UPDATED 2/21/2013
Jeanne
Bryner (LONG POETRY)
Jeanne Bryner
was born in Appalachia and grew up in Newton Falls, Ohio. A practicing registered nurse, she is a
graduate of Trumbull Memorial’s School of Nursing and Kent State University’s
Honors College. She has received writing
fellowships from Bucknell University, the Ohio Arts Council (’97, 07), and
Vermont Studio Center. Her poetry has
been adapted for the stage and performed in Ohio, West Virginia, New York,
Kentucky and Edinburgh, Scotland. With
the support of Hiram College’s Center for Literature, Medicine and Biomedical
Humanities, her nursing poetry has been adapted for the stage and performed by
Verb Ballets, Cleveland, Ohio. She has a
new play, “Foxglove Canyon” and her books in print are Breathless, Blind Horse: Poems, Eclipse: Stories, Tenderly Lift Me:
Nurses Honored, Celebrated and Remembered, No Matter How Many Windows, The Wedding
of Miss Meredith Mouse and Smoke:
Poems.
She
received outstanding alumnae award from KSU, Trumbull Campus and her book, No Matter How Many Windows received the
Working Class Studies’ Tillie Olsen Award
for Creative Writing in
Chicago. She recently received second
place for the 2012 American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award in the
category of Public Interest/Creative writings for her new book, SMOKE.
A community affiliate of the Center for Working Class Studies, she
often writes about working class issues.
She lives with her husband near a dairy farm in Newton Falls, Ohio.
Diane Gilliam (SHORT POETRY)
Diane Gilliam
was born and grew up in Columbus, Ohio. Gilliam’s books include: Kettle Bottom,
One of Everything, and Recipe for Blackberry Cake (chapbook). In 2003 she was
the recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship. She is the
winner of the Ohioana Library Association Book of the Year Award in Poetry 2005
for Kettle Bottom, which also won a Pushcart Prize and was an American
Booksellers Association Book Sense Pick for the Top Ten Poetry Books of 2005.
She is the winner of the 2008 Chaffin Award for Appalachian Literature.
Chris Green (APPALACHIAN WRITING)
Chris Green
is a writer and instructor whose monograph, The
Social Life of Poetry: Appalachia, Race, and Radical Modernism, won the
2009 Weatherford Award for the best non-fiction book about Appalachia. From
2004 to 2012, Chris taught at Marshall University for the Department of English
and the Graduate Humanities Program; he was also chair of Marshall’s General
Education Council & helped refabricate the school’s Gen Ed program. Chris grew up in Lexington and attended the
University of Kentucky where Appalachian Studies answered his need to write
poetry, know the world, and fight for justice.
He went on to earn his MA in English from Appalachian State University,
and his MFA in Poetry and MS in secondary education at Indiana University,
where he studied post-colonialism. He
returned to Lexington where he worked as a poet in the schools and edited Wind Magazine: A Journal of Writing and
Community. Trouble was, he kept
writing essays about poetry and world change.
After returning to the academy & completing his PhD. on
multicultural American poetry, Chris also co-edited Radicalism in the South Since Reconstruction, a collection of
scholarly essays, and edited Coal: A
Poetry Anthology, a collection of 98 poets designed for non-academic
readers, a book that one reviewer concluded was “significant and lasting
contribution to Appalachian literature, and maybe more importantly, to the
literature of a world coming to terms with how our resources and the ways we
use them transform our lives.” His own
book of poetry is called Rushlight. He is currently (August 2012) vice-president
and president elect of the Appalachian Studies Association, and he is working
on a book about antebellum Appalachian literature. He also tries to write at least one haiku a
day.
Pam Hanson (EMERGING WRITERS PROSE)
Pam Andrews
Hanson along with her writing partner/mother (Barbara Andrews) is the author of
more than 30 novels, including women’s inspirational fiction for Guideposts
Publishing and romances for Harlequin. Several more titles will be released by
Guideposts this year. In addition, she and her partner released two indie
inspirational romances for Kindle on Amazon and Nook on Barnes & Noble. A
former reporter, Pam previously taught beat reporting and was the director of
advising for the School of Journalism at West Virginia University. She is a
past recipient of the JUG Award. Pam now resides with her family in Nebraska,
where she writes fulltime.
