Maggie Cleveland
Hailing from the seacoast town of Fairhaven, Maggie Cleveland works as a writer in the elevator industry and lives as a proud mama of two fierce little girls. She’s the director of the Whaling City Review LIVE poetry series and the author of The Kids Ate My Homework: A New Bedford Area Resource Guide for Adult Students with Children (2008). Her poems have been published in qarrtsiluni,the Newport Review, Amerarcana: A Bird & Beckett Review, Out of Our, Flying Fish, Elephant, Wallet Scrap, and …like this. Maggie holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College in Plainfield, VT.
Patrick Donnelly
Patrick Donnelly is director of the Advanced Seminar, one of three summer programs at The Frost Place (www.frostplace.org), a poetry conference center at Robert Frost’s old homestead in Franconia, NH. Donnelly is the author of two books of poetry, and is an associate editor of Poetry International. Website: http://web.me.com/patricksdonnelly
Rhina P. Espaillat
Rhina P. Espaillat has published poems, essays, shortstories and translations in numerous magazines and over fifty anthologies, in both English and her native Spanish, as well as three chapbooks and eight
full-length books, including three in bilingual format. Her most recent are a poetry collection in English, Her Place in These Designs (Truman State University Press, Kirksville, 2008), and a bilingual collection of her short stories, El olor de la memoria/The Scent of Memory (Ediciones CEDIBIL, Santo Domingo,
D. R., 2007).
Her honors include the Wilbur Award, the T. S. Eliot Prize in Poetry, the Robert Frost “Tree at My Window” Award for Translation, the May Sarton Award, a Lifetime Achievement in the Arts Award from Salem State College, and several prizes from the Dominican Republic’s Ministry of Culture.
Michelle Gillett
Michelle Gillett has won poetry awards from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and published work in numerous literary magazines. She is the author of Blinding the Goldfinches, winner of the Backwaters Press Poetry Prize, published in 2005; a chapbook, Rock &Spindle (Mad River Press), and The Green Cottage, winner of The Ledge 2010 Poetry Chapbook competition, out this fall. She received an MFA from Warren Wilson College. A regular op ed columnist for The Berkshire Eagle, writing workshop teacher and partner in g + r editing writing and book development, she lives in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
Barry Hellman
Barry Hellman is a poet and clinical psychologist, hosts The Chapel In The Pines Poetry Series in Eastham, Co-hosts the Poets’ Corner Open Mic at The Cultural Center Of Cape Cod in S. Yarmouth, conducts workshops on “Writing Poems About Family, Friends, Lovers, and Others”, and publishes a website at http://home.comcast.net/~bmhellman which provides information about poetry events on Cape Cod and other material of interest to poets. His poems have appeared in journals, anthologies, and broadsides. His forthcoming chapbook, The King of Newark, will be released by Finishing Line Press of Georgetown, KY in November, 2011.
Jamaica Pond Poets
Jamaica Pond Poets is a collaborative poetry workshop that meets every Saturday morning in the Boston, Massachusetts neighborhood of Jamaica Plain, to creatively comment on one another’s poems. JPP has been running constantly for 17 years. As of summer, 2011, members of JPP include Dorothy Derifield, Carolyn Gregory, Holly Guran, Audrey Henderson, Susanna Kittredge, Alice Kociemba, Dorian Kotsiopoulos, Jim LaFond-Lewis, Jennifer Markell, Sandra Storey, and Gary Whited.
Joan Houlihan
Joan Houlihan’s most recent book of poetry, The Us, was named a “must read” book of 2009 by the Massachusetts Center for the Book. She is also author of The Mending Worm, winner of the Green Rose Award from New Issues Press, and Hand-Held Executions: Poems and Essays. Her critical essays on contemporary poetry are archived online at Bostoncomment.com, and she is managing editor of the Contemporary Poetry Review. Her work has appeared in many journals and magazines and has been anthologized in The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries (University of Iowa Press) and The Book of Irish-American Poetry–Eighteenth Century to Present (University of Notre Dame Press). Houlihan is founding director of the Concord Poetry Center and the Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference. She has taught at Columbia University, Emerson College, and others, and is on the faculty of Lesley University’s Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Susan Kan
Susan Kan is founder and director of Perugia Press, a nonprofit, independent literary press located in Florence, Massachusetts. Prior to starting the press in 1997, Susan earned her MFA in creative writing from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. She has been reading poetry since she could read Dr. Seuss books, and although once in a while she tries to write a poem, she enjoys reading them far more. Susan also offers private manuscript reviews. See www.perugiapress.com. Susan Kan is founder and director of Perugia Press, a nonprofit, independent literary press located in Florence, Massachusetts. Prior to starting the press in 1997, Susan earned her MFA in creative writing from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. She has been reading poetry since she could read Dr. Seuss books, and although once in a while she tries to write a poem, she enjoys reading them far more. Susan also offers private manuscript reviews. See www.perugiapress.com.
Alice Kociemba
Alice Kociemba is the director of Calliope – Poetry Readings at West Falmouth Library. www.calliopepoetryseries.com. She facilitates a monthly poetry book discussion group at the Falmouth Public Library, an outgrowth of “What’s Falmouth Reading?” selection of the Favorite Poems project in 2009. She is the author of a chapbook Death of Teaticket Hardware (2010). Her recent poems have appeared in the Atlanta Review, Off the Coast, Roanoke Review, Salamander, Slant among other journals. Alice is a member of the Advisory Board of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival and the Jamaica Pond Poets.
Irene Koronas
Irene Koronas is the poetry editor for Wilderness House Literary Review. Her poetry has appeared in many publications, on line journals and anthologies. With two full length books, Self Portrait Drawn From any,’Ibbetson Street Press, 2007, Pentakomo Cyprus, Cervana Barva Press 2009. Her most recent chapbooks, Zero Boundaries, Cervana Barva Press, 2008 and Emily Dickinson, Propaganda Press, 2010. She is also a member of Bagel with the Bards, which meets Saturday mornings in Davis Square at Au Bon Pain. Bagel Bards is a community of writers who exchange literary information.
Thomas Libby
Jacquelyn Malone
Jacquelyn Malone has been a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship grant in poetry. Her work has appeared in Poetry Magazine, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cimarron Review, Cortland Review, Ploughshares, and Poetry Northwest. The poem published in the Beloit Journal was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. One of the poems published in Poetry was featured on the website Poetry Daily. Her chapbook All Waters Run to Lethe was published by Finishing Line Press this summer.
Don McLagan
Don McLagan writes and resides in Sudbury and Chappaquiddick Massachusetts. He is a member of the Concord Poetry Center and its weekly workshop, and a member of the Board of MassPoetry.org.
Lisa Olstein
Lisa Olstein is the author of Radio Crackling, Radio Gone (Copper Canyon Press, 2006), winner of the Hayden Carruth Award, and Lost Alphabet (Copper Canyon Press, 2009), named one of the nine best poetry books of 2009 by Library Journal. Her third collection, Little Stranger, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon in 2013. Cold Satellite, an album of songs based on her poems and lyrics, was released by singer-songwriter Jeffrey Foucault in fall 2010 and was ranked #1 on Greil Marcus’ Real Life Rock Top Ten list in The Believer (February 2011). She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and Centrum. Her poems have appeared in many literary journals. She is a contributing editor of jubilat. With Dara Wier and Noy Holland she co-founded the Juniper Initiative for Literary Arts & Action at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she is Associate Director of MFA Program for Poets and Writers.
Carla Panciera
Carla Panciera has published fiction, poetry and memoir in several journals including The Chattahoochee Review, The New England Review, Painted Bride and Nimrod. Her first book of poetry, One of the Cimalores received the 2004 Cider Press Book Award. Her second volume of poetry, No Day, No Dusk, No Love, was awarded the 2010 Bordighera Poetry Prize. She lives in Rowley, MA, and teaches high school English.
Paul Richmond
Paul Richmond has been an artist and performer for more then 30 years. Paul remembers not knowing what to write, just knowing he wanted to write which led to many years of filling journals. He wrote or co-wrote scripts for solo, duet, and group performance pieces. He is HumanErrorPublishing.com, organizing two monthly Word, events and three annual Word festivals in Western MA and helps others publish their work. Paul has two books out No Guarantees – Adjust and Continue and Ready or Not – Living in the Break Down Lane with a third coming out soon.
M.A. Schorr
M.A. Schorr serves as the Executive Director of the Robert Frost Foundation in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and teaches American Literature at Cambridge College in Lawrence. At last year’s Mass Poetry Festival he presented sonnets from Heart’s Ladder,his collection of 40 sonnetsPOETRY:The Art of Words [monthly] and The Poetry Showcase [yearly]. The Book of Arrows, the poetry of Mike Amado, as edited by Scully and Nancy Brady ,. A new collection, Recovery Renga: 77 Dream Songs describes his return from a near-death experience this past summer.
Jack Scully
Jack Scully is the co-founder of two ongoing poetry venues in Plymouth, MA. , POETRY:The Art of Words [monthly] and The Poetry Showcase [yearly]. The Book of Arrows, the poetry of Mike Amado, as edited by Scully and Nancy Brady Cunningham was released in August 2011. He currently serves as the literary executor of Amado’s poetry. He is the unofficial photographer of numerous poetry venues, South of Boston Poetry Trail is a monthly newsletter he pens.
J. D. Scrimgeour
J.D. Scrimgeour is the author of the poetry collection,The Last Miles, and Themes For English B: A Professor’s Education In and Out of Class,which won the AWP award in Creative Nonfiction in 2005. In 2010, under the name “Confluence,” he and musician Philip Swanson released a CD of poetry and music with MSR Classics,Ogunquit & Other Works.
He teaches at Salem State University and is the founder and director of the Salem Poetry Seminar, a summer program for students at public colleges and universities in the commonwealth.
David Surette
David R. Surette’s new book of poetry is The Immaculate Conception Mothers‘ Club. He is the author of two other collections: Young Gentlemen’s School and Easy to Keep, Hard to Keep In. His poems have been published in literary journals such as Peregrine, Off the Coast, and Salamander and appear in the anthologies French Connections: A Gathering of Franco-American Poets and Cadence of Hooves: A Celebration of Horses. He has been a co-host of Poetribe, a contributing editor at Salamander, an instructor at the Cape Cod Writers’ Conference, and a contributor at theBread Loaf Writing Conference.
Mark Wagner
Musician and writer Mark Wagner has kept bread on the table by teaching writing and literature at the college level, most recently at Worcester State University, where this year he is also doing some organizing as Director of the Center for Service Learning and Civic Engagement. . . . His published works include A Cabin in a Field (Mellen Poetry Press, 2001), Silkheads (Homestead, 1999), and The Immediate Field, A Brief History of the Communicative Body (Verlag-Springer, 2010). This year he is celebrating the publication of Homebuilding (Finishing Line Press), a chapbook about his continued work to build a sustainable micro-farm where he lives with Monica Elefterion and their son Myles (now12).
Kris Weinrich
Kris Weinrich grew up in Stony Point, NY. He moved to southeastern Massachusetts at the age of 19 and graduated from Emerson College in Dec. ’02 with a BA in Audio Engineering and a minor in Literature. Since 2003 he has read at various open mics throughout southeastern Mass and is currently one of the Poetry Workshop facilitators for the Brockton Public Library Poetry Series. His first chapbook of poems Threshold was printed in 2007. His upcoming collection is titled Between Streetlights And Stars. You can follow Kris Weinrich on Twitter and read his blog on Tumblr,
