John Chapman, jazz bassist, grew up in Madison, WI and is a freelance bassist in Phoenix, AZ, and adjunct faculty member at Phoenix College. He studied music at University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and Arizona State University and has performed extensively with jazz pianist Les Czimber in Sedona, jazz vocalist Dennis Rowland and the Jazz Experience, Moseyhorse, and the John Vold-John Chapman Duo.in Phoenix. Moseyhorse’s original jazz compositions are now available on CD. Becca Grant will join him on piano.
John Chapman at MySpace and his band CD with Moseyhorse.
Robin Chapman is the author of six books of poetry, including The Way In and Images of a Complex World: The Art and Poetry of Chaos (with J.C. Sprott’s fractals), both winners of the Posner Poetry Award; The Dreamer Who Counted the Dead, winner of a WLA Outstanding Poetry Book Award, Smoke and Strong Whiskey, and Abundance, winner of the Cider Press Editors’ Award, and five chapbooks, including The Only Everglades in the World (Parallel Press). She co-edited the anthology On Retirement: 75 Poems (Univ. of Iowa Press), with Judith Strasser. A recipient of three Wisconsin Arts Board Grants, including a 2007 Literary Arts Fellowship, her poems have appeared in The American Scholar, Poetry, OnEarth, and The Southern Review, among others.
Anne-Marie Cusac is the author of the poetry books, Silkie (MMM Press, 2007), winner of the MMM Press poetry book prize, and the Wisconsin Library Associa-
tion award; and The Mean Days (Tia Chucha, 2001), which won recognition from both the Wisconsin Library Association and the Council for Wisconsin Writers. An Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Communication at Roosevelt University, where she heads the Journalism Program, Cusac is also a George Polk Award-winning journalist and worked as an editor and investigative reporter for The Progressive magazine for ten years. She is currently a member of the blog team for The Huffington Post. Her nonfiction book, Cruel and Unusual: The Culture of Punishment in America, was published by Yale University Press in 2009.
Susan Elbe is the author of Eden in the Rearview Mirror (Word Press) which received Honorable Mention for the Posner Book-Length Poetry Award, and a chapbook, Light Made from Nothing (Parallel Press). Her poems appear or are forthcoming in many journals, including Ascent, Blackbird, Diode, MARGIE, North American Review, Ocho, and Salt Hill. Her work has also been widely anthologized, including in A Fierce Brightness: Twenty-Five Years of Women's Poetry (Calyx Books), On Retirement: 75 Poems (University of Iowa Press), and Eating the Pure Light: Homage to Thomas McGrath (The Backwaters Press). Among her awards are fellowships to the Vermont Studio Center and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and the Lorine Niedecker Poetry Prize. Her web site is www.susanelbe.com; she currently works as a webmaster.
Catherine Jagoe holds a PhD in Spanish literature from the University of Cambridge, England and is a former Associate Professor of Spanish at the UW-Madison. Poems from her chapbook, Casting Off (Parallel Press, 2007), have been featured on Garrison Keillor's The Writer’s Almanac and on the website Poetry Daily. Her poetry and essays have appeared in Rattle, Kalliope, Wisconsin Academy Review, Poem, Red Wheelbarrow, Isle, Ninth Letter, diode and other journals. Her books include translations of a novel from Spain, That Bringas Woman (Everyman, 1996) and another from Argentina, My Name Is Light (Bloomsbury, 2003). She works as a translator in Madison, Wisconsin, and recently finished translating a scientist's memoir about the Arctic from Catalan to English
Sara Parrell was awarded first prize in the 2008 Poetry Center of Chicago’s Juried Reading; Dancing Girl Press published poems from her winning manuscript in an accompanying chapbook. She won second place in the Wisconsin People & Ideas magazine’s 2007 poetry contest and her work has been published in the Lake Wingra Morning anthology, Nocturne (a collaboration with photographer and musician Thomas Ferrella), the Wisconsin Academy Review and other journals. As a pediatric nurse she has practiced and taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with multiple publications in her field. More recently, she works with children in the public schools and designs the professional staff development program for nurses. Sara also leads writing workshops including “Writing and Meditation”, and “Writing as a Way of Healing”. She lives with her husband Grayson Kampschroer in Madison, Wisconsin
The late Judith Strasser, who was a member of the Lake Effect Poets and author of two published collections of poetry, Sand Island Succession: Poems of the Apostle Islands, and The Reason/Unreason Project, winner of the Lewis-Clark Expedition award, left a last poetry manuscript, Limited Warranty, that is now available on her website www.judithstrasser.com for downloading as a PDF or reading online. She also wrote the memoir Black Eye: Escaping a Marriage, Writing a Life and the non-fiction book Facing Fear: Cancer and Politics, Courage and Hope
Alison Townsend is the author of two collections of poetry, The Blue Dress (White Pine Press), and Persephone in America (Southern Illinois University Press), which won the Crab Orchard Open Poetry Competition and was published in spring 2009. She also has two limited edition chapbooks, And Still the Music (Flume Press) and What the Body Knows (Parallel Press). Her work appears in many literary journals and anthologies and she has won awards and fellowships from the Wisconsin Arts Board and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, among others. She teaches English, Creative Writing and Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and lives on four acres of prairie and oak savanna in the farm country outside Madison.
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