Sharon Olds is an American poet. Olds won the first San Francisco Poetry Center Award in 1980, the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award, and the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She teaches creative writing at New York University and is a previous director of the Creative Writing Program at NYU.
Linda K. Hogan is an American poet, storyteller, academic, playwright, novelist, environmentalist and writer of short stories. She is currently the Chickasaw Nation's writer in residence. Hogan is a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry.
Lynn Collins Emanuel is an American poet. Some of her poetry collections are Then, Suddenly— and Noose and Hook.
Sandra M. Castillo is a poet and South Florida resident. She was born in Havana, Cuba and emigrated on one of the last of President Lyndon B. Johnson's Freedom Flights. Castillo's family's number for the Freedom Flights was 160,633. Sandra Castillo is not only a poet, but also a professor at Miami Dade College and she teaches in the History Department.
Bill Deasy is a singer-songwriter, recording artist and author born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In the late 1980s, Deasy's musical start blossomed at open stages in and around Pittsburgh. Within a few years Deasy and his band, Shiloh, outscored Rusted Root to win the 1991 Graffiti Rock Challenge, a local Pittsburgh competition. By the mid-90s, with Shiloh defunct, a new group emerged and Deasy became the lead singer-songwriter of The Gathering Field, whose regional hit "Lost in America", from an album by the same name, led to a deal with Atlantic Records in 1996. After parting ways with Atlantic, The Gathering Field released three more albums: Reliance, the self-titled The Gathering Field and So Close To Home. During that time Deasy also released a semi-acoustic solo album, Spring Lies Waiting. The Gathering Field did not record for several years during which time Deasy continued to record and perform as mostly a solo act. In 2014, The Gathering Field reunited for their release Wild Journey and in 2017 Deasy and Gathering Field band-mate Dave Brown released Glory Bound.
Nathalie Handal is a French-American poet, writer and professor, described as a “contemporary Orpheus.” A New Yorker and a quintessential global citizen, she has published 10 prize-winning books, including Life in a Country Album. She is praised for her “diverse, and innovative body of work.”
Joy Harjo is an American poet, musician, playwright, and author. She served as the 23rd United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold that honor. She was also only the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to have served three terms. Harjo is a member of the Muscogee Nation and belongs to Oce Vpofv. She is an important figure in the second wave of the literary Native American Renaissance of the late 20th century. She studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts, completed her undergraduate degree at University of New Mexico in 1976, and earned an MFA degree at the University of Iowa in its creative writing program.
Shao Wei is a Chinese-American poet and memoir author.
Jeanne Marie Beaumont is an American poet and author of the four poetry collections Letters from Limbo, Burning of the Three Fires, Curious Conduct, and Placebo Effects. Her work has appeared in Boston Review, Barrow Street, Colorado Review, Court Green, Harper’s, Harvard Review, Manhattan Review, The Nation, New American Writing, Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, Witness, and World Literature Today, and she has had poems featured on The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor.
Beth Ann Gylys is a poet and professor of English and Creative Writing at Georgia State University. She has published five poetry collections, three of which have won awards.
Eve Shelnutt was an American poet and writer of short stories. She lived in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Athens, Ohio, and Worcester, Massachusetts. Over the course of her career, she taught at Western Michigan University University of Pittsburgh, Ohio University, and The College of the Holy Cross.
Pittsburgh has nearly 800 sets of city-owned steps. Many steps parallel existing roads, but others exist on their own and are classified as city streets and are commonly referred to as "paper streets." Nearly two-thirds of the steps are in low or moderate-income areas. Approximately 450 sets of steps are built on structures and 350 are built into sidewalks, known as "jumpwalks".
Valerie Martínez is an American poet, writer, educator, arts administrator, consultant, and collaborative artist. She served as the poet laureate of Santa Fe, New Mexico from 2008 to 2010.
Laraine Herring is an American writer of both novels and nonfiction books. Laraine's poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in various anthologies and magazines, including Midnight Mind and Walking the Twilight: Women Writers of the Southwest. She was awarded the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund grant for her fiction, and her non-fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Maria Terrone is an American poet and writer. She is the author of three collections of poetry: Eye to Eye (2014), A Secret Room in Fall (2006) and The Bodies We Were Loaned (2002). She has been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize and has received the Individual Artist Initiative Award from the Queens Council on the Arts. Her poetry ranges widely in subject, including themes of history, family and contemporary urban environments.
Simone Muench is an American poet and a professor of creative writing and film studies. She was raised in the small town of Benson, Louisiana and also Arkansas. She completed her bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Colorado in Boulder, received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago and is director of the Writing Program at Lewis University in Romeoville.
Maureen Therese Seaton was an American lesbian poet, memoirist, and professor of creative writing. She authored fifteen solo books of poetry, co-authored an additional thirteen, and wrote one memoir, Sex Talks to Girls, which won the 2009 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography. Seaton's writing has been described as "unusual, compressed, and surrealistic," and was frequently created in collaboration with fellow poets such as Denise Duhamel, Samuel Ace, Neil de la Flor, David Trinidad, Kristine Snodgrass, cin salach, Niki Nolin, and Mia Leonin.
Cavankerry Press is an American nonprofit literary press located in Fort Lee, New Jersey, which publishes poetry and nonfiction. Cavankerry Press is a member of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses, has thrice received a Citation of Excellence from the New Jersey Arts Council honoring New Jersey arts organizations, and was a finalist for the 2017 AWP Small Press Publisher Award.
Julie Marie Wade is an American writer and professor of creative writing. Wade has received numerous awards for her writing, most notably winning the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir or Biography in 2011 for her book Wishbone.
