Gary Fincke has published some 25 books of poetry, short fiction, and nonfiction, and his novel, How Blasphemy Sounds to God was published earlier this year by Braddock Avenue Books.
Richard Kramer, an Emmy and multiple Peabody award winning writer, director and producer of numerous television series, is the author of These Things Happen (Unbridled Books, April 15, 2012), his first novel.
Cynthia Atkins' most recent poetry collection, In the Event of Full Disclosure," has been featured in the Huffington Post and Bill and Dave's Cocktail Hour, founded by Bill Roorbach and Dave Gessner at http://billanddavescocktailhour.com.
Ross Klavan's novel Schmuck was published by Greenpoint Press earlier this year. His work spans film, television, and radio, as well as print, and also live performance. His original screenplay for the film Tigerland was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award.
Alfred Corn has published several collections of poetry over the years, including his first collection All Roads at Once (1976), A Call in the Midst of the Crowd: Poems (1978), The Various Light (1980), Notes from a Child of Paradise (1984), and Tables (Press 53, 2013). Other collections are The West Door: Poems (1988), Autobiographies: Poems (1992), Stake: Selected Poems, 1972-1992, and Contradictions: Poems (2002).
Mark Statman's most recent books are the poetry collection, A Map of the Winds (Lavender Ink, 2013), and Black Tulips: The Selected Poems of Jose Maria Hinojosa (University of New Orleans Press, 2012). He is also the author of the poetry collection, Tourist at a Miracle ((Hanging Loose, 2010), as well as a translation, with Pedro Medina, of Federico Garcia Lorca's Poet in New York (Grove, 2008).
Travis Cebula resides with his wife and trusty dog in Colorado, where he founded Shadow Mountain Press in 2009. His poems, photographs, essays, and stories have appeared internationally in various print and on-line journals.
John Dufresne's most recent novel is No Regrets Coyote (W.W. Norton & Company, 2013). He has written four previous novels, including his first novel, Louisiana Power & Light (1994), as well as Love Warps the Mind a Little, (1997), which were both New York Times notable books. His other novels are Deep in the Shade of Paradise (2002) and Requiem, Mass. (2008).
Jack Smith is author of the novel Hog to Hog, which won the George Garrett Fiction Prize (Texas Review Press. 2008), and also is the author Write and Revise for Publication for Publication: A 6-Month Pan for Crafting a Publishable Novel and Other Works of Fiction, published earlier this year by Writer's Digest Books.
Patty Dann is the author of the novel, Starfish (Greenpoint Press, 2013), a sequel to her novel, Mermaids, a coming of age novel about a teenage girl which was published in 1986. In 1990, Mermaids was made into a movie of the same name, starring Cher, Winona Ryder, Bob Hoskins, and Christina Ricci.
Nick Antosca is the author of four books, including his recent short story collection, The Girlfriend Game (Word Riot Press, 2013). His novella, Midnight Picnic (Word Riot Press, 2009) was winner of the Shirley Jackson Award for best Novella.
Sharyn Wolf, a practicing psychotherapist in New York City, is the author of the memoir, Love Shrinks: A Memoir of a Marriage Counselor's Divorce (May 3, 2011).
Kelle Groom (http://www.kellegroom.com) is the author of the memoir, I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl (Free Press/Simon & Schuster 2011), which was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great Writers pick, as well as a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice selection, a Library Journal Best Memoir of 2011, a Barnes & Noble Book of the Month, an Oxford American Editor's Pick, and Oprah.com O Magazine selection.
Charles Clifford Brooks III, a true poet from the Georgia landscape, has been published in The Dead Mule, Eclectica, Gloom Cupboard, Red Fez, Zygote in My Coffee, and The Cartier Street Review, just to name some.
Ani Gjika was born and raised in Albania, before moving to the United States with her parents at the age of 18 and studying poetry at Simmons College and Boston University.
Charles Baxter is the author of Gryphon: New and Selected Stories, released in paperback by Vintage Contemporaries in February of 2012, as well as five novels. His novels include The Feast of Love (2000), nominated for the National Book Award, The Soul Thief (2008), Saul and Patsy (2003), Shadow Play (1993), and First Light (1987).
Eve Bridburg is the Executive Director of Grub Street in Boston, an independent center for creative writing, dedicated to proving an innovative, rigorous, and welcoming community for writers to create their best work, find an audience, and elevate the literary arts for all.
Lee Martin is the author of the novel, The Bright Forever (Broadway; Reprint edition, April 4, 2006), a Pulitzer Prize Finalist, and three other novels, including Break the Skin (Broadway; Reprint edition, April 7, 2009). His other novels are River of Heaven (Broadway; Reprint edition, April 7, 2008) and Quakertown.(Plume, 2001).
Susan Tepper (http;//www.susantepper.com/) is the author of From the Umberplatzen, published by Wilderness Press in 2012, and Deer & Other Stories (Wilderness Press, 2009), in which most of the stories take place on Long Island or are connected to the Island, where Tepper was raised.
Okla Elliott, author of the story collection, From a Crooked Timber (Press 53, 2011), is the Illinois Distinguished Fellow at the University of Illinois, where he works in the fields of comparative literature and trauma studies.
My mother was the baseball fan, grateful for the arrival of the Mets as an expansion team in 1962 after the loss of her beloved Dodgers who left Brooklyn for Los Angeles at the end of 1957 season.
My grandparents on both sides had names from a distant past, names more likely to be found in history books than at contemporary social gatherings.
While in the military service, my father was stationed at Army Letterman Hospital in San Francisco, where both my younger sister and I were born, a year apart.
The video experience was unexpected, the actors who were supposed to play the children in the family in the group therapy session were on strike and my father was in a panic.
So, my father went to medical school, and worked as a magician on the side, which I’m sure he’d had an interest in since childhood, and to top off the act, he became a psychiatrist.
I have never been a great proponent, nor participant, of doing things for the sake of doing things under the guise that such activity is something other than it really is, and for me, at least, usually means killing time while convincing oneself whatever one happens to be doing is beneficial.
Lying sprawled on the floor between a bench and the lockers, I felt more embarrassed than anything, but instantly could see I wasn't going to ever receive any useful information from Coach Peck.
Events were out of my control. All I could do was keep swimming, and eventually, I would come up to the rocks on the shore by the cabin at Rocky Point.
A few days before my mother died, she said to me in a hoarse whisper, with sad resignation, "I don't trust, Dad," and unfortunately, she was right.
I told customer service guy there shouldn't be a problem, to which, he replied, "I'm sorry, sir, payment is being denied on your card."
I could see my side of the car was going to smash right into a telephone pole.
I do know that when I was a young child, my father was the closest I ever came to believing in a Godlike figure. The power of psychiatry was much more powerful than Christianity could ever be for me.
I am definitely a literary outsider, and as such, I’ve been able to attend AWP Conferences sort of like an anthropologist studying the natives – it was alien territory to me and I had no one to answer to or to try and impress.
Bob was a gigantic bulk of a man, his body like a perfectly proportioned concrete block, and he had one of the largest heads I'd ever seen, but it didn't seem abnormal because of his sheer size.
I was the editor of a weekly newspaper in a community of 50,000 when the governing body of the place was divided into Hatfield and McCoy factions in a zero sum game to take over the place.