Dr. Jimmy Carl Harris (SHORT STORY)
Dr. Jimmy
Carl Harris lives in Birmingham, Alabama. He writes, teaches, and edits, mostly
fiction. His collections of prizewinning short stories, Walking Wounded and Wounds
That Bind, were published by Iris Press in 2006 and 2007. His stories have
appeared in The Louisville Review, Appalachian Heritage, Confluence, the Tulane Review, the Birmingham
Arts Journal, and elsewhere. Some of his stories draw on his experiences as
a Marine, including decorated service as a Sergeant Major. He held a number of
positions in higher education, including assistant professor and department
chair at Southeastern Louisiana University. In addition, he taught creative
writing for the Alabama Writers Conclave, Southeastern Writers, West Virginia
Writers, Tennessee Mountain Writers, and others. Jimmy Carl is currently an
editor for Inspiration for Writers, an editorial service based in West
Virginia.
Brett Hursey (EMERGING WRITERS POETRY)
Brett
Hursey's poetry has appeared in over a hundred literary journals across the
United States and Canada. His plays have
also been produced in more than a hundred theatres across the world. Currently he teaches Playwriting and Poetry
at Longwood University, in Virginia.
Jacqueline Jules (CHILDREN'S BOOKS)
Jacqueline Jules is the award-winning author of 23 children's books, including Zapato Power: Freddie Ramos Takes Off (2010 CYBILS Literary Award for Short Chapter Book, Maryland Blue Crab Young Reader Honor Book, ALSC Great Early Elementary Reads), Unite or Die: How Thirteen States Became a Nation (2010 Library of Virginia Cardozo Award), Benjamin and the Silver Goblet (2010 Sydney Taylor Honor Award), Duck for Turkey Day (Washington State Children’s Choice Book Awards list, TN Volunteer State Award), and No English (DE Diamonds list, TN Volunteer State Award list). Also a poet, Jacqueline won the Arlington Arts Moving Words Contest, Best Original Poetry Award from the Catholic Press Association, and the SCBWI Magazine Merit Poetry Award. Jacqueline lives in Northern Virginia. Visit her website at JacquelineJules.com.
Becca J.R. Lachman (INSPIRATIONAL
WRITING)
Becca J.R.
Lachman teaches writing at Ohio University, from which she received her M.A. in
English. She holds B.A.s in music
composition and creative writing from Otterbein University and an M.F.A. from
the Bennington College Writing Seminars.
Her 2004 chapbook “Songs from the Springhouse” won the national Florence
Kahn Memorial Award. Her latest
collection is “The Apple Speaks” from Dreamseeker Books.
Gretchen Moran Laskas (YOUNG
ADULT/MIDDLE GRADE)
Born in
Philippi, in 1969, Gretchen Moran Laskas is proud of the fact that she is an
eighth generation West Virginian. Laskas
attended the University of Pittsburg, graduating in 1990. A series of moves
eventually led her to Charlottesville, Virginia, so that her husband Karl could
attend Law School. Her first book, The Midwife's Tale, was purchased by
Dial Press (Random House) with the book released in 2003. Among the honors the
book has received are the Appalachian Studies Association's Weatherford Award
for Outstanding Contribution to Appalachia and the Appalachian Writers
Association Fiction Book of the Year Award (2003), as well as Southeast
Booksellers Book of the Years and Library of Virginia book award
nominations. Laskas' second novel, The Miner's Daughter was published in
2007. She has been published in a
variety of journals, magazines, and anthologies. She served as the 2012 Appalachian Heritage
Writer-in-Residence at Shepherd University, participating in the West Virginia
Fiction Competition and fall residency events, as well as the completion of the
2013 Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Gretchen Moran Laskas Volume V.
