Since 1989 Philip S. Bryant has taught at Gustavus Adolphus College, where he is Professor of English. His poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, The Indiana Review, The American Poetry Review, and Nimrod.  He has a chapbook, published Blue Island (Crossroads Press, 1997) and a poetry collection, Sermon on a Perfect Spring Day (New Rivers Press, 1998). His poetry has appeared in several anthologies, including Where One Voice Ends Another Begins: 150 Years of Minnesota Poetry.  Blueroad Press published his collection of jazz poems, Stompin’ at the Grand Terrace along with accompanying CD in Spring 2009.  Read more...

Susanna Childress spent the better part of her first decade in the Philippines, where her parents were missionaries. Her debut volume of poems, Jagged with Love, was selected by former US poet laureate Billy Collins for the 2005 Brittingham Prize from the University of Wisconsin Press and by the University of Southern Illinois at Carbondale for the 2006 Devil's Kitchen Literary Award for the best book of poems published in the previous year. Recently, her fiction has been selected by David James Duncan for a short story award from Ruminate Magazine. She earned a PhD in Creative Writing at Florida State University, taught as a Visiting Professor at Hope College, and has just completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship with the Lilly Fellows Program at Valparaiso University, where she was mentored by Walter Wangerin, Jr. and served as a lecturer in the Humanities and English at Christ College and the English Department. She lives with her husband in Holland, Michigan, and they are enjoying their first child, a boy, born in May.  Read more...

Barbara  Crooker’s poems appear in The Christian Science Monitor, Christian Century, Christianity and Literature, Sojourners, Windhover, The Cresset, Tiferet, and Rock & Sling.  She has published three poetry collections, Radiance, which won the 2005 Word Press First Book Award; Line Dance (Word Press, 2008), which won the 2009 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence; and More (C&R Press, 1010).  She has received three Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowships in Literature and the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award.   Visit Barbara's website here.  Read more...

Cass Dalglish’s poetry collection, Humming the Blues (Calyx, 2008), is a jazz interpretation of Sumerian cuneiform signs in Enheduanna’s Song to Inanna, (ancient Iraq, 2350 BCE).  She was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award for Sweetgrass (Lone Oak Press) and was awarded a Loft Career Enhancement Grant for Nin (Spinsters Ink, 2000).  Her animated interpretation of Enheduanna’s ancient text, “Mesopotamian Blues,” was selected for www.mnartists.org Five Minutes of Fame, and she has been invited to present her interpretation of the poem in various venues, including the British Museum. She has studied Akkadian and Sumerian cuneiform, holds an MFA from Vermont College, and a Ph.D. from the Union Institute.. A former print and television journalist, Cass is a professor of English at Augsburg College, Minneapolis.  Read more...

David Faldet is a Professor of English at his alma mater, Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, the town where he grew up.  He is in the sixth generation of his family to live in the basin of the Upper Iowa River.  In his book, Oneota Flow: The Upper Iowa River and Its People (University of Iowa, 2009), he blends history, environmental research, and personal experience to show us that taking care of the rivers around us is a necessary way to take care of our future.  He earned his M. A. at the University of Washington and his Ph.D. at the University of Iowa on a Danforth Fellowship.  He has also taught in Idaho and in England.  Much of his published writing deals with William Morris, a writer and artist who was an early environmentalist.  Click here for David's website.  Read more...

Rachel Faldet grew up in small town Wisconsin and received her Master of Arts in Writing from the University of Iowa.  She has taught writing to Luther College students for twenty years, partnered on writing projects with high school classrooms, and led writing workshops with disabled adults.  She edited the grant-funded book From My Perspective:  Essays About Disability (2009), which was featured on Iowa Public Radio's The Exchange.  As co-editor of Our Stories of Miscarriage: Healing with Words (Fairview 1997), Rachel has appeared on NBC's Today show.  Her personal essays – published in The Christian Science Monitor, Carolina Quarterly, Wapsipinicon Almanac, Iowa Woman, and Tapestry – deal with connections to other females.  She is at work on a memoir about the sister-in-law she never met in person.      Read more...

