Ron A. Austin holds an MFA from the University of Missouri–St. Louis and is a 2016 Regional Arts Commission Fellow. Avery Colt Is a Snake, a Thief, a Liar, his first collection of linked stories, won the 2017 Nilsen Prize. The book will be released in fall of 2019. Austin’s short stories have been placed or are forthcoming in Pleiades, Story Quarterly, Ninth Letter, Black Warrior Review, Midwestern Gothic, Juked and other journals. He, his partner Jennie, and son Elijah live in St. Louis with a whippet named Carmen.

Tim Bascom is author of the recent memoir Running to the Fire (University of Iowa Press, 2015), about coming of age as the son of missionaries in Ethiopia during a Marxist Revolution. His earlier memoir Chameleon Days (Houghton Mifflin) won the Bakeless Literary Prize. He is also the author of a collection of essays and a novel, and his writing has won editor’s prizes at The Missouri Review and Florida Review, being selected for Best Creative Nonfiction and Best American Travel Writing. Bascom, who received his MFA from the University of Iowa, is Director of Creative Writing at Waldorf University.

Charles Baxter is the author of the novels The Feast of Love (nominated for the National Book Award), The Soul Thief, Saul and Patsy, Shadow Play, and First Light, and the story collections Gryphon, Believers, A Relative Stranger, Through the Safety Net, and Harmony of the World. The stories “Bravery” and “Charity,” which appear in There’s Something I Want You to Do, were included in Best American Short Stories. Baxter lives in Minneapolis and teaches at the University of Minnesota and in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

Elijah Burrell is the author of the poetry collection The Skin of the River (Aldrich Press, 2014). His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as Agni, Sugar House Review, Measure, Cider Press Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Structo, and many others. He received the 2009 Cecil A. Blue Award in Poetry and the 2010 Jane Kenyon Scholarship at Bennington College. Audio versions of his poetry have recently been featured on both The Missouri Review’s and Sugar House Review’s podcasts. In 2012 Burrell joined the faculty of Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. An assistant professor in Lincoln's English, Foreign Languages, and Journalism Department, Burrell teaches creative writing, literature, and advanced composition. Burrell holds an MFA in Writing and Literature (emphasis: poetry) from Bennington College. He resides in Jefferson City, Missouri, with his wife and two little girls.

Ryan Collins is the author of A New American Field Guide & Song Book (H_NGM_N Books) and several poetry chapbooks. He is an English Instructor at St. Ambrose University, and the Executive Director of the Midwest Writing Center. He runs the SPECTRA Reading Series in Rock Island, IL where he lives.

Fiction writer and prose poet Cass Dalglish is a professor of English and a mentor in the Augsburg College Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program. Her published books include the novels Nin (Spinsters Ink) and Sweetgrass (finalist for a Minnesota Book Award). A former television crime reporter, she is currently working on a third novel, a mystery set in Granada, Spain. Her book-length prose poem Humming the Blues (Calyx Books) is a jazz interpretation of the Sumerian cuneiform signs in Enheduanna’s Song to Inanna (Ancient Iraq, 2350 BCE). See her animation of the Song to Inanna on YouTube.

Jasmin Darznik's novel Song of a Captive Bird was selected as a New York Times Book Review "Editors' Choice" as well as one of 2018's "Best Books" by Vogue, Ms. and Newsweek. Jasmin is also the author of the New York Times bestseller The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother's Hidden Life. Her books have been published and are forthcoming in seventeen countries and her essays have appeared in numerous periodicals, including the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. Jasmin was born in Tehran, Iran and came to America when she was five years old. She holds an MFA in fiction from Bennington College and a Ph.D. in English from Princeton University. Now a professor of English and creative writing at California College of the Arts, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.

Yasmina Din Madden lives in Iowa and her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in PANK, The Idaho Review, Word Riot, The Masters Review: New Voices, Hobart, Fiction Southeast, Carve, and other journals. Her story "At the Dog Park" was shortlisted for The Masters Review Anthology: 10 Best Stories by Emerging Authors, and her flash fiction was shortlisted for the Wigleaf Top 50 (Very) Short Fictions of 2017 and Pulp Literature's Hummingbird Prize for Flash Fiction. She teaches creative writing, literature, and women's and gender studies at Drake University. 

