CHRISTOPHER FISHER
SCARS
Editor’s Choice for Creative Nonfiction

Christopher Fisher’s fiction, essays, and satire have appeared in The Wittenburg Door, the Thou Shalt Not horror anthology, Infuze Magazine, The Sam Houston State Review, and in a wonderful new literary journal called Relief. With his loverly wife of ten years, Christopher is currently raising four children in Texas, where he works as an editor for the Office of International Criminal Justice Press. In six short months he will receive his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine and may very well be calling one of you dear readers to beg for a job.

C. A. HASSELBALCH
AN ITALIAN RESTAURANT IN DOMINION
Editor’s Choice for Poetry

Carol Ann Hasselbalch lives in a small southeast Texas town with her husband and four boys. She likes to read, travel, and write in that order. August 2007 she will graduate from Lamar University.

EDMUND DE CHASCA
EPITHALAMIUM
Editor’s Choice for Fiction

Edmund de Chasca's fiction has appeared in various literary journals and anthologies, including The Green Hills Literary Lantern, Chautauqua Literary Journal, Real, and Under the Arch: St. Louis Stories. A book of literary history, John Gould Fletcher and Imagism, was published by the University of Missouri Press. He is Senior Editor of Boulevard magazine.

ALAN ACKMANN
SWIMMERS INTO CLEANNESS LEAPING
Fiction

Alan Ackmann graduated from the MFA fiction program at the University of Arkansas. His work has appeared in McSweeney's and Clackamas, and is forthcoming in Louisiana Literature, Ontario Review, and elsewhere. He was a Tennessee Williams scholar at the 2007 Sewanee Writers' Conference and teaches at DePaul University. Check out his website at http://www.alanackmann.com.

DAVID BENJAMIN BEDSOLE
FINDING THE RING
MY THERAPIST SAYS I NEED TO LEARN GRACE
PRISON WORK
Poetry

David Bedsole has a short attention span. He likes cookbooks and modern novels. He plays the drums badly. He plays the piano fairly well, but writes all of his songs on the guitar. When he's not doing any of this, he hangs out with with his wife, Katharine, and his dog, Shiloh, teaches at a small Christian college in South Carolina, and tries to be a poet. His poems are also forthcoming in Xavier Review. Catch up with David at http://www.punkisrael.typepad.com .

CINDY LEE BEEBE
TRANSFORMATION
Poetry

Cindy Beebe is a married mother of two who works with at-risk children and youth in inner city Memphis, near her home in Collierville, Tennessee. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in The Southern Review, Midwest Quarterly, Rock & Sling, Sow's Ear Poetry Review, and Grasslimb, among others. Having written reams of poetry as a child, followed by nearly nothing for many years, she regrets her lack of formal education in creative writing (which would have been easier to manage when her parents were paying for college, as opposed to now, when she has no money).

S. R. KOVACOVIC
WINDOW WASHER
Poetry

S. R. Kovacovic lives just outside of Philadelphia. His writing career was derailed by addiction about 10 years ago until about a year ago when he sobered up. In early 2007 he began writing again as a form of therapy. The result has been a load of poems, several short stories, and one manuscript for a novel. S.R. has two beautiful children with one on the way. His wife is his backbone as he was born without one; much like a salamander... or a worm. Yeah, a worm. Vistit his website at http://www.myspace.com/srkovacovic .

D. S. MARTIN
THE ATLANTIC
Poetry

D.S. Martin is a Canadian whose poetry has appeared in many significant journals such as Canadian Literature, The Christian Century, Christianity & Literature, and Rock & Sling. Visit his website at http://www.dsmartin.ca/, where you'll be able to purchase his chapbook So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon) which was published in 2007. He writes about poetry for various publications including Books & Culture and Image. He is Music Critic for Christian Week.

SORINA HIGGINS
DAPHNE’S COMPLAINT TO SYRINX
SEMELE’S EXAMPLE
WEDDING DAY
Poetry

Sorina Higgins and her husband live in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where she teaches courses in language arts, writing, music, philosophy, Shakespeare, and The Inklings. Her poetry and other writings have appeared in Innisfree, Studio, Perspectives, Alive Now, Windhover, Bible & Spade, and idiom. She is the author of the entry on Charles Williams in the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Christian Literature. A paper entitled “Heraldry of Heaven: The Development of Lewis’s Sehnsucht in his Correspondence and Cultural Context.” has been selected for presentation at a conference on C. S. Lewis in October.

