Book Signing with Rock and Roll Legend Mitch Ryder

Friday, February 3, 7PM

Legendary Rock and Roll icon, Mitch Ryder, will be reading from and and signing his new autobiography Devils & Blue Dresses: My Wild Ride as a Rock and Roll Legend at Lido Gallery on Friday Evening, February 3rd from 7-9 PM.

Join us for a special evening and a rare opportunity to meet and hear Ryder read from the book and speak about his fascinating life with a tribute by host John D. Lamb, and ML Liebler.

Sponsored by Lido Gallery and Springfed Arts. This event is FREE and open to the public.

The Ecstatic Ekphrastic (tm)

Emily Carr Lecture with Terry Blackhawk
Saturday, January 21, 2PM

Frida Kahlo, Georgia O'Keeffe and Emily Carr form a triumvirate of 20th Century iconoclastic North American women artists. All drew from nature and native sources and lived fiercely independent lives devoted to their art. The least known of the three, Carr's life and work infiltrated Terry Blackhawk's writing in the mid-nineties when she first became aware of her. She will share slides and some of her own poems as well as Carr's own writings to show how art inspires art.

Book Release Party

Featuring Mary Minock's new book, "The Way Back Room" and poet Rebecca Rank.
Saturday, January 7, 2PM

Mary Minock's new book is The Way-Back Room: A Memoir of a Detroit Childhood (Bottom Dog Press). Southwest Detroit is the backdrop to Minock's memoir, but the real story is less about the city and more about Minock's rocky childhood. Her father died when she was six, which led to Minock caring for her mother and a strained relationship with her extended family. At Catholic school, Minock was an outcast, a deeply troubled child whose way of dealing with her grief caused her to be misunderstood. Minock doesn't dramatize her misfortunes, and instead readers see a self-possessed, sharply honest girl who tries her best to confront challenges head on. Minock is a creative writing professor at Madonna University. She won the Society for the Study of Midwest Literature Gwendolyn Brooks Award and has been published in Mid-America and the MacGuffin.

Detroit born Jan Krist is a well established veteran of the acoustic music scene. Jan's musical gifts have been recognized by Billboard Magazine, Entertainment Weekly Magazine, Dirty Linen, Image Journal, and others. “A writer whose gift as a songwriter equals - if not surpasses her vocal gifts. She has an uncanny way of cutting to the heart of a topic and providing the listener with food for thought.” — Image Journal

Ama Carey Barr was raised on Ireland’s Atlantic west coast speaking both the Irish and English languages, she also speaks French and Spanish and some German, Italian, Dutch and Catalan! She is passionate about all things literary, linguistic and artistic - and all travel. She lived in Belgium, Spain, France, and England for extended periods, teaching and in the travel industry, and for “extended creative spells” in New York, Brussels, Paris, Lyons, Switzerland, London, Galway and Dublin. She has a BA from Ireland, Speech and Drama certification from the London College of Music, and an M.A in English Literature from University of Detroit, where she teaches English and writing.

Anne Doran's first attempts at poetry date from when she received her first computer, which she considered a godsend, due to her habit of revising just about any line she ever wrote. Now retired after thirty-six years as a public school teacher, Anne uses her freedom to attend Springfed Arts’ workshops and edit even more obsessively. She has been thinking about submitting to magazines for about 10 years but doesn’t want to rush it.

Ginny Grush lives in Farmington Hills. She's a Spanish instructor at Schoolcraft College. She was a Peace Corps volunteer in Bolivia. She’s married, has two grown children and one grandchild. She writes personal essays, poetry and short stories. She's been published in The MacGuffin, Detroit Free Press, Farmington Observer and Peninsula Poets.

Lucija Franetovic has been writing poetry since she was in high school. She loves discovering herself and the world through writing, loves its reflective, communicative and transformative powers. She believes writing poetry is inviting the soul to come out and dance. She does it to celebrate and understand. Lucija was born in Croatia and now lives in Farmington Hills with her husband. She teaches World History and German at Thurston High School in Redford.

Zilka Joseph's "What Dread" Book Release
With songwriter John Latini and poets Lynn Deturk, Nancy Faerber, Devon Adjei, Josephine Rood, Jane Bridges and Michelle Deatrick.

