Poets

Quinn White is the author of My Moustache (Dancing Girl Press, 2013). Her poems appear in or are forthcoming from journals such as Gargoyle, Sixth Finch, Word Riot, Weave Magazine, and The Adroit Journal.
 

Kathy Kroener does not have degrees nor fancy awards worth mentioning, none the less, she has lived a full life, helped by her grit and determination. She has sailed oceans, explored the tundra, and lived on an island alone, she’s paddled to icebergs, lived through a war, and has ridden thousands of waves. Kathy’s been homeless, lost and sick, no trust fund baby her, she left home early, was lonely and broke, and is well acquainted with pain. Yet somehow she has survived the years to experience these things, and more, and through it all she has sought the light, while willing to face the darkness.

She lives with her husband, George, and an elderly, long-haired feline, named the Beautiful Gray Makita, A.K.A. Her Royal Grayness.  Kathy has been a visual artist for a long time and has been a voracious reader for as long as she can remember. In more recent years she's discovered the joy of writing. Her husband claims that "it’s like turning on a faucet, the stuff just pours out."

Kathy writes the things she knows, tapping into her large reservoir of experience. She is working on a book about her life, but has found that poetry is where her heart really lies. These days Katherine is also an avid birder, as always, finding her solace in nature.

Sherry Weaver Smith is the author of Land Shapes: Selected Haiku Poems, published by Richer Resources Publications in 2011. This collection reflects meditations in nature, especially its spiraling shapes and geometric patterns. Artist Sylvia Van Strijthem has illustrated the collection with Chinese brush paintings.

Her individual poems have appeared in Arizona Literary Magazine, California Quarterly, To Topos: Poetry International, the Speak Peace international exhibit, and The Heron's Nest. Awards include a Pushcart Prize nomination for poetry (2008).

In her prosaic life, she is Grants Manager for Science Buddies, an educational nonprofit in California. She is married and enjoys writing poems along with her nine-year-old daughter, Laura. 

M.J. Iuppa lives on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario.  Her most recent poems have appeared in Poetry East, The Chariton Review, Tar River Poetry, Blueline, The Prose Poem Project, and The Centrifugal Eye, among others. 

Recent chapbook As the Crows Flies (Foothills Publishing, 2008) and a second full-length collection, Within Reach by Cherry Grove Collections, 2010.  A forthcoming prose chapbook Between Worlds will soon be available from Foothills Publishing.

She is Writer-in-Residence and Director of the Visual and Performing Arts Minor program at St. John Fisher College, Rochester, NY.  She's also the Flash Fiction editor for the Schuykill Valley Journal  - her blogsite: (A)stray: One Poet's Conversation.

Update Passed away April 27, 2023: Mary Jo (MJ) Iuppa passed peacefully after a five-year battle with ovarian cancer. She died at home with family by her side.

MJ was born in Rochester, NY to Dr. Louis A. and Josephine Iuppa. The youngest of five children, she had two older sisters, Andrea and Karen, and two older brothers, Bruce and Robert. Growing up in the Rochester area, she lived on Knollwood Drive and Edgemere Drive as a child. MJ attended Sacred Heart Academy until it closed in 1968. She then transferred to Our Lady of Mercy.

She attended St. Bonaventure University and completed her BA in English Literature, Journalism and Media Studies at SUNY Empire State College in 1976.

In pursuit of her art and teaching career, she obtained her Master of Arts in Creative Writing from SUNY Brockport in 2000.

She followed her mentors, Judith Kitchen and Stan Rubin, and enrolled in Pacific Lutheran University to obtain her finishing degree, a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing in 2006.

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     Emily Wall is a Professor of English at the University of Alaska. She holds an M.F.A. in poetry and her poems have been published in journals across the US and Canada, most recently in Prairie Schooner and Alaska Quarterly Review. She has been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes and her most recent book, Flame, won the Minerva Rising chapbook prize.

She has two books published with Salmon Poetry: Liveaboard and Freshly Rooted and has two books being launched this year. Her chapbook Fist will come out this winter and her full-length book Breaking Into Air: Birth Poems is coming out in June.

Emily lives and writes in Douglas, Alaska. She can be found online at Emily Wall.com

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Robert Graves Jr. grew up in Maine, moved to Connecticut in his early 20’s and raised his family there, finally settling in Rhode Island in 2009. His interests are guitar, golf, hiking, poetry and, recently, politics. He graduated from Central Connecticut State University in 1999 with a BA in English and retired from fire/security at United Technologies that same year. 

In 1996, he began doing short stories, essays, and poetry while a freshman at CCSU (at age 53!) and has not had any publication other than editorials in a few magazines and newspapers. Although he tells us that he has "no pedigree regarding my writing experience," he adds, "I do have a few poems posted at Poetry.com and Poemhunter.com."

Jnana Hodson is an active Quaker living in the seacoast region of New Hampshire. He came to the Society of Friends (Quakers) by way of yoga, not knowing it had been the faith of his ancestors, and finds that much of his poetry springs from the quietude of meditation.

A native of Ohio, he spent four decades as a professional daily newspaper editor and is also the author of two published novels, Subway Hitchhikers and Ashram.

In addition to his primary blog, Jnana’s Red Barn (jnanahodson.net), with its emphasis on poetry and daily life, he is presenting a biography of Rhode Island Quaker firebrand Robert Hodgson at the Orphan George Chronicles (jmunrohodson.wordpress.com) and a series on early Friends’ understanding of the spiritual metaphor of Light at As Light Is Sown

Harbor of Grace, a chapbook of prose-poems, is available from Fowlpox Press, and In a Heartbeat, a chapbook of poems reflecting the Animal Kingdom, is forthcoming from Barometric Pressures.

His wife and two stepdaughters are endless sources of delight and inspiration.