William Baer

(Founding Editor)

William Baer grew up in the Bronx and Wayne, New Jersey.  A graduate of Rutgers and N.Y.U, he completed his dissertation in creative writing at the University of South Carolina under James Dickey.  After attending the Johns Hopkins' Writing Seminars, where he studied under John Barth and David St. John, he was a Fulbright Professor in American Literature at the University of Coimbra in Portugal.  He then attended the University of Southern California's Graduate School of Cinema where he received the Jack Nicholson Screenwriting Award.  In 1995, he received a Creative Writing Grant in fiction from the National Endowment for the Arts.

He has published two books of poems: The Unfortunates, which received the T.S. Eliot Prize in 1997; and "Borges" and Other Sonnets (2003).  His poetry has appeared in The Hudson Review, The New Criterion, Ploughshares, Poetry, The Southern Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Iowa Review, The Antioch Review, The New York Quarterly, and other periodicals.  He has also edited two books of interviews: Conversations with Derek Walcott (1996), and Elia Kazan: Interviews (2000).  

He currently teaches creative writing and cinema at the University of Evansville in southwest Indiana.

Mona Baer

(Managing Editor)

Mona Baer grew up in upstate New York.  She's a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, where she received a Language Department Achievement Award.  Later, she completed an M.F.A. from the University of Southern California's Graduate School of Cinema, where she won a national Focus Award for her editing of Heroes, a short film that also won the Focus and Student Oscar Awards for Best Picture.  She's taught writing at the University of Southern California and the University of Evansville, and is, currently, homeschooling her children, Maggie and Billy.

Samuel Maio

(Associate Editor)

Samuel Maio grew up in Colorado. He's a graduate of the University of Utah and the University of Southern California, where he received his doctorate in literature under the renowned Americanists Jay Martin and Ronald Gottesman. He is the author of a collection of poems, The Burning of Los Angeles, as well as the critical study Creating Another Self: Voice in Modern American Personal Poetry, which was a Christian Gauss Award finalist. He has published numerous poems, stories, essays, and reviews in a wide range of journals including The Antioch Review, The Bloomsbury Review, Northwest Review, The Southern California Anthology, The Chariton Review, and the Los Angeles Times. He is currently Professor of English and Comparative Literature at San Jose State University.

Henry Russell

(Associate Editor) 

Henry Russell grew up in central Pennsylvania.  He's a graduate of Princeton University and the University of South Carolina, where he did his thesis under James Dickey.  He completed his doctorate at Louisiana State University, where he was a Federation Fellow.  His critical and creative work has been published in The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Southern Review, South Central Review, POMPA, Renascence, and other journals.  He has also served on the editorial staff at The Henry James Review and as the Chair of the Russian Literature Section of SCMLA.  He is currently a professor of English at Ave Maria College in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Rob Griffith

(Website Editor)

Rob Griffith grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. He's a graduate of The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and the University of Arkansas, where he received his M.F.A. in Creative Writing. A collection of his poems, Necessary Alchemy, was chosen as the winner of the 1999 Tennessee Chapbook Prize, and his newest collection, Poisoning Caesar, was published by Finishing Line Press in fall 2004. His poetry has been published in numerous journals including Poetry, New Millennium Writings, The Cape Rock, Cottonwood, and Parnassus. He has also won various awards for his writing including the ACM Literary Award for Poetry, The University of the South's Tennessee Williams Scholarship, Colgate University's Chenango Valley Scholarship, the Felix Christopher McKean Award for Poetry, and a Lily Peters Fellowship from the University of Arkansas. He currently teaches creative writing and American literature at the University of Evansville.