MARY PIERCE BROSMER is a poet and transformative educator who brings the art of writing and the practices of community to the work of organizational well-being and social healing in business, political, medical and educational settings. Mary is the founder of Women Writing for (a) Change, “bringing women to words and the words of women to the world” since 1991. Mary is a published poet and author of Women Writing for (a) Change: A Guide for Creative Transformation (Notre Dame: Sorin Press, 2009). Mary is a TED speaker, presenting “Found: the Holy Grail of Organizational Wholeness at TEDxCincy, October, 2010.

JOHN DRURY earned his BA in Comparative Literature from Stony Brook University in 1976, his MA from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University in 1978, and his MFA from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1980. He began teaching at the University of Cincinnati in 1985. He is the author of four full-length poetry collections (The Disappearing Town, Burning the Aspern Papers, The Refugee Camp, and Sea Level Rising) and two books about poetry (Creating Poetry and The Poetry Dictionary). He has won the Bernard F. Conners Prize in Poetry from The Paris Review, two Ohio Arts Council grants, and an Ingram Merrill Foundation award, as well as the UC Dolly Cohen Award for Distinguished Teaching. His narrative nonfiction has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Evansville Review, Alligator Juniper, and Ploughshares.

NORM FINKELSTEIN is a Professor of English at Xavier University in Cincinnati and a poet and literary critic. He has written extensively about modern and postmodern poetry and about Jewish American literature. According to Tablet Magazine, Finkelstein’s poetry “is simultaneously secular and religious, stately and conversational, prophetic, and circumspect.” Finkelstein was born in New York City. He earned his B.A. from Binghamton University and his Ph.D. from Emory University.

DAVID LEE GARRISON’s work has appeared widely in journals and anthologies, and two poems from his book Sweeping the Cemetery were read by Garrison Keillor on his national radio show, The Writer’s Almanac. The title poem from his Playing Bach in the DC Metro was featured by Poet Laureate Ted Kooser on his website, American Life in Poetry, and read on the BBC in London. He won the Paul Laurence Dunbar Poetry Prize in 2009 and was named Ohio Poet of the Year in 2014. His most recent book is Carpeing the Diem: Poems About High School.

GERRY GRUBBS is an attorney who practices law in Cincinnati. He has had poems appear in numerous literary magazines and reviews. His latest book, The Palace of Flowers is his fourth collection from Dos Madres Press. His last collection, The Hive is a Book We Read for its Honey, was a finalist for the Ohioana Library poetry book of the year in 2015. In addition to writing, he conducts workshops for other artists, which sport course titles like “Wordshop” and “Bringing more creativity to your practice through the practice of creativity”.

DICK HAGUE is a native of Steubenville, Ohio. His most recent poetry titles are Public Hearings (Word Press, 2009), During The Recent Extinctions: New & Selected Poems, 1982-2012 (Dos Madres Press 2012) and he is a winner of the Appalachian Studies Association’s Weatherford Award. His other titles include Where Drunk Men Go (Dos Madres Press 2015), and Beasts, River, Drunk Men, Garden, Burst, & Light: Sequences and Long Poems (Dos Madres Press 2016). He is Writer-in-Residence at Thomas More College in Crestview Hills, Kentucky and is also the editor of the anthology, Realms of the Mothers: The First Decade of Dos Madres Press.

PAULETTA HANSEL Poet, memoirist, teacher and editor Pauletta Hansel served as the first Poet Laureate of Cincinnati from April 2016 through March 2018. She is author of seven poetry collections, most recently Coal Town Photograph (Dos Madres Press, 2019) and Palindrome (Dos Madres Press, 2017), which was awarded the prestigious Weatherford Award for the best Appalachian poetry book of 2017. Other recent books include Tangle (Dos Madres Press, 2015), The Lives We Live in Houses (Wind Publications, 2011) and What I Did There (Dos Madres Press, 2011). Pauletta’s poetry and prose has been featured in such journals as Rattle, Main Street Rag, Literary Accents, Poetry South, Talisman, Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine, Atlanta Review, ABZ Journal, Postcard Poems and Prose, Still: The Journal, The Mom Egg, Appalachian Journal and others. Her poems have been featured on The Writer’s Almanac, Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry and Verse Daily.

MICHAEL HENSON is a Cincinnati based teacher, activist and writer. Born in Sidney, Ohio, he moved to Cincinnati to attend Xavier University where he majored in English. He later received a Master’s in English from the University of Chicago. Michael Henson is the author of four books of fiction and four collections of poetry, the most recent of which is The Dead Singing from Mongrel Empire Press. Richard Hague has likened Henson’s poetry to that of Blake, Whitman, and Tennyson. Retired now from a career as substance abuse counselor and community organizer, Henson works as a full-time writer and musician with the Carter Bridge Bluegrass Band. He served until recently as a co-editor for Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, the annual publication of the Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative. He lives in the Mount Washington area of Cincinnati, where he volunteers with a group concerned with the opioid epidemic.

