Roller-blading gym rat and mother of
three, Laurie Barton lives in southern
California and visits Hawaii frequently.
She is completing an MFA in poetry at
Antioch University Los Angeles, where
her work is partly funded by an Eloise
Klein Healy scholarship.
Louis E. Bourgeois teaches English at
the University of Mississippi in Oxford.
His memoir, The Gar Diaries, will be
released in the fall of 2007 by
Community Press. Bourgeois is also
editor of VOX.
Eddie Dowe is a high school English
and creative writing teacher in Norfolk,
Virginia. He is also a student in Old
Dominion University's MFA Creative
Writing Program. His poems have
appeared in Mannequin Envy, the
strange fruit, Facets, Lunarosity, and
Trillium, among others.
three, Laurie Barton lives in southern
California and visits Hawaii frequently.
She is completing an MFA in poetry at
Antioch University Los Angeles, where
her work is partly funded by an Eloise
Klein Healy scholarship.
Louis E. Bourgeois teaches English at
the University of Mississippi in Oxford.
His memoir, The Gar Diaries, will be
released in the fall of 2007 by
Community Press. Bourgeois is also
editor of VOX.
Eddie Dowe is a high school English
and creative writing teacher in Norfolk,
Virginia. He is also a student in Old
Dominion University's MFA Creative
Writing Program. His poems have
appeared in Mannequin Envy, the
strange fruit, Facets, Lunarosity, and
Trillium, among others.
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| All files © Copyright 2007 The Sylvan Echo |
| Volume 1 Issue 1 |
| Offering by Ross Walenga etching with drypoint, 12" x 18" |
Melanie Faith amuses herself educating young minds at a college preparatory high school in
Pennsylvania, writing poems in colorful notebooks, and roving the rural landscape taking
nature and architectural images with her digital camera. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing
from Queens University of Charlotte, North Carolina. In addition to publication of her
chapbook, Restless: Relative Poems (Foothills Publishing), her writing earned 3rd place in a
Maison Neuve Magazine (Montreal) writing contest and placed honorable mention in the
Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prizes. She was featured reader in her alma mater’s 2005
Wilson College Visiting Writers Series and was recipient of the 2006 Outstanding Young
Alumnae Award. Her poems and photography recently appeared in The Binnacle (University of
Maine), Heavyglow, Six Little Things, Arabesques, Siren, The Long Islander, and Fifth
Wednesday Journal. Current projects include creating a manuscript combining her poetry and
photographs as well as writing a novel.
Born and raised in East Los Angeles, Consuelo Flores is currently a Creative Nonfiction
MFA student at Antioch University, Los Angeles where she was awarded the Diversity and
Eloise Klein Healy Scholarships. She has read at Self Help Graphics, the Armory Center for
the Arts, Beyond Baroque, The Autry Museum, the J. Paul Getty Museum and several colleges
and universities throughout the U.S. and Mexico including Cornell and Brown Universities as
well as La Universidad Nacional Autonima de Mexico. Her work incorporates performance
elements, poetic illustrations of life that reflect family and culture mixed with social
perspective. She prolifically writes “Day of the Dead” themed work, remembrances and
celebrations of life, literary altars she builds as offerings to the dead.
Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of two poetry
chapbooks, Death of the Frog Prince (2004) and Heartland (2007), both from FootHills
Publishing. He was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Jim Hetrick graduated from American International College in Springfield, Massachusetts in
1978, with a BA in English, a minor in Journalism, and a teaching certificate. He taught high
school and middle school English and literature for ten years, including seven years in central
Maine, where he also homesteaded in 1980s. His hobbies are scuba diving, alpine skiing,
horseback riding, and acting and directing local community theater productions. He has written
a drama which has been produced locally and is currently being considered for publication by
Samuel French, Inc. Jim, now a grandfather to two granddaughters, resides in rural Coventry,
Connecticut on a small horse farm with his wife, Mary Ellen.
Randall Horton has an MFA from Chicago State University and is the author of The Definition
of Place (Main Street Rag, 2006).
