A list of participating authors, this page is updated frequently, so check back for more exciting additions!
PHILLIP ALLEN is a Louisville native and a graduate of the University of Kentucky and Duke University School of Law. His first novel, Play Money, was published by Soho Press, and his second novel, The Creations of Chad Hamilton, is forthcoming. He has also written several screenplays. He currently serves as the General Counsel of 21c Museum Hotels and is a member of the board of Sarabande Books. He lives in Louisville with his wife and two children.
MAKALANI BANDELE is a Louisville, Kentucky, native. He has a BA from the University of Notre Dame and an MDiv from Shaw University. A member of the Affrilachian Poets since 2008 and a Cave Canem fellow, his poetry has been anthologized in Storytellers, and can be seen in Mythium Literary Magazine, Tidal Basin Review, Pluck! the Journal of Affrilachian Arts and Culture, Platte Valley Review. He is a winner of the Literary LEO 1st Prize in Poetry. His first volume of poetry entitled Hellfightin was just released on Willow Books in September 2011.
CATHERINE BOWMAN is the Director of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Indiana University. She is the author of the poetry collections The Plath Cabinet (Four Way Books), Notarikon (Four Way Books), Rock Farm (Gibbs Smith), and 1-800-HOT-RIBS (Gibbs Smith) which was reissued by Carnegie-Mellon University Press as part of its contemporary classics series. She is the editor of Word of Mouth: Poems Featured on NPR’s “All Things Considered.”
Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, the Harvard Review, The Best American Poetry Series.
GAYLORD BREWER is a professor at Middle Tennessee State University, where in 1993 he founded and has since edited the journal Poems & Plays. His recent poetry publications include an eighth full-length collection, Give Over, Graymalkin (Red Hen Press), and the chapbook Ghost (Anabiosis Press), both in 2011. In June he was artist in residence at the Arteles Creative Center in Finland.
LYNNELL EDWARDS‘ third book of poetry is Covet, (2011) from Red Hen Press. Her short fiction and book reviews have also appeared in literary journals such as New Madrid, Pleiades, and Connecticut Review. She is Associate Professor of English at Spalding University.
KIRBY GANN is the author of the novels The Barbarian Parade and Our Napoleon in Rags. His work has appeared in Witness and The Best of Witness, American Writing, The Oxford American, and The Southeast Review, among other journals. He is the recipient of an Individual Artist Fellowship and two Professional Assistance Awards from the Kentucky Arts Council. Gann is Managing Editor at Sarabande Books, and teaches in the brief-residency MFA in Writing Program at Spalding University. His third novel, Ghosting, is scheduled to appear in May 2012.
SARAH GORHAM is the author of four collections of poetry: Bad Daughter , The Cure, The Tension Zone, and Don’t Go Back to Sleep. Individual poems have been published in Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, Pool, Kenyon Review, Paris Review, Open City, Georgia Review, among other places. She also writes essays, which are appearing in Iowa Review, AGNI, Creative Nonfiction, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, and Quarterly West. She received grants and fellowships from the Kentucky, Connecticut, and Delaware State Arts Councils, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, Yaddo, MacDowell, the Vermont Studio Center, and the James Merrill House. In 1994, Gorham founded Sarabande Books, and serves as its President and Editor-in-Chief. She is the wife of poet Jeffrey Skinner, mother of Laura and Bonnie, and grandmother of Lucille and Josephine.
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JEFF HIPSHER is the founding member of the artist collective The Gold County Paper Mill. His work has previously appeared in or is forthcoming from Fork Lift Ohio, iO Poetry, Caketrain, elimae, The Alice Blue Review and others. In 2010 he received an honorable mention in Sarabande’s Flo Gault Poetry Prize. He is the head editor of Catch Up (www.catch-up.us), a journal of comics and literature.
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ALYSSA KNICKERBOKER received her MFA in fiction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is currently the Axton Fellow at the University of Louisville. Her work has appeared in Brooklyn Magazine, The Bat City Review, Meridian, Sou’wester, Avery Anthology and others and has been anthologized in The Best of the West 2011: New Stories from the West Side of the Missouri. Her novella, “Your Rightful Home,” was published by Flatmancrooked in 2009 and is now available as an e-book from Nouvella. She is completing a collection of short stories linked by the geography of the San Juan Islands in Washington State, where she lived for many years. She lives in Louisville with her husband and son.
WILL LAVENDER is the author of Dominance and Obedience, which was translated into 14 languages and was a New York Times and international bestseller in 2008. He is a graduate of Centre College and holds an MFA in creative writing from Bard College. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with his wife and two children, and he is at work on his third novel.
BRIAN LEUNG is the author of the novel Take Me Home, recipient of the 2011 Willa Award for Historical Fiction. He is also the author of the novel Lost Men as well as the story collection World Famous Love Acts, a recipient of the Asian American Literary Award and the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction. His poetry, creative nonfiction, and short fiction have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. He is a collector of animation art and of the artist Charles Harper. He was born and raised in San Diego County, and currently lives in Louisville, Kentucky where he is the Director of Creative Writing at the University of Louisville.
JAMES MARKERT is an award-winning novelist and produced screenwriter from Louisville, Kentucky, and is a graduate of the University of Louisville. His new screenplay, a comedy called Tan Lines, was shot in June, directed by Tim Kirkman and produced by Gill Holland, and is set to premier Spring 2012. His new novel, The Requiem Rose, recently won an IPPY Award for Best Regional Fiction. The Requiem Rose hit #1 on the Courier Journal’s Best Seller list, and takes place at Waverly Hills Tuberculosis Sanatorium in 1929. James is also a USPTA certified tennis professional and has coached players to high state, sectional, and national rankings, and two have gone on to play Division I tennis in the Big Ten Conference. He lives in Louisville with his wife and two children.
Formerly muscle for the IRS, RON MITCHELL is the editor of the Southern Indiana Review and the co-founder and former editor of RopeWalk Press. He teaches composition, creative writing, and literary editing & publishing at the University of Southern Indiana.
MAUREEN MOREHEAD has published four books of poetry: In a Yellow Room (Sulgrave Press, 1990), Our Brothers’ War (Sulgrave Press, 1993), A Sense of Time Left (Larkspur Press, 2003), and The Melancholy Teacher (Larkspur Press, 2010). Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Black Warrior Review, The California Quarterly, The Greensboro Review, The Iowa Review, The Louisville Review, Poet and Critic, Poetry, and other literary journals. She is featured in Conversations with Kentucky Writers II (University of Kentucky Press, 1999) and Kentucky Voices: A Bicentennial Celebration of Kentucky Writing (Kentucky Arts Council, 1992). She won fellowships for her poetry from the Kentucky Arts Council and the Kentucky Foundation for Women. She serves as the 2011/2012 Kentucky Poet Laureate.
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ALANNA NASH is a New York Times best-selling author and ghostwriter. Her works include Baby, Let’s Play House: Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him (It Books/HarperCollins), Dolly: The Biography (Cooper Square Press), Behind Closed Doors: Talking With The Legends Of Country Music (Alfred A. Knopf), Golden Girl: The Story Of Jessica Savitch (E.P. Dutton), and The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story Of Colonel Tom Parker And Elvis Presley (Simon & Schuster), winner of the 2004 Belmont Award for the best book in music. She is also the co-editor of Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Country Music in America (DK), as well as the ghostwriter of a number of other books. Nash has written scores of magazine articles for such publications as Vanity Fair, People, USA Weekend, Entertainment Weekly, LadiesHome Journal, The New York Times, and Reader’s Digest, where she was a contributing editor from 2004-2008. An alumna of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she was named the Society of Professional Journalists’ National Member of the Year. Other honors: The 2004 Country Music Association Media Achievement Award, the 2009 Charlie Lamb Award for Excellence in Country Music Journalism, and the 2005 Crystal Heart Award, given by the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations.
MARY LOU NORTHERN’s fiction, nonfiction, reviews and poetry have appeared in Redbook, Australian Good Housekeeping, Orion, Horizon, Flighttime, Folio, Kentucky Poetry Review and others, including the anthology Place Gives Rise To Spirit. Three of her plays have been produced, one selected by the National Conference for the Prevention of Child Abuse for distribution. A Summer Literary Seminar fellow for 2009 and 2010 in Montreal, she received a professional development grant from the Kentucky Arts Council and studied at the Sewanee Writers Conference. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Spalding University. A board member of Louisville Literary Arts, she serves as senior advisor to Louisville’s Mayor Greg Fischer. She is an 8th generation Kentuckian.
