October 5, 2009
Leonard Gontarek is the author of four books of poems: St. Genevieve Watching Over Paris, Van Morrison Can’t Find His Feet, Zen For Beginners, and Déjà Vu Diner. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Fence, Field, Pool, Poetry Northwest, Blackbird and The Best American Poetry. He has been nominated five times for the Pushcart Prize, and twice received poetry fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. He conducts poetry workshops at The University City Arts League, Moonstone Art Center, The Kelly Writers House and the Philadelphia Arts in Education Partnership.

November 2, 2009
Michael Loughran’s poems have appeared in many journals, including American Letters and Commentary, The Boston Review, The Harvard Review, and Tin House. His first book was a finalist for the 2008 Four Way Books Intro Prize, and he is an Assistant Professor of English at the Community College of Philadelphia.

Lisa Sewell is the author of The Way Out, Name Withheld, and Long Corridor, which won the 2008 Keystone Chapbook Award. She is also co-editor with Claudia Rankine of American Poets in the 21st Century: The New Poetics (Wesleyan UP). Recent work is appearing or forthcoming in Colorado Review, Tampa Review, American Letters and Commentary, Denver Quarterly and The Journal. She lives in Philadelphia and teaches at Villanova University.

December 7, 2009
Taije Silverman’s poems have been published in Ploughshares, Poetry, Shenandoah, The Antioch Review, Five Points, Prairie Schooner, Massachusetts Review, Pleiades, and elsewhere. Her translations from the Italian of poems by Paolo Valesio are forthcoming in Pleiades, and her work has won two first place prizes from the Academy of American Poets, including the Anaïs Nin Prize, judged by Stephen Dunn. Currently teaching at Ursinus College, she was the 2005-2007 Poetry Fellow at Emory University. She lives in Philadelphia.

Dan Featherston is the author of several books of poetry, including The Radiant World, The Clock Maker’s Memoir and United States. His poetry has appeared in such journals as Aufgabe, Kiosk, Mandorla, and New American Writing. While living in Tucson, Arizona, Featherston help found POG, a collective of artists and scholars which fostered avant-garde work in a variety of media. Featherston holds a lectureship at Temple University, where

January 11, 2010
Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno won the 2008 Beatrice Hawley Award for her book, Slamming Open the Door, which recounts her daughter’s murder and its aftermath. Two of the poems in this collection were nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Bonanno is a Contributing Editor to the American Poetry Review and teaches English and Creative Writing in the Philadelphia area.

Steve Burke lives in Philadelphia with his wife and daughter where he works as a labor and delivery nurse. Steve has published his poetry in the Painted Bride Quarterly, Look Quick, Asphodel, Spitball, and Mad Poets Review. His two manuscripts, Thirty-Six Views of Here and Building An Onion, are awaiting publication.

February 2, 2010
April Lindner’s poetry collection, Skin, received the 2002 Walt McDonald First Book Prize from Texas Tech University Press. Her poems have appeared in many journals, including The Hudson Review, The Paris Review, Crazyhorse, Prairie Schooner, and The Formalist, as well as in numerous anthologies and textbooks. Garrison Keillor featured her work on his nationally syndicated radio program, The Writer’s Almanac. With R. S. Gwynn, she co-edited Contemporary American Poetry, an anthology in Longman’s Penguin Academics series. Ms. Lindner is an associate professor of English at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.

David Moolten’s poetry has appeared in many journals and reviews such as Poetry, The Georgia Review, The Southwest Review, and Epoch. His first book, Plums & Ashes, won the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize. A third collection, Primitive Mood, recently won the T.S. Eliot prize from Truman State University Press and is forthcoming in the fall of 2009. Mr. Moolten is a physician who lives and works in Philadelphia.

March 1, 2010
Catie Rosemurgy’s first poetry collection, My Favorite Apocalypse, was recognized by The Rona Jaffe Foundation with an award for an emerging female writer. She is also the recipient of a National Endowment for The Arts Fellowship. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, The Best American Poetry 1997, American Poetry Review The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner and elsewhere. Her second poetry collection, The Stranger Manual, is forthcoming. She teaches creative writing at The College of New Jersey.

Thomas Devaney is the author of A Series of Small Boxes and The American Pragmatist Fell in Love. He is the editor of ONAnd On-Screen, a website that pairs poems and videos. Devaney was a curatorial consultant for the 2008-2009 exhibition “Quote the Raven” on Edgar Allan Poe for the Free Library of Philadelphia. He is a Senior Writing Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, and currently a Visiting Poet at Haverford College.

April 5, 2010
Harry Humes is the author of several poetry collections, most recently Butterfly Effect, a National Poetry Series selection, published by Milkweed Editions in 1999; August Evening with Trumpet, and Underground Singing, winner of the inaugural Keystone Chapbook Award, an annual competition for Pennsylvania poets. The recipient of numerous awards, including several grants from the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts and a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship, Humes lives in the country near Kutztown, Pennsylvania.

Tenaya Darlington has worked as a knife seller, an x-ray librarian, a back-up singer for a pop band, and a columnist for the alternative press in Madison, Wisconsin. She now lives and teaches in Philadelphia at St. Joseph’s University. Her first book, Madame Deluxe, a collection of poetry inspired by drag queens, won the National Poetry Series and the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writer’s Award. Her novel Maybe Baby, the story of a young couple trying to raise a gender-neutral child, was released in 2004.