Blogger Bios

Michael Dean Clark is an author of fiction and nonfiction and an Assistant Professor of Writing at Point Loma Nazarene University. He lives in San Diego with his wife and 2.7 children.
Kimberly Culbertson is the Founding Editor of Relief. These days serves on the board of ccPublishing, NFP, the company that publishes Relief and The Midnight Diner, alongside many other adventures. She and her husband live in Bloomingdale, Illinois, with their great dog Latte. Their family-by-choice daughter, son, and godson now reside in California, and they are expecting their first biological child in February 2011.
Christopher Fisher, Editor-in-Chief of Relief, enjoys reading most anything, from award-winning novels to his kids’ cereal boxes. He has worked with authors of academic non-fiction as well as literary and historical fiction and creative nonfiction, edited for peer-reviewed journals in criminal justice and psychology, and served as a judge for The Christy Awards. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine, and his own fiction has been honored with a Pushcart Prize Special Mention and an honorable mention in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, 2007. In addition to his role at Relief, he also works as an Editing and Design Consultant with The Editorial Department. What little time he has left he spends in the woods building forts with his four children, making (and sampling) homemade wine with his wife, and writing his own stories of neurotic misadventure.
Brad Fruhauff is Poetry Editor with Relief. He holds a PhD in English from Loyola University Chicago and is currently an adjunct instructor in the Chicago area where he lives with his wife and 2-year old son. He has published fiction in The Ankeny Briefcase, poetry in Relief, Salt, and *catapult, and reviews in Burnside Writers’ Collective and The Englewood Review of Books.
Deanna Hershiser’s essays have appeared in Runner’s World, BackHome Magazine, Relief, and other places. She lives with her husband in Oregon and blogs at deannahershiser.com.
Michelle Pendergrass loves living in the Boondocks (which also happens to be one of her favorite songs!) with her husband and son, Phil and Zane. They watch Food Network, The Real Housewives, and NCIS, and for them, there’s nowhere better to be than home. Michelle has made pizzas, put paste on billboard signs, waitressed at truck stops as well as high class steakhouses, and she has also led a Convoy (another favorite song!) across the bottom of Texas when she and Phil drove their semi across this great nation. Now she homeschools, messes in mixed media art, prays visually, and sometimes writes horror stories.
Ian David Philpot is the Web Editor for ccPublishing and the Web Content Developer for Willow Creek Community Church. He recently receive his Bachelor’s in English at Northern Illinois University and spent one year in Columbia College Chicago’s Fiction Writing program. He writes fiction, poetry, and music. Ian prefers black to white, vanilla to chocolate, and only eats yellow cake.
Bonnie Ponce lives in Huntsville, Texas. After work she enjoys relaxing with a good book or working on her novel.
Stephanie S. Smith graduated from Moody Bible Institute with a degree in Communications and Women’s Ministry, which she now puts to work freelancing as a book publicist and writer through her business, (In)dialogue Communications, at www.stephaniessmith.com. After living in Chicago for four years, traveling to Amsterdam for a spell, and then moving back home to Baltimore to plan a wedding, she now lives with her husband in Upstate New York where they make novice attempts at home renovation in their 1930s bungalow. She is a member of the Young Professionals of the Southern Tier and blogs for Moody Publishers at moodyfiction.com.
Stephen Swanson teaches as an assistant professor of English at McLennan Community College. Aside from guiding students through the pitfalls of college writing and literature, he spends most of his time trying to remain aware of popular culture, cooking, and enjoying time with his wife and son. He holds degrees in Communications (Calvin College), Film Studies (Central Michigan University), and Media and American Culture Studies (Bowling Green State University. In addition to editing a collection, Battleground States: Scholarship in Contemporary America, he has forthcoming projects on Johnny Cash and approaches to analyzing detective narratives in terms of ethical responsibility.