Authors

Franco Pagnucci

Again the Red Fox

Franco Pagnucci, poet/writer and educator, has published storytelling books for teachers and students and eight volumes of poetry: Again the Red Fox (2024); Firstborn (2016); Breath of the Onion—Italian-American Anecdotes (2015); Tracks on Damp Sand (2014); a chapbook Imprints of Your Tires on Damp Sand (2012); Ancient Moves (1998); I Never Had a Pet (1992); Out Harmsen’s Way (1991); as well as two poetry anthologies: New Roads Old Towns (1988) and Face the Poem (1979). His essays have appeared in such publications as The Christian Science Monitor and Commonweal. Poems of his have been published in many periodicals and anthologies, including News of the Universe, American Voices, and the Best American Poetry, 1999. “Death of an Elephant,” podcast. He and Susan Pagnucci, a graphic designer and paper artist, live on the east coast of NC, where they work on handmade books.

Joan Wiese Johannes

Lamenting My Failure to Learn How to Tap Dance: And Other Missteps

Joan Wiese Johannes believes Thornton Wilder was right when his Stage Manager in Our Town said only poets and saints truly appreciate life while they are living it. Although not a candidate for sainthood, Joan appreciates her life as a poet, and Lamenting My Failure to Learn How to Tap Dance and Other Missteps is her fifth poetry collection. She has also published creative nonfiction, musical compositions for the Native American-style flute, and articles on topics ranging from teaching language arts to catching her first musky.

Winner of the 2011 regional poetry award from the Mississippi Valley Poetry Society and the John and Miriam Morris Memorial Chapbook Contest sponsored by the Alabama Poetry Society, she has also won and placed in contests sponsored by Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, Wisconsin Academy of Arts and Letters, Peninsula Pulse, Free Verse, and English Journal. She is a long-time member