John Domini has won awards in all genres, with fiction in Paris Review and non-fiction in The New York Times. He’s published three books of stories and three novels, as well as selections of essays and poetry. His 2016 set of stories, MOVIEOLA! (Dzanc Books) has been hailed as “the smartest kind of fun,"and “a glory.” Earlier books were praised in the New York Times and on NPR’s "All Things Considered.” Domini's grants include an NEA Fellowship and an Iowa Major Artist Award. He has taught at Harvard and Northwestern — as well as at Luther — and makes his home in Des Moines.

Anaïs Duplan is the author of Take This Stallion (Brooklyn Arts Press). His poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming coming on PBS News Hour, Hyperallergic, Fence, The Journal, Horse Less Review, Birdfeast, and in other publications. He is the director of the Center for Afrofuturist Studies, a new artist residency program in Iowa City, where he is an MFA candidate at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

David Faldet’s poetry has been published  in such journals as Prairie Schooner, Mid-American Review, Midwest, andCortland Review.  His book Oneota Flow, a natural history of the Upper Iowa was published in 2009 by University of Iowa Press.  He teaches English literature, journalism, and Luther College's first-year course: Enduring Questions.

Adrianne Finlay received her PhD in literature and creative writing from Binghamton University. Originally from Ithaca, New York, she now lives in Cedar Falls, Iowa with her husband, the poet J. D. Schraffenberger, and their two young daughters. She is an associate professor of English and the Program Director of Creative Writing at Upper Iowa University in Fayette, Iowa. Her debut novel, Your One & Only, released in 2018 with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and she has a forthcoming novel that will be available in 2020. When she’s not writing, reading, or grading, she’s making soap to sell locally, raising money for type 1 diabetes research.

Carol Gilbertson’s poems have appeared in various journals including The MacGuffin, Christian Century, Magnolia, Concho River Review, Vineyard, Pebble Lake Review, The Cresset, New Zoo Poetry 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” earned second place in the 2009 MacGuffin Poet Hunt.  She has written hymn texts with a range of 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); her essay in it, on the religious imagination in the literature classroom, earned the NCTE Donald Murray Prize. Now Professor Emerita of English at Luther College, she has been the Dennis M. Jones Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Humanities, has directed the Luther Poetry Project and a study abroad program in Nottingham, England, and was founding director of the Lutheran Festival of Writing at Luther College. She lives in Decorah, Iowa.

David Gonzalez is a professional storyteller, poet, playwright, musician and public speaker. He is a cultural ambassador for the U.S. State Department, and is the proud recipient of the International Performing Arts for Youth "Lifetime Achievement Award for Sustained Excellence". Mr. Gonzalez was named a Fellow of the Joseph Campbell Foundation and was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for "Unique Theatrical Experience" for The Frog Bride. David has created numerous productions, including the critically acclaimed ¡Sofrito! with The Latin Legends Band, and MytholoJazz, both of which enjoyed sold-out runs at New Victory Theater. Sleeping Beauty was co-commissioned by the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Brooklyn College, and The McCallum Theater. David was a featured performer at the National Storytelling Festival, and appeared for three seasons at the Royal National Theatre in London. The Man of the House was commissioned by, and premiered at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 2013.

Vince Gotera is a professor of English at the University of Northern Iowa, where he served as Editor of the North American Review (2000-2016). He is Editor of Star*Line, the print journal of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association. Poetry collections include Fighting Kite, Ghost Wars, Dragonfly, and the upcoming Pacific Crossing. Recent poems appeared in Altered Reality Magazine, The American Journal of Poetry, Crab Orchard Review, Crooked Teeth Literary Magazine, Eye to the Telescope, Voices de la Luna, and other venues. He blogs at The Man with the Blue Guitar.

After graduating with majors in art and English, Hall served as an officer in the U.S. Army during the Viet Nam War Era. He began his career as a journalist.  As a reporter and editorial writer he won the National Newspaper Association Freedom of Information Award for investigative journalism. From there, Hall joined the University of Iowa’s Office of Public Information and University Relations as communications director for the arts. From Iowa, Hall took a position at Dartmouth College and later Walker Art Center.  

