Alan King is a Cave Canem fellow and Vona Alum. His fiction and poems have appeared in the Arabesques Review, Warpland, The Amistad, and Fingernails Across the Chalkboard: Poetry and Prose on HIV/AIDS, among others. Visit his MySpace page
Felecia Studstill graduated from Florida A&M University’s School of Business and currently works as a portfolio manager for a pension fund advisor in Detroit. She is also active in various charity and church-related activities. In addition to winning the Award of Honor in Poetry in the Wayne County Council for Arts, History & Humanities Artists Among Us competition, Felecia is a member of MENSA. Her first published collection of poetry is Speaking No Evil (Aquarius Press).
Eddie Bell has nationally recognized accomplishments in education, photography, minority affairs, writing and poetry. During his twenty-eight year career in higher education he ascended to the highest level of administration as Assistant Vice-Chancellor at the State University of New York (SUNY), the country’s largest public institution of higher education. Eddie has written two well-received volumes of poetry and a history of one of Kingston, NY’s oldest black churches. He has written numerous feature stories and opinion articles for the Times Herald-Record, Middletown, NY. He teaches writing and poetry seminars.
Brian Gilmore is a poet, writer and lawyer. He is the author of two collections of poetry, elvis presley is alive and well and living in harlem (Third World Press of Chicago, 1993) and Jungle Nights and Soda Fountain Rags: Poem for Duke Ellington (Karibu Books, 2000). He is a columnist with the Progressive Media Project, a contributing writer with Ebony Jet (online), and a regular contributor to The Progressive Magazine. His poetry, essays, reviews, and other writings have appeared in The Washington Review, The Apple Valley Review, The Red Brick Review, The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, The Detroit Free Press, The Charlotte Observer, The Buffalo News, The Rochester Democrat, The Nation, The Utne Reader, Jazz Times, Jazz and Blues, and many other national and local publications. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., and a graduate of Archbishop Carroll High School, he currently resides in Takoma Park, Maryland, with his family.
Dike Okoro, a poet, fiction writer, critic, and photographer, teaches World literature/English at Olive Harvey College, Chicago. He the author of Dance of the Heart (MSU/ABC 2007) and the editor of Songs for Wonodi: An international anthology in Memory of Okogbule Wonodi (MSU/ABC 2007) and Echoes from the Mountain: New & Selected Poems by Mazisi Kunene (MSU/ABC 2007). Okoro is a PhD in English candidate at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee.
Debraha Watson, Ph.D., is the Vice-Chancellor of Educational Affairs for the Wayne County Community College District. She will be featured in the soon-to-be released anthology, It’s Worth The Struggle: Inspiration for Contemporary Writers by Aquarius Press.
Gerri Stone has been published in Seeds, Patterson Literary Review, and Wayne Literary Review, and the anthology At the Edge of Mirror Lake. Last year she won first place in the Dancing Poetry Contest for her poem on Charlie Parker, This Bird. In 2004, she was a Writer in Residence in the Interdisciplinary Studies Program at Wayne State. She holds a B.A. from Wayne State and currently works as an administrative assistant and newsletter editor at Detroit Unity Temple.
Cheresse Thornhill is a recent graduate of the College for Creative Studies in Detroit and designed a new prototype shoe for Nike. She enjoys writing poetry in her spare time.
Qiana Towns received a MFA in poetry from Bowling Green State University and is a 2007 recipient of the Cave Canem fellowship. She holds a MA from Central Michigan University where she served as poetry editor for the online literary journal Temenos. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Nubian Chronicle, The Mochila Review, Prick of the Spindle and Pindeldyboz. Visit her MySpace page at myspace.com/qianatowns
Juanita Torrence-Thompson is a poet, speaker, columnist, instructor and editor of the 25 year-old MOBIUS, THE POETRY MAGAZINE. Her award-winning work has been published in hundreds of U.S. newspapers and literary journals including Paterson Literary Review, Phantasmagoria, New Laurel Review, Black Enterprise and literary magazines in Canada, Europe and Australia. Juanita has read her poetry and prose on TV and the radio in Singapore, Switzerland and the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
Clarence Young has one philosophy about writing: if you’re not presenting a gift, don’t bother. He’s published several short stories and two novels are available for consideration. He is a lifelong resident of Detroit and writes blogs and rants for the community. Please visit his blogs, rants and questions at the highly accessible writing community for Detroit writers, motownwriters.ning.com, search Clarence Young (and search everybody else while you're there).
Editorial Staff
t. tara turk (Los Angeles, CA) is originally from Detroit, MI. She received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, attended Eugene Lang at The New School for undergraduate work, and is a former Van Lier Fellow at the New York Theater Workshop. Her fiction has appeared in Stress Magazine, Jessica Care Moore Poole’s The Poetry of EMCEES, as well as a few international journals. She has also been a playwright for about ten years and her plays have appeared at the New Federal Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theater, and The Actor’s Studio at the New School. Her first novel is called Things Fall Together.
Randall Horton (Chicago, IL) is originally from Birmingham, Alabama. His most recent poetry appears in Tigertail, Dance the Guns to Silence, and Versal. His manuscript, The Idyll Concept, was a finalist for the Main Street Rag Book Award and selected to be published in the Editor’s Select Series in 2007. He received his undergraduate education from both Howard University and The University of the District of Columbia. He has an MFA in Creative Writing with an emphasis in Poetry from Chicago State University. Randall received an Archie D. and Bertha H. Walker Foundation Summer Scholarship to Fine Arts Workcenter at Provincetown, 2005. He is also a Cave Canem Fellow.