Cristy Fossum, self-published author of the Sunday by Sunday series www.sundaybysunday.com, lives in Columbia, South Carolina. Raised Methodist in Illinois, she has been a member of thirteen Lutheran congregations in Illinois, Georgia, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and South Carolina. A full-time mother and homemaker for ten years, she has since worked in public relations and in special education. Most recently, she taught at Provost Academy in South Carolina, a virtual high school. She attended Wartburg College, earned a BA from the University of Illinois in Chicago (1971), and an M.S. in special education from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville (1990).  Read more...

Katy Giebenhain edits the Poetry + Theology rubric for Seminary Ridge Review. Her MPhil is from University of Glamorgan, Wales. Her MA is from University of Baltimore. Her poems have appeared in The London Magazine, Prairie Schooner, Bordercrossing Berlin, Water~Stone Review, Hidden City Quarterly and American Life in Poetry. Her chapbook, Pretending to be Italian, is available from RockSaw Press. She lives in Pennsylvania.  Read more...

A St. Olaf grad with an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop, John Graber has published over fifty poems in national magazines, including The American Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, The Great River Review, and JAMA.  He has two chapbooks, Walking Home (Pudding House) and Only on This Planet (Parallel Press).  After his meeting with Jim Bodeen at the 2007 Lutheran Festival of Writing, Thanksgiving Dawn was published by Bodeen’s Blue Begonia Press (2008) and later nominated for the 2010 Pushcart Prize.  Graber’s voice emerges from the language, moods, and tones of scripture.  He and his wife spent six years in teaching college students in the Holden Village Christian Life Enrichment program.  Now living in Stockholm, Wisconsin, John has taught in area colleges and high schools.  He teaches a workshop in “The Writing and Repair of Poetry,” teaches confirmation, sings in the choir, and helps wash Lutheran coffee-time cups.  Read more...

A graduate of St. Olaf College and Christ Seminary-Seminex, Patrick Cabello Hansel is an ELCA pastor who has served for 25 years in bilingual multicultural inner city ministries in the Bronx, Philadelphia and Minneapolis, where he has developed arts programs for youth and adults.  He studied with Phillip Schultz, the 2008 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry, and was one of four poets in the 2008-2009 Mentor Series of the Loft in Minneapolis.  Patrick has published poetry and essays in Fire Ring Voices, Main Channel Voices, Alitcom, Turtle Quarterly, Sojourners, The Other Side, and Philly Edition ’99, the celebration of Philadelphia poets by The American Poetry Review. He is currently serializing his novella, Searching, in the monthly Alley News in Minneapolis.  He and his wife are co-pastors of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church.   Read more...

Mary Crockett Hill is the author of A Theory of Everything, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye for the Autumn House Award, and If You Return Home with Food, winner of the Bluestem Poetry Award. Her poems have been nominated for five Pushcart Awards and selected for the Best of the Net anthology. She teaches at Roanoke College in southwestern Virginia and edits the Roanoke Review.  Read more...

Diane LeBlanc is the author of two poetry chapbooks: Dancer with Good Sow (Finishing Line Press, 2008) and Hope in Zone Four (Talent House Press, 1998). Awards include literary fellowships from the Wyoming Arts Council, a Brenda Ueland Prose Prize, a Robert Penn Warren Award, and a Pushcart Prize nomination for poetry. Diane received the Bechtel Prize from Teachers & Writers Collaborative for her essay “Weaving Voices: Writing as a Working Class Daughter, Professor, and Poet.” Diane directs the writing program at St. Olaf College, where she teaches writing and women’s studies.  For more information, see LeBlanc’s website:  http://dianeleblanc.v2efoliomn.mnscu.edu/  Read more...

Thomas Maltman’s essays, poetry, and fiction have been published in many literary journals.  He has an MFA from Minnesota State University, Mankato.  His first novel, The Night Birds, won several national awards, including an Alex Award, a Spur Award, and the Friends of American Writers Literary Award. In 2009 the American Library Association chose The Night Birds as an “Outstanding Book for the College Bound."  Read more...

Mark Mustian is an author, attorney and city commissioner in Tallahassee, Florida, where he has practiced public finance law for over 25 years.  Mark’s fiction appears in such periodicals Stand Magazine, The Green Hills Literary Lantern and Opium Magazine.   His novel The Gendarme came out in 2010 (Amy Einhorn Books/G.P. Putnam’s Sons), with foreign editions in France, Greece, and Israel.  He is chair of the Lutheran Readers Project, a readers’ resource, writer connection and book club (and part of the Lutheran Writers Project), designed to put quality books into the hands and minds of Lutheran readers.  A member of St. Stephen Lutheran Church in Tallahassee, he’s taught the high school Sunday School class since 2001.  For more information, check out Mark’s website here.  Read more...

