JEFFREY ALFIER (California) won the 2014 Kithara Book Prize for his poetry collection, Idyll for a Vanishing River. He is also author of The Wolf Yearling, The Storm Petrel and The Red Stag at Carrbridge (2016). His work has appeared recently in Southern Poetry Review, Hiram Poetry Review and Poetry Ireland Review. He is founder and co-editor of Blue Horse Press and San Pedro River Review.
CÉCILE BARLIER (California) was born in France and has lived in the United States. Two of her stories, “A Gypsy’s Book of Revelations” and “Forgetting” have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her work is featured or is forthcoming in Amarillo Bay, Bacopa Literary Review (first place for fiction, 2012), Cerise Press, Clare Literary Journal, Crack The Spine, The Emerson Review, Knee-Jerk, The Lindenwood Review, New Delta Review, The Penmen Review, Saint Ann's Review, Serving House Journal, Sou’wester, The Tower Journal and Valparaiso Fiction Review.
JOHN BENNER’s (Virginia) fiction appears in The Penmen Review and Diverse Voices Quarterly. His articles and essays have been published in The Washington Post and other newspapers. A 25-year journalism career and the ascendance of everyday celebrity left him just jaded enough to write this story.
LAURA BERNSTEIN-MACHLAY (Michigan) is an instructor of literature and Creative Writing at The College for Creative Studies, in Detroit, where she lives. Her poems and creative nonfiction have appeared in numerous journals including Michigan Quarterly Review, New Madrid, Concho River Review, Oyez, Redivider, and upstreet. She has work forthcoming in The American Scholar, Soundings East, and Moon City Review.
MICHELLE BROOKS (Michigan) has published her work in Threepenny Review, Iowa Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, and elsewhere. Her poetry collection, Make Yourself Small, was published by Backwaters Press. A native Texan, she has spent much of her adult life in Detroit, her favorite city, and is at work on a novel.
JOHN SCOTT DEWEY (Maryland) is a fiction writer, poet, and middle school English teacher on the Eastern Shore. He received his MA in writing from Johns Hopkins University. His flash fiction has been featured in Fjords Review and The Wilderness House Literary Review. He tweets about literature, education, and politics from his Twitter handle @eweyD.
SOLVEIG EGGERZ (Virginia) is the author of the award-winning novel, Seal Woman, published by Unbridled Books. A native of Iceland, she teaches memoir and personal stories at the Writer’s Center, in Bethesda, MD. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Catholic University of America. As a storyteller, she has worked with homeless women, and performed in local venues. Website: www.solveigeggerz.com.
VANYA ERICKSON (California) is a veteran writing and performing arts teacher and has spent her life helping children stand up and be counted. She bears witness to the transformative power of words on a daily basis. Her work has appeared in Oxford Magazine, Gulf Stream Literary Magazine, Evening Street Review, and the upcoming anthology, Magic Of Memoir.
BARBARA ESSTMAN (Virginia) is a creative writing teacher and developmental editor who works with individual clients. Her novels, The Other Anna and Night Ride Home were published by Harcourt Brace, Harper Collins, and numerous foreign presses such as Bertelsmann, and they were adapted for TV by Hallmark Productions. She is a MFA, NEA fellow, Pushcart nominee, and Redbook award winner.
DANIEL M. FORD (Delaware) is a poet and novelist from Baltimore, living in Delaware. As a poet, his work has appeared in Soundings Review, Phoebe, Floorboard Review, The Cossack, and Vending Machine Press. His first novel, Ordination: Book I of the Paladin Trilogy was published by SFWP in June 2016. He can be found at www.danielmford.com or on Twitter @soundingline.
MICHAEL KEENAN GUTIERREZ (North Carolina) is the author of The Trench Angel (Leapfrog Press), a finalist for the James Jones First Novel prize. His work has been published in The Collagist, Scarab, Public Books, We’re History, The Pisgah Review, Untoward, The Boiler, and Crossborder. He lives with his wife in Chapel Hill where he teaches writing at the University of North Carolina.
MARY LOUISE KIERNAN HAGERDON (New York) is a former copywriter, associate editor, and reporter with poems published in Pudding, ArtSpace, Hudson Valley Echoes and essays in The New York Times and Catskill Country Magazine. Winner of the 2015 Arizona State University/Tempe Library Poetry Writing Contest, she has been privileged to workshop her poetry under the late Lucille Clifton, Peg Boyers, and Sharon Olds.
DAVID A. HARPER (Maryland) is Associate Professor of English at Chesapeake College. He grew up on a farm in Caroline County, MD, where he now resides with his wife and children. His teaching emphasizes Eastern Shore writers and culture and often incorporates outdoor adventure experiences in the Chesapeake Bay region. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Biblical Studies, focusing on the human relationship with wilderness.