Mariel Howsepian-Rodriguez is an MFA candidate in Creative Nonfiction at Antioch
University, and a sixth grade teacher. She lives with her husband in Santa Monica, California.
Karen Lewis lives in rural northern California and teaches with California Poets in the
Schools and at Mendocino College. She holds an MFA from Antioch-Los Angeles. Her essays,
fiction and poetry have appeared in a variety of journals. She still loves rainstorms, and strives
to build a more peaceful world. Karen is a Gemini, which may partially explain why she writes
poetry and fiction and creative nonfiction. Why she loves the city and lives in the forest. Why
she cannot decide whether to run, or to bicycle. Whether to send this essay, or a micro fiction.
Jan Locasha has always loved little boys, and her three are all grown now; yet, all three are
living at home. Living with her are Bonnie, her lab, Larry, the tabby cat, and Susie, her
cockatiel. She and her husband have been married for 27 years. Writing is her passion; she
write every day, though not always productively. She works part-time in retail and is big on
customer service. In other lives, she has been a pharmacy IV technician, a secretary, a
receptionist and an editor. She has a BA in English as a writing major and a minor in Bio
Chem from Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois.
Eileen Malone lives and writes in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her poems have been
published in over 400 literary journals and anthologies, a significant number of which have
earned prizes and awards. Last year two were nominated for Pushcart Prizes.
Patrick O'Neil, writer, former artist, reluctant musician – San Franciscan, a holdover from the
punk rock days of yesteryear. Still dressed in black with nowhere to go. His last piece of public
art – graffiti scrawled on his neighbor's front door. His last musical venture – tune hummed
while waiting for the bus. Last published writing – "There's a Crackhead at My Window," Blood
Orange Review vol. 2.3 June 2007. Mr. O'Neil also attempts to maintain, although somewhat
haphazardly, his literary blog Full Blue Moon Dementia where, publicity whore that he is,
shamelessly exploits himself for all to see.
Kristen Orser is an MFA candidate in the Poetry Program at Columbia College Chicago,
where she edits the Columbia Poetry Review. Her work has most recently appeared or is
forthcoming in After Hours, Redactions, Columbia Poetry Review, Womb, and kaleidowhirl.
Don E. Perkins’ short stories have been in Good Old Days Magazine, Barfing Frog, Burst,
and Long Story Short. He received Honorable Mention in the Erma Bombeck 2007 Short Story
contest. He lives in Des Moines, Iowa, with his wife of 58 years.
Charles P. Ries lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His narrative poems, short stories, interviews
and poetry reviews have appeared in over one hundred and seventy print and electronic
publications. He has received four Pushcart Prize nominations for his writing. He is the author
of The Fathers We Find, a novel based on memory, and five books of poetry — the most
recent entitled, The Last Time, which was released by The Moon Press in Tucson, Arizona. He
is the poetry editor for Word Riot, Pass Port Journal and ESC!. He is on the board of the
Woodland Pattern Bookstore (www.woodlandpattern.org). He is a member of the Wisconsin
Poet Laureate Commission and a founding member of the Lake Shore Surf Club, the oldest
fresh water surfing club on the Great Lakes. You may find additional samples of his work by
going here.
Keith Russell is an Assistant Professor of Humanities at Lindenwood University in St.
Charles, Missouri. His work has appeared in Poetry Midwest and Notes on Contemporary
Literature. He loves words, baseball and rock music.
Karen Schubert is a graduate student in creative writing at Cleveland State, and editor of
Whiskey Island. She is recipient of Youngstown State University's Hare Award for poetry, and
her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Mid-America Poetry Review, DMQ,
Angle, Primavera, Versal, Poetry Midwest, and others.
The author of over 500 novels including the multi-billion selling How to Eat Blueberries
Without Really Trying, Scott Spangler is also a world-renowned yodeler and explorer. In his
off hours, he divides his time between his 15 houses and three yachts while maintaining one
of the world's most extensive topiary gardens. He has written so many different things that he
is not sure if this story is even his. However, he will take credit for it, nonetheless. Scott
Spangler lives in Northern Virginia, having moved there from the deep deserts of Arizona and
the verdant streets of Richmond.