Zilka Joseph was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her chapbook, Lands I Live In, was nominated for a PEN America Beyond Margins Award. She was awarded a Zell Fellowship, a Hopwood Award, and the Elsie Choy Lee Scholarship at the University of Michigan.

John Latini grew up in Queens, New York, but he’s a son of Michigan as if he’d been issued a passport. Winner of the Metro Detroit Songwriting Grand Prize in 2004 and the Detroit Blues Challenge winner in both 2008 and 2009. Latini lives in Ypsilanti and is serious crafter of songs. The Ann Arbor Observer called his voice “alternately celebratory, remorseful, seductive and dangerous.”

A few computer science courses led Nancy Faerber to freelancing as a corporate trainer and systems documentation specialist, while her concentration in English Lit eventually formed the root ball that supports her sapling poetry. Living in western Wayne county, she is married with two kids and humbly accepts Most Favored Human status from the family cat. Nancy would especially like to thank the gracious Zilka Joseph for her insight and encouragement.

Devon Adjei began writing poetry at age twelve inspired by her father’s 1960’s revolutionary poems. Devon is a graduate of the University of Michigan and has lived in Ghana and Germany. She views poetry as the highest form of communication and uses it as a vehicle to understand the past, present and imagine different possibilities for the future. Her love of words is a family affair as she is raising two wonderful writers, Sena and Dzifa Adjei. Devon lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Josephine Rood writes poetry and is working on a play. She writes because she loves playing with words and trying to make something new out of them. She writes to give shape to her experience and to communicate with others. As a child she lived in wilderness areas in Uganda and Tanzania. Then she lived in another kind of wilderness, Chicago. Now she lives in Ann Arbor, MI.

Jane Bridges grew up in Texas, New Hampshire, and India. For fifty years she has lived in Ann Arbor, raising two children and teaching. Her poems have been published or have been accepted for publication in Margie, Sow's Ear Poetry Review, Third Wednesday, and The MacGuffin.

Lynn DeTurk began writing by joining Springfed Arts to study with Joy Gaines-Friedler and Zilka Joeseph. She has published poetry in the Cave Moon Press Broken Circles Hunger Project Anthology, The Boston Literary Magazine, The Orange Room Review, CowboyPoetry.com, and has work forthcoming in The Great American Poetry Story Anthology. She placed 3rd in the Writer's Workshop Words of Love Contest.

Michelle Regalado Deatrick’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New American Voices, Copper Nickel, The Comstock Review’s Award Issue, Poet Lore and other publications. Michelle's MFA in fiction is from the University of Michigan, where she received a Colby Fellowship, Hopwood Awards in Fiction and Poetry, the Bain-Swigget Prize, and a Classics Translation Award. She's held writing residencies at Macdowell, Ragdale and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Michelle lives on the outskirts of Ann Arbor on an 80-acre farm.

Dawn McDuffie's "Bulky Pick-Up Day" Book Release
With poets Carol Carpenter, Mack Carpenter, Beth Langelier, Tracy Morris, Mary Stebbins Taitt and Mildred Williams.

Dawn McDuffie moved to Detroit in 1963 and has drawn on the city for inspiration ever since. Her second book, Carmina Detroit, was published in 2006 by Adastra Press. She earned an MA in Humanities from Wayne State University in 1973, and an MFA in poetry from Vermont College in 2003. Since 2000 Dawn has taught creative writing at the Scarab Club in downtown Detroit. Her poems have appeared in Rattle, The MacGuffin, and Feminist Studies.

Joe Ponepinto - 1st Place Prose

Joe Ponepinto is the Book Review Editor for the Los Angeles Review and a graduate of the MFA program at the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts, where he studied under award-winning authors including David Wagoner, Bruce Holland Rogers, and Kathleen Alcalá. He was a journalist, political speechwriter and business owner before turning to writing full time. His work has been published in the Los Angeles Review, Vestal Review, Apalachee Review, Tottenville Review, and 100 Stories for Queensland.

Alexander Morgan - 2nd Place Prose

Alexander Morgan is a retired General Motors mathematician. He lives in Birmingham, Michigan, with his wife, Janice, his son, Abraham, and his daughter, Julia. He won second prize in Springfed Arts’ 2008 prose competition. Several of his personal essays have appeared in The Artisan’s Well.

