Bios

Robt Ward was born in 1946 and deafened by meningitis in 1949. A southern California native, he spent three of his most formative years in Geneva, Switzerland in the late 1950's and studied too much Latin at Ecole Internationale de Geneve. Later he attended Brown University (where he studied with the poet Edwin Honig) and the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture.

Nola Garrett is Faculity Emeritus of Edinboro University of PA and presently lives in Palm Harbor, FL.  Her poems, translations, and essays have appeared in Arts Letters, Christian Century, FIELD, Georgia Review, Poetry Northwest, and Tampa Review.  Her chapbook, The Pastor's Wife Considers Pinball, won the 1998 American Poets' Prize.  Forthcoming from David Robert Books, February 2009, is The Dynamite Maker's Mistress: Variations on the Sestina Form.

Mebane Robertson’s poems have appeared in The Beloit Poetry Journal, The Journal, Blue Unicorn, The Lyric, and others.  Black Widow Press published his book Signal From Draco: New and Selected Poems in December of 2007.  He is also a rock and folk musician whose recordings can be heard on iTunes or cdbaby.com.  He is presently sweating out a Ph.D. in English Lit. at Fordham University and lives in Brooklyn with his wife and infant son.

Marilyn Taylor is the author of five collections of poetry, with a sixth forthcoming from Parallel Press in 2009. Her poems have appeared in many anthologies and journals, including Poetry, The American Scholar, The Formalist, Measure, and The Evansville Review. She was the winner of the 2005 Dogwood Prize, as well as recent contests sponsored by Passager, The Ledge, and the GSU Review. Marilyn is currently a Contributing Editor for The Writer magazine, where her articles on poetic craft appear bi-monthly.

Marcus Smith’s poetry and reviews have appeared in many journals on both sides of the Atlantic, including  Poetry Salzburg Review, Greensboro Review, Acumen, The Lyric and The Classical Outlook.  Recent publications and commendations include a “Poetry on the Lake” prize (Italy),  The Southern Poetry Review’s contest, Atlanta Review’s tenth anniversary anthology, The Thomas Hardy Society and The Ledbury Poetry Festival. He is a contributing editor to Hunger Mountain.

Lionel Willis was born in 1932 in Toronto, Canada. He taught English Literature at Ryerson Polytechnical University for 34 years, retiring in 1992. His formal verse has been appearing in little journals for the past forty years, especially since early retirement allowed him time to write and submit. His verse has appeared in Candelabrum, The Classical Outlook, Dream International Quarterly, The Lyric, The Poet's Pen, Time for Rhyme and Tucumcari Literary Review. The Plowman Ministries Inc.

John Milbury-Steen's poems have appeared in The Beloit Poetry Journal, Hellas, Blue Unicorn, Kayak, The Listening Eye, The Neovictorian/Cochlea, The Piedmont Literary Review, Scholia Satyrica and Shenandoah.  He served in the Peace Corps in Liberia, West Africa;  did a Master's in Creative Writing with Ruth Stone at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana;  worked as an artificial intelligence programmer in Computer Based Education.  He currently teaches English as a Second Language at Temple University, Philadelph

Geraldine Connolly is the author of the chapbook, The Red Room, as well as two full-length collections of poetry, Food for the Winter (Purdue) and Province of Fire (Iris). A new book, Hand of the Wind, is forthcoming from Iris Press in 2009. Her poems, reviews and essays have appeared in Chelsea, The Gettysburg Review, Poetry, Shenandoah, The Georgia Review and The Washington Post. She has taught at The Writers Center in Bethesda, Johns Hopkins and the University of Arizona Poetry Center.

Ellen Goldstein was born and raised in Virginia. Her poems have appeared in The Formalist, Measure, StorySouth, Mid-American Review, and Three Candles. She lives in eastern Massachusetts.

Cally Conan-Davies learnt a lot as a labourer, dancer, dairy farmer, model, beachcomber. She did not learn what she expected to from her time in academia, where she specialised in Modernism and Depth Psychology. She learnt most of all from mothering her daughter. Now she writes, practises bibliotherapy, and gives private tuition to  under/post-graduate students. She’s still dancing, and loves the sea,  spending as much time as she can in water – where she learns a lot.