Contributor Biographies

Tipton Poetry Journal – Spring 2021 ContributorBiographies

Steve Abbott was a founder in 1984 of The Poetry Forum, now one of the country’s longest-running poetry reading series, and continues as a co-host. His poems have appeared in Rattle, Connecticut Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Birmingham Poetry Review, among others. He has published five chapbooks and two full-length collections, A Green Line Between Green Fields and A Language the Image Speaks, a collection of ekphrastic poems including artwork. He also edited the poetry anthology Cap City Poets (2008), a collection of 74 central Ohio poets, as well as two anthologies for Ohio Poetry Association: Everything Stops and Listens (2013) and Eclipsing the Dark: Poems from the Sun and Moon Poetry Festival, 2014-2019 (2020). He also edits OPA's annual journal Common Threads. He lives in Columbus with his wife Melanie Boyd and Loki, World’s Best Dog. www.steveabbott.us

Karen Arnold lives and writes from Columbia, Maryland.

Carol Barrett coordinates the Creative Writing Certificate program at Union Institute & University and also teaches for Saybrook University. She lives in Oregon and has published two volumes of poetry and one of creative nonfiction. Her poems appear in JAMA, Poetry International, Nimrod, and many other venues.

Jonah Bornstein teaches creative writing at Denver University. Book publications include The Art of Waking, Treatise on Emptiness, and We Are Built of Light. Poems have most recently been published in Prairie Schooner and Turtle Island Quarterly. He directed the Ashland Writers Conference in Ashland, Oregon from 1997-2002.

Tony Brewer is executive director of the spoken word stage at the 4th Street Arts Festival in Bloomington, Indiana, and his books include: The Great American Scapegoat (2006), Little Glove in a Big Hand (2010), Hot Type Cold Read (2013), and Homunculus (2019). He also has work in the anthologies And Know This Place: Poetry of Indiana (2011) and Writers Resist: Hoosier Writers Unite (2017). Tony has been offering Poetry On Demand at coffeehouses, museums, cemeteries, churches, bars, and art and music festivals for over 10 years, and he is one-third of the poetry performance group Reservoir Dogwoods.

Kris Capezio is a novice poet out of the Boston area. This poem references a time a few years back when her family learned of another's confirmed genetically-inherited disease. Chorea means Involuntary Dance and deals directly with the loss of motor control and jerking movements of a person who is succumbing to Huntington's Disease, a neurodegenerative illness for which there is no cure.

Neil Carpathios is the author of six full-length poetry collections and various chapbooks. Currently, he is Writer-in-Residence at Malone University in Canton, Ohio.

Yuan Changming edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan in Vancouver. Credits include ten Pushcart nominations, eight poetry awards & chapbooks, as well as publications in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry & BestNewPoemsOnline, among others.

Eric Chiles lives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. After a newspaper career he began teaching writing and journalism at colleges in eastern Pennsylvania. He is the author of the chapbook Caught in Between (Desert Willow Press), and his poetry has appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, Blue Collar Review, Canary, Chiron Review, Main Street Rag, Rattle, Tar River Poetry, and elsewhere.

Cole Depuy, winner of the Negative Capability Press Spring 2020 Poetry Contest, is a Ph.D. student at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York & a recipient of the Provost’s Doctoral Summer Fellowship. His poetry is forthcoming or has appeared in The Summerset Review, Offing, Paterson Literary Review, Penn Review, Ilanot Review, & elsewhere. He is Co-Poetry Editor for Harpur Palate & instructor for the Binghamton Poetry Project.

Joanne Durham is a retired educator living on the North Carolina coast. She was a finalist for the 2021 NC Poetry Society's Laureate Award. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the anthology Spheres and Canticles, and journals including Flying South, Poetry in Plain Sight, and Your Daily Poem, among others. www.joanndurham.com Michael Estabrook has been publishing his poetry in the small press since the 1980s. He has published over 20 collections, a recent one being The Poet’s Curse, A Miscellany (The Poetry Box, 2019). He lives in Massachusetts.

Arthur Ginsberg is a neurologist and poet based in Seattle. He has studied poetry at the University of Washington and at Squaw Valley, with Galway Kinnell, Sharon Olds, and Lucille Clifton. Recent work appears in the anthologies, Blood and Bone, and Primary Care, from University of Iowa Press. He was awarded the William Stafford prize in 2003. He attained an MFA degree in creative writing in July 2010 from Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon where he studied with Dorianne Laux, Marvin Bell and David St. John. His book, The Anatomist, was published in the summer of 2013. A second book, Brain Works has just been released by David Roberts Books. He currently teaches a course, titled, “Brain and the Healing Power of Poetry” at the University of Washington.