John Jeffire - 3rd Place Prose

John Jeffire was born in Detroit. His novel Motown Burning was named Grad Prize Winner in the 2005 Mount Arrowsmith Novel Competition and in 2007 it won a gold medal for regional fiction in the Independent Publisher Awards. His first book of poetry, Stone + Fist + Brick + Bone, was released by The Aquarius Press on its Living Detroit series and was nominated for the Michigan Notable Book Award. Pulitzer Prize winner Philip Levine calls the book "a terrific one for our city." For more on Jeffire and his writing, visit www.johnjeffire.com.

Zilka Joseph - 1st Place Poetry

Zilka Joseph was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her chapbook, Lands I Live In, was nominated for a PEN America Beyond Margins Award. She was awarded a Zell Fellowship, a Hopwood Award, and the Elsie Choy Lee Scholarship at the University of Michigan. Her new chapbook What Dread (semi-finalist in the New Women’s Voices contest) is available for pre-ordering from the “New Releases and forthcoming titles” link at Finishing Line Press, www.finishinglinepress.com.

Sophia Rivkin - 2nd Place Poetry

Sophia Rivkin has a B.A. and M.A. from Wayne State University. She raised four kids, helped send her husband through school, then returned herself to school. She is published in Wayne Review, Driftwood Review, Garfield Review, The MacGuffin, Rattle, Poet Lore, Comstock Review. Rivkin has won prizes from MacGuffin, Rattle, Garfield Review, Blue Unicorn, Diner, Comstock Review, Passager and is a three-time winner of Springfed Arts poetry contest. She released her chapbook, The Valise. Rivkin's chapbook Naked Woman, will be published this year.

Olga Klekner - 3rd Place Poetry

Olga Klekner is a bilingual, award-winning poet published both in Hungarian and English. Her essays and poetry have appeared in anthologies in the United States and Canada, in The Ambassador Poetry Project, Renaissance City, The MacGuffin, and numerous volumes of Lyceum. She lives in the United States (Dearborn, Michigan), Canada and Hungary.

Mary Minock - Honorable Mention Prose

Mary Minock grew up abnormal but it made her creative, and gave her a fine sense of humor. She writes poetry and prose that champions the underdog—whether the dog be a great city like Detroit, or whether the dog be a dog. She’s won some contests—recently Society for the Study of Midwest Literature Gwendolyn Brooks Award. Her latest publications are in Mid-America and the MacGuffin. She’s recently completed a memoir of her girlhood in Detroit entitled: The Way-Back Room, and she may have found a publisher but we'll let her announce that when she's ready.

Maria Costantini - Honorable Mention Prose

Maria A. Costantini was almost thirteen when she came with her family to the United States from her native town just south of Rome. She speaks of her heritage and immigrant experience in much of her writing, which has appeared in The MacGuffin, Peninsula Poets, NFPS Encore, Versedaily.com, rencity.net., Driftwood Review, and others. Her work has won honors and prizes from the National and Michigan Poetry Societies, William Allen Creative Nonfiction, and Springfed Arts 2009 and 2010 prose contests. Maria has translated from Italian into English two books of poetry by Ada Negri (1870-1945): The Book of Mara and Songs of the Island, both recently published by Italica Press, N.Y. She is currently working on a memoir, a collection of poems, and a third book of poetry in translation.

Linda Nemec Foster - Honorable Mention Poetry

Linda Nemec Foster is the author of nine collections of poetry including: A History of the Body; A Modern Fairy Tale: The Baba Yaga Poems (Trying to Balance the Heart ; Living in the Fire Nest ; Contemplating the Heavens; and Talking Diamonds. Foster has won numerous honors for her poetry including the International Creative Arts Award from the Polish American Historical Association, finalist for the Michigan Governor’s Artist Award, two grants from the Michigan Council for the Arts, fellowships from the Arts Foundation of Michigan and ArtServe Michigan, a teaching fellowship from the National Writers’ Voice Project, and a book award nomination from the Academy of American Poets.

Caroline Maun - Honorable Mention Poetry

Caroline C. Maun is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. She is the editor of The Collected Poems of Evelyn Scott and the author of Mosaic of Fire: The Work of Lola Ridge, Evelyn Scott, Charlotte Wilder, and Kay Boyle, forthcoming in 2012 from University of South Carolina Press. She has written a volume of poetry titled The Sleeping (Marick Press 2006) and two chapbooks published by Pudding House Press.