Ross Walenga was born during the blizzard of '78 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and currently
resides in Richmond, Virginia. His goal is to create work that pushes him to grow as a human
being. The process of making decisions in the creation of a painting often teaches him how to
take risks, when to push forward and when to step back, and how to make his thoughts more
coherent. He often find that the lessons he learns over the course of a painting lead to growth
in other areas of his life. It is his belief that in a successful piece this progress manifests itself
in such a way that others can read it, either on a conscious or subconscious level. His hope is
that the viewer can then take something positive from it as well.
Patricia Wellingham-Jones is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work is published
internationally in anthologies, journals, and Internet magazines. Winner of the Palabra
Productions Chapbook Contest 2006, End-Cycle, poems about caregiving, is her latest book.
She just won Grand Prize in the Artists Embassy International Dancing Poetry Contest. Her
website is here.
Earl J. Wilcox retired after 40 years of university teaching after which he took up poetry
writing for the first time at age 71--three years ago. Three dozen of his poems have appeared
in journals, both online and print. He writes about aging, baseball, birds, Southern culture,
politics, and the world at large. His poems may be found in The Centrifugal Eye, Word Riot,
Lunarosity, Strange Horizons, The New Verse News, Southern Gothic, Arkansas Literary
Forum, KAKALAK, Aethlon, and elsewhere. He founded The Robert Frost Review which he
edited for a decade. His poetry was nominated for a Pushcart prize in 2006.
Martin Willitts Jr. is a Senior Librarian in New York. He has recent publications in Pebble
Lake Review, Hurricane Blues (anthology), Hotmetalpress.net, Haigaonline, Bent Pin, 5th
Gear, and others. He has a fifth chapbook Falling In and Out of Love (Pudding House
Publications, 2005), an online chapbook Farewell--the journey now begins in 2006, a full
length book of poems with his art The Secret Language of the Universe (March Street Press,
2006), and he has another chapbook “Lowering the Nets of Light” forthcoming from Pudding
House Publications.
Andrena Zawinski is Features Editor at PoetryMagazine.com Her poems appear in print at
publications like Rattle, Slipstream, Gulf Coast, Nimrod, and others. They also appear widely
online. She is author of a full collection of poetry, Traveling in Reflected Light, and three
chapbooks, with a CD forthcoming. She hails from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania but has made the
San Francisco Bay area her home. Zawinski is a long time teacher of writing.
Pennsylvania, writing poems in colorful notebooks, and roving the rural landscape taking
nature and architectural images with her digital camera. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing
from Queens University of Charlotte, North Carolina. In addition to publication of her
chapbook, Restless: Relative Poems (Foothills Publishing), her writing earned 3rd place in a
Maison Neuve Magazine (Montreal) writing contest and placed honorable mention in the
Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prizes. She was featured reader in her alma mater’s 2005
Wilson College Visiting Writers Series and was recipient of the 2006 Outstanding Young
Alumnae Award. Her poems and photography recently appeared in The Binnacle (University of
Maine), Heavyglow, Six Little Things, Arabesques, Siren, The Long Islander, and Fifth
Wednesday Journal. Current projects include creating a manuscript combining her poetry and
photographs as well as writing a novel.
Born and raised in East Los Angeles, Consuelo Flores is currently a Creative Nonfiction
MFA student at Antioch University, Los Angeles where she was awarded the Diversity and
Eloise Klein Healy Scholarships. She has read at Self Help Graphics, the Armory Center for
the Arts, Beyond Baroque, The Autry Museum, the J. Paul Getty Museum and several colleges
and universities throughout the U.S. and Mexico including Cornell and Brown Universities as
well as La Universidad Nacional Autonima de Mexico. Her work incorporates performance
elements, poetic illustrations of life that reflect family and culture mixed with social
perspective. She prolifically writes “Day of the Dead” themed work, remembrances and
celebrations of life, literary altars she builds as offerings to the dead.
Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of two poetry
chapbooks, Death of the Frog Prince (2004) and Heartland (2007), both from FootHills
Publishing. He was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Jim Hetrick graduated from American International College in Springfield, Massachusetts in
1978, with a BA in English, a minor in Journalism, and a teaching certificate. He taught high
school and middle school English and literature for ten years, including seven years in central
Maine, where he also homesteaded in 1980s. His hobbies are scuba diving, alpine skiing,
horseback riding, and acting and directing local community theater productions. He has written
a drama which has been produced locally and is currently being considered for publication by
Samuel French, Inc. Jim, now a grandfather to two granddaughters, resides in rural Coventry,
Connecticut on a small horse farm with his wife, Mary Ellen.
Randall Horton has an MFA from Chicago State University and is the author of The Definition
of Place (Main Street Rag, 2006).
Mariel Howsepian-Rodriguez is an MFA candidate in Creative Nonfiction at Antioch
University, and a sixth grade teacher. She lives with her husband in Santa Monica, California.
Karen Lewis lives in rural northern California and teaches with California Poets in the
Schools and at Mendocino College. She holds an MFA from Antioch-Los Angeles. Her essays,
fiction and poetry have appeared in a variety of journals. She still loves rainstorms, and strives
to build a more peaceful world. Karen is a Gemini, which may partially explain why she writes
poetry and fiction and creative nonfiction. Why she loves the city and lives in the forest. Why
she cannot decide whether to run, or to bicycle. Whether to send this essay, or a micro fiction.
Jan Locasha has always loved little boys, and her three are all grown now; yet, all three are
living at home. Living with her are Bonnie, her lab, Larry, the tabby cat, and Susie, her
cockatiel. She and her husband have been married for 27 years. Writing is her passion; she
write every day, though not always productively. She works part-time in retail and is big on
customer service. In other lives, she has been a pharmacy IV technician, a secretary, a
receptionist and an editor. She has a BA in English as a writing major and a minor in Bio
Chem from Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois.
Eileen Malone lives and writes in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her poems have been
published in over 400 literary journals and anthologies, a significant number of which have
earned prizes and awards. Last year two were nominated for Pushcart Prizes.
Patrick O'Neil, writer, former artist, reluctant musician – San Franciscan, a holdover from the
punk rock days of yesteryear. Still dressed in black with nowhere to go. His last piece of public
art – graffiti scrawled on his neighbor's front door. His last musical venture – tune hummed
while waiting for the bus. Last published writing – "There's a Crackhead at My Window," Blood
Orange Review vol. 2.3 June 2007. Mr. O'Neil also attempts to maintain, although somewhat
haphazardly, his literary blog Full Blue Moon Dementia where, publicity whore that he is,
shamelessly exploits himself for all to see.
Kristen Orser is an MFA candidate in the Poetry Program at Columbia College Chicago,
where she edits the Columbia Poetry Review. Her work has most recently appeared or is
forthcoming in After Hours, Redactions, Columbia Poetry Review, Womb, and kaleidowhirl.
Don E. Perkins’ short stories have been in Good Old Days Magazine, Barfing Frog, Burst,
and Long Story Short. He received Honorable Mention in the Erma Bombeck 2007 Short Story
contest. He lives in Des Moines, Iowa, with his wife of 58 years.
Charles P. Ries lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His narrative poems, short stories, interviews
and poetry reviews have appeared in over one hundred and seventy print and electronic
publications. He has received four Pushcart Prize nominations for his writing. He is the author
of The Fathers We Find, a novel based on memory, and five books of poetry — the most
recent entitled, The Last Time, which was released by The Moon Press in Tucson, Arizona. He
is the poetry editor for Word Riot, Pass Port Journal and ESC!. He is on the board of the
Woodland Pattern Bookstore (www.woodlandpattern.org). He is a member of the Wisconsin
Poet Laureate Commission and a founding member of the Lake Shore Surf Club, the oldest
fresh water surfing club on the Great Lakes. You may find additional samples of his work by
going here.