Ellen Goldsmith is the author of Where to Look, Such Distances and No Pine Tree in This Forest Is Perfect which won the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center 1997 chapbook contest. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals. She holds an Ed.D. from Teachers College, Columbia University and is professor emeritus of The City University of New York. She lives in Cushing, Maine.

Peter Grandbois is the author of eleven books, the most recent of which is the poetry collection The Three-Legged World, published as Triptych with books by James McCorkle and Robert Miltner (Etruscan 2020). His work has appeared in over one hundred journals, including Kenyon Review, The Gettysburg Review, and Prairie Schooner. His plays have been performed in St. Louis, Columbus, Los Angeles, and New York. He is poetry editor at Boulevard magazine and teaches at Denison University in Ohio. You can find him at www.petergrandbois.com.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in the New World Writing, Dalhousie Review and Blood And Thunder.Work upcoming in Hollins Critic, Redactions and California Quarterly. John lives in Rhode Island.

John D. Groppe’s The Raid of the Grackles and Other Poems was published in 2016 by Iroquois River Press. Mr. Groppe was listed on Indiana’s bicentennial literary map 18162016 Literary Map of Indiana: 200 Years-200 Writers. He is Professor Emeritus of English at Saint Joseph’s College and a resident of Rensselaer, Indiana since 1962.

Elisabeth Harrahy’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Zone 3, Passengers Journal, Plainsongs, Ghost City Review, Pinyon, Drunk Monkeys, 3rd Wednesday Review, Bramble, Gyroscope Review, The Café Review, and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net. She is an Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.

Robert Hasselblad of Mt.Vernon, Washington, has been writing poetry for half a century. Retired from over forty years in the lumber industry, he enjoys the challenge of observing life as an estuary of trials and opportunities, and seeks to reflect that in his work. Recent poems have appeared in K’in, Avalon Literary Review, riverbabble, and Door=Jar.

Briggs Helton lives in southern Georgia where he works as a law clerk. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming in The Colorado Review, Pif Magazine, Clade Song, and elsewhere.

Katherine Hoerth is the author of five poetry collections, including the forthcoming Flare Stacks in Full Bloom (Texas Review Press, 2021). She is an assistant professor at Lamar University and editor of Lamar University Literary Press. Her writing interests include eco-poetry, feminism, and formalism. She is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and lives near Houston.

Ruth Holzer lives in Virginia and is the author of six chapbooks, most recently, Home and Away (dancing girl press), A Face in the Crowd (Kelsay Books) and Why We’re Here (Presa Press). Her poems have appeared in Blue Unicorn, Faultline, Slant, Poet Lore, Earth’s Daughters, Connecticut River Review and Plainsongs, among other journals and anthologies. She has received several Pushcart Prize nominations.

Paul Hostovsky has ten full-length collections of poetry, Sonnets from South Mountain (2001), Bending the Notes (2008), Dear Truth (2009), A Little in Love a Lot (2011), Hurt Into Beauty (2012), Naming Names (2013), Selected Poems (2014), The Bad Guys (2015), Is That What That Is (2017), and Late for the Gratitude Meeting (2019). He makes his living in Boston as a sign language interpreter at the Massachusetts Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. He lives with his wife Marlene in Medfield, Massachusetts.

Laura Anella Johnson is the author of Not Yet (Kelsay Books, 2019). Her work has appeared in a range of online and print journals and anthologies, including Literary Mama, Snakeskin, Reach of Song, and Tipton Poetry Journal. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Fairfield University and teaches English/ESOL at Fayette County High School in Georgia. Website: laurajohnsonpoet.com

Nwenna Kai is an adjunct professor at West Chester University and Community College of Philadelphia. She teaches English, creative writing, and film studies classes. Her poems and essays have appeared in Obsidian, Bum Rush The Page: A Def Poetry Jam, and Heart and Soul Magazine.

Joseph Kerschbaum’s most recent publications include Mirror Box (Main Street Rag Press, 2020) and Distant Shore of a Split Second (Louisiana Literature Press, 2018). Joseph has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Indiana Arts Commission. His work has appeared in journals such as failbetter, Panoply, Flying Island, The Battered Suitcase, Main Street Rag, and The Delinquent. Joseph lives in Bloomington, Indiana with his family.

