Nonfiction

Desirae Matherly teaches writing at Heidelberg University and is the nonfiction editor for the Tusculum Review. She earned her PhD in creative nonfiction from Ohio University in 2004 and is a former Harper Fellow at The University of Chicago. Her essays appear in several literary magazines such as Hotel Amerika, Assay, and Fourth Genre, and in 2019 her short fiction won the Owl Canyon Press Hackathon. She is also the author of Echo’s Fugue, a collection of personal essays published by Mad Creek Books (OSU Press) in 2019.

Diane Holloway was a Dallas psychologist and the first "Drug Czar" for Dallas appointed by the Mayor. Earlier she lived in London and Paris where she married a Greek. Since retirement she has written twelve books, three about the assassination of President Kennedy with which she was closely associated, having worked at Parkland Hospital. She has spoken on television, radio, and elsewhere about Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, psychology and other subjects.

Donald Morrill is the author of four books of nonfiction, Impetuous Sleeper, The Untouched Minutes (winner of the River Teeth Nonfiction Prize), Sounding for Cool and A Stranger's Neighborhood, as well as two volumes of poetry, At the Bottom of the Sky and With Your Back to Half the Day. He has taught at Jilin University, Peoples' Republic of China, and has been a Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Lodz, Poland, as well as the Bedell Visiting Writer in the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Currently, he is an editor of Tampa Review and Interim Dean of the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Tampa.

Elena Passarello is an actor and writer living in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she teaches at Grand Valley State University. Her essays have appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Slate, and Ninth Letter, among other publications. More work is forthcoming in The Iowa Review and in an anthology of pieces from the EMP POP Conference, published by Duke University Press. A 2008 graduate of the University of Iowa's Nonfiction Writing Program, Elena lives a few blocks from the Grand River with her three-legged cat and her two-legged boyfriend.

Elizabeth Bobrick received her PhD in Classical Studies from Johns Hopkins University. Her work has appeared in Fiction, Salon, Creative Nonfiction, in the anthologies The Anatomy of Baseball and The City as Comedy, and other publications. She has taught at the University of Virginia, the University of Missouri, and Wesleyan University. "The Myth of the Moon" is an excerpt from a memoir in progress.

Jane Bernstein's fifth book, Rachel in the World, was published in Fall 2007. Her awards include arts fellowships in both New Jersey and Pennsylvania, two National Endowment Fellowships, and a 2004 Fulbright Fellowship spent in Israel, where she taught at Bar-Ilan Universitys Creative Writing Program. She has written screenplays, and essays that have been published in such places as The New York Times Magazine, Ms., Glamour, Poets & Writers, and Creative Nonfiction. Bernstein is a professor of English and Creative Writing at Carnegie Mellon University.

Janice Dvorak received her MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. A former RN and childhood cancer survivor, she is writing a memoir about the long-term effects of cancer treatments. She lives outside Boston with her husband.

J. D. Riso is the author of the novel, Blue (Murphy's Law Press). Her short fiction and travel writing have appeared or are forthcoming in Avatar Review, flashquake, Identity Theory, Eclectica, Smokelong Quarterly, and many other diverse publications. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best Creative Nonfiction. A former resident of Arizona, she currently resides in Poznan, Poland, with her husband and her rabbit.

Maria Hummel is the Draper Lecturer in Nonfiction at Stanford University. Her poetry and essays have recently appeared/are forthcoming in Third Coast, Literary Mama, and Creative Nonfiction.

Michael Berberich has taught writing and humanities at Galveston College for twenty-one years and has been published several times in Notre Dame Magazine. He was also published in the special John McPhee edition of Creative Nonfiction, which featured (aside from McPhee) pieces by Phillip Lopate, Ellen Gilchrist, and others. He was listed on the cover of that issue under "and others," a designation he takes no small delight in. For several years, Michael also wrote a column for the Two-Year College English Association's Southwest regional newsletter (TYCA-SW Newsletter), which went to 1,500 community college English teachers in six southwest states.

Michelle Menting grew up in the Northwoods of Wisconsin and Upper Michigan and now lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, where she is a PhD student at UN-L. Her work appears in Boxcar Poetry Review, The Pedestal Magazine, Diagram, and other literary journals. She is happy to now live in a place that actually experiences the season of spring.