Chapbook Series Three
Nin Andrews
Any Kind of Excuse
Nin Andrews grew up on a farm in Charlottesville, Virginia. She received a BA in 1980 from Hamilton College and an MFA in 1995 from Vermont College. Andrews is the author of Sleeping with Houdini; Spontaneous Breasts, winner of the Pearl Chapbook Contest; Any Kind of Excuse, winner of the Kent State University chapbook contest; and The Book of Orgasms, and Why They Grow Wings, winner of the Gerald Cable Award. Her book Midlife Crisis with Dick and Jane was published in 2005 by Web del Sol. Nin Andrews’s poems and stories have appeared in Ploughshares, The Paris Review, Best American Poetry (1997, 2001, 2003), and The KGB Bar Book of Poems, among other journals. She received individual artist grants from the Ohio Arts Council in 1997 and 2003.
Leonard Kress
Orphics
Leonard Kress spent 40 years in and around Philadelphia before moving to the Great Black Swamp in Ohio, where he teaches religion, philosophy, art history, and creative writing at Owens College. He has published four collections of poetry, including Orphics and a translation of the nineteenth-century Polish Romantic epic Pan Tadeusz by Adam Mickiewicz. Poetry, fiction, and translations have appeared in Iowa Review, Massachusetts Review, Missouri Review, and Electronic Poetry Journal.
Sarah Perrier
Just One of Those Things
Sarah Perrier’s interests include contemporary American fiction, confessional poetry, and the nature of voice and speaker in poetry. Her poetry has also appeared in journals such as Cimarron Review, Pleiades, The Journal, POOL, and Hotel Amerika.
Will Toedtman
The Several World
Will Toedtman is a student at the University of Cincinnati and has a BA in English.
Karen Craigo
Stone for an Eye
Karen Craigo is editor-in-chief (along with Michael Czyzniejewski) for Mid-American Review. She is the author of the chapbook Stone for an Eye. Her poetry has appeared in Poetry, Another Chicago Magazine, Indiana Review, Puerto del Sol, Crab Orchard Review, and The North American Review, among other journals. In addition to her teaching duties at Bowling Green State University, she has served as a visiting artist in the schools through the Ohio Arts Council (OAC). She is a two-time recipient of an OAC Individual Artist Fellowship, and she is a past fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
Philip Metres
Primers for Non-Native Speakers
Metres went to Indiana University, where he received a PhD in English and an MFA in Creative Writing, both in 2001. He is a poet and translator of Russian poetry, and his work has appeared in numerous journals and in Best American Poetry (2002). His books include Behind the Lines: War Resistance Poetry on the American Homefront Since 1941 (University of Iowa Press, 2007), Instants (chapbook; Ugly Duckling Presse, 2006), Primer for Non-Native Speakers (chapbook; Kent State University Press, 2004), A Kindred Orphanhood: Selected Poems of Sergey Gandlevsky (Zephyr 2003), Catalogue of Comedic Novelties: Selected Poems of Lev Rubinstein (Ugly Duckling, 2004), and, This Distracted Globe (2008). He has received fellowships from Thomas J. Watson Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Ledig House, and the Ohio Arts Council. He is an assistant professor of English at John Carroll University, where he teaches American Literature and Creative Writing.
Catherine Pierce
Animals of Habit
Catherine Pierce’s poems have appeared in Slate, Third Coast, Gulf Coast, Barrow Street, Smartish Pace, Mid-American Review, Bellingham Review, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA from Ohio State University and a PhD from the University of Missouri. She now lives in Starkville, Mississippi, where she teaches and co-directs the creative writing program at Mississippi State University.
J. Gabriel Scala
Twenty Questions for Robbie Dunkle
J. Gabriel Scala’s poems and reviews have appeared in Lullwater Review, Beacon Street Review, Poems & Plays, and Mid-American Review. “Inspired by the story of Secundus the Silent Philosopher and the twenty vital questions posed to him by Emperor Hadrian, J. Gabriel Scala’s Twenty Questions for Robbie Dunkle moves swiftly and deftly into the essence of human existence—memory. Imbued with that ancient consideration, Robbie Dunkle emerges as a chance metaphor for the poet’s own past, the dead past, which becomes our past, with all of its wonders and wastes, which only brilliant poetry can revive this powerfully.”—Larissa Szporluk
Joanne Lehman
Morning Song
Joanne Lehman is the author of Kairos and Traces of Treasure: Quest for God in the Commonplace. Her essays and poems have appeared in local newspapers, literary magazines, and religious and rural life publications.
Maureen Passmore
Stranger Truths
She has had poems published in Sycamore Review and has won the Mississippi Review Poetry Prize. The Pittsburgh resident earned her MFA from Bowling Green State University where she received the Distinguished Master’s Thesis Award.
Benjamin Scott Grossberg
The Auctioneer Bangs His Gavel
Benjamin Grosssberg’s first full-length book, Underwater Lengths in a Single Breath, won the 2005 Snyder Prize and will be published in 2007.
F. Daniel Rzicznek
Cloud Tablets
F. Daniel Rzicznek’s first full-length collection of poems, Neck of the World, was the winner of the 2007 May Swenson Poetry Award and will be published by Utah State University Press this year. His poems have appeared in Boston Review, The New Republic, AGNI, The Iowa Review, Gulf Coast, The Mississippi Review, North American Review, and elsewhere. He teaches English composition at Bowling Green State University.