Lauri Anderson, English Department Chair at Finlandia University in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, has published eight books of fiction, including Hunting Hemingway’s Trout. Heikki Heikkinen and Other Stories of Upper Peninsula Finns, Misery Bay, Back to Misery Bay, Impressions of Arvo Laurila, Children of the Kalevala, and Small Winter Wars.  His latest book, Mosquito Conversations, was a finalist for the Maria Thomas Award and was selected for a GobalTeach.Net listing. His books’ presses include Atheneum and North Star Press, and his books have been nationally reviewed and studied at universities by students and scholars.  He has received nine grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and has been a featured author on Finnish National Television.  Read more...

Nancy K. Barry is a professor of English and Assistant Dean at Luther College, where she teaches courses on creative nonfiction and women’s literature.  For many years, she has taught essays and memoir writing at the University of Iowa Summer Writing Festival.  Her one-act play, “Lessons from Cancer College,” premiered in 2010, and details her experience of sustaining her work as a writing teacher while undergoing treatment for cancer.  Her essays have appeared in Iowa Woman, the Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Sun.   Read more...

Jill Peláez Baumgaerter is the author of Finding Cuba (Chimney Hill Press, 2001), a collection of poems that explores her Cuban ancestry through the themes of political and theological exile and separation.  She is the author of three poetry chapbooks:  Leaving Eden (White Eagle Coffee Store Press, 1995), Namings (Franciscan University Press, 1999) and My Father’s Bones (Finishing Line Press, forthcoming 2006); a textbook/anthology, Poetry (HBJ, 1990); and Flannery O’Connor:  A Proper Scaring (Cornerstone Press, 1998), in addition to over forty essays.  She has been a Fulbright scholar, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and is the winner of the White Eagle Coffee Store Press’s poetry chapbook contest, the Goodman Award, an Illinois Arts Council Award, and the Illinois Prize of the Rock River Poetry Contest.  She is past president of the Conference on Christianity and Literature and serves as poetry editor of The Christian Century.  Currently she is Professor of English and Dean of Humanities and Theological Studies at Wheaton College.  View Jill's website here.  Read more...

Jill Alexander Essbaum is the author of several collections of poetry, including the 1999 Bakeless Prize winner, Heaven (UPNE 2000), Harlot (No Tell Books, 2007), and Necropolis (NeoNuma Arts, 2008).  Her most recent publication is a single-poem chapbook, The Devastation (Cooper Dillon Books, 2009).  A former NEA Literature Fellow, she has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize four times, and her poem “Apologia” (originally published in Image) is forthcoming in The Best American Poetry 2010.  Jill teaches in the UCR-Palm Desert Low Residency MFA program and lives in Austin, TX.  Read more...

Gary Fincke is the Writers Institute Director, as well as the Charles Degenstein Professor of English and Creative Writing, at Susquehanna University.  Winner of the 2003 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and the 2003 Ohio State University/The Journal Poetry Prize for recent collections of stories and poems, he has published twenty-two books of poetry, short fiction, and nonfiction, most recently The Canals of Mars (memoir, Michigan State, 2010), The Fire Landscape (poems, Arkansas, 2008), Sorry I Worried You (stories, Georgia, 2004), and Amp'd: A Father's Backstage Pass, a nonfiction account of his son's life as a rock guitarist in the band Breaking Benjamin (Michigan State, 2004). Winner of the Bess Hokin Prize from Poetry Magazine,the Rose Lefcowitz Prize from Poet Lore, and the George Garrett Fiction Prize, Gary has twice been awarded Pushcart Prizes for his work, recognized by Best American Stories, and cited nine times in the past eleven years for a "Notable Essay" in Best American Essays.  View Gary's website here.  Read more...

Carol Gilbertson’s poems have appeared in various journals including The MacGuffin, Christian Century, Pebble Lake Review, and the radio program Voices from the Prairie.  Her poem “Hercules” won the 2006 Flyway Sweet Corn Prize for Poetry, “On the Train from Krakow” was recently given honorable mention in The MacGuffin Poet Hunt, and other poems have earned contest honors.  She has written three hymn texts with different composers.  Her poem “Night Rising” inspired composer Philip Wharton’s composition “Nightrising” for flute, oboe, and strings, and she wrote the libretto for “Birdsongs,” a song cycle for mezzo-soprano by Wharton.  She co-edited the essay collection Translucence:  Religion, the Arts, and Imagination (Fortress, 2004).  A Professor of English at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, she has been the Dennis M. Jones Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Humanities, and she has directed the Luther Poetry Project and a study abroad program in Nottingham, England.   Read more...

Gracia Grindal, Professor of Rhetoric at Luther Seminary, taught English at Luther College from 1968 to 1984.  She has published many articles on the history of Scandinavian-American Lutheran hymnody, and her hymn texts and translations appear in hymnals of several mainline churches. Her books include A Treasury of Faith A B C Hymns on the Revised Common Lectionary (2006, 2008, 2009), Hymns Of Grace (2002), and We Are One in Christ (1997).  Her poetry collections include A Revelry of Harvest (2002), Sketches Against the Dark (1982), and Pulpit Rock (1976).  In 2007 Gracia provided a commentary on original sketches by Linka Preus for the new translation of her diary (2007). Her study of Scandinavian women hymn writers, Preaching From Home, is forthcoming from Eerdmans. She created the Reformation Festival, has served on a number of boards of the church, including the hymn text committee for the Lutheran Book of Worship (1978) and the Task Force for the Study of Ministry.  Gracia earned a BA from Augsburg College, an MFA from the University of Arkansas, and a MA from Luther Seminary. She is now completing a cycle of hymns on Old Testament lectionary texts and a series on the Epistles, and is working on a study of Scandinavian-American Lutheran parsonage traditions.  View Gracia’s website here.   Read more...

Patrick Hicks is the Writer-in-Residence at Augustana College as well as the author of five poetry collections, most recently Finding the Gossamer (2008) and This London (2010), both from Ireland’s acclaimed press, Salmon Poetry. His fiction and essays have appeared in such journals as Ploughshares, The Utne Reader, Christian Science Monitor, Commonweal, National Catholic Reporter, Natural Bridge, and many others. His stories have been nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize, he recently won the “Glimmer Train New Writer’s Fiction Award,” and several of his stories have been nominated for Best American Short Stories. He is the recipient of a number of grants, including one from the Bush Foundation to support work on his first novel. A citizen of Ireland, he has also lived in England, Germany, and Spain.  To view Patrick's website, click here.  Read more...

Robert Schultz's books include two collections of poetry, Vein Along the Fault and Winter in Eden, a novel, The Madhouse Nudes, and a work of nonfiction, We Were Pirates:  A Torpedoman’s Pacific War.   He has received a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Award in Fiction, Cornell University 's Corson Bishop Poetry Prize, and the Emily Clark Balch Prize for Poetry from The Virginia Quarterly Review.  His first book of poems was a finalist for the Yale Younger Poets Prize and the Academy of American Poets Walt Whitman Award.  He attended Luther College and received his graduate education at Cornell University.  In 1985 he returned to Luther, where he taught for 19 years.  He has also taught at Cornell and at the University of Virginia. Since 2004 he has been the John P. Fishwick Professor of English at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia.  For Robert’s website, click here.  Read more...

Paul Shepherd’s novel More Like Not Running Away won the Mary McCarthy Award and was published by Sarabande Books.  He has been a finalist for the James Jones, the Bakeless, and the AWP Awards.  He has worked as director of a nonprofit housing group and in youth and family ministries.  Most recently, he was Writer in Residence and Kingsbury Fellow at Florida State University, where he earned a Ph.D. in English, and where he served as Senior Editor of  International Quarterly.  View Paul's website here.  Read more...

Walter Wangerin, Jr. is widely recognized as one of today’s most gifted writers on issues of faith and spirituality.  Beginning with the renowned Book of the Dun Cow, Wangerin’s writing career has encompassed almost every genre: fiction, essay, spirituality, children’s stories, and biblical exposition.  Wangerin has won the National Book Award, the New York Times Best Children’s Book of the Year Award, and several Gold Medallion Awards, including best fiction awards for both The Book of God and Paul: A Novel.  Wangerin’s most recent work, Naomi and Her Daughters, released in September, 2010, is a historically accurate telling of the ancient narrative, cast in new light and filled with rich description and gritty realism.  Another 2010 book is Letters from the Land of Cancer, a series of letters in which he explores his own illness and mortality.  The author of more than forty books, Wangerin lives in Valparaiso, Indiana, where he is Senior Research Professor at Valparaiso University.  To view Walt’s website, click here.    Read more...

Amy Weldon, an Alabama native, is assistant professor of English at Luther College.  She holds a Ph.D. in 19^th-century British literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  Her fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in Shenandoah, StoryQuarterly, The South Carolina Review, Yemassee, Southern Cultures, The Carolina Quarterly, and The North Carolina Literary Review, and her personal essay “The Fruits of Memory” is reprinted in Cornbread Nation 2: The Best of Southern Food Writing (2004).  Her scholarly essays have appeared in Cardiff Corvey, Mississippi Quarterly, and Southern Writers: A Biographical Dictionary (2006.)  A former Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, she has completed a story collection, Traveling Grace, and is at work on a novel.  Read more...