Donna Vinstra - Honorable Mention Poetry

Dorene O'Brien

Dorene O’Brien is a fiction writer from Detroit. She has won the Red Rock Review Mark Twain Award for Short Fiction, the New Millennium’s Fiction Award and the Chicago Tribune Nelson Algren Award. She also won the international Bridport Prize and is the recipient of a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her short stories have appeared in the Connecticut Review, Clackamas Literary Review, the Chicago Tribune, the Montreal Review, New Millennium Writings, Cimarron Review, Detroit Noir and others. Voices of the Lost and Found, her first full-length short fiction collection, won the USA Best Books Award in Fiction. She is currently writing a novel featuring fossil hunters in Ethiopia.

Rick Bailey

Rick Bailey teaches English at Henry Ford Community College. He has written four books about writing for McGraw-Hill. His freelance work has appeared in Metro Times, Small Business Opportunities, and Real Woman, his poetry and fiction in College English, Oxford Magazine, Chattahoochee Review, and Georgetown Review. He directed the Cranbrook Writers Conference 2006-08.

Diane Dickinson

Diane Dickinson holds a B.A. in English Literature, an M.L.S. in Library Science, and completed several classes toward a degree in theology and Greek. She was a research analyst for Coopers & Lybrand, now Price Waterhouse Coopers, until she left to become the business manager for Mayfair Accessories, Inc. Diane has a strong interest in art, music, and dance, and studied ballet for several years. She lives in Royal Oak and has been a member of Mary Jo Firth Gillet’s workshop for two years. Her poems have appeared in California Quarterly and Altadena Review, among others.

Lori Volante

In addition to poetry, Lori Volante enjoys writing song parodies, short stories and humorous essays. She says her best ideas (like friends) arrive without warning in the middle of life. Her poetry has appeared in the literary journals “Rattle,” “Toasted Cheese,” and “The Wayne Literary Review.” She works in Detroit for a non-profit youth serving organization called InsideOut Literary Arts Project.

Alise Alousi

Alise Alousi’s poems have appeared in several anthologies including: Poets Against War, I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You, and Inclined to Speak: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Poetry and is forthcoming in The Malpais Review and We are Iraqis: Aesthetics and Politics in a Time of War. Her poems have been produced as a broadside and hand made book for the Mutanabbi Street Starts Here project and can be heard on the CD Reading Rumi in an Uncertain World. Alousi is Associate Director of the InsideOut Literary Arts Project, and is on the board of RAWI, an organization dedicated to supporting creative and scholarly writing by Arab Americans.

Desiree Cooper

Desiree Cooper, a columnist for the Free Press, feels that stories have the power to be not only entertaining, but transformational and redemptive as well. She’s been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize twice for her coverage of Nathaniel Abraham, an 11-year-old boy in Pontiac who was tried as an adult for murder in 1999. She’s won journalism awards from Radcliffe College, Planned Parenthood, the Michigan Press Association and the Society for Professional Journalists.

An aspiring fiction writer, she has also won several national prizes for her fiction and poetry from such publications as "Ebony Magazine" and "Writer’s Digest." She is a founding board member of Cave Canem, a national program for emerging African-American poets. A memoir, “Color My World,” is included in the anthology “Children of the Dream: Our Stories of Growing Up Black in America” (Atria 2000).

George Dila

George Dila's fiction and personal essays have appeared in such publications as North American Review, Driftwood, Literal Latte, Current, Christian Science Monitor, Traverse, Detroit Free Press and others. His short story collection, "The End of the World", was published by Pure Heart Press in 2006. His second story collection, "Nothing More to Tell," will be released by Mayapple Press in July, 2011. Born and raised in Detroit, his vocations have included advertising creative director, New York City waiter, casino Blackjack dealer, actor and director, but never, his parents were always proud to point out, bowling alley pin-setter.

Phillip Sterling

Phillip Sterling's most recent poetry collection is "Abeyance", winner of the Frank Cat Press Chapbook Award 2007. Phillip Sterling is the author of "In Which Brief Stories Are Told" (short fiction, Wayne State U Press 2011), and three other collections of poetry: "Quatrains" (Pudding House 2006), "Significant Others" (Main Street Rag 2005), and "Mutual Shores" (New Issues 2000). He is the editor of "Imported Breads: Literature of Cultural Exchange" (Mammoth 2003) and founding coordinator of the Literature In Person (LIP) Reading Series at Ferris State University, where he has taught for many years.

