JESSE BREITE currently lives and teaches high school in Atlanta, Georgia. He was raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, and considers it his home. His work has been published in Prairie Schooner, Prick of the Spindle, Slant: A Journal of Poetry, Toad, and Main Street Rag. Jesse enjoys spending time with his wife, Emily, and attempts to write a bit each night.

PHILLIP BARRON is a poet, writer, and award winning digital media artist. He has taught philosophy at the University of North Carolina and now teaches poetry and digital humanities at the University of California, Davis. Barron is co-editor of the journal OccuPoetry and editor of The Squaw Valley Review.

MAGGIE BLAKE currently lives and teaches in Atlanta, Georgia.  She has studied at Stanford, Oxford, and Brown Universities and is now working toward her MFA in the Sewanee School of Letters program.  Previously published in The Southern Poetry Anthology Volume V: Georgia, she is thrilled to be included in this volume of Town Creek Poetry. 

Award-winning poet and editor LAUREL BLOSSOM is the author, most recently, of Degrees of Latitude, a book-length narrative poem published by Four Way Books in 2007.  Previous books of lyric poetry include Wednesday: New and Selected Poems, The Papers Said, What’s Wrong, and Any Minute. Blossom’s awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Ohio Arts Council, and the New York Foundation for the Arts.   Blossom curates an occasional poetry reading series in Edgefield, South Carolina.  Her sixth book and second book-length narrative poem, Longevity, will be published by Four Way Books in 2015.

THOM CARAWAY was born in Redlands, California, part of what is called the "Inland Empire." Later, he moved to Spokane, Washington, part of what was called, "The Inland Empire." Now Spokane is part of what is called, "The Inland Northwest." He liked the old way better. He liked being part of an empire, though the northwest is great, too. He keeps chickens, just completed a rabbit hutch, and will add a breeding pair of New Zealands to the menagerie this spring. In the fall, he will have hundreds of pounds of zucchini that he won't know what to do with. Please contact him if you would like some zucchini.

HOPE COULTER’s poetry has been published in such journals as North American Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Rattle, and Flycatcher. Last year she was a finalist for the James Hearst Poetry Prize of the North American Review, a Pushcart nominee (2008) and a runner-up for Spoon River Poetry Review’s Editors’ Prize and New Delta Review’s Matt Clark Poetry Prize (2007).  She was born in New Orleans, grew up in Alexandria, Louisiana, and received an AB from Harvard University and an MFA in creative writing from Queens University of Charlotte. She lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, and teaches creative writing at Hendrix College.

MICHAEL DOWDY grew up in Virginia’s Appalachian Mountains and currently teaches at Hunter College of the City University of New York. He has published a chapbook (The Coriolis Effect) and received a Pushcart Prize nomination. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Aethlon, Appalachian Journal, Crab Orchard Review, J Journal, Kestrel, Now & Then, Pembroke Magazine, and Still: The Journal, amongst other places. His scholarly articles on US and Latin American poetry have appeared in numerous journals, and his book, Broken Souths: Latina/o Poetic Responses to Neoliberalism and Globalization, will be published this fall by the University of Arizona Press.  

GEORGIA EDWARDS is a native Californian and graduate of Santa Clara University. She worked for 12 years as a human resources executive in New York and Los Angeles before marrying and moving to Atlanta, Georgia in 1992. She has two daughters whom she educates at home, is a devout Catholic and lay member of the Franciscan order.

RENEE EMERSON has an MFA from Boston University, teaches at Shorter University, and recently published poetry in 32 Poems, Indiana Review, Stirring, and various others.

SIERRA GOLDEN received her MFA in poetry from North Carolina State University. Winner of the program's 2012 Academy of American Poets Prize, Golden's work appears widely in literary journals such as Fourth River, Cirque, and Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, as well as place-based anthologies about the Pacific Northwest. Though she calls Washington State home, Golden has spent time in Spain, Mexico, and Argentina and spends summers in Alaska, working as a commercial fisherman.