Throughout his career Hall has maintained his connection with poetry and the visual arts. He has been writing (unpublished) poetry himself the past eight years and in 2013 resumed drawing and painting. His latest intaglio work is a suite of four prints, entitled “Deep Noticing,” currently on display at Luther College’s Preus Library.  Each of the prints is a response to four poems by four poets. In 2012 Hall’s book, “The Last Battle,” the story of his father and the noted theologian Roger Lincoln Shinn, was published. Hall is currently working on a film based on that book.

Hall did graduate work at the University of Iowa School of Art & Art History and at Mankato (MN) State University. He received a BFA from the University of South Dakota. He lives with his wife Lou Ann in rural Winneshiek County. They have three grown children.

Jane Hamilton is the author most recently of The Excellent Lombards and The Book of Ruth, winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award for first fiction, as well as A Map of the World, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and named one of the top ten books of the year by Entertainment Weekly, Publishers Weekly, the Miami Herald, and People. Both The Book of Ruth and A Map of the World have been selections of Oprah's Book Club. Her following work, The Short History of a Prince, was a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 1998. Her novel Disobedience was published in 2000, and her last novel When Madeline Was Young was a Washington Post Best Book of 2006. She lives in and writes in an orchard farmhouse in Wisconsin.

Katherine Hannigan is the author of the New York Times bestseller Ida B…And Her Plans to Maximize Fun, Avoid Disaster and (Possibly) Save the World and True (…Sort Of), which was a California Young Reader Award nominee and an Iowa Children’s Choice selection. She has also written and illustrated Emmaline and the Bunny (a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year), Gwendolyn Grace (an Atlanta Parent Best Book of 2015), and Dirt+Water=Mud. She received an M.F.A. in studio art, and has worked as an assistant professor of art and design at Iowa State University, and as the education coordinator for a Head Start program in New York. She grew up in Western New York, and now lives in Iowa.

Gwen Hart is the author of the poetry collections The Empress of Kisses (winner of the X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize from Texas Review Press), Lost and Found (David Robert Books), Dating the Invisible Man (The Ledge Press), and Losing Ohio (Finishing Line Press). Her poems and stories have appeared in journals and anthologies such as Calliope, Litro, Heater, Measure, Midwestern Gothic, and Main Street Rag. She teaches writing at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa, and is the faculty advisor for Hot Dish Magazine.

Geoff Herbach is the author of several young adult novels, including Stupid Fast, FatBoy vs. The Cheerleaders, and most recently Hooper (Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins, 2018). His books have received the Cybils Award for best YA Fiction, The Minnesota Book Award, and Outstanding Book by a Wisconsin author. They've been listed amongthe year's best by the American Library Association, the American Bookseller's association, and the International Literacy Association. Before writing for young adults, Geoff wrote the literary novel The Miracle Letters of T. Rimberg, performed comedy, produced radio, and traveled around the country telling weird stories in rock clubs. He teaches creative writing in the English Department at Minnesota State, Mankato.

Patrick Hicks is the author of ten books, including The Collector of Names, Adoptable, and This London—he also wrote the critically and popularly acclaimed novel, The Commandant of Lubizec. He has been nominated seven times for the Pushcart Prize, he was recently a finalist for the High Plains Book Award, the Dzanc Short Story Collection Competition, and the Gival Press Novel Award. His poetry has appeared on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac, The PBS NewsHour, American Life in Poetry, and his first novel not only held company among only 20 books selected for National Reading Group Month, but it was listed as a Top Pick for First Year College Programs. He is the recipient of a number of grants and fellowships, including awards from the Bush Artist Foundation, the Loft Literary Center, the South Dakota Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. A dual-citizen of Ireland and America, he is the Writer-in-Residence at Augustana University as well as a faculty member at the MFA program at Sierra Nevada College.

Bret Anthony Johnston is the author of the internationally bestselling novel Remember Me Like This (Random House, 2014), which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. He is also the author of the short-story collection Corpus Christi (Random House, 2004) and the editor of Naming the World and Other Exercises for the Creative Writer. He is the director of creative writing at Harvard University.

