A.B. EMRYS has published micro-prose in Prairie Schooner, The Mississippi Review, and other journals.  She has been a finalist in the World’s Best Short Short Fiction Contest and received a Mary Roberts Rinehart Award in nonfiction.  Her work appears in the collections Air Fish: an Anthology of Speculative Fiction (Catseye), Sacred Ground: Writings about Home (Milkweed), Times of Sorrow/Times of Grace: an Anthology of Women’s  Writing on the Great Plains/High Plains (Backwaters), and How We Live Our Yoga (Beacon). Her scholarship currently appears in Storytelling: A Critical Journal of Popular Narrative and Clues, and she has written an afterword for new editions of Laura and Bedelia by Vera Caspary for the Feminist Press.  She chairs the English Department at the University of Nebraska at Kearney and teaches courses in writing and popular literature.

DAVID ALLAN EVANS was born and raised in Sioux City, Iowa, and began college on a football scholarship. He has a B.A. from Morningside College, an M.A. from the University of Iowa, and an M.F.A. from the University of Arkansas. He has won writing grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Bush Artist Foundation; he has twice been a Fulbright Scholar to China. Recently he received the 2009 Governor’s Award for Creative Distinction in the Arts. He is the author of eight collections of poems, the most recent being  The Bull Rider’s Advice: New and Selected Poems, as well as several books of prose, including a memoir about growing up in Sioux City. He has edited and co-edited several anthologies. His poems, short stories, and essays have been published in numerous magazines and journals, and in over 80 anthologies, including Shenandoah, Poetry Northwest, Southern Review, Esquire, Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature, Prairie Schooner, Heartland: Poets of the Midwest, Best Poems of 1969 (The Borestone Awards), The HBJ Treasury of Literature, Poetspeak, Imagining Home: Writing from the Midwest, The Norton Book of Sports, Motion: The Anthology of American Sports Poems, and The Poets Guide to Birds. He was named Poet Laureate of South Dakota by the governor in 2002. His poem, “Neighbors,” was the first poem to be re-printed in the popular newspaper column and website, “American Life in Poetry,” established by Ted Kooser, former U.S. Poet Laureate. Evans lives in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Dr. KATE GALE is Managing Editor of Red Hen Press, Editor of the Los Angeles Review and President of the American Composers Forum, LA.  She is author of five books of poetry (her most recent, Mating Season, Tupelo Press), a novel Lake of Fire, and Rio de Sangre, a libretto for an opera with composer Don Davis. Her current projects include a co-written libretto, Paradises Lost with Ursula K. LeGuin with composer Stephen Taylor and a libretto adapted from Kindred by Octavia Butler with composer Billy Childs. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and children.

“Teaching is about the process of getting out of the way. It’s all about getting out of the way for me. I think that if we as writers can teach ourselves to get out of the way, we can write. If you are a writer, even a young writer, the process of writing is a quiet pull, a voice, talking to you, stringing you along. Many times we let ourselves get sucked in by all the other stuff we need to do, or the nasty editor in our head who says we’re no good and that gets in the way of writing. We do need to learn to shape and craft and edit, and that’s very important too. But what a good writing teacher does is get out of the way of good writing and teach his or her students to do the same. Language wants to emerge if only we can make room for it, a place, a home.

“Regarding teaching writers what to expect from the relationship between writer and editor, here is what it’s not:  it’s not mother/daughter, father/son, therapist/client, coach/athlete, probation officer/minor offender. Ideally, it’s more like mother/midwife. Two people working together to bring the same creation to life. The editor and writer both bring their own fears, frustrations, expectations and often communication issues to the table. This conversation with an author and her editor is about how those issues can play out in a fruitful manner whether the manuscript is completely ready or not. Either way, in the end, we want a book that makes us all proud.”

STEPHANIE ELIZONDO GRIEST has mingled with the Russian Mafia, polished Chinese propaganda, and belly danced with Cuban rumba queens. These adventures inspired her memoir Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana (Villard/Random House, 2004) and guidebook 100 Places Every Woman Should Go (Travelers’ Tales, 2007). Atria/Simon & Schuster published her memoir Mexican Enough: My Life Between the Borderlines in 2008. She has also written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Latina Magazine, and the Associated Press. An avid traveler, she has explored five continents and once spent a year driving 45,000 miles  across the United States, documenting its history for a website for kids called The Odyssey. A 2005-2006 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University, she lectures and performs nationwide, and recently won the Gold Prize for Best Travel Book in the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition. Visit her website at www.aroundthebloc.com.

ANNA MONARDO’s  novel Falling In Love With Natassia, was published by Doubleday in May 2006. Her first novel, The Courtyard of Dreams (Doubleday, 1993; reprinted by iUniverse.com, 2000), has been translated into German, Norwegian, and Dutch. Her stories, essays, and poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Sun, Indiana Review, Redbook, Other Voices, Clackamas Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, McCall’s  and anthologized in A Different Plain: Contemporary Nebraska Fiction Writers (University of Nebraska Press), The Dream Book Anthology of Writing by Italian-American Women (Schocken Books) and The Good Parts: The Best Erotic Writing in Modern Fiction (Berkley Books). Her fiction has also been included in the NPR reading series, “Selected Shorts.” She is Associate Professor and Chair of the Writer’s Workshop at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where she has been awarded several University Creative Research grants. Before moving to Nebraska, Monardo taught in the MFA Program at Eastern Washington University and in various writing programs in New York City, including the Writer’s Voice of the West Side Y, New York University School of Continuing Education, and Marymount Manhattan College Courses for Adults. Originally from Pittsburgh, she received her BA from St. Mary’s College (Notre Dame, Indiana) and her MFA from Columbia University. She has also worked as an editor at McCall's, Time, and Random House. She is a 2000 and 2003 recipient of Merit Awards from the Nebraska Arts Council.