DAVID HAVIRD has two poems forthcoming in the Sewanee Review. Others have appeared there and in Agni, The New Yorker, Poetry, Shenandoah, Southwest Review, Yale Review, and elsewhere. His book of poems, Map Home, has just been published by Texas Review Press.

MIKE JAMES’s work has been widely published in magazines throughout the country. His seventh and most recent poetry collection is Past Due Notices: Poems 1991-2011 (2012, Main Street Rag.)  After years spent in Kansas City, Missouri, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he now lives in Douglasville, Georgia, with his wife and five children.  

M.P. JONES IV is a Graduate Teaching Assistant working toward an M.A. in American Literature at Auburn University and is also Editor-in-Chief of Kudzu Review, a Southern journal of scholarly and creative ecocriticism. His poetry has appeared this past year, or is forthcoming, in Avocet, Canary, Wilderness House Literary Review, and many others; memoirs in Sleet Magazine and decomP magazinE; and he has penned book reviews for Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment and A Few Lines Magazine.

ROGER JONES teaches in the MFA program at Texas State University.  He has published poems widely in journals for the past thirty years, and has published three collections.  A collection of his haibun entitled "Goodbye" recently won the Snapshot Press's e-chapbook haibun award in the UK, and will be published online this summer.

JAKE LAWSON, a native of Eastern Tennessee, has always found inspiration in the mountains and community of the Appalachian region. While working closely with Dr. Jesse Graves at East Tennessee State University, he has developed a strong appreciation for the music and economy of regional poetry. His work will be published in the forthcoming issue of The Mockingbird, and has received an honorable mention for his poem “The Barber,” in the 2012 Old Grey Cemetery poetry contest of Knoxville, Tennessee.

DENTON LOVING’s fiction, poetry, essays and reviews have appeared in publications such as Appalachian Journal, Literal Latte, Main Street Rag and in numerous anthologies including Degrees of Elevation: Stories of Contemporary Appalachia and the forthcoming The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume VI: Tennessee. He is a second-term student in the MFA for Creative Writing program at Bennington College. Along with Darnell Arnoult, He co-directs the Mountain Heritage Literary Festival at Lincoln Memorial University. He also serves as executive editor of the university’s literary journal drafthorse.

CAROLANN MADDEN is a Navy brat, and the daughter of a Texan and a 1st generation American. She has spent much of her life between the Texas Panhandle and Northern California, and is currently an MFA candidate in Poetry at San Diego State University. She holds a Master’s in English from Boston College, and was recently chosen as a poetry finalist in the New South’s Annual Writing Contest. She has been invited to, and will attend, the Seamus Heaney Centre's Poetry Summer School in Belfast this year.

MAREN O. MITCHELL’s poems have appeared in Southern Humanities Review, The Classical Outlook, The Journal of Kentucky Studies, Wild Goose Poetry Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Appalachian Journal, The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume V: Georgia, and elsewhere. Her nonfiction book is Beat Chronic Pain, An Insider’s Guide (Line of Sight Press, 2012). She lives in the mountains of north Georgia.

SALLY STEWART MOHNEY is a Creative Writing and Art History graduate of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.  She is a recipient of the Jesse Rehder Prize--the University's most prestigious writing award.  Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in literary journals such as Boston Literary Review, Cellar Door, Moving Out and Iodine Poetry Journal, among others. Her poetry book, pale blue mercy, was published as part of the Author's Choice Chapbook Series, and is available from www.MainStreetRag.com, Author's Page.

RITA QUILLEN lives with her husband Mac on Early Autumn Farm in Scott County, southwest Virginia. She was one of six finalists for the 2012 Poet Laureate of Virginia and also received a Pushcart nomination and Best of the Net nomination for the year. Her most recent book, Her Secret Dream: New and Collected Poems received the 2008 Poetry Book of the Year from the Appalachian Writer’s Association. In addition to her other books of poems, October Dusk, and Counting the Sums, she is the author of a book of critical essays, Looking for Native Ground:  Contemporary Appalachian Poetry, and an unpublished novel entitled Hiding Ezra. Featured in literary journals such as Antietam Review, Chattahoochie Review, Roanoke Review, Appalachian Journal and many other periodicals, her work has been included in several critically acclaimed anthologies, including Blood Root: Reflections on Place by Appalachian Women Writers (UP of KY 2000); Listen Here:  Appalachian Women Writers (UP of KY 2004); Girls Like Us: 40 Extraordinary Women Celebrate Girlhood (New World Library 1999); and the Appalshop public radio series, “Tell It On The Mountain.”  Most recently, her poems are featured in the new Southern Poetry Anthology-Vol.3 published by the Texas Review Press in 2011.