Michael Keshigian had his fourteenth poetry collection, What To Do With Intangibles, recently released in January, 2020 by Cyberwit.net. He lives in New Hampshire and has been published in numerous national and international journals and has appeared as feature writer in twenty publications with 7 Pushcart Prize and 2 Best Of The Net nominations. (michaelkeshigian.com)

George R. Kramer hails from Canada, Colorado, Kenya, New York and Alabama, but is a long-time Virginia transplant. He is the child of refugees from Nazism and Communism. All of the above influences his writing. His work has appeared in a wide range of poetry journals. His poetry website is at https://blueguitar58.wixsite.com/website-1, with links to many of his previously published works.

Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda, Virginia Poet Laureate Emerita and abstract colorist painter, has coedited three anthologies and published nine books, including The Embrace: Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. Her poems appear in the U.S. and abroad in such journals as Nimrod, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Mid-American Review, World Poetry Yearbook, and Best of Literary Journals. She has won numerous awards, including the Art in Literature: The Mary Lynn Kotz Award, the Ellen Anderson Award, Virginia Cultural Laureate Award, Edgar Allan Poe Poetry Award, and the Alumna of the Year Award from both George Mason University and the University of Mary Washington. [www.carolynforonda.com]

Richard Krohn has lived much of his life up and down the East Coast, north and south, but with several years at various times in the Midwest and also in Central America. He presently teaches Economics and Spanish at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. In recent years his poetry has appeared in Poet Lore, Southern Poetry Review, Arts & Letters, Tar River, and Rattle, among many others.

Edward Lee's poetry, short stories, non-fiction and photography have been published in magazines in Ireland, England and America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen, Tipton Poetry Journal, The Blue Nib and Poetry Wales. His play ‘Wall’ was part of Druid Theatre’s Druid Debuts 2020. His debut poetry collection Playing Poohsticks On Ha'Penny Bridge was published in 2010. He lives in Ireland and is currently working towards a second collection. He also makes musical noise under the names Ayahuasca Collective, Orson Carroll, Lego Figures Fighting, and Pale Blond Boy. His blog/website can be found at https://edwardmlee.wordpress.com

Marianne Lyon has been a music teacher for 43 years. After teaching in Hong Kong, she returned to the Napa Valley and has been published in various literary magazines and reviews including Ravens Perch, TWJM Magazine, Earth Daughters, Tipton poetry Journal and Indiana Voice Journal. She was nominated for the Pushcart prize in 2017. She is a member of the California Writers Club and an Adjunct Professor at Touro University in California.

Jennifer L. McClellan , is an Evansville, Indiana based poet. She is published in the Tipton Poetry Journal, Flying Island, and an upcoming issue of Green Hills Literacy Lantern. She believes poetry and music are the heart of human connection and is thrilled to share her writing.

John McKernan, who grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, is now a retired comma herder / Phonics Coach after teaching 41 years at Marshall University. He lives now in Florida. His most recent book is a selected poems Resurrection of the Dust. He has published poems in The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, The New Yorker, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Journal, Antioch Review, Guernica, Field and many other magazines.

Karla Linn Merrifield lives in New York and has had 900+ poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has 14 books to her credit. Following her 2018 Psyche’s Scroll (Poetry Box Select) is the 2019 full-length book Athabaskan Fractal: Poems of the Far North from Cirque Press. She is currently at work on a poetry collection, My Body the Guitar, inspired by famous guitarists and their guitars; the book is slated to be published in December 2021 by Before Your Quiet Eyes Publications Holograph Series (Rochester, New York).

Lylanne Musselman is an award-winning poet, playwright, and visual artist, living in Indiana. Her work has appeared in Pank, Flying Island, Tipton Poetry Journal, The New Verse News, Rose Quartz Magazine, and The Ekphrastic Review, among others, and many anthologies. Musselman is the author of five chapbooks, and author of the fulllength poetry collection, It’s Not Love, Unfortunately (Chatter House Press, 2018).

Robert Okaji is a displaced Texan seeking work in Indianapolis. He once owned a bookstore, served without distinction in the U.S. Navy, and most recently bagged groceries for a living. He is the author of multiple chapbooks, including My Mother's Ghost Scrubs the Floor at 2 a.m. (winner of the 2021 Etchings Press Poetry Prize). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in North Dakota Quarterly, Vox Populi, Buddhist Poetry Review, Book of Matches and elsewhere.

