLA SINK DRUZGAL
considers herself a modern American nomad. The
Pennsylvania native lives and writes throughout the
United States. Currently stalking Los Angeles, she
contributes to the L.A. Writers Group and California
Writers Coalition. While obtaining her English B.A. at
Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Marla placed second
in the Linda Haldeman Short Fiction award. Her poetry
appears in diverse publications including Riders of
the Rainbow and Trouvere’s Laureate.
DON EULERT
is chair of the Doctoral Program for Integrative
Psychology at the California School of Professional
Psychology in San Diego. He has published eight books of
poetry, including Outposts: Letters from Buffalo Bill
to Annie Oakley, and Field: A Haiku Circle,
and is the leading English-language translator of
traditional Romanian literature. In 1963, he
co-founded and edited American Haiku, the first
journal in English devoted to Zen poems of the Japanese
tradition. He has promulgated Zen and haiku as a teacher
at Columbia University, Reed College, and the C.G. Jung
Institut-Zurich. Lucian Stryk, author of Cage of
Fireflies: Modern Japanese Haiku, writes,
"Don Eulert has a genuine feeling for haiku, and his are
of the best of the Americans using the form."
MISSY FELLER
teaches literature and creative writing classes at
Benjamin Bosse High School in Evansville, IN. Currently,
she sponsors the BHS Writers' Guild, encouraging teens
to explore their own enthusiasm for storytelling through
a literary magazine, Imagery, writing workshops,
and a school-wide Coffee House. She is a popular speaker
at young writers' and technology conferences. Missy will
soon complete her first novel,
Wings.
JENNIFER HILLMAN
is a poet, Intuitive Spiritual Coach, Healer and Host of
Abstract Illusions Radio. Jen enjoys her time inspiring
others with her coaching, writing and radio program. Jen
is the author of Embracing Souls: Poetry of the
Dance, Volume I, and two forthcoming titles, Too
Deep For Sunday and Embracing Souls, Volume II.
Her radio program airs on Thursdays on BBSRadio.com.
VALARIE JAMES
is an artist, sculptor and essayist whose works have
increasingly focused on the plight of those who suffered
and died in the desert while crossing the U.S./Mexico
border. A former art therapist, she has spent the past
20 years gaining direct experience in the power of art
and writing to inform and heal. She and her work have
been featured in several publications, among them
Sculptural Pursuit magazine and The Wall St.
Journal. She teaches at Pima Community College and
is based in southern Arizona.
JANICE L. KING
spent most of the past 10 years in Woodstock, NY, where
she wrote her 2002 poetry collection, Taking Wing:
Poems from the Oregon Outback to the Hudson Valley,
while managing the popular Golden Notebook bookstore.
Widely published in poetry anthologies, she has been
writing a new batch of poetry since returning west. As
she writes, "I have landed in the high desert of
Washington. This is a sparse and beautiful landscape
filled with magpies and fields of grapes and grain."
SAID LEGHLID
is a poet and writer whose poetry and essays have
appeared in several print publications. Said is the host
of WorldStreams World Talk Radio, an international
multi-media resource that offers diverse programs on
music, the arts, culture, world politics and social
issues. Said teaches inter-cultural creative writing,
and works full-time as a copywriter, content editor and
translator. He is working on his first novel.
ALWYN MARTIN
likes to squeeze in writing, somewhere between
alienating people at PTA meetings and making snarky
comments about the mayonnaise-based dips served at the
dreadful parties she’s had to attend while living deep
in Middle America. A Southern California native, she is
gratefully (and permanently) returning home in summer
2010, residing with her husband and two children. She
currently has two novels in progress. She won the 2009
Southern California Writers Conference fiction-writing
contest.
WILLIAM MAWHINNEY
brings his warrior's spirit, precise rendering of images
and engrossing voice to poetry circles wherever he sets
foot. His readings have enthralled poets and audiences
through-out the Southwest and Pacific Northwest. Formerly
of Tucson, AZ, his poems have appeared in numerous
anthologies and in concert with the art showings of his
wife, Wanda. He is the author of two collections,
Songs in My Begging Bowl (2002) and Cairns Along
the Road (2009).
DEAN NELSON
is founder and director of the journalism program at
Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, where he
serves as professor of journalism. He has written or
co-written 11 books, including the 2009 title God
Hides in Plain Sight: How to See the Sacred in a Chaotic
World. He has written for dozens of newspapers and
magazines, including the New York Times, Boston
Globe, Science & Spirit, Utne Reader and
Christianity Today. Other titles include The
Power of Serving Others, 100 Years of Stories, Every
Full Moon Night and They Saw Feet.
JACOB PRUETT
is a sophomore at Sonoma State (CA) University and an
increasingly popular reader in Northern California
circles whose poetic voice already integrates a
combination of classic prosody with free verse to convey
a wide variety of themes. "Glimpses from a Poetic Suite"
is a snippet of a larger collection that will be
published in early 2011.