David Oppegaard is the author of the Bram Stoker-nominated The Suicide Collectors and the recently released Wormwood, Nevada.  David’s work is a blend of science fiction, literary fiction, and dark fantasy.  He holds an M.F.A. in Writing from Hamline University and a B.A. in English from St. Olaf College.  His essay “The Amnesia of the Desert” was published in the spring 2010 edition of The Nevada Review.  David lives in St. Paul, MN.  Please visit his website at www.davidoppegaard.com.  Read more...

Steven Schroeder is the co-founder, with composer Clarice Assad, of the Virtual Artists Collective (a "virtual" gathering of musicians, poets, and visual artists). His work appears in many literary journals, including Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, the Cresset, Druskininkai Poetic, The Journal of the American Medical Association, Mid-America Poetry Review, Rhino, Shichao, TriQuarterly. He has two chapbooks, Theory of Cats and Revolutionary Patience, and four full-length collections, Fallen Prose, The Imperfection of the Eye, Six Stops South, and A Dim Sum of the Day Before.  His most recent book in philosophy and religious studies is On Not Founding Rome: The Virtue of Hesitation.  He teaches at Shenzhen University (China) and in Asian Classics and in the Liberal Education for Adults program at the University of Chicago, where he received his Ph.D.  Visit Steven’s website at http://stevenschroeder.org/index.  Read more...

Brianna Van Dyke is the founder and editor-in-chief of Ruminate, a quarterly literary and arts magazine engaging the Christian faith. She has a BA from Westmont College and an MA from Colorado State University, both in English literature. Brianna has presented at writing, publishing, and editing conferences across the country and directs a national publishing internship for undergraduate and graduate English students. She lives in Fort Collins, CO, with her husband and two children and two dogs, where she dreams about documenting a pilgrimage of labyrinths and handcrafted ales. View the Ruminate website here.  Read more...

Cary Waterman is the author of four books of poems, including When I Looked Back You Were Gone, which was nominated for a Minnesota Book Award.  Her new collection, The Memory Palace, is forthcoming from Nodin Press (2011). Her poems are included in the anthologies Poets Against the War, To Sing Along the Way: Minnesota Women Poets from Pre-territorial Days to the Present, and Where One Song Ends, Another Begins: 150 Years of Minnesota Poetry. She has received The Common Ground poetry award (2009), as well as grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Bush Foundation.  She has had residencies at the MacDowell Colony and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland. Cary currently teaches creative writing at Augsburg College in Minneapolis.  Read more...

Though born and raised on the Big Dry of eastern Montana, Joe Wilkins lives now with his wife and son in north Iowa, where he teaches writing at Waldorf College. He is the author Killing the Murnion Dogs (forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press) and Ragged Point Road (Main Street Rag 2006), and his work appears in the Georgia Review, the Southern Review, theSun, Orion, Slate, and Best New Poets 2006 and 2009, among other venues. A National Magazine Award Finalist, he is the 2009 recipient of the Richard J. Margolis Award of Blue Mountain Center, which goes to “a promising new journalist or essayist whose work combines warmth, humor, wisdom and concern with social justice.”  For more information, check out Joe’s website:  http://joewilkins.org/.  Read more...

Vincent Wixon has three books of poems, including The Square Grove (Traprock Books, 2006), and most recently, Blue Moon (Wordcraft of Oregon). He is co-producer of documentary films on William Stafford and former Oregon Poet Laureate Lawson Inada. His work in the William Stafford Archives in Portland includes co-editing two Stafford books on writing for the University of Michigan’s Poets on Poetry Series, and choosing poems for Stafford’s selected poems. Wixon is retired from teaching high school English and Creative Writing in Southern Oregon, where he was named Oregon Teacher of the Year (1988).  In 1996 he was awarded a Luther College Distinguished Service Award.  Wixon and his wife Patty live in Ashland, Oregon, where he hits fungoes and serves as official scorekeeper for the high school baseball team.  Read more...