David Kamm is an assistant professor of art and art gallery coordinator at Luther College, where he also assists in management of the school’s fine arts collection. His studio work focuses on prints, collages and mixed-media pieces, and has been included in over 130 juried, group and solo exhibitions. In addition to his studio work and teaching, he has been a participant in a Fulbright Study Abroad project to Russia, the Institute of Lutheran Scholars at Harvard University, and two National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminars. In 2007 he was an artist-in-residence at the Henry Luce III Center for the Arts and Religion at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. He has presented at several sessions of national art conferences, including the College Art Association and FATE (Foundations in Art: Theory and Education). Kamm earned his BA in art education from Wartburg College, and his MA and MFA degrees in printmaking from the University of Iowa.

Athena Kildegaard is the author of four books of poetry, Rare Momentum, Bodies of Light, Cloves & Honey, and Ventriloquy, just published by the new independent woman-run press Tinderbox Editions. Her second book was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award and her third was a finalist for the Midwest Book Award. Her poems have appeared widely in journals and anthologies and have been read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer's Almanac. She has received grants from the Lake Region Arts Council and the Minnesota State Arts Board. She is the poetry series editor of the on-line journal Bloom, and she teaches at the University of Minnesota, Morris.

Lise Kildegaard is an English professor at Luther College. While she teaches everything from soup to nuts, Renaissance texts to postmodernism, her main literary project for the last several years has been translating the “square stories” of Danish author Louis Jensen. As soon as we finish up with the LC Writers Festival, she’ll be heading to Denmark to celebrate the publication of Jensen’s 1001^st story.

Charlie Langton’s book of poems, Keep Silence, But Speak Out, was chosen as the second selection in the Loess Hills Poetry Series. His work has appeared in the Antioch Review, the Iowa Review, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, and other magazines, and his poems have been included in two anthologies, Voices on the Landscape and River of Earth and Sky. He earned his MFA degree from the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa and lives in Decorah, Iowa.

Debra Marquart is the author of six books including, Small Buried Things: Poems (2015), The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere (2007), and a co-edited anthology of experimental writing, Nothing to Declare: A Guide to the Prose Sequence (2016). She teaches in the Stonecoast MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine and is a Professor of English in the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Environment at Iowa State University. The Senior Editor of Flyway: Journal of Writing & Environment, Marquart has delivered over 250 invited readings and keynotes at universities and conferences from New York and Washington to Greece and Ireland.

Gretchen Marquette's work has been featured in The Paris Review, Poetry Magazine, Harper's, Tin House, and other places. Her first book, May Day, was released by Graywolf Press in 2016. She lives in South Minneapolis.

James McKean has published three books of poems—Headlong (University of Utah Press), Tree of Heaven (University of Iowa Press), which won an Iowa Poetry Prize, and We Are the Bus (Texas Review Press), which won the 2011 X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize—and a book of essays, Home Stand: Growing Up in Sports (Michigan State University Press). His essays have appeared in journals such as The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, and The Southern Review; and have been reprinted in an edition of Best American Sports Writing and the Pushcart Prize anthology. He teaches for the Queens University low residency M.F.A. program in Charlotte, NC, the Tinker Mountain Writers Workshop at Hollins University in Roanoke, VA, and on occasion, for the University of Iowa.

June Melby is the author of My Family and Other Hazards (Henry Holt), a New York Times bestseller and Midwest Connections award winner. As a spoken word artist she has featured in Munich, Hamburg, London, and Amsterdam; at the Knitting Factory and CBGBs in New York, and the LA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. She has three poetry chapbooks, and three cds of original music with spoken word. Her other work has appeared or is forthcoming in Utne Reader, LAWeekly, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Forklift Ohio, and Fugue, among others.

