FRIDAY —- 

Dana Ward is the author of The Crisis of Infinite Worlds (Futurepoem) & This Can’t Be Life (Edge Books). He lives in CIncinnati, Oh.

Catherine Wagner‘s latest book is Nervous Device (City Lights, 2012). She lives in Oxford, Ohio, where she teaches at Miami University.

Lane Hall is a multi-media artist, writer and professor in the Department of English at UW-Milwaukee. He has been active in the recent labor struggles in Wisconsin, and has written extensively about pragmatic activism. He was a founding member of the Playground Legends PAC which focused on voter enfranchisement  in some of Milwaukee’s African American neighborhoods, and has more recently co-founded the Overpass Light Brigade (OLB) which is a direct action group aimed at DIY political messaging, visibility, and the creation of community through the power of play.  His art installations have been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, The Milwaukee Art Museum, the California Academy of Sciences, the Shanghai World Expo, the Field Museum, The Science Gallery in Dublin,  and – most recently – Eyebeam in NYC, and OLB images and videos have been widely, and at times, virally, disseminated throughout the web.
More information about the Overpass Light Brigade can be found at:
<www.overpasslightbrigade.org>,
<www.olbfilm.com>,
<https://www.facebook.com/OverpassLightBrigade>
<en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overpass_Light_Brigade>

mIEKAL aND lives outside the constraints of academia in the most lush and rural part of the unglaciated Driftless area of southwest Wisconsin.  Choosing to focus on creating wilderness and abundance surrounded by the perfect setting for limitless imagination his course of action includes demonstrating alternatives to inbred aesthetics, delighting in the play of DIY culture, and making art and writing that is both anarchic and noisy. aND is the author of numerous books, many available via Xexoxial Editions (http://xexoxial.org). After many years working in the realms of digital poetry and video, he has surrendered his role as author and focused exclusively on interactions that allow the author to be reconfigured by the mysteries of the collaborative process, including books with Maria Damon, Sheila Murphy and Geof Huth.  Anyone wanting to tap into his stream can find him on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/miekal.

Jennifer Karmin’s multidisciplinary projects have been presented at festivals, artist-run spaces, and on city streets across the United States, Japan, Kenya, and Europe.  A  founding curator of the Red Rover Series, she is the author of the text-sound epic Aaaaaaaaaaalice (Flim Forum Press, 2010) and her poetry was recently published in I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women (Les Figues Press, 2012). Jennifer teaches in the Creative Writing program at Columbia College and at Truman College, where she works with immigrants as a community educator. She will be a guest faculty member at Naropa University in the summer of 2013.

SATURDAY—-

imaginary friend -

Ryder Collins is the author of the novel Homegirl! published by Honest Publishing and Orpheus on Toast: Poems for Hipsters, Drunks, Lovers and Wannabes published by Imaginary Friend Press. She believes in the power of Sam Elliott’s moustache.

Keith S. Wilson is the author of A Kinder-Meal from Imaginary Friend Press. He is associated with the Affrolachian poets and is a Cave Canem fellow. Keith is an editor for We Who are About to Die.

  rabbit catastrophe -

Karl McComas-Rechl is a double bassist, cellist, writer, painter and composer living in Kansas City.  In 2009 Karl graduated with a BFA from the New School in New York, NY where he studied with Dennis Irwin and Ben Street. Subsequently he formed the Zodiac Ensemble, an original quintet including Aaron Kruziki, Mike Bjella, Colin Stranahan and Glenn Zaleski, and ARK, a new music trio with pianist Carlos Homs and Colin Stranahan. Karl is a co-founder and editor of Strange Cage, a small press based in Iowa City, IA.  He has a chapbook of poetry, Everything is Loose, from Rabbit Catastrophe press.

Mikey Swanberg is a poet living in Chicago.

Curbside Splendor -

Daniela Olszewska is the author of three collections of poetry: cloudfang : : cakedirt (Horse Less Press, 2012), True Confessions of an Escapee From The Capra Facility for Wayward Girls (Spittoon Press, 2013), and Citizen J (Artifice Books, forthcoming).  She was born in Wrocław, Poland and received her MFA from the University of Alabama, but she self-identifies as a Chicagoan.

Michael Czyzniejewski is the author of two collections of stories, Elephants in Our Bedroom (Dzanc Books, 2009) and Chicago Stories: 40 Dramatic Fictions (Curbside Splendor, 2012), and a 2010 recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in Prose. He is an assistant professor at Missouri State University, where he serves as Editor of Moon City Review, but during summers, he lives in Chicago and works as a beer vendor at Wrigley Field.

Chris L. Terry is the author of the young adult novel Zero Fade (Curbside Splendor, 2013) and multiple short stories about his black and white mixed-race identity. He has an MFA in Fiction Writing from Columbia College Chicago, where he now works in Multicultural Affairs. He spent his late teens and early twenties touring North America and Europe, singing for punk bands.

Bloof/Sunnyoutside/Rose Metal –

CATHRYN COFELL and KARLA HUSTON have been collaborators since 2000 with poems in Rhino, Indiana Review, and Quiddity, among others. The duo has been anthologized in Saints of Hysteria: A Half Century of Collaborative Writing (Soft Skull Press, 2007) and exercised in Wingbeats: Exercises & Practice in Poetry (Dos Gatos Press, 2011) and in many workshop settings. Between them, they have published 12 books or poems, two broadsides, one music/poetry CD, oodles of interviews and essays. They’ve won many writing awards and received a boatload of Pushcart nominations including one win for Karla. When the pen is off the paper, one of their feet is often on the gas pedal as they motor about the state advocating for the written word via their work on boards of several state writing organizations or coming up with new ideas for collaboration.

B.J. BEST is the author of three books of poetry: But Our Princess Is in Another Castle (Rose Metal Press), Birds of Wisconsin (New Rivers Press), and State Sonnets (sunnyoutside). His fourth book, I got off the train at Ash Lake, is a novella in verse and is forthcoming from sunnyoutside. B.J. teaches at Carroll University.

Danielle Pafunda is the author of Natural History Rape Museum (Bloof Books, 2013), Manhater (Dusie Press, 2012), Iatrogenic: Their Testimonies (Noemi Press, 2010), My Zorba (Bloof Books, 2008), and Pretty Young Thing (Soft Skull Press, 2005). Her poems have appeared in three editions of Best American Poetry. Her work has been anthologized in Beauty Is a Verb: The Poetry of Disability (Cinco Puntos Press, 2011), Gurlesque: The New Grrly, Grotesque, Burlesque Poetics (Saturnalia Books, 2010) and Not for Mothers Only: Contemporary Poems on Child-Getting & Child Rearing (Fence Books, 2007). She is an Assistant Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and English at the University of Wyoming.

Peter Davis is the author of TINA (Bloof, 2013), Poetry! Poetry! Poetry! (Bloof, 2010) and Hitler’s Mustache (Barnwood, 2006), and the editor of the anthologies Poet’s Bookshelf: Contemporary Poets on Books That Shaped Their Art, volumes 1 and 2 (Barnwood, 2005 and 2008). He lives with his sweet wife, son and daughter. His poems have appeared in places like Atticus, Jacket, and the Best American Poetry anthology. He draws, writes and makes music in Muncie, Indiana while teaching English at Ball State University. More info at artisnecessary.com or tinapeterdavis.blogspot.com.

Midwestern Gothic

Lee L. Krecklow was born and raised and roundly schooled in the Milwaukee area, where he continues to live and love and tend his children. The hundreds of hours he’s spent in the wilderness have been among his most satisfying, though he cannot discount those spent writing fiction or listening to baseball on the radio.

Joanna Thompson Yezek is an Instructional Developer at the University of
Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls. Her poetry has been published in Inner Weather and a few seedy joints around the web (including, oddly enough, the video game Minecraft), and her fiction has just begun to tiptoe down the stairs and sneak out the front door. She enjoys reading banned books to her son Sam and eating peanut-butter-and-pickle sandwiches.

Poet Paul Scot August is originally from Chicago but has spent the 2nd half of his life now in Wisconsin. He has an MA in Creative Writing from UW-Milwaukee and works as a quality assurance software developer. He is the cofounder of the Middle Coast Poets reading series based in Milwaukee, is a former poetry editor of The Cream City Review and has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize and once for a Best of The Net award. His poetry has appeared or is upcoming in Mead: the Magazine of Literature & Libations, Lindenwood Review, Louisville Review, South Dakota Review, Tygerburning, Connotation-Press, Midwestern Gothic, Los Angeles Review, Dunes Review, Naugatuck River Review and elsewhere. He currently lives in the Milwaukee area with his two children.

Horse Less

Stephanie Anderson is the author of four chapbooks, including Sentence, Signal, Stain (forthcoming from Greying Ghost Press) and one full-length book, In the Key of Those Who Can No Longer Organize Their Environments, forthcoming from Horse Less Press. She edits Projective Industries and lives in Chicago. www.projectiveindustries.com

Laura Goldstein‘s poetry and essays have appeared or are forthcoming from the Denver Quarterly, American Letters and Commentary, Jacket2, How2 and other fine publications. She is the author of six chapbooks, one of which, phylum is forthcoming from Horse Less Press in Spring 2013. Her first full-length collection of poetry, loaded arc, will be released by Trembling Pillow Press in Summer 2013. She currently teaches at Loyola University and co-curates the Red Rover Series with Jennifer Karmin in Chicago. http://lauragoldstein.tumblr.com/post/43085464636/the-next-big-thing

Mary Hickman is the author of three chapbooks and a forthcoming book of poems. She lives in Iowa City and works for the Iowa Summer Writing Festival.

Daniela Olszewska is the author of four full-length collections of poetry: True
Confessions of an Escapee from The Capra Facility for Wayward Girls (Spittoon Press, 2013), cloudfang : : cakedirt (Horse Less Press 2012), Citizen J (Artifice Books, forthcoming), and (co-written with Carol Guess) How To Feel Confident With Your Special Talents (Black Lawrence Press, forthcoming), as well as half a dozen chapbooks. She sits on Switchback Books’ Board of Directors and serves as an Associate Poetry Editor of H_NGM_N and Another Chicago Magazine. Daniela teaches composition and creative writing courses at community colleges and maximum-security prisons throughout the area known as Chicagoland. The address to her infrequently updated Tumblr goes like this: http://danielaolszewska.tumblr.com/.

Michael Sikkema is the author of Futuring and seven or eight chapbooks,
collaborative chapbooks, animal to English transcriptions, visual poems, and
several accidents. The newest versions of these things are available from Serif of
Nottingham Press, Horse Less Press, and Grey Book Press.

Jen Tynes is the founding editor of Horse Less Press. She is the author of several books and chapbooks, most recently You Are Causing a Disturbance (Dancing Girl Press), The Fabulous Bilocation of B. Lee (Projective Industries), The Black Mariah (DoubleCross Press), and Hunter Monies (Horse Less Press). Her third full- length book, Trick Rider, will be published by Trembling Pillow Press in 2014. www.horselesspress.com

Furrow Open Mic -

Charles P. Ries lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His narrative poems, short stories, interviews, and poetry reviews have appeared in over two hundred print and electronic publications. He has received four Pushcart Prize nominations for his writing. He is the author of The Fathers We Find, a “somewhat” fictionalize memoir as well as six books of poetry. His work is achieved at Marquette University in the Charles P. Ries Collections.

He is on the board of the John Michael Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan and he is a past board member of The Woodland Pattern Book Center. He is a founding member of the Lake Shore Surf Club, the oldest fresh water surfing club on the Great Lakes.

About, his most recent collection of poetry, Girl Friend and Other Mysteries of Love he says, “It is a meditation on the ebb and flow of love in these times. The screw ups, suck ups, epiphanies, black holes, celestial awakenings, and confusions of the thing considered mystical to some, and impossible to others. Whoever has said love was easy, has never been in love.”

New American Press -

Micah Dean Hicks is an author of magical realism, modern fairy tales, and other kinds of magical stories. His work is published or forthcoming in places like New Letters, Indiana Review, and New Orleans Review. His short story collection, Electricity and Other Dreams, will be published by New American Press in summer 2013. He attends the creative writing PhD program in fiction at Florida State University.

Nathan Hoks is the author of Reveilles and The Narrow Circle, which was a winner of the 2012 National Poetry Series and is forthcoming from Penguin. His poems have appeared in journals such as jubilat, the Colorado Review, Octopus, CutBank, and Forklift Ohio. He lives in Chicago where he teaches at Columbia College and works an editor and letterpress printer for Convulsive Editions.

Okla Elliott is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Illinois, where he works in the fields of comparative literature and trauma studies. He also holds an MFA in creative writing from Ohio State University. His non-fiction, poetry, short fiction, and translations have appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, Indiana Review, The Literary Review, The Los Angeles Review, New Letters, A Public Space, and The Southeast Review, among many others. He is the author of a full-length collection of short fiction, From the Crooked Timber, and three poetry chapbooks—The Mutable Wheel; Lucid Bodies and Other Poems; and A Vulgar Geography. His po-mo/sci-fi novel The Doors You Mark Are Your Own, co-written with Raul Clement, is forthcoming in 2014.

Strange Cage -