Terry Blackhawk

Terry Blackhawk is the founder and director of Detroit 's acclaimed InsideOut Literary Arts Project, a poets-in-schools program. Her poetry collections include Body & Field (Michigan State University Press, 1999), Escape Artist (BkMk Press, 2003), selected by Molly Peacock for the John Ciardi Prize; and The Dropped Hand (Marick Press, 2007). She has published two chapbooks, Trio: Voices from the Myths (Ridgeway Press, 1998) and Greatest Hits 1989-2003 (Pudding House Press). Terry is the recipient of the 2010 Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize from Nimrod International.

Ed Haworth Hoeppner

Ed Haworth Hoeppner teaches at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He's published poetry in a wide variety of magazines and journals, including Crazyhorse, Colorado Review, Passages North, Prairie Schooner and Shenandoah, and is the author of three books: Echoes And Moving Fields (criticism) and Rain Through High Windows and Ancestral Radio (poetry) . His new book of poems, Blood Prism, has recently won the 2011 Ohio State University Press/The Journal Award and will be published in the fall.

Karin Hoffecker

Karin Hoffecker has a Master's Degree in English Literature from Oakland University and has been writing poetry for twelve years. She was a finalist for the James Hearst Poetry Prize at the North American Review and won a First Place Prize in a Graduate Alumnus Poetry Contest at Oakland University. Her poems have appeared in literary journals including Penumbra, The Comstock Review, The MacGuffin, Mona Poetica, Passager, and Spire.

Artist Tom Maniaci graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1978 with a BFA in Design. He then spent a semester at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee studying film history and editing. During this time he was becoming a popular local artist, painting murals for local businesses and residences there in his home town. In 1980 he put away his brushes, moved to Detroit and began a career in advertising. He’s done award-winning work as an art-director and writer, and has been directing television commercials for several years now.

Since 2001, Tom’s Frame Your Face portraits can be found in The Lido Gallery in Birmingham, Michigan, The Gaslight Gallery in Petosky, Michigan and in the homes and offices of clients in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Miami, Dallas and of course, Detroit. In 2005, Tom was one of only five local artists to be included in the Classic Rock Art Show & Sale when it made its stop in Detroit as part of a national tour.

View the Exhibit Online

Alexander MacLeod

Alexander MacLeod was born in Inverness, Cape Breton and raised in Windsor, Ontario. His award-winning stories have appeared in many of the leading Canadian and American journals and have been selected for The Journey Prize Anthology. He holds degrees from the University of Windsor, the University of Notre Dame, and McGill. He currently lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia and teaches at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax.

Clark Blaise

Clark Blaise was born in Fargo, North Dakota in 1940 to French and Anglo-Canadian parents. He moved often during his childhood years as the family followed the usually disastrous fortunes of his furniture salesman father which have been chronicled in the author's `post-modern' autobiography I Had a Father. Blaise graduated from Denison University in Granville, Ohio in 1961 and then went to Harvard to study writing with Bernard Malamud. In 1962 he moved to attend the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop, where he met and married the well-known American novelist, Bharati Mukherjee. He emigrated to Montreal in 1966 in search of his French-Canadian roots and taught for the next twelve years at Sir George Williams University where he established what is now Concordia's creative writing workshop. After a brief period at York University, Clark and Bharati moved back to the United States where Clark took up the position of Director of the prestigious International Writing School at Iowa.

Mary Butler has lived and worked in the Detroit area all her life, earning her BA from Wayne State University. She continues to hone her skills in Mary Jo Firth Gillett’s poetry workshop, is an avid gardener, and enjoys the love and support of family and friends.

Ama Carey Barr was raised on Ireland’s Atlantic west coast speaking both the Irish and English languages, she also speaks French and Spanish and some German, Italian, Dutch and Catalan! She is passionate about all things literary, linguistic and artistic - and all travel. She lived in Belgium, Spain, France, and England for extended periods, teaching and in the travel industry, and for “extended creative spells” in New York, Brussels, Paris, Lyons, Switzerland, London, Galway and Dublin. She has a BA from Ireland, Speech and Drama certification from the London College of Music, and an M.A in English Literature from University of Detroit, where she teaches English and writing.