Jennifer Morales is a poet, fiction writer, and performance artist based in rural Wisconsin. Recent publications include poems in MAYDAY and in "Pulsamos," a special issue of Glass Poetry dedicated to the Pulse nightclub victims, and a novel excerpt in Our Happy Hours: LGBT Voices from the Gay Bars (Flashpoint, 2017). Her first book, Meet Me Halfway (UW Press, 2015), a short story collection about life in hyper-segregated Milwaukee, was Wisconsin Center for the Book’s 2016 “Book of the Year.” The book was also a finalist for the Midwest Book Award, won an Outstanding Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Library Association, and was part of the inaugural LGBTQ Writers in the Schools program in the New York City Public Schools, among other honors. Morales is president of the board of the Driftless Writing Center, based in Viroqua, Wis. www.moraleswrites.com

Kate Rattenborg is the owner and manager of Decorah’s independent bookstore, Dragonfly Books. Kate opened her bookstore five years ago after returning to her hometown Decorah after a long and fulfilling career as a librarian with the University of Iowa Libraries and University of Minnesota Libraries.  Passionate about all things book-related, Kate is honored to have created a business that promotes literacy and reading; a business that also is community-centered, complementing Decorah’s literary and artistic aesthetics.

Sheila O’Connor is the author of four novels: Tokens of Grace, Where No Gods Came, Sparrow Road, and Keeping Safe the Stars. Awards for her novels include the Michigan Prize for Literary Fiction, Minnesota Book Award, International Reading Award, Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and Midwest Booksellers Award among others. She teaches in the MFA program at Hamline University where she serves as Fiction Editor for Water~Stone Review.

Jim O'Loughlin is the author of the flash fiction collection, Dean Dean Dean Dean (Twelve Winters Press). He teaches English at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls where he also coordinates the Final Thursday Reading Series, which is beginning its 19th season.

Jill Osier is the author of three chapbooks of poems: from (2018), winner of the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award, Should Our Undoing Come Down Upon Us White (2013), winner of the Frost Place Chapbook Competition, and Bedful of Nebraskas (2012). She has served as the Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and the George Bennett Fellow at Phillips Exeter Academy. Osier is a graduate of Luther College and lives in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Ari Satok is an author and educator, who believes in the power of stories to make the world abetter place. After graduating from Princeton University in 2014, he embarked on a storytelling journey, through which he traveled to international schools on four different continents, interviewing students from dozens of countries and then writing a book, titled The Architects of Hope, that captures 16 of these students' incredible stories. Since publishing The Architects of Hope, Ari has given book talks at a wide range of venues both in the US and abroad and has hasbeen privileged to lead writing and storytelling workshops with all kinds of communities.

Kathryn Savage is a recipient of the 2018 Academy of American Poets James Wright Prize. A hybrid writer, her work appears or is forthcoming in American Short Fiction, poets.org, the Guardian, Poets & Writers, Ploughshares, the Village Voice, Star Tribune, and The Best Small Fictions of 2015. She currently teaches writing at The Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD), and at the University of Minnesota, and serves as a program manager at The Loft Literary Center. Her work has been supported by the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Napa Valley Writers' Conference, Minnesota State Arts Board, Millay Colony, Ucross Foundation, Coffee House Press: In the Stacks, Weisman Art Museum, and the Gullkistan Center for Creativity in Laugarvatn, Iceland.

J. D. Schraffenberger is editor of the North American Review and an associate professor of English at the University of Northern Iowa. He is the author of two books of poetry, Saint Joe's Passion (Etruscan Press) and The Waxen Poor (Twelve Winters Press), and co-author of The Necessary Poetic of Atheism (Twelve Winters Press) with Martín Espada and Lauren Schmidt. His other work has appeared in Best Creative Nonfiction, Brevity, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. He lives in Cedar Falls, Iowa, with his two daughters and his wife, the novelist Adrianne Finlay.

Julie Schumacher is the author of nine books, including the national bestseller Dear Committee Members, winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor. Ms. Schumacher is the only woman to have won the Thurber Prize. Schumacher’s first novel, The Body Is Water, was an ALA Notable Book of the Year and a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her essays and short stories have appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Chronicle for Higher Education and other publications; most recently, she is the author of Doodling for Academics – a Coloring and Activity Book, and a novel, The Shakespeare Requirement. She is a professor of English and Creative Writing program at the University of Minnesota.