MARGOT STARBUCK HAUSMANN
RELINQUISHED
Creative Nonfiction

Margot Starbuck Hausmann, a writer and speaker, lives with her husband, Peter, and children Zoe, Rollie, and Abhishek in Durham NC. A graduate of Westmont College and Princeton Theological Seminary, Margot has also served the Church as wordbearer in her work as chaplain, pastor, graphic artist and mommy. Recent publications include Today’s Christian Woman, Adoption Today, and Rev! Connect with Margot at http://www.margotstarbuckhausmann.com/.

TRISTA SWING
KNOWING TOO MUCH
PARENTS
Poetry

Trista Swing lives in a tiny one-bedroom apartment with her newlywed husband in Boston, Massachusetts. During the day she works as a marketing coordinator for a textbook publisher. At night she enjoys walking around the city with her husband, or playing with their new pet, the robot vacuum. Trista received her master’s degree in creative writing from Texas Tech University. She was a semi-finalist for the 2005 “Discovery”/ The Nation Prize, and her poems have appeared in The Minnesota Review, 32 Poems, and Albatross.

JUDY LEE GREEN
THE HEALER
Poetry

Judy Lee Green is an award-winning writer and speaker whose spirit and roots reach deep into the Tennessee and North Carolina Mountains. Tennessee-bred and cornbread-fed, she developed a passion for the written word at an early age when inspired to carry a notebook by Daily Planet girl reporter Lois Lane. Appearing in print hundreds of times, her work has received numerous awards. She lives in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and writes about growing up in a large family with a teenage mother, daughter of a sharecropper, who married at fourteen and birthed five little babies by the age of twenty-one.

DEVIN O’DONNELL
A REED SHAKEN IN THE WILDERNESS
Fiction

Devin O’Donnell lives in Santa Cruz, California with his wife and two children. He teaches English at a college preparatory school. He holds a BA in Journalism and is studying for a master's in Humanities and Literature. He writes because he must but tries not to make an idol of it. He was recently published in The Ankeny Briefcase, an anthology of short fiction from the Burnside Writers Collective.

KELLY BELMONTE
THE READING
Poetry

Consultant and strategic planner by day, Kelly Belmonte is the wife of historian Kevin and mother of 17-month-old mad scientist and lay preacher Samuel. Kelly graduated from Gordon College eons ago with a BA in English literature and is currently pursuing a MS in Project Management from New England College so that she can sport a few more letters on her resume. She enjoys peek-a-boo, hide-and-seek, and many other games that make her son laugh. Kelly also can be found occasionally shooting hoops, swimming, gardening, reading murder mysteries, conducting writing workshops, and climbing up the slide at the playground.

LISA OHLEN HARRIS
TORN VEIL
Creative Nonfiction

When Lisa returned to the U.S. from Damascus, Syria, she married one of her American classmates, Todd Harris. They moved to Amman, Jordan, where Todd pastored an English-speaking church and Lisa had lots of babies (actually only two of her children were born in the Middle East, if she kept a correct count. The years blur, she says). Watch for more of Lisa's creative nonfiction about living in the Middle East in upcoming issues of River Teeth, The Jabberwock Review, and Arts & Letters.

NICK DUMAIS
PRELUDE
Poetry

Nick Dumais teaches English in the Washington, D.C. area and is currently working on an MEd at the University of Maryland. He has published poetry and short fiction in a few tiny magazines.

ROSS GALE
I FELL IN LOVE WITH A PREACHER’S WIFE
Poetry

Ross Gale is a writer from Portland, Oregon. His writing career began in second grade when his essay on Martin Luther King, Jr. was entered into a writing contest. He placed runner-up behind the brown-haired girl who sat next to him. He is not bitter about it. He is also on the five-year plan for his English degree and works as a youth minister.

LINDSAY CRANDALL
A WIFE OF NOBLE CHARACTER
AN ADAM OF MY OWN
BATHSEBA AND THE KING
Poetry

Lindsay Crandall was born and raised in Rochester, New York. She received a BA in English and a BA in Communication from Roberts Wesleyan College in 2003. She married her husband, Adam, in June of 2005 and they promptly moved 1200 miles away from home to the gulf coast of Alabama. Lindsay then worked as a IT tech temp, a newspaper editor, and a high school English teacher, all while working on her MA in English/Creative Writing from SUNY Brockport. She received her degree in 2006. Lindsay is a voracious reader and she spends a lot of time watching films, listening to music, playing with her dog, hanging with her husband, and basically wreaking havoc upon Baldwin County, Alabama.