KIKI PETROSINO is the author of Fort Red Border (Sarabande, 2009) and co-editor of Transom, an electronic poetry journal. Her new chapbook, The Dark is Here, was released in 2011 by Forklift, Ink. She teaches at the University of Louisville.
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JOHN BURNHAM SCHWARTZ is the author of the novels Claire Marvel, Bicycle Days, Reservation Road (made into a motion picture based on his screenplay, starring Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Ruffalo, and Jennifer Connelly), and Northwest Corner. His books have been translated into more than fifteen languages and his writing has appeared in many publications, including the New York Times, The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, and Vogue. He lives with his wife and son in Brooklyn, New York.
In 2006 JEFFREY SKINNER was awarded his second Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His fifth book of poetry, Salt Water Amnesia, appeared in 2005 from Ausable Press. He has published four previous collections: Late Stars, A Guide to Forgetting (a winner in the 1987 National Poetry series), The Company of Heaven, and Gender Studies. Down Range, his newest play, had a successful limited run at Theatre 3 in New York City in the spring of 2009. Skinner’s poems have appeared in many magazines, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Nation, The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and FENCE. He is President of the Board of Directors, and Editorial Consultant, for Sarabande Books, a literary publishing house he founded with his wife, poet Sarah Gorham.
KATERINA STOYKOVA-KLEMER is the author of the bilingual poetry book, The Air around the Butterfly (Fakel Express, 2009), which won the 2010 Pencho’s Oak award, given annually to recognize literary contribution to contemporary Bulgarian culture. Her chapbook, The Most was published by Finishing Line Press in 2010. Her full-length book, Indivisible Number (Fakel Express, 2011, Bulgarian only) just became available. Katerina is the editor of the anthology Bigger Than They Appear: Anthology of Very Short Poems, scheduled to be released by Accents Publishing in winter, 2011. Katerina is the founder and leader of poetry and prose groups in Lexington, Kentucky. She hosts Accents – a radio show for literature, art and culture on WRFL, 88.1 FM, Lexington. In January 2010, Katerina launched Accents Publishing – an independent press for brilliant voices.
LUCINDA DIXON SULLIVAN is the author of a novel, It Was the Goodness of the Place (Fleur de Lis Press), and most recently a screenplay (working title: Gabe). Her stories and essays have appeared in The Louisville Review, the anthologies Place Gives Rise to Spirit, The Kentucky Anthology, and other publications. She is a Kentucky native (see novel’s title) whose writing mind is currently (!) caught up in the Florida tides.
KYLE THOMPSON writes poetry and short fiction. His work has appeared in the Boston Review, AGNI, Indiana Review, and elsewhere. He’s held fellowships as an Axton Fellow in Creative Writing at University of Louisville, a Bennett Fellow at Phillips Exeter Academy, and a Hoyns Fellow at the University of Virginia.
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BRIAN WEINBERG was a Henry Hoyns Fellow in fiction writing at the University of Virginia and a writer-in-residence at St. Albans School in Washington, D.C. The winner of the New Letters Readers’ Choice Award for Best Fiction, his work has appeared in n+1, Men’s Vogue, Northwest Review, Meridian, Bellevue Literary Review, Notre Dame Review and other publications. Currently at work on a novel set in Central America, he teaches creative writing at the University of Louisville and the University of Kentucky. He lives in Louisville.
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KEVIN WILSON is the author of a story collection, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth (Ecco/Harper Perennial, 2009), which received the Shirley Jackson Award, and a novel, The Family Fang (Ecco, 2011). His fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, Tin House, One Story, and elsewhere. He lives and teaches in Sewanee, TN.
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CUTTER WOOD is a native of Pennsylvania. He received his MFA from the University of Iowa and taught at the university as visiting faculty. He has been the recipient of working scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, and his work has appeared in The L and Harper’s Magazine. He is currently the Visiting Scholar in Creative Nonfiction at the University of Louisville.