MICHAEL SHRIEVE
performed the most-watched drum solo in rock and roll
history; his rendition of Santana's "Soul Sacrifice" was
a highlight of the Woodstock Festival in 1969. A
songwriter and the original drummer for Santana, Michael
is a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the
recipient of numerous musical honors. Originally from
San Francisco, he anchors Michael Shrieve's
Spellbinders, a jazz-fusion-rock group, while also
supporting cutting edge bands throughout the Pacific
Northwest.
SAM SHRIEVE
is a 20-year-old singer/songwriter from Seattle
preparing to begin his fourth year at Berklee School of
Music in Boston. His first full-length album,
Bittersweet Lullabies, was released in May of 2009.
The album features contributions from guitar legend Bill
Frisell on a beautiful remake of Leonard Cohen’s
“Hallelujah” and an original jazz-flavored composition,
“I’ll Be There.” Said music writer Balen Deasin, "The
range of his songwriting and voice conveys a sense of
wisdom beyond his years.”
LIBBY SOKOLOWSKI
is an award-winning visual artist and essayist from
Southern California. Whether painting pictures with
words or watercolors, she enjoys exploring the depth and
heart of her subject matter. A popular photographer and
videographer, she spends much of her time documenting
blues guitarists and rock bands when she's not busy
capturing the wonder and quiet beauty of the desert
surrounding her. She considers it her job to find the
extraordinary in the ordinary.
ANDRÉE STOLTE
has read her poems in New York City at Bluestockings,
Cornelia Street Café, Fordham University at Lincoln
Center, and Casa Italia Zerilli Marimo NYU, and is
compiling a collection for publication. She wrote and
performed a solo play about First Lady Jacqueline
Kennedy titled Jackie Undressed, presented at the
National Arts Club and various festivals in NYC.
Currently, she is speaking a series of essays and poems
exploring our relationship to myth and contemporary
culture titled Leaving Camelot Behind,
which can be heard on her you tube channel
HealingAwake.
KAY TAYLOR
has been a script supervisor on numerous productions,
ranging from motion picture features to commercials. She
has also produced films, worked in television. She also
conducts research & editing for a film industry
publication based in Los Angeles. She writes on the
process of archiving, as well as films and music. Poetry
is a recent passion in her life.
ANJA TUMERT
claims she was born in the wrong country. A native
resident of Norway, she has been a member of the
Stavanger Opera Choir for seven years. "A Shared
Universe" is part of a larger collection of poems on
love, loss and hope. She enjoys writing, traveling,
photography and macrobiotics.
SAM TURNER
is a longtime member of the Society of Southwestern
Authors whose poetry and short stories have been
published in a variety of print and online publications.
A big fan and creator of western landscape writing, he
mentors young authors throughout southeastern Arizona.
LUIS ALBERTO URREA,
a prolific and acclaimed author of 11 books, is a member
of the Latino Literature Hall of Fame. He won an
American Book Award in 1999 for his memoir, Nobody's
Son: Notes from an American Life, and ForeWord
Magazine's Book of the Year in 2002 for Six Kinds
of Sky. His 2004 bestseller, A Devil's Highway,
was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and won the Lannan
Literary Award and Pacific Rim Kiriyama Prize. His 2006
novel, The Hummingbird's Daughter, was also a
bestseller. His latest book, Into the Beautiful
North, has received high praise from critics and
readers alike.
CLAUDIA WHITSITT
won the 2010 Hummingbird Review/ Southern California
Writers Conference award for her narrative
non-fiction piece, "One Last Pearl," which appears in
this issue. A lifelong resident of eastern Michigan, she
is a special education teacher and the author of two
mystery-suspense novels, Identity Issues and
The Wrong Guy, soon to be published by Echelon
Press.
JILL
WIDNER
was the
recipient of a 2007 Artist Trust/Washington State Arts
Commission fellowship in literature and a 2009 Artist
Trust grant for artist projects. She has been awarded
residencies at Yaddo and the Virginia Center for the
Creative Arts and is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’
Workshop. Excerpts from her novel in progress, which
fictionalizes her experience growing up in Indonesia in
the 1960s, the daughter of a petroleum engineer, have
appeared or will appear soon in North American Review,
Hobart, Kartika Review, Kyoto Journal, Asia Literary
Review, and Bamboo Ridge: The Hawai’i Writers
Quarterly. A longer excerpt was one of two equal
runners-up in the 2009 Willesden Herald international
short story competition and appeared in New Short
Stories 3, an anthology published by pretend genius
press in the UK. Her story, “Akualele,” published in
Verna Dreisbach's anthology Why We Ride: Women Writers
on the Horses in Their Lives, is an excerpt from her
novella “Before the Rain,” set on the island of Lana’i
where she lived and taught in the early 1980s.
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