Diane Dickinson holds a B.A. in English Literature, an M.L.S. in Library Science, and completed several classes toward a degree in theology and Greek. She was a research analyst for Coopers & Lybrand, now Price Waterhouse Coopers, until she left to become the business manager for Mayfair Accessories, Inc. Diane has a strong interest in art, music, and dance, and studied ballet for several years. She lives in Royal Oak and has been a member of Mary Jo Firth Gillet’s workshop for two years. Her poems have appeared in California Quarterly and Altadena Review, among others.

Anne Doran's first attempts at poetry date from when she received her first computer, which she considered a godsend, due to her habit of revising just about any line she ever wrote. Now retired after thirty-six years as a public school teacher, Anne uses her freedom to attend Springfed Arts’ workshops and edit even more obsessively. She has been thinking about submitting to magazines for about 10 years but doesn’t want to rush it.

Karin Hoffecker has a Master's Degree in English Literature from Oakland University and has been writing poetry for twelve years. She was a finalist for the James Hearst Poetry Prize at the North American Review and won a First Place Prize in a Graduate Alumnus Poetry Contest at Oakland University. Her poems have appeared in literary journals including Penumbra, The Comstock Review, The MacGuffin, Mona Poetica, Passager, and Spire.

Mary Minock grew up abnormal but it made her creative, and gave her a fine sense of humor. She writes poetry and prose that champions the underdog—whether the dog be a great city like Detroit, or whether the dog be a dog. She’s won some contests—recently Society for the Study of Midwest Literature Gwendolyn Brooks Award. Her latest publications are in Mid-America and the MacGuffin. She’s recently completed a memoir of her girlhood in Detroit entitled: The Way-Back Room, and she’s looking for a publisher.

Christine Rhein is the author of Wild Flight (Walt McDonald First Book Prize in Poetry, Texas Tech University Press, 2008). Her work has appeared in journals including The Gettysburg Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and The Southern Review and has been selected for Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Best New Poets, and The Writer’s Almanac.

Mary Schmitt's poetry and prose has been published on numerous occasions, most recently in the MacGuffin. In 2001 she won the Detroit Women Writers Tri-Centennial Poetry Competition. She also won the 2010 MacGuffin Poet Hunt judged by Jim Daniels. Mary works for Oakland Community College teaching students with disabilities.

Carol Was is the Poetry Editor for The MacGuffin. Her poetry has appeared in The Southern Review, Gettysburg Review, Nimrod International Journal, among others. It has been nominated for Best New Poets, and was read on Martha Stewart Living Radio.

Liza Young is a writer of poetry and short stories. Her poems have been published in The MacGuffin, The Pinehurst Journal, Cellar Roots Special Issue – Metropolyesterday Dreams, and the anthologies The Space Between, Facets and A Velvet Bridge. She has also won several writing competitions.

Featuring Jim Bizer, Christine Rhein, Lucinda Sabino & Kristine Uyeda.
This event is sponsored by Springfed Arts.

Jim Bizer combines a vast musical knowledge with thoughtful and humorous lyrical ideas. He concocts songs that are both beautiful and startling. He sings about faith, rivers, insanity and a few things you've probably never heard before in a song. You never quite know what will come out of his mouth, or his guitar, next. Starting his professional career at age 14, he's been a "cover" musician, a session player and a composer for radio and television. His songwriting has earned accolades from the Great American Song Contest.

Christine Rhein has a degree in mechanical engineering from Kettering University and worked for fifteen years in the automotive industry before becoming a writer. Her poems have appeared in literary journals including The Gettysburg Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and The Southern Review and have been selected for Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Best New Poets, and The Writer's Almanac. Her first book, Wild Flight, soars across extensive terrain, from the working world of Detroit to American suburbia and pop culture, from the European landscape of World War II to present-day Iraq. In poems that explore the historical, social, and scientific, as well as the poignant and humorous, Christine relishes life's juxtapositions.

Lucinda Sabino is a poet whose work treats longing and loss with humor and hope. Her chapbook We're Coming Close is published by Pudding House Press. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in Driftwood, The Bridge and PrePress: New Michigan Writers.

Kristine Uyedam is the 3rd place winner in Springfed Arts 2010 poetry contest.