Kaethe Schwehn is the author of a post-apocalyptic novel, The Rending and the Nest, as well as a memoir, Tailings, and the poetry collection Tanka & Me. She is the co-editor of Claiming Our Callings: Toward a New Understanding of Vocation in the Liberal Arts. Her poems and prose can be found in journals such as Crazyhorse, Pleiades, jubilat, Witness, Minnesota Review and the anthology Fiction on a Stick. She has been the recipient of a Minnesota Book Award for Creative Nonfiction, a Minnesota State Arts Board Grant, a Loft Mentor Series Award, the Donald Justice Poetry Prize, and a Best of the Net Anthology award. She lives in Northfield and teaches composition and creative writing at St. Olaf College.

Steve Semken founded the Ice Cube Press in 1993 as a way to use the literary arts to better learn how to best live in the Midwest. Since then he has published the work of hundreds of authors of both regional and national acclaim. He speaks and teaches throughout the Midwest on issues of creativity, entrepreneurship, writing, and publishing. In addition, he is the author of six books, most recently The Great Blues/Soul External: Rediscovering the Great Blue Heron which won a Kansas Book Award, and a novella, Pick Up Stick City: Restoration Fiction which Publishers' Weekly called “funny, poignant and more than a bit whimsical, this allegorical tale of small town and environmental care is suffused with wonder.” He has also been a writer-in-residence at the Island Institute in Sitka, Alaska.

Grant Tracey has published close to fifty short stories in various literary magazines, four collections, and most recently a crime novel, Cheap Amusements (Twelve Winters). He has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize and won an Iowa Regents Award for Faculty Excellence in 2013. He has also acted in over thirty community theatre productions most recently playing Peter in Zoo Story and Gordon in Dead Man's Cell Phone. For the past sixteen years, he's served as Fiction Editor for the North American Review.

Nick Twemlow is the author of two collections of poetry—Palm Trees, which received the Norma Farber First Book Prize from the Poetry Society of America, and Attributed to the Harrow Painter, forthcoming in fall 2017—and is a senior editor at The Iowa Review and co-editor at Canarium Books. His short films have played Athens, Slamdance, SXSW, Tribeca, and other film festivals. He is assistant professor in English at Coe College, where he teaches creative writing and filmmaking.

Kali VanBaale is the author of the novels The Good Divide and The Space Between. She is the recipient of an American Book Award, the Independent Publisher’s silver medal for fiction, the Fred Bonnie Memorial First Novel Award, and an Iowa Arts Council major artist grant. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Numéro Cinq, The Milo Review, Northwind Literary, Poets&Writers, The Writer and several anthologies. Kali holds an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is a faculty member of the Lindenwood University MFA Creative Writing Program. She lives outside Des Moines with her family.

Cary Waterman is the author of five books of poems, including The Salamander Migration from the U. of Pittsburgh Press and When I Looked Back You Were Gone  from Holy Cow! Press that was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award. Her most recent book, Book of Fire from Nodin Press was a finalist for the Midwest Book Award. 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. Her poems have been awarded prizes in the Federico Garcia Lorca Poetry Contest, the Rash Awards, the Common Ground Review Poetry Contest and So to Speak, the feminist journal from George Mason University.

An Alabama native, Amy Weldon is currently associate professor of English at Luther College, where she teaches literature and creative writing. Her book The Hands-On Life: How to Wake Yourself Up and Save The World is forthcoming from Cascade Books / Wipf and Stock, and her short fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in multiple journals and edited collections including Teaching Eudora Welty: Twenty-first Century Approaches, Fracture: Essays, Poems, and Stories on Fracking, Orion, Midwestern Gothic, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Millions, The Carolina Quarterly, Fiction Southeast, and others.

Andrea Wilson is the Founder and Executive Director of the Iowa Writers' House. IWH is headquartered in Iowa City, Iowa, provides literary programming throughout Iowa, and is dedicated to extending the Iowa literary legacy to all writers, editors, and literary artists who honor the power of words.

Erika T. Wurth’s publications include a novel, Crazy Horse’s Girlfriend, two collections of poetry and a collection of short stories, Buckskin Cocaine. Her novel You Who Enter Here is forthcoming from SUNY. A writer of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, she teaches creative writing at Western Illinois University and has been a guest writer at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals including Boulevard, Drunken Boat, The Writer’s Chronicle, Waxwing and The Kenyon Review. She is represented by Peter Steinberg. She is Apache/Chickasaw/Cherokee and was raised outside of Denver.