SUZANNE RAE DESHCHIDN
SUNSET YEARS
Poetry

Suzanne Rae Deshchidn is a confessional free verse poet, freelance editor, and homeschooling mom of hispanic and native (Isleta Pueblo) heritage. She will be published in Paterson Literary Review Issues 36 & 37, as well as LIPS Journal. She was featured in Rockland Magazine, May 2007. Suzanne's debut poetry reading was at Bluestockings in New York City. She founded and hosts two online poetry groups, as well as a poetry roundtable at Suffern Library in New York. Her interests include belly dancing and Tai Chi. Her major poetic influences of late are: Kinnell, Lorca, Flynn, Mazziotti-Gillan, Boss, Brauer, and Hafiz.

JEFF NEWBERRY
TERMINAL
A BODY’S LAMENT
SUNLIGHT SHATTERED
Poetry

Jeff Newberry is a student in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Georgia in Athens and an Assistant Professor of English at Abraham Baldwin College in Tifton, Georgia. His poems and essays have appeared in a variety of publications, including Copper Nickel, Poetry Southeast, The Eleventh Muse, and Gulf Stream Magazine. He and his wife, Heather, welcomed their first son, Benjamin Lang, in April of 2007. The now-ousted former baby of the family, Scout the dog, is convalescing in the back yard. Check out his website at http://museoffireblog.blogspot.com

NINA FORSYTHE
THING PSALM
Poetry

Nina Forsythe currently (and, she hopes, forever) lives in Frostburg, Maryland, a fantastic little town in the mountains, after having wandered from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Wisconsin, to Kansas, to Nicaragua, and to Iowa. She has an MFA from Bennington and has had poems in many journals, including the most recent issue of Puerto del Sol. She was raised Lutheran, got "saved" at 15, got caught up in the charismatic movement, experienced a profound transformation through reading Dutch Calvinist philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd, became a Mennonite, and is currently attending an Episcopal Church, retaining something from every tradition she's been involved with.

JOSEPH LAIZURE
THE RIDER AHEAD
Fiction

Joseph Laizure is writing a novel and riding his bike in Minneapolis. His fiction has also appeared in Third Coast.

JENNA RISANO
WHAT WOULD JESUS WEAR?
Poetry

Jenna Risano is just your everyday liberal Catholic poet. She is a junior at the University of Tampa, double majoring in Writing and English. She would like to thank her family for their love, the UT English/Writing department for their support, and Sister Pat for scaring the crap out her.

ELLEN HERBERT
STONING, SOUTHERN BAPTIST STYLE
Creative Nonfiction

Ellen Herbert's essays have been published in The Sonora Review, The Rambler, Alimentum, and others. She won the 2006 Flint Hills Review Creative Nonfiction Prize and was published in it subsequently. Her latest essay was published 6/11/07 in The Washington Post's "Style," which thrilled her family of origin. You would have thought it was her first publication, even though she's had 15 short stories published, some in slicks. Why do newspapers thrill non-writers so? Her real love is fiction; it is what she buys and reads. Her novel-in-progress won a 2006 National Pen Women Award, but she has no idea whether it will be published, because agents say no one is buying or reading fiction any more. No one but her, she tells them.

J. MARCUS WEEKLEY
LITTLE GIRLS
Poetry

J. Marcus Weekley was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His writing appears in from four years, Look Out Below and Other Tales, and other books (www.lulu.com/whynottryitagain), as well as the journals Quick Fiction, Versal, Poetry International, and others. Marcus became a believer a while ago, but is still learning what it means to walk with God. Marcus is also a photographer, and his images accompany the essays of Gail Folkins in Texas Dance Halls (Texas Tech University Press, September 2007).

LYNN DOMINA
PRODIGAL
Poetry

Lynn Domina is the author of a collection of poetry, Corporal Works. Her more recent work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, Green Mountains Review, Tiferet: A Journal of Spiritual Literature, and several other periodicals. She currently lives in the western Catskill region of New York.

