V o l . 11 N o . 2 Suzanne Simons is a long-time faculty member at The Evergreen State College where she teaches poetry and interdisciplinary studies. She recently helped establish the city of Olympia, Washington’s poet laureate program, and her poetry has been published in Cirque, Aethlon: Journal of Sports Literature, Passager, and Western Friend. A former journalist, Suzanne brings her keen reporter's curiosity, intrepid observation skills, and love of language to her poetry that intends to connect heart and head. Judith Skillman is the recipient of awards from the Academy of American Poets and Artist Trust. Her recent collection is The Truth About Our American Births, Shanti Arts Press. Her poems have appeared in Shenandoah, The Southern Review, The Threepenny Review, Zyzzyva, and elsewhere. Skillman is a faculty member at the Richard Hugo House in Seattle, Washington. Skillman also paints expressionist works in oil on canvas. She is interested in feelings engendered by the natural world, and the play of light in still life. Her art has appeared in Cloud Lake Literary, Artemis, The Penn Review, and other journals. Skillman has studied at McDaniel College, Pratt Fine Arts Center and Seattle Artist League. Shows include The Pratt and Galvanize. https://www.saatchiart.com/account/artworks/823323 https://www.etsy.com/shop/JkpaintingsStore www.judithskillman.com Kathleen Smith is a northwest poet with roots in Montana’s Flathead Valley. Her work has appeared in Raven Chronicles, Shrub-Steppe Poetry Journal, Windfall, Cirque, Helen: A Literary Journal, Rise Up Review, Baseball Bard, and The Far Field. She has won several awards from the Yakima Coffee House Poets and is included in regional anthologies from Okanogan Poems, Floating Bridge Review, LitFuse , and 129+ More Poets of WA. She lives and writes in the community of Roslyn, WA. Jack Smith has published six novels: If Winter Comes (2020), Run (2020), Miss Manners for War Criminals (2017), Being (2016), Icon (2014), and Hog to Hog, which won the 2007 George Garrett Fiction Prize and was published by Texas Review Press in 2008. He has published stories in a number of literary magazines, including Southern Review, North American Review, Texas Review, In Posse Review, Word Riot, and Night Train. His reviews have appeared widely in such publications as Ploughshares, Georgia Review, American Book Review, Prairie Schooner, Mid-American Review, Pleiades, The Missouri Review, and Environment magazine. He has published numerous articles in Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market and is a regular contributor to The Writer magazine. He has published two books on creative writing: Write and Revise for Publication: A 6-Month Plan for Crafting an Exceptional Novel and Other Works of Fiction (Writer’s Digest Books, 2013) and Inventing the World: The Fiction Writer’s Guide to Craft and Process (Serving House Books, 2018). Besides his writing, Smith was fiction editor of The Green Hills Literary Lantern, an online literary magazine published by Truman State University, for 25 years. He presently teaches for Writers.com Larry Slonaker: I was born and raised in Great Falls, Montana, and have worked as a writer and editor at the once-renowned San Jose Mercury News, and the still-renowned Stanford University. There were a few stops at never-renowned places as well. I'm a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern. My wife and I live on a (very) small ranch in Northern California with a few horses, a few dogs and the Last Cat Standing. Kaye Spivey is a poet based in the Pacific Northwest with a great love
203 of rain, travel, and her cats. She has two poetry collections, Fragments and An Isolated Storm and has been published in such literary journals as Written River, Dual Coast Magazine, Ghost City Review, and Northwest Boulevard. You can find her at kayespivey.wordpress.com Kim Stafford directs the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College, and is the author of a dozen books, including The Muses Among Us and Wild Honey, Tough Salt. His book Singer Come from Afar is forthcoming in 2021 from Red Hen Press. He has taught writing in Scotland, Italy, Mexico, and Bhutan. In May 2018 he was named Oregon’s 9th Poet Laureate by Governor Kate Brown for a two-year term. Bob Stark lives in Happy Valley, Alaska with his lovely wife, Savanna, and their three month old daughter, Primrose. They own and operate a small farm called Secret Garden Alaska, where they enjoy the peace and quiet of off grid life. Cynthia Steele likes to pluck a bit of humor or beauty or evoke memory through nonfiction writing. She's also slowly growing her petite poetic oeuvre. In photo classes with Mike Conte, she keeps finding new Ways of Seeing. She serves as Assistant Editor and Publicist for Cirque and as a dog whisperer for Rover. MA English, BA Journalism. She's read plays for the Valdez Theatre Conference for a decade and been in a few plays, too. Most often, she reads for Poetry Parley. In addition to poetry, Leah Stenson has published essays, editorials, feature articles and a textbook. Finishing Line Press published her poetry chapbooks, Heavenly Body in 2011 and The Turquoise Bee and Other Love Poems in 2014. Turning Point Press published her first full-length poetry book, Everywhere I Find Myself, in 2017. Her hybrid memoir. Life Revised, was published by Cirque Press in 2020. She served as a regional editor of Alive at the Center: Contemporary Poems from the Pacific Northwest (Ooligan Press, 2013) and co-edited Reverberations from Fukushima: 50 Japanese Poets Speak Out (Inkwater Press, 2014) with Asao Sarukawa Aroldi. Richard Stokes is a Juneau resident of 49 years. He writes both prose and poetry. His work usually reflects his love of nature, his aging and his boyhood in the sharply defined black-white world of rural Georgia in the 1940-50’s. He graduated from Emory in Atlanta in 1961. Sheary Clough Suiter grew up in Eugene, Oregon, then lived in Alaska for 35 years before her relocation to Colorado. Her encaustic fine art is represented in Anchorage, Alaska by Stephan Fine Art, in Camas, Washington by the Attic Gallery, in Santa Fe, New Mexico by the Encaustic Art Institute, in Green Mountain Falls, Colorado by Stones, Bones, & Wood Gallery, and in Old Colorado City, Colorado by 45 Degree Gallery. When she's not on the back-roads of America traveling and painting with her artist partner Nard Claar, Suiter teaches at Bemis School of Art, Colorado Springs Fine Art Center at Colorado College, and works from her studio in Colorado Springs. Online at www.sheary.me Mercury-Marvin Sunderland is a 2013, 2014, and 2015 winner of ACT Theater’s Young Playwright’s Program, a 2015 and 2016 selected playwright for ACT Theater’s 14:48 HS, a 2016 winner of the Jack Straw Young Writer’s Program, a 2016 selected participant for the Seattle Talent Show hosted by Rainier Beach High School, and was hired as a paid representative of Youth Speaks Seattle in 2016. In 2017, he was selected for and won the 2017 Youth Speaks Seattle Grand Slam, and went off as one of the top five youth slam poets representing Seattle at Brave New Voices 2017, an international slam poetry tournament