ELIZABETH POWELL’s first book of poems, The Republic of Self, won the New Issues Poetry Prize. Her recent work has appeared in Ploughshares, Missouri Review, Post Road, Alaska Quarterly Review, among others. She has received grants from the Vermont Council on the Arts, as well as a residency from Yaddo. This year her essay “Infidelities” appeared in My Mother Married Your Father, an anthology of essays on step-families, published by WW Norton. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin, Elizabeth teaches at the University of Vermont, and lives with her family in Burlington, Vermont.

KATHERINE RUSSELL RICH  is an award-winning writer and magazine editor who currently works full time as a writer. Her first book was the The Red Devil: To hell with cancer and back (Crown, 1999).   She has just finished a second book, for Houghton Mifflin. about a year she spent in India learning to speak Hindi. Tentative title: “Unspeakable: Life in Another Language,” it intertwines personal narrative from India with reporting on the neurobiology of language acquisition. Slated publication date: spring of 2009.   As a journalist, her list of recent publications includes: The New York Times, the Sunday New York Times Magazine, Vogue, the Washington Post, O magazine, Elle, British Conde Nast Traveler, NPR,  Salon. She has translated Hindi poetry for The Literary Review.  Rich has been the recipient of a number of awards and fellowships. In 2002, she was a fellow at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars and in 2001, she was a Hindi Language Fellow at the American Institute of Indian Studies in Rajastan, India. An excerpt from her forthcoming book won a New York Foundation for the Arts award for non-fiction in 2005. She has had several residencies at MacDowell and Yaddo.  She’s on the MFA faculty in non fiction in the low-residency program at Lesley College. In addition, every spring, she teaches a seminar in nonfiction to doctors at Harvard. She’s also lectured at Bennington College, the University of Chicago Medical School, Goucher College and Princeton.  In a previous life, she worked on the staff side at magazines, as an assigning editor at a range of places including GQ, Allure, Seventeen, and Real Simple. Ms. Rich is a stand-up storyteller and advisory council member at the Moth, a widely acclaimed non-profit arts organization that stages storytelling nights. One of the stories she told, “What Goes Up,” is now out on CD.

SUE WILLIAM SILVERMAN’s first memoir, Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You (University of Georgia Press), won the Association of Writers & Writing Programs award series in creative nonfiction and is in its 6th printing.  Her second memoir, Love Sick: One Woman’s Journey Through Sexual Addiction (W. W. Norton), is in production for a Lifetime Television Original Movie.  Her books have been translated into Chinese, German, Japanese, and Norwegian.  Her poetry collection is Hieroglyphics in Neon (Orchises Press).  In 2005, two of Sue’s essays won national contests: one with Hotel Amerika, the other with the Mid-American Review.  Individual essays, short stories, and poems have appeared in such places as Prairie Schooner, Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press, Redbook, Louisville Review, The Caribbean Writer, Brevity, Nebraska Review, Charleston Review, Chronicle of Higher Education, and The Writer’s Chronicle.   She is associate editor of Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction and teaches in the MFA in Writing program at  Vermont  College.  As a professional speaker, she has appeared on many nationally syndicated radio and TV programs including “Anderson Cooper 360” (CNN), “To the Contrary” (PBS), a John Stossel Special on ABC-TV, Montel Williams, and both the U. S. and Canadian Discovery Channels.  She is featured in the award-winning documentary “Pursuit of Pleasure.”   For more information please visit www.suewilliamsilverman.com

“My goal as a teacher/mentor is to assist a student in fully realizing her or his own vision in a piece of writing.  Together, we will explore a story, memoir, essay, or novel until it reveals its true intention.  When offering specific feedback, I provide line-by-line edits that note seemingly small details such as shaky grammar or awkward paragraph construction, while also considering more global issues such as metaphor, reflection, language, character development, plot, arc, and theme.  I  always applaud a student’s fine moments (this perfect metaphor, that expertly crafted sentence) as well as assist a student in developing new skills.  As writers, I think we all learn both by knowing our strengths and by exploring areas requiring additional study.  I am very respectful of student work, creating a safe environment in which to learn.

Born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, MILES WAGGENER studied Spanish and English at Northern Arizona University before earning an MFA from the University of Montana, where he received the Richard Hugo Memorial Scholarship.  His poems have appeared in such journals as Crazyhorse, the Antioch Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Green Mountains Review, Gulf Coast, the Mid-American Review, and Hayden’s Ferry Review.  He won an individual creative writing fellowship from the Arizona Commission on the Arts in 2003 and a prize from the Academy of American Poets at the University of Montana.  Before joining the faculty of the Writer’s Workshop at The University of Nebraska at Omaha, he taught creative writing and Latin American literature at Prescott College in Prescott, Arizona.  His collection Phoenix Suites won the Washington Prize and was published in 2003 by The Word Works.  He lives in Omaha with his wife and fellow poet, Megan Gannon.