Artist Bios – May 2016
Though Jeanne DeLarm-Neri has been writing poetry her entire life, she earns a living in other fields, particularly as a bookkeeper at a private school, and as a vendor of antiques. Her poems and short fiction have been published in two anthologies (In Gilded Frame, 2013, and Poems Of The Super-Moon, 2015), and several literary journals, one of which, Slipstream, nominated a poem for the Pushcart Prize. In 2014 and 2015 she was a contributor at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and worked under Ed Hirsch and David Rivard. Poems forthcoming will be published in Zingara Poet and 823 On High.
Elizabeth Downing shows her artwork online at www.lizdowningart.com.
Gail Fishman Gerwin, a Paterson, NJ, native, received her bachelor’s degree from Goucher College and her master’s degree from New York University. In 1984 she founded the Morristown, NJ, writing/editing firm inedit. Her collection Sugar and Sand was a 2010 Paterson Poetry Prize finalist; her second collection Dear Kinfolk, earned a 2013 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence. Gail also authored the plays Bella’s Family and Dropping Names, and the monologue set Women in Motion. Her poetry, book reviews, short fiction, essays, and drama appear in print and online literary journals and on stage. She is associate poetry editor of Tiferet. She facilitates writing workshops, presents readings, and participates in panels on the creative process. Gail and her husband Kenneth are parents of two daughters and grandparents of three boys and a girl. Find more of her work at www.gailfgerwin.com.
Dr. Emory D. Jones is an English teacher who has taught in Cherokee Vocational High School in Cherokee, Alabama, for one year, Northeast Alabama State Junior College for four years, Snead State Junior College in Alabama for two years, and Northeast Mississippi Community College for thirty-five years. He joined the Mississippi Poetry Society, Inc. in 1981 and has served as President of this society. He has over two hundred and thirty-five publishing credits including publication in such journals as Voices International, The White Rock Review, Free Xpressions Magazine, The Storyteller, Pasques Petals, The Pink Chameleon, and Encore: Journal of the NFSPS.
More work by Sanzi Kermes can be seen at www.sanzistudio.com.
Margo Lemieux has been an artist since the first grade when she got into trouble with her teacher for “decorating” her workbook. After earning a degree in fine arts in painting from Boston University, she worked as a graphic designer, tee-shirt artist, newspaper correspondent and columnist, children’s book author and illustrator, poet, and other interesting things. Currently she is an associate professor in the Art & Graphic Design department at Lasell College, Newton. Her thoughts express themselves through art, poetry, music, and story. Besides printmaking and artist books, she paints in oil, watercolor, and acrylic. She exhibited recently at Art Basel Miami, The Contemporary Art Center in Hanoi, Vietnam, and the Blanche Ames National. “Believe in Water,” a poetry chapbook from Finishing Line Press, was published in 2013.
Katherine Menon earned her BA from a liberal arts university called Lander, situated in the small town of Greenwood, South Carolina and set straight away doing nothing with that degree. She started writing poems and stories before she could spell. Writing has been part of her for as long as she can remember. She is now the parent of two gorgeously intelligent children who keep her on her toes and require ever-more inventive bedtime stories.
Bonnie Schupp earned her doctorate at age 60 from the University of Baltimore, two years after she retired from teaching and six years after she traveled to Japan through a teacher Fulbright program. Her writing and photography have appeared in national magazines, as well as the Baltimore Evening Sun as a weekly photo columnist. Among other places, her work is represented in the Kinsey Institute permanent collection and presently in the 2016 Then & Now exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Industry. She captured her best photograph while she was giving birth to her daughter. Learn more about her journey and projects at http://bonnieschupp.com/index.html
Christy Sheffield Sanford lives in a 1920s Florida bungalow three blocks from the St. Johns River. Originally from Atlanta, she holds an MA Degree in Creative Writing and Interarts from Antioch University. Her art work won the recent Bacopa Literary Review cover contest, and Yellow Chair chose her art for the cover of Issue 6, 2016. Christy has received an NEA in Poetry and is the author of seven small press books including The Italian Smoking Piece (Helicon Nine Editions), The Hs: the Spasms of a Requiem (Bloody Twin Press) and The Cowrie Shell Piece (Flockophobic Press). Her work has appeared in numerous literary magazines online and in print.
Martha Simons is ½ of Creative Wellness (http://www.corpcreativewellness.com), a partnership of two artists who plan to save the world through art. Martha has facilitated numerous community and corporate art projects by nurturing the creative process from initial concept to final execution. She works with diverse groups of participants to bravely try their hands at printmaking, papier-mâché, painting and fiber arts.
Ekphrastic writing by Ron Singer (www.ronsinger.net) has been published, e.g., in Art & Artists, elimae, Gravel, Marco Polo Arts Magazine, Sleet, Snow Monkey, Tree House and Word Riot. These pieces have been collected in a chapbook, From A Small Fish in the Floating World (Akorin Books, 2014). Singer’s eighth, and most recent, book, Uhuru Revisited: Interviews with Pro-Democracy Leaders (Africa World Press/Red Sea Press, Feb. 2015), is available in about 100 university and other library systems.
Jenna M. Sterner is currently a photography major at Shepherd University and will graduate in May 2017. She specializes in documentary and lifestyle photography, and has most recently been experimenting with alternative methods and unusual presentation of her images. Upon graduation, she hopes to go into photojournalism and pursue a career for a newspaper or magazine.
