From 1985 until I graduated with an MFA in 1988, I was a student at Virginia Commonwealth University. My thesis advisor was the important Southern poet, Dave Smith.
James Applewhite was born in 1935 in Stantonsburg, North Carolina, and he is the author of eight books of poetry include Selected Poems (Duke UP, 2005), A Diary of Altered Light (LSU, 2006),
Patrick Lane was born in Nelson, British Columbia, Canada, in 1939 and has no formal education beyond high school in Vernon, B.C. Much of his life after 1968 has been spent as an itinerant poet, wandering over three continents and many countries.
Cheryl Dumesnil, winner of the 2008 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, is the author of In Praise of Falling, editor of Hitched! Wedding Stories from San Francisco City Hall,
Nathalie Handalis an award-winning poet, playwright, and editor. She teaches and lectures nationally and internationally, most recently in Africa, at Columbia University and as Picador Guest Professor, Leipzig University, Germany.
Elizabeth Seydel Morgan is the author of four books of poetry—Parties (1988), The Governor of Desire (1993), On Long Mountain: Poems (1998), and Without a Philosophy (2007)
Stuart Dischell is the author of Good Hope Road, a 1991 National Poetry Series Selection, (Viking, 1993), Evenings & Avenues (Penguin, 1996), Dig Safe (Penguin, 2003), and Backwards Days (Penguin, 2007).