ZARA RAAB’s books are Swimming the Eel (David Robert Books, 2011) and The Book of Gretel (Finishing Line Press chapbook, 2010). She is a contributing editor to Poetry Flash, and her reviews and interviews appear regularly in the San Francisco Book Review. Her poems, reviews, and essays also appear in Arts & Letters, West Branch, The Evansville Review, River Styx, Redwood Coast Review, The Dark Horse and elsewhere. She grew up in rural Northern California, and attended Mills College and the University of Michigan.

ROSEMARY ROYSTON holds an MFA in Writing from Spalding University and is a lecturer at Young Harris College. Rosemary’s poetry has been published in journals such as Southern Poetry Review, The Comstock Review, Main Street Rag, Coal Hill Review, STILL, Flycatcher, FutureCycle, and Alehouse.

M. E. SILVERMAN, editor of Blue Lyra Review, moved from New Orleans to Georgia to teach at Gordon State College. His work has appeared in over 65 publications including: Crab Orchard Review, 32 Poems, Chicago Quarterly Review, Hawai'i Pacific Review, Yellow Medicine Review, BatterSea Review, Neon, Many Mountains Moving, The Southern Poetry Anthology, The Los Angeles Review, Mizmor L'David Anthology: The Shoah, Cloudbank, The Broad River Review, Pacific Review, Because I Said So Anthology, Sugar House Review, and other magazines. M. E. Silverman was a finalist for the 2008 New Letters Poetry Award, the 2008 DeNovo Contest and the 2009 Naugatuck River Review Contest. He is working on editing a contemporary Jewish anthology with Deborah Ager forthcoming in 2013 from Continuum and he is a member of the board of 32 Poems. 

LEE SLONIMSKY’s poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, California Quarterly, The Carolina Quarterly, Connecticut Review, Measure, The New York Times, North Dakota Quarterly, Phi Kappa Phi Forum, Poetry Daily, 32 Poems, and Valparaiso Poetry Review, and has received seven Pushcart Prize nominations. His second collection of poems about the life of Pythagoras, Logician of the Wind, with cover comments from the poets Rachel Hadas and A. E. Stallings, was published this past January by Orchises Press. Slonimsky is also the co-author, along with his wife, Hammett Prize winning mystery writer Carol Goodman, of the Lee Carroll Black Swan Rising trilogy (Tor Books). The last of the trilogy, The Shape Stealer, will appear next March.

SHELBY STEPHENSON's most recent publication is Play My Music Anyhow (Finishing Line Press:  2013). His Family Matters:  Homage to July, the Slave Girl won the 2008 Bellday Poetry Prize, Allen Grossman, judge, and the 2009 Oscar Arnold Young Award from the Poetry Council of North Carolina, Jared Carter, judge.  Shelby Stephenson was editor of Pembroke Magazine, an international literary journal, from 1979 until his retirement from University of North Carolina at Pembroke in 2010.

WILLIAM KELLEY WOOLFITT teaches creative writing and literature at Lee University. He has worked as a summer camp counselor, bookseller, ballpark peanuts vendor, and teacher of computer literacy to senior citizens. He is the author of The Salvager's Arts, co-winner of the 2011 Keystone Chapbook Prize. His writings have appeared or are forthcoming in Threepenny Review, Cincinnati Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Ninth Letter, Shenandoah, Los Angeles Review, Sycamore Review, Southern Humanities Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Still: the Journal, drafthorse, Motif, and Now & Then.