Kimberly Culbertson, Editor-In-Chief:  Kimberly is a writer who found that her type of writing had no outlet, and that the type of Christian writing that she was looking to read was difficult to find. She graduated from Bradley University and taught a few years in inner city Chicago. Her favorite authors are Toni Morrison and Banana Yoshimoto.

Heather von Doehren, Assistant Editor:  Heather von Doehren is a former English teacher turned computer applications instructor, which works out well for Relief as she wears many hats, both literary and technical.  Check out her video on How to Format Submissions Using Microsoft Word 2007 ! Though she has trouble picking a favorite author, Sharon Olds' poetry sparked her interest in writing.

Lisa Ohlen Harris, Assistant Editor, Creative Nonfiction:  Lisa looks for literary nonfiction that portrays life the way the Bible does: layered, connected, full of foreshadowing and types. In the early 1990s, Lisa worked as an assistant editor and copywriter for the publications wing of the national radio broadcast The Bible Study Hour. In 1996, she moved to Amman, Jordan, where she and her husband lived until 1999. Now she lives in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Look for her creative nonfiction coming up in River Teeth, Potomac Review, Under the Sun, and The Jabberwock Review and in back issues of Arts & Letters and Relief.

Brad Fruhauff, Poetry Editor: Brad is pursuing a PhD in English at Loyola University Chicago. He occasionally contributes book and music reviews to the Burnside Writer's Collective, and his story "The Strangler" will appear in the first issue of the Ankeny Briefcase. He is by temperament something of an Ancient - "a grumpy old man," as his (young) wife puts it - and does not believe a good idea goes bad by going out of fashion. He has not found a better dictum for poetics than "to instruct and delight" (Horace). In application he believes these are very hard to balance: a pleasant poem may yet be vacuous, and a didactic poem is almost always bad. A poem instructs by being itself, and the poet never knows just what her reader will learn. He wishes to say that good poetry is true, but the truth is not always poetry. He is currently excited about the novels of Marilynne Robinson and Orhan Pamuk, and enjoys the poetry of Auden, Donne, Hopkins, Tennyson and, more recently, Scott Cairns.

Alan Ackmann, Fiction Editor: Alan Ackmann received his MFA in fiction from the University of Arkansas and teaches at DePaul University.  His work has appeared or is forthcoming in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Clackamas Literary Review, Louisiana Literature, Ontario Review, and elsewhere. He is a former fiction editor of The Evansville Review and was a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the 2007 Sewanee Writer’s Conference.  Find out more at www.alanackmann.com.

Karen Miedrich-Luo, Creative Nonfiction Consultant:  Karen is a writer and language coach who lives in Plano, Texas. She has a BA in Religion and Philosophy from the University of Georgia and a post-graduate English Lit degree from the University of Houston. She was a staff writer for Vision Magazine 2002-2005. She also spent three years teaching English, Writing, and History at Wuhan University in China where she met and married her husband, Brad. They have two daughters. Karen’s favorite contemporary authors are Annie Dillard, Yiyun Li and Peter Hessler; her favorite poets are Margo Berdeshevsky and Allison Smythe. Check out her blog here.

J. Mark Bertrand, Advisory Board Member and Editor Emeritus: Mark thinks faith should produce robust, engaged writing. As an editor, he's looking for well-crafted prose that stands up to a second reading, stories that are rich and layered. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Houston, where he served as a production editor at Gulf Coast. For a taste of his perspective, you can visit his personal blog at jmarkbertrand.com, his fiction technique blog Notes on Craft, and his weekly contributions to The Master's Artist, a group blog for Christian writers. His recent fiction has appeared in The New Pantagruel, Hardluck Stories and InFuze Magazine, recent nonfiction in The Wittenburg Door and Fire By Nite. His flash fiction has appeared in Flashing in the Gutters. You can find his fiction in The Ankeny Briefcase and the upcoming Coach's Midnight Diner. He recently completed his first novel, The Pattern of Wounds, and his book Rethinking Worldview: Learning to Think, Live, and Speak in this World will be released by Crossway this October.

Coach Culbertson, Technical Editor:  Coach is a Baptist minister, a teacher, a web designer, and a computer technician and trainer, among other things. He does all the heavy lifting on the web site. He is also likes to pretend to be a novelist in his spare time. You can visit his site @ coachculbertson.com. His favorite authors are Raymond Chandler, Neil Gaiman, and H. P. Lovecraft.

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