Artist Bios – Aug. 2014
Carla Barger holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her poetry has appeared in several literary journals as well as two photography books titled Objet d’Art and Metal. She works as a full-time freelance writer and editor in Chicago.
Roy Beckemeyer is the author of “Music I Once Could Dance To: Poems,” a new book available NOW from Coal City Review Press, and coming to The Raven Book Store in Lawrence, KS, and Watermark Books and Cafe and Eighth Day Books in Wichita KS. Walter Bargen, 1st Poet Laureate of Missouri has said of the poems in this book: “…I hear a voice as uplifting and insightful as Mary Oliver’s…unique and powerful as that of Hayden Carruth.”
Chrystal Berche is a poet, artist and photographer living in North central Iowa.
Mary Huddleston lived on the Eastern Shore of Maryland for more than 30 years and recently moved to northern Baltimore County to be closer to her family. Although she usually paints from nature, she is experimenting with new materials and concepts.
S.E. Ingraham is a retired mental health consumer who pens poems from the 53rd parallel. A recent award-winning poet (1st, Tom Howard Poetry contest), she has also been published in various online and print publications. Not writing? Uber-grand-parenting, world traveling, studying writing via MOOC’S, and/or, straightening public works of arts compulsively…(note tiny carpenter’s level always at hand). More of her work may be found on any of her blogs two of which are: http://whenthepenbleeds.blogspot.ca and http://thepoet-tree-house.blogspot.ca.
Sharain Mines is owner, artist & interior designer at Green Apple Core Creations.
Simon Perchik‘s poetry has appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, The New Yorker and elsewhere.
Nicholas Power recently published ‘Melancholy Scientist’ with Tekst Editions and edits and publishes through his own Gesture Press in Toronto.
Janet Ruhe-Schoen, born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in 1950, widened her horizons to include a long residency in Latin America — Peru and Chile — as well as a sojourn on the Mescalero Apache homelands in New Mexico, travel in other parts of the Americas and in Europe and the Middle East. She currently lives in New York State. She was a free-lance journalist, specializing in investigative environmental reporting, in Chile and the U.S. for some years. Her major books to date are biographies, the most recent being Rejoice in My Gladness: The Life of Tahirih. It relates the passionate and dramatic life of Tahirih Qurratu’l-Ayn, the Iranian poet-mystic who unveiled herself before a gathering of men in 1848 and was assassinated two years later because of her continuing insistence on freedom of faith for herself, women, and humanity. Since childhood, Janet has written poetry and made visual poems, primarily multi-media collages, and currently gives that pursuit priority in her life.
CarlaJean Valluzzi is a native of beautiful western Massachusetts. She received her BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art, and her MFA in Creative Writing and Publishing Arts from the University of Baltimore. Based in Station North, she photographs using film and a camera that doesn’t make phone calls, and creates collages, hand-bound books and many other forms of paper-based ephemera under the moniker Kitchen Table Press. Visit her blog at www.imisspaperletters.com.
Peter Weltner is the author of five books of fiction, including The Risk of His Music and How the Body Prays (Graywolf Press), two collaborations with the artist Galen Garwood, two poetry chapbooks, and three full length books of poetry, most recently The Outerlands and To the Final Cinder (BrickHouse Books). He lives in San Francisco, by the ocean.
Nathan Wirth is a photographer. See more of his work at nlwirth.com.
Earle Wood grew up in Dundalk, MD with a predisposition to sensitivity and creativity. As a high school student, he studied visual arts and architecture. In college, his official major was Elementary Education, although he confesses that he spent much more time than he should have learning to play music on the guitar. Guitar playing effectively replaced all forms of visual art and has been Earle’s main medium for creativity to this day. After earning a Master’s Certificate with Berklee College of Music’s online school, Earle now teaches others how to better enjoy life with the help of some wood, frets and strings. He also writes music constantly. You can find out more about him at www.ewguitar.com.
Changming Yuan [pen name of Yuan Wumin], 8-time Pushcart nominee, grew up in rural China, began to learn the English alphabet at 19 in Shanghai, and published several monographs before moving to Canada as an international student. While pursuing his graduate studies in University of Saskatchewan, he helped establish the Saskatchewan Chinese Monthly, and served as its chief editor until 1992. Since he obtained his PhD in English, he has been tutoring in Vancouver. Changming started to write poetry in English during his first family tour to Banff in early August 2004; since mid-2005, he has had poetry appearing in nearly 900 literary journals/anthologies across 30 countries, which include Asia Literary Review, Best Canadian Poetry (2009, 2012), BestNewPoemsOnline, In Other Words, Istanbul Review, Kwani?, LiNQ, London Magazine, Paris/Atlantic, Poetry Kanto, Poetry Salzburg Review, SAND, Saraba Magazine, Taj Mahal Review, Threepenny Review, Two Thirds North and Voice Israel Poetry Anthology. On the Remembrance Day of 2013, Yuan established Poetry Pacific Press (PP Press) at http://poetrypacificpress.blogspot.ca/ in Vancouver. Blogsite:: yuanspoetry.blogspot.ca.