Keith Russell is an Assistant Professor of Humanities at Lindenwood University in St.
Charles, Missouri. His work has appeared in Poetry Midwest and Notes on Contemporary
Literature. He loves words, baseball and rock music.
Karen Schubert is a graduate student in creative writing at Cleveland State, and editor of
Whiskey Island. She is recipient of Youngstown State University's Hare Award for poetry, and
her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Mid-America Poetry Review, DMQ,
Angle, Primavera, Versal, Poetry Midwest, and others.
The author of over 500 novels including the multi-billion selling How to Eat Blueberries
Without Really Trying, Scott Spangler is also a world-renowned yodeler and explorer. In his
off hours, he divides his time between his 15 houses and three yachts while maintaining one
of the world's most extensive topiary gardens. He has written so many different things that he
is not sure if this story is even his. However, he will take credit for it, nonetheless. Scott
Spangler lives in Northern Virginia, having moved there from the deep deserts of Arizona and
the verdant streets of Richmond.
Ross Walenga was born during the blizzard of '78 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and currently
resides in Richmond, Virginia. His goal is to create work that pushes him to grow as a human
being. The process of making decisions in the creation of a painting often teaches him how to
take risks, when to push forward and when to step back, and how to make his thoughts more
coherent. He often find that the lessons he learns over the course of a painting lead to growth
in other areas of his life. It is his belief that in a successful piece this progress manifests itself
in such a way that others can read it, either on a conscious or subconscious level. His hope is
that the viewer can then take something positive from it as well.
Patricia Wellingham-Jones is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work is published
internationally in anthologies, journals, and Internet magazines. Winner of the Palabra
Productions Chapbook Contest 2006, End-Cycle, poems about caregiving, is her latest book.
She just won Grand Prize in the Artists Embassy International Dancing Poetry Contest. Her
website is here.
Earl J. Wilcox retired after 40 years of university teaching after which he took up poetry
writing for the first time at age 71--three years ago. Three dozen of his poems have appeared
in journals, both online and print. He writes about aging, baseball, birds, Southern culture,
politics, and the world at large. His poems may be found in The Centrifugal Eye, Word Riot,
Lunarosity, Strange Horizons, The New Verse News, Southern Gothic, Arkansas Literary
Forum, KAKALAK, Aethlon, and elsewhere. He founded The Robert Frost Review which he
edited for a decade. His poetry was nominated for a Pushcart prize in 2006.
Martin Willitts Jr. is a Senior Librarian in New York. He has recent publications in Pebble
Lake Review, Hurricane Blues (anthology), Hotmetalpress.net, Haigaonline, Bent Pin, 5th
Gear, and others. He has a fifth chapbook Falling In and Out of Love (Pudding House
Publications, 2005), an online chapbook Farewell--the journey now begins in 2006, a full
length book of poems with his art The Secret Language of the Universe (March Street Press,
2006), and he has another chapbook “Lowering the Nets of Light” forthcoming from Pudding
House Publications.
Andrena Zawinski is Features Editor at PoetryMagazine.com Her poems appear in print at
publications like Rattle, Slipstream, Gulf Coast, Nimrod, and others. They also appear widely
online. She is author of a full collection of poetry, Traveling in Reflected Light, and three
chapbooks, with a CD forthcoming. She hails from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania but has made the
San Francisco Bay area her home. Zawinski is a long time teacher of writing.
Poetry readings, awards, and book signings have taken Gretchen Fletcher to San
Francisco, Chicago, Kansas City, Boston, Houston, Palm Beach, and Miami. She writes articles
about her travels for magazines and newspapers and lives in Ft. Lauderdale where she leads
writing workshops for Florida Center for the Book, an affiliate of the Library of Congress.
Francisco, Chicago, Kansas City, Boston, Houston, Palm Beach, and Miami. She writes articles
about her travels for magazines and newspapers and lives in Ft. Lauderdale where she leads
writing workshops for Florida Center for the Book, an affiliate of the Library of Congress.