Suphil Lee Park is the author of Present Tense Complex, winner of the Marystina Santiestevan Prize. She spent 9/14 of her life all over the Korean peninsula before landing in the American Northeast. She graduated from New York University with a BA in English and from the University of Texas at Austin with an MFA in Poetry. Her poems and short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, the Iowa Review, the Massachusetts Review, Writer’s Digest, and the Yale Review, among many others. You can find more about her at: https://suphil-lee-park.com/

Born in the Caribbean and raised in the U.S., Tia Paul-Louis began writing songs at age 11 then experimented with poetry during high school. She earned a BA in English/Creative Writing from the University of South Florida along with a M.F.A in Creative Writing from National University in California. Her works have appeared in literary magazines such as The Voices Project, Ethos Literary Journal, and Rabbit Catastrophe Review. Some of her favorite authors and poets include Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson, Maya Angelou and Edgar Allan Poe. Apart from writing, Paul-Louis enjoys music, photography, acting and cooking, though she mostly finds herself and others through poetry.

Mary Paulson lives in Naples, Florida. Her poems have appeared in various publications including Slow Trains, Main Street Rag, Painted Bride Quarterly, Nerve Cowboy, Thimble Lit Magazine and Arkana. Her chapbook, Paint the Window Open, is forthcoming from Alabaster Leaves Publishing, a Kelsay Books publication.

Nancy Kay Peterson’s poetry has appeared in print and online in numerous publications, most recently in HerWords, Lost Lake Folk Opera, One Sentence Poems, Spank the Carp, Steam Ticket, Tipton Poetry Journal and Three Line Poetry. From 2004-2009, she co-edited and co-published Main Channel Voices: A Dam Fine Literary Magazine (Winona, Minnesota). Finishing Line Press published her two poetry chapbooks, Belated Remembrance (2010) and Selling the Family (2021). For more information, see www.nancykaypeterson.com.

Nnadi Samuel is a black writer & graduate of English & literature from the University of Benin in Nigeria. His works have been previously published in Suburban Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Quarterly West, Blood Orange Review, The Cordite Poetry Review, Gordon Square Review, Canyon Voices, Journal Nine & elsewhere. Winner of the Canadian Open Drawer contest 2020, Splendor of Dawn Poetry Contest April 2020, and the Bkpw Poetry Workshop Contest 2021. He was shortlisted in the annual Poet's Choice award & was the second-prize winner of the EOPP 2019 contest. A longlist of the NSPP 2020 prize, & Pushcart Nominee. He is the author of Reopening of Wounds & Subject Lessons (forthcoming). He reads for U-Right Magazine. He tweets @Samuelsamba10.

M.E. Silverman lives in Georgia and is the author of The Breath before Birds Fly (2013), and The Floating Door (Glass Lyre Press). Silverman co-edited 3 anthologies including Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry and 101 Jewish Poems for the Third Millennium. Silverman's work has appeared in over 85 publications including: Crab Orchard Review, December, 32 Poems, Chicago Quarterly Review, BatterSea Review, The Southern Poetry Anthology, The Los Angeles Review, Sugar House Review, and other magazines.

Bobbi Sinha-Morey is an Oregon poet whose poetry has appeared in a wide variety of places such as Plainsongs, Pirene's Fountain, The Wayfarer, Helix Magazine, Miller's Pond, The Tau, Vita Brevis, Cascadia Rising Review, Old Red Kimono, and Woods Reader. Her books of poetry are available at Amazon.com and her work has been nominated for Best of the Net in 2015 and the Best of the Net 2018 Anthology Awards hosted by Sundress Publications. Website: http://bobbisinhamorey.wordpress.com.

Judith Skillman is a resident of Newcastle, Washington and a dual citizen of US and Canada. Her work has appeared in Cimarron Review, Threepenny Review, Zyzzyva, and other journals. She is the recipient of awards from Academy of American Poets and Artist Trust. Her new collection A Landscaped Garden for the Addict will be out from Shanti Arts Press in 2021. Visit www.judithskillman.com

Richard Spilman is the author of In the Night Speaking and of a chapbook, Suspension. His poems have appeared in many journals, including Poetry, The Southern Review, The Gettysburg Review, Gargoyle, and Image. He lives in West Virginia.

Peggy Turnbull is a retired academic librarian living in Wisconsin, whose first chapbook, The Joy of Their Holiness, was published by Kelsay Books in 2020. Her poetry has been recently published in Hummingbird, Right Hand Pointing, Mad Swirl, and As It Ought To Be.

David Vancil has lived in Terre Haute, Indiana for over 30 years, but has been writing much longer. As an Army brat, he lived in many different places and enjoyed many cultures but identifies most strongly with his Midwestern roots.

Mark Vogel lives at the back of a Blue Ridge holler with his wife, Susan Weinberg, an accomplished fiction and creative non-fiction writer, and two foster sons. He currently serves as Professor of English at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, where he co-directs the English Education Program. Poems and short stories have appeared in several dozen literary journals.