JEFF HILLARD, (M.F.A., Warren Wilson College; M.A., University of Colorado; B.S., University of Cincinnati) is an Professor of English in the Department of English and Modern Languages at Mount St. Joseph University. He teaches courses in modern and contemporary literature and drama, communication studies, advanced composition, and creative writing. A prolific and award-winning author, publisher, and literary advocate, he is the author of four books of poems, two chapbooks of short stories, and is currently editor and publisher of RED! the breakthrough ‘zine, an internet publication based on his many years of teaching in jails and prisons and showcases stories of transformation and healthy life-changes in the lives of inmates and ex-inmates, as well as innovators who help make these changes happen. Among his awards are the Post-Corbett Award for Literary Artist (1993), the Sister Adelle Clifford Award for Teaching Excellence (1998), and Ohio Arts Council Writer-in-Residence (2000) at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center in Massachusetts.

BUCKY IGNATIUS has lived in Cincinnati for most of his seventy-something years. He has been trying, with a variety of strategies, to lead a purposeful life since he began to intentionally think for himself in the early 1960s. For the past twenty-five years, primary practices have included non-fiction writing and poetry. He is a former president of the Greater Cincinnati Writers League and has moderated dozens of poetry critiques and workshops. In recent years, his attention has turned mostly to short-form poetry, and he is currently involved in a collaborative project honoring the work of poet Adelaide Crapsey and the form she invented, called the Crapsey cinquain. His work has appeared in many obscure places. Fifty of his short poems (all with fewer than 50 words) were published in the chapbook Fifty Under Fifty by Finishing Line Press in 2015.

MANUEL IRIS has a Ph.D. in romance languages from the University of Cincinnati. He has a degree in Latin American Literature from the Autonomous University of the Yucatan, and a masters in Spanish from New Mexico State University. Iris was an experienced, published poet before he ever left his homeland. In 2003, at age 20, he published his first book while living in Mérida, Yucatán. He’s received several awards including the National Award of Poetry Merida (Mexico, 2009) for his book, “Notebook of Dreams.” His third book, 2014’s The Disguise of Fire, won the Rodulfo Figueroa Regional Award for Poetry and was one of the 10 finalists for the Latin-American award for published books, Ciudad de la Lira, in Cuenca, Ecuador. Translating Silence was his first book published in the U.S. and is bilingual — he sought to avoid using a translator but rather tried to write in English, as if he was first composing the poems in that language.

KAMAL E. KIMBALL is a Pushcart-nominated poet currently living in central Ohio. A reviewer for Muzzle Magazine and production editor for The Journal. Her work has been published in Juked, Phoebe, Hobart, Sundog Lit, Bone Parade, Kaaterskill Basin Literary Journal, Forklift Ohio, and elsewhere. She is a member of the Ohio Poetry Association and a current MFA candidate in Poetry at The Ohio State University.

ROBERT MURPHY is the co-founder of Dos Madres Press and a prolific poet and scholar. Until the age of forty he was not a part of the vibrant literary community of the Greater Cincinnati Area. He was not an academician but made his living in the building trades. Until… he entered a competition sponsored by the Greater Cincinnati Writer’s League. His poem won, and a year’s free membership to the League came along with it. That was 32 years ago. The rest is history. In 2004 he decided to give back to the literary community. His wife Elizabeth, a gifted graphic designer, portraitist, and iconographer, is Dos Madres Press’s book designer. Dos Madres, two mothers in Spanish, in honor of their own mothers, early supporters of the Press. He is the author of a number of books of poetry.

CLAUDIA SKUTAR is an associate professor of English at the University of Cincinnati. She teaches composition, literature, creative writing, and liberal arts at the university’s Blue Ash College. Professor Skutar writes poetry and nonfiction and as a scholar is interested in animals and culture and environmental literature. She’s taught creative writing and poetry workshops to university students in Michigan and Ohio and to community members in the Cincinnati area. She’s also been a guest poet at Michigan State University, University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College, and Wright State University.

SHERRY COOK STANFORTH is the founder/director of Thomas More University’s Creative Writing Vision/MFA program, co-editor of Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel and a regional performer in Tellico, a multi-generation Appalachian family band. She is also the author of the poetry collection Drone String (Bottom Dog Press, 2015).

SARAH MOORE WAGNER is a Pushcart nominated poet whose work has appeared most recently or is forthcoming in Gigantic Sequins, IDK Magazine, Reservoir, The Wide Shore, and the Pittsburgh Poetry Review, among others. Her chapbook, Hooked Through, was published by Five Oaks Press in early 2017. She lives in Cincinnati with her filmmaker husband Jon and their children Daisy, Vivienne, and Cohen. She teaches at Xavier and Northern Kentucky University.

TYRONE WILLIAMS was born in Detroit, MI and attended Wayne State University for his B.A., M.A. and Ph, D. (1972-1990). He moved to Cincinnati to take a teaching position at Xavier University in 1983 shortly after a completing paper (on Frank O’Hara) for Edward Hisrch’s Contemporary American Poetry class. He is the author of a number of chapbooks, including Convalescence (1987); Futures, Elections (2004); Musique Noir (2006);  Pink Tie (2011), among others. His full-length collections of poetry include c.c. (2002), On Spec (2008), The Hero Project (2009), Adventures of Pi (2011), and Howell (2011). His sixth book, As Iz, was published last fall and he’ll be in residence at the Center for African American Poetics at the University of Pittsburgh the first week of October. He is married to Elizabeth Hamilton.