Judy Bebelaar taught in San Francisco public schools for 37 years. Her students won many writing awards; she won awards for her teaching as well. Her prize-winning poetry has been published widely in magazines and anthologies including The Widows’ Handbook (foreword by Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Kent State University Press). Her chapbook, Walking Across the Pacific, was published by Finishing Line Press, 2014. And Then They Were Gone: Teenagers of Peoples Temple from High School to Jonestown (2018), written with fellow teacher Ron Cabral, has won ten awards and honors.
Greta Broda grew up in Wisconsin and graduated from the University of Toronto. She lived off the grid in the back woods of northern California with her husband, Robert. She taught grade school for thirty years. Now a widow, she is retired and has returned to Wisconsin.
Perissa Busick grew up in New York City. She spent magical summers in a cabin in New Jersey, living without electricity, running water or indoor plumbing. It was here that her love of nature grew. In the 60s she lived in Paris. Returning to the US, she met and married her husband and had one son. They moved to Nevada City, California where she still resides. After retirement she turned to writing poetry; a morning schedule of meditation, nature walks, and Tai Chi relaxes and opens her to the beauty around her. Her poetry has been published in Canary Online Magazine.
Maija Rhee Devine is a Korean-American poet and nonfiction and fiction writer. Her autobiographical novel about Korea, The Voices of Heaven (Seoul Selection, Irvine, CA, 2013), won four awards. Her TEDx Talk relaying the book’s relevance to today’s S. Korean society’s critical issues is on YouTube. She received an NEA Fellowship, 2001. Her works have appeared in The Kenyon Review, North American Review, in her poetry chapbook, Long Walks on Short Days, and in anthologies, including When the Virus Came Calling: COVID-19 Strikes America, 2020.
Gail Rudd Entrekin’s five books of poems include Rearrangement of the Invisible and Change (Will Do You Good), nominated for a Northern California Book Award. Her poems were finalists for the Pablo Neruda Prize, won the Women’s National Book Association Prize, and were first runner-up for the Steve Kowit and the Catamaran Poetry Prizes and finalists for the Blue Light and the Frontier Open Prizes. Poetry Editor of Hip Pocket Press, she edits the on-line journal of the environment Canary.
Mollie Feeney was born in California, married and raised her children in the Canadian Maritimes. Over the years that she and her husband moved from Canada to Wisconsin and then Illinois, she kept a journal which gradually took on a more spiritual and poetic tone. She currently resides in the Sierra Foothills of California where she writes poetry, enjoys the company of her grandchildren, and indulges her lifelong love of gardening.
Betty Naegele Gundred has enjoyed writing since high school when she was editor of her school’s literary magazine, then she taught middle school science for twenty years. Her work has appeared or will soon appear in publications such as Current, The Heron’s Nest, Frogpond, Last Leaves, Months to Years, Orchards Poetry Journal, and Open Door Magazine. Her chapbook Aperture was published by Kelsay Books in 2023. She is currently writing a series of memoir stories. Betty lives with her husband in the Sierra Foothills of Northern California and enjoys Zumba, hiking and photography.
Martha Klein Henrickson was born in Brooklyn, New York, and has lived in Canada since 1968 where she has dual citizenship. A visual artist as long as she can remember, she has been writing since she was a teenager. She began writing poetry 30 years ago when a poet friend told her that the notes she had been writing on scraps of paper were poetry and that she should keep on writing. Her poems have been published by Northern Cardinal Review, Juniper Poetry, and Yellow Arrow Publishing. She has self-published four chapbooks and is currently working on a fifth.
Debra Kiva has been writing poetry as a way to process and honor what life throws at her. She is a certified grief educator and grief movement guide and the co-director of a threshold choir, singing at the bedside of those passing. Debra and her husband recently moved to Whidbey Island, Washington to be close to their grandchildren. She has been published in Mountain Astrology, as well as The Pharos, the Alpha/Omega/Alpha Honor Medical Society publication.
Donna Ayock Meares is a native of Atlanta, Georgia, currently living with her husband in Grass Valley, California. Having worked as a social worker, she pursued her interests in writing after the birth of her first child. She engages in volunteer work, and enjoys bonsai gardening, genealogy, Zumba, and baking seedy sourdough bread. Donna has been published in Whiskey Blot Literary Journal, Home Life, Romantic Hearts Magazine, and Thelma Literary Journal.
Judie Rae is the author of the novel, The Haunting of Walter Rabinowitz. Her poems have appeared in many literary journals and anthologies, among them Nimrod, Wisconsin Review, and Mudfish. She is the author of two chapbooks, The Weight of Roses and Howling Down the Moon. Her essays have appeared in Tahoe Quarterly, The Sacramento Bee, as well as online at San Francisco’s NPR station, KQED. Judie taught college English classes for twenty-seven years at various colleges throughout California. A Canadian, she now lives in Nevada City, California, a landscape reminiscent of her grandmother’s home on the Ottawa River, where Judie spent her childhood summers.
Thelma T. Reyna’s books have won 22 national and international literary awards. She has written six books, edited three anthologies featuring about 200 authors, and co-edited the new book, Doctor Poets and Other Healers (2022). For over thirty years, her fiction, poetry, and non-fiction have appeared in literary journals, anthologies, textbooks, blogs, and regional media, both in print and online. She served as Poet Laureate in Altadena, California from 2014-2016, and was a Pushcart Nominee in Poetry in 2017. She is founder and Chief Editor of the award-winning Golden Foothills Press, based in Pasadena, California.
Ellen Dooling Reynard spent her childhood on a cattle ranch in Jackson, Montana. A one-time editor of Parabola Magazine, she is retired and lives in Grass Valley, California. She is the author of two chapbooks, No Batteries Required (Yellow Arrow Publishing) and Double Stream (South Forty Press). She has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize.
Susan Solinsky raised her family in the Sierra Nevada Foothills, on land inhabited by the Northern California Nisenan Tribe for thousands of years. Since childhood, she has painted and drawn, taken photographs, traveled, and written stories and poems about the wonders and heartbreak of life and love. A good, formal education helped hone her creativity. The world continues to inspire and bewilder her as she watches her grandchildren grow into young adults and the land regenerate year after year. Susan has been published in Canary, Dharma Stream Magazine, Writing for our Lives, Wild Duck Review, and other publications.
Susan Warden has lived many places throughout her life, each providing a wealth of material for her poems. Early on she taught elementary school, where she discovered the power of story. She became a professional storyteller, sharing fairy tales, legends, and myths with audiences of all ages. Later in life she found herself writing poetry in response to music. She has continued her interest in the art, honing her craft while living in Grass Valley, California. She has been published in Current Magazine.
Paperback: 63 pages
Publisher: Kelsay Books (March 22, 2023)