James
M. Martin (SCREENPLAY)
James M. Martin is a senior
lecturer in radio, television and film studies at the University of North Texas. He was the director of the film The Doubtful Martyr in 2008. His films have placed in the St. Louis
International Film Festival and the Rhode Island International Film Festival,
among others. He was a second round finalist in the Creative Screenwriting 2010
Cyberspace Open.
Lee Maynard (PEARL S. BUCK AWARD FOR
WRITING FOR SOCIAL CHANGE)
Lee Maynard
is the author of three novels, Crum, Screaming with the Cannibals, and The
Scummers, which together make up the Crum trilogy, as well as the
memoir-fiction blend The Pale Light of Sunset: Scattershots and Hallucinations
in an Imagined Life. WVU Press, which published Lee's controversial novels,
described them as "full of intense violence and cutting humor." Lee
was born and grew up in an unincorporated town in West Virginia, like his Crum
protagonist Jesse Stone, and now lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He is
President and CEO of The Storehouse, a nonprofit food pantry that serves more
than 2 million free meals and gives away more than 40,000 articles of clothing
each year to people in need, regardless of race or faith. He has also, over the
years, worked as a criminal investigator in the military; an editor at a
conservation magazine; the first secretary of West Virginia's Commission on
Manpower, Technology and Training; and an advisor on experiential education as
Vice Chancellor at Prescott College in Arizona--to name a few.
Dana Wildsmith (SHORT NONFICTION)
Dana
Wildsmith grew up in south Georgia, the daughter of a Methodist minister active
in working for social justice. She attended college wherever her Navy husband’s
career took them, finally obtaining a B.A. in Sociology from Virginia Wesleyan
College. In 1992, Wildsmith was named a
Poetry Fellow in the South Carolina Academy of Authors, and published her first
book, Alchemy (Sow’s Ear Press). Her
second chapbook, Annie won the Palanquin Press competition of the University Of
South Carolina, Aiken. Her first full-length collection of poems, Our Bodies Remember (Sow’s Ear Press),
was published in 1999. Her poetry collection, One Good Hand, was a SIBA Poetry Book of the Year nominee and was
nominated for Appalachian Book of the Year. A poem from that collection, “Making
a Living,” was read on Garrison Keiller’s Writer’s
Almanac. Her most recent book, a
non-fiction collection of essays titled Back
to Abnormal, was Finalist for Georgia Author of the Year in Essay. She has been a Writer-in-residence for the
Devil’s Tower National Monument and for the Island Institute in Sitka, Alaska.
She has worked as an Artist In the Schools for the South Carolina Humanities
Council. Wildsmith teaches writing workshops throughout the United States. Her
poems and essays have been widely published in both literary and commercial
journals, including: The Sun, Yankee, The Kentucky Poetry review,
and The Chattahoochee Review. Her poems have most recently been
anthologized in the University Press of Kentucky’s Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia, The Southern Poetry
Anthology (Texas Review Press,
2006), Women, Period (Spinsters Ink,
January, 2009), and Writing By Ear (Motes Books, 2009).
Meredith Sue Willis (BOOK LENGTH
PROSE)
Meredith Sue
Willis was raised in Shinnston, West Virginia, where her father’s father got a
job as store keeper at Consolidation Coal Company’s facility in Owings. Her
mother’s family, the Merediths, were from Monongah and other parts of Marion
County. She now lives in New Jersey a short train ride from New York
City, where she is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at New
York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies, as well as a
frequent visiting writer-in-the-schools in New York and New Jersey. She has degrees
from Barnard College and Columbia University as well as an honorary doctorate
from West Virginia University.
Her novels and short fiction for adults and children
have been published by Scribners’, Harper Collins, West Virginia University
Press, Mercury House, Ohio University Press, and others. Her latest books
are a collection of short spin-offs from myth and the Bible called Re-Visions;
a book for writers called Ten Strategies to Write Your Novel; and a book
of literary Appalachian stories called Out of the Mountains. The latter
was praised in Booklist as a “finely crafted collection...worth reading
twice to discover all its intricacies and connections."
For more information, please visit her website at http://www.meredithsuewillis.com.
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