VIRGINIA HARTMAN's (Maryland) writing has appeared in The Hudson Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Potomac Review, and Gravity Dancers, among others. She has experienced the magical atmosphere of both the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Sewanee Writer’s Conference, and has enjoyed teaching at American University, George Washington University, the Writer’s Center, and Miriam’s Kitchen. Website: virginiahartman.com.
SHERRI H. HOFFMAN (Vancouver, Washington) is a working writer, graphic designer, and sports fanatic. She holds an MFA from Pacific University and is a PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in Creative Writing. Publications include december, PANK, Etchings, and Cimarron Review. Sherri teaches creative writing and loves birds, her rambunctious family, and a good cup of coffee. Website: www.sherrihhoffman.com.
JAMES KEEGAN (Delaware) is an actor, who, for over a decade, has been a member of the resident acting company at The American Shakespeare Center's Blackfriars Playhouse, performing some 80 roles in more than 60 productions. Favorite roles include Macbeth, Falstaff, Iago, King Lear, Mark Antony, Shylock, Leontes, Prospero, and Titus Andronicus. He is an associate professor of English and theater at the University of Delaware, in Georgetown. His poems, essays, and short fiction have appeared in Poet Lore, Southern Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, and The Best Small Fictions of 2015. He lives in Milton, Delaware.
LEN KRISAK’s (Massachusetts) most recent books are Afterimage (poems) and Rilke's New Poems (a complete translation). With work in the Hudson Review, Sewanee Review, PN, Southwest Review, and Antioch Review, he is the recipient of the Richard Wilbur and Robert Frost Prizes, and a four-time champion on Jeopardy!
TOM LARSEN (Delaware) has been writing fiction for 25 years. His work has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories, Newsday, Puerto del Sol, and the LA Review. His novels FLAWED and INTO THE FIRE are available through Amazon. Tom lives with his wife and dog in Milton, Delaware on the Delmarva Peninsula.
PETER LEIGHT (Massachusetts) has previously published poems in Paris Review, AGNI, Antioch Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Matter, and other magazines. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.
DESIRÉE MAGNEY (Maryland), a writer and attorney, has published in bioStories, Bethesda Magazine, Washingtonian Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine, The Writer’s Center – Art Begins with a Story, and Jellyfish Whispers. She is a board member and blogger for Little Patuxent Review. She has two children, Daniel and Nicole, and lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland with her husband, John, and dog, Tucker.
GEORGE MERRILL (Maryland) took the cover photograph, “Significant Other.” Since processing his first black and white photographs in 1947, his images have been exhibited at Fells Point, in Baltimore, the Government House, in Annapolis, New York City, Maryknoll Center, Maryknoll, New York, and the Academy Art Museum, in Easton. He is Nonfiction Co-Editor of The Delmarva Review. George’s essays are broadcast on Delmarva Public Radio and appear weekly in the Talbot Spy.
MARGOT MILLER (Maryland) earned a mid-life PhD in French literature. She also holds an advanced degree in counseling. Miller published a dozen scholarly articles as well as her dissertation before turning to fiction, publishing several dozen short stories. She was the Fiction Editor for The Delmarva Review from 2008-2013. She teaches a contemporary literature class for IAL at Chesapeake College and is learning Italian.
DEVON MILLER-DUGGAN (Delaware) has published poems in Rattle, Shenandoah, Margie, Christianity and Literature, The Indiana Review, and Gargoyle. She teaches Creative Writing at the University of Delaware. Her books include Pinning the Bird to the Wall (Tres Chicas Books, 2008) and a chapbook of poems about angels, Neither Prayer, Nor Bird (Finishing Line Press, 2013).
JED MYERS (Washington) poetry collections include Watching the Perseids (winner of the 2013 Sacramento Poetry Center Book Award) and the chapbook The Nameless (Finishing Line Press). His work has received Southern Indiana Review’s Editors’ Award, the Literal Latte Poetry Award, Blue Lyra Review’s Longish Poem Award, two Pushcart nominations, and, in the UK, a Forward Prize nomination. His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Nimrod, Crab Orchard Review, I-70 Review, Harpur Palate, Crab Creek Review, The Briar Cliff Review, Atlanta Review, The New Guard, and elsewhere. He lives in Seattle. Website: www.jedmyers.com.
SUZANNE PARKER (New York) is a winner of the Kinereth Gensler Book Award for her poetry collection Viral (Alice James Books, 2013), which was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and was on the National Library Association’s Over the Rainbow List of recommended books for 2013. She is also a winner of Tupelo Press’s Sunken Garden Chapbook Award for her collection Feed (summer 2016). Her work has recently appeared/is forthcoming in Passages North, Notre Dame Review, Diode, Cimarron Review, and Hunger Mountain. Suzanne is a poetry editor at MEAD: A Magazine of Literature and Libations. She directs the creative writing program at Brookdale Community College, in NJ.
DOROTHY PLACE (California) lives and writes in Davis, California. Since 2005, nine of her short stories have been published in literary journals and magazines. Her debut literary novel, The Heart To Kill, is being published by SFA Press in the fall. She is preparing a short story collection for publication and working on her second novel, The Search for Yetta.
MELISSA REDDISH (Maryland) is Fiction Co-Editor of the Delmarva Review. She graduated with an MFA from American University in 2008. Her work has appeared in several journals, including Northwind, Prick of the Spindle, and Gargoyle. She has a book of short stories entitled My Father is an Angry Storm Cloud (Tailwinds Press, 2015) and a novella-in-flashes entitled Girl & Flame (Conium Press, 2016).
DAVID SALNER (Maryland) worked for 25 years as an iron ore miner, steelworker, and general laborer. His writing has appeared in Threepenny Review, Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Salmagundi, River Styx, and many other magazines. His third book, Blue Morning Light (2016, Pond Road Press), features poems on the paintings of American artist George Bellows. Website: www.DSalner.wix.com/salner.
SHARON SCHOLL (Florida) is professor emerita from Jacksonville University where she taught the western humanities and non-western studies (Africa, Japan, etc). A professional musician, she maintains an active performance schedule and hosts a website, freeprintmusic.com, which donates choral music to small choirs. Her chapbook, Summer's Child, was published in 2016 (Finishing Line Press).
BETH SHERMAN (New York) has an MFA in creative writing from Queens College, where she teaches in the English department. Her fiction has been published in Portland Review, Black Fox Literary Magazine, and KYSO and is forthcoming in Blue Lyra Review, Sandy River Review and Joyce Quarterly. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2016. She has also written five mystery novels (Avon Books, Harper Collins).
CATHERINE SIMPSON (California) is a cellist who lives in Santa Barbara. She has been published in Big River Poetry Review, Right Hand Pointing, Spectrum, Step Away Magazine, Into the Teeth of the Wind, Poydras Review, and Splash of Red, among others.
LEE SLATER (Virginia) is a writer who teaches and directs the world literature program for the Department of World Languages and Cultures at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. She translates African poetry written in French, and greatly enjoys working with young writers and spoken word artists in Kigali, Rwanda.
JONAH SMITH-BARTLETT (New York) is an ordained American Baptist minister and Californian turned New Yorker He loves to write about small-city America and is influenced by John Updike and Philip Roth. His work has appeared or is upcoming in Gemini Magazine, 10,000 Tons of Black Ink, Sliver of Stone, Whistling Shade, Pamplemousse, and Forge Journal.
GERALD F. SWEENEY (Maryland), of Trappe, is the Review’s Book Section Editor and is past President of the Eastern Shore Writers Association. He is a veteran and a graduate of University of Michigan. A retired NY magazine executive, he is completing the final novel in a seven-book series called The Columbiad that follows one family through the 20th Century. The novels include: Eagles Rising, First Lights, Crashing into Sunrise, A Tournament of a Distinguished White Order, Yo Columbia! and Wizard Ho!. Web: www.GeraldFSweeney.com.
MICHELE L. WHITNEY (Illinois) is a writer, musician, and teacher from the South Side of Chicago. She holds an MBA as well as a MS in Human Services. Her work has appeared in the Chicago Sun Times, and her creative nonfiction is published in The Griffin, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, r.kv.r.y, Diverse Arts Project, and Diverse Voices Quarterly. Website: www.michelewhitney.net
Helen Wickes (California), worked for many years as a psychotherapist and received an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars in 2002. Glass Lyre Press published her second and third books—The Moon Over Zabriskie and Dowser's Apprentice—in 2014. Sixteen Rivers Press published The World As You Left It in 2015.
WILSON WYATT, JR. (Maryland), Executive Editor of The Delmarva Review, has published fiction and nonfiction in journals, magazines and newspapers. He was a reporter at The Courier-Journal. He later became the senior corporate communications officer for BATUS (UK), PNC Financial Services Corp., and The Travelers Insurance Companies. As a photographer, he published Yosemite–Catching the Light, and Chesapeake Views–Catching the Light.
Website: wilsonwyattjr.com.
