Magnolia

Roy Bentley poems have appeared in several publications. His latest chapbook, The Idiot’s Guide to the Afterlife, is due out shortly. This year, he was awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship in poetry by the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs. A recent book (The Trouble with a Short Horse in Montana) won the White Pine poetry prize and was published by White Pine Press in 2006.

Eve Anthony Hanninen writes and illustrates from a North Coast, B.C. town. Recent poems appear in Long Story Short (interview, May ’09), east to west: bicoastal verse, Sein und Werden, Moondance, Wicked Alice, and in anthologies, Crazed by the Sun and Trim (Mannequin Envy). Eve edits The Centrifugal Eye poetry journal.

Alex Cigale's poems recently appeared in The Cafe, Colorado, Global City, Green Mountains, and North American reviews, Eleven Eleven, Hanging Loose, and Zoland Poetry, online in Drunken Boat, H_ngm_n, McSweeney's, and are forthcoming in Gargoyle, Many Mountains Moving, Redactions, St. Petersburg Review, Tar River Poetry, and 32 Poems. His translations from the Russian can be found in Crossing Centuries: the New Generation in Russian Poetry, in The Manhattan, St. Ann's, and Yellow Medicine reviews, and are forthcoming online in Brooklyn Rail's InTranslation.

Peter Schmitt is the author of five books of poems, three of them full-length collections: His poems have appeared in many leading journals. He has also reviewed poetry and fiction for major newspapers. A native Miamian, he has taught creative writing and literature at The University of Miami since 1986. 

Chad Prevost is author of the collections A Walking Cliché Coins a Phrase: Prose Poems, Letters and Microfictions (Plain View 2008), and Snapshots of the Perishing World (Cherry Grove 2006), and the chapbook Chasing the Gods (Pudding House 2007). Chad’s work has been included in several recent anthologies, and has served in various editorial capacities. Chad has taught creative writing, composition and literature at Georgia State University, Georgia Perimeter College, Lee University and Dalton State College. He is Editor of C&R Press.

Ron McFarland teaches literature & creative writing at the University of Idaho, but he visits relatives in Florida often and maintains his membership in the Florida Historical Society. Chapin House Press published his memoir of growing up in Florida in the 1950s & 1960s, Confessions of a Night Librarian & Other Embarrassments, in 2005.

CHARLES ADÈS FISHMAN is a consultant in poetry to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. His books include The Death Mazurka, a 1989 American Library Association Outstanding Book of the Year that was nominated for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry; Country of Memory (2004); Chopin’s Piano (2006); and Water under Water (2009), recipient of the 2010 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence. The revised, second edition of his anthology, Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust, was published by Time Being Books in 2007.

Diana Hurlburt is a graduate student of library and information science at the University of South Florida, and also holds a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature. Currently car-less in Tampa, she is learning the joys of bicycling and public transportation. She is working toward a career in youth services public librarianship, and enjoys reading and writing in her spare time.

Zara Raab poems and literary journalism have appeared (or will soon) in Poetry Flash, West Branch, Arts & Letters, Nimrod, Spoon River Poetry Review, Rosebud and major newspapers such as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. My Book of Gretel will come out this spring. Much of my work draws on my roots in rural northern California, where my great-great-grandparents settled. I studied at Mills College, followed by graduate work at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, then lived in Paris and Washington, D.C., freelancing as a writer and editor for New Republic Books, the National Geographic Society, and the National Endowment for Humanities, before returning to the West Coast. I now live and write in San Francisco.

James Aubright lived the life of a military brat during his early years. Being something he was proud of, he chose to serve in the military himself. From the time he received his first camera as a gift from his mother at the age of ten, he has been aiming to capture the world in a way many fail to see or simply overlook. Furthermore, with his photographs he hopes to inspire others to seek, observe, and capture the naturally beautiful wonders in life that leave you in total awe and amazement; they’re all around you everyday.

Michele Wirt has been a part of the visual arts faculty at CFCC since 1990. She is a figure and portrait painter with influences from jazz, Asian art and American realists and is exploring the field of digital media. She has exhibited locally as well as in Harlem, N.Y., and Florence, Italy

Pat Allen, photographer, Though she currently works as a full-time costumer for a community theater, from early in life she loved literature, the idea of writing, and the attempt to catch something special in photographs. Some of her pictures and a poem or two appeared in the online magazine "Artistry of Life."

Christopher Woods: “I have published a prose collection, Under a Riverbed Sky, and a collection of stage monologues for actors, Heart Speak. Other photographs of mine can be seen in my online gallery, Moonbird Hill Arts, which I share with my wife, Linda. I live in Houston and in Chappell Hill, Texas.”

John Martino: “Believing that photography is a means to transform the world, not reproduce it, I aim to create images that function as works of fiction that suggest and entertain rather than document or confirm. My photos have appeared in Photographer's Forum, The Advocate, New Orleans Review, and can be found at www.johnmartinophoto.com.

Stephanie Colaianni is a graduate of Palm Beach Community College, where she contributed photography and prose for their newspaper, The Beachcomber She currently attends Florida Atlantic University and works as photo editor of the University Press.

Dan McGavin studied drawing, painting, and print-making at Oxbow Summer School for the Arts, part of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he has had works displayed and selected for auction. Dan studied photography with internationally noted photographer, Jack Wild, at the Boca Raton Art Museum School in Boca Raton, Florida, where he is currently enrolled in the Masters class. 

Judy Haisten grew up in the Canal Zone, Panama during the 1970’S and 1980’s. Her dad, Edwin Armbruster, worked for the Panama Canal Company. Judy is currently working on her memoir of a unique childhood in a truly special place. The book, Canal Zone Daughter, will profile her family’s experience and give readers glimpse of an American family living abroad.

Ursula Loscalzo lives in Long Beach, California and recently graduated from the California State University there with a degree in Film. She has been photographing scenes of her first home, the Pacific Northwest, since she received her trusty 35mm Minolta camera at the age of twelve. She hopes to make a living as a camera operator on independent films while working on her MFA in creative writing in Southern California. This is the first time her still photography has been published.

Cassandra Robison is the founding editor of Artistry of Life and co-founder of Magnolia: The Florida Journal of Literary and Fine Arts. She is an Associate Professor of Communications at Central Florida Community College and faculty advisor for the award-winning student literary magazine, IMPRINTS. She teaches creative writing and other English courses.