HOLLY CARTER
PREGNANT AND UNWED ON A SMALL CHRISTIAN CAMPUS IN KIRKLAND, WASHINGTON
Poetry

Holly Carter graduated with a BA in English from Northwest University. Although she was raised in Puyallup, Washington, she currently resides in Illinois with her husband, Stephen, and their mutt, Tucker. Holly enjoys running as well as reading and writing. They hope to make their home in Omaha, Nebraska.

LINDA MCCULLOUGH MOORE
HUNDRED DOLLAR BILLS
IS ANYONE ALL RIGHT?
Fiction

Linda McCullough Moore is the author of The Distance Between (Soho Press). A second literary novel and a collection of short stories are currently in search of brilliant representation and/or prompt pretigious publication. Linda's award-winning short fiction appears in more than 200 places such as The Sun, The Massachusettes Review, Glimmer Train, The Southern Review, Queen's Quarterly, The Boston Glober, and The Alaska Quarterly Review.

DANNY MILLER
.5 YEARS IN TOKYO
Creative Nonfiction

Danny Miller is a 22 year old go-getter from Orlando, Florida. He recently graduated from the University Of Central Florida with a degree in creative writing. When he isn't writing sob stories about his upbringing he is usually working on short films or video productions in some capacity with Rocksteady Pictures, which he founded. Danny is 65 pages through his first screenplay (written in collaboration) and in the early stages of a series of stories about a fighting rooster named The Great Satan. In November he'll marry his childhood crush and the love of his life (actually the same person!).

TOM PAUL BIRD
A SHORT HISTORY OF FAILURE
Poetry

Tom Paul Bird has been writing poetry off and on for thirty plus years. It's only lately that he's aspired again to see his poems in print. He's been a number of things in life: soldier, layabout, laborer, drafter, designer, supervisor. Currently he pastors a small church in the Adirondak Mountains of New York State.

SARAH FRANCES GAJKOWSKI-HILL
THE JOB POEMS
Poetry

Sarah Gajkowski-Hill is a writer who was born in Waukesha, Wisconsin but currently lives in Houston, Texas with her husband and three young children. She works for a non-profit organization called Writers in the Schools, sharing her love of creative writing with school children in the inner city of Houston. She contributes to publications such as Arts Houston Magazine, CuiZine Houston, and the Houston Press, writing reviews of bands, food and art. She published her first book of poetry in 2000, entitled, Distracted and Other Poems. She also has had her poetry published in Scribendi, Rectangle, and Pebble Lake Review.

RICK MULLIN
CREATOR, AUTHOR OF THE FOOL’S CANARD
Poetry

Rick Mullin is a painter, poet and journalist living in northern New Jersey. His paintings can best be described as representational expressionist. His poetry is almost exclusively formal, metrical verse with a heavy emphasis on the sonnet. Much of Rick’s poetry deals with family issues and he writes extensively about his home state and the New York metropolitan area. He has also written light verse and travel pieces. He is currently working on a series of poems with the working title of Stations of the Parkway. Visit Rick online at http://www.reliefjournal.com/www.cassowary.wordpress.com .

M. L. LIEBLER
IN ANOTHER UNIVERSE
Poetry

M.L. Liebler is the author of several books of poetry including the forthcoming book Wide Awake in Someone Else’s Dream (Wayne State University Press 2008) and the 2001 Finalist for The Paterson Poetry Prize and winner of The 2001 Wayne State University Board of Governors’ Award for Written In Rain: New & Selected (2000). Much of his work has been published in both national and international journals and reviews, and he has recorded CDs of poetry and music with his own Magic Poetry Band. He has taught English, Creative Writing, World Literature, American Studies, and Labor Studies at Wayne State University in Detroit since 1980.

ALIENE PYLANT
NOTRE DAME
Poetry

Aliene Pylant serves as an adjunct faculty member at Richland College in Dallas, Texas, where she teaches creative writing in a program designed for survivors of traumatic brain injury. Every semester her students teach her the meaning of courage and perseverance.

MARK SHAW
TETRAGRAMMATON
Poetry

Hailing from Frankfurt, Germany, Marc Shaw is a recent graduate of the Theology and the Arts program at Fuller Theological Seminary with an emphasis in Literature and Poetry. He currently teaches High School English in Los Angeles. He enjoys jumping up and down at random intervals, singing in the shower, and throwing things at his students. He also enjoys Billy Collins, William Blake, Wendell Berry, Van Morrison, and Bob Dylan. He is currently applying to various PhD programs in English Literature around the country. Visit Mark online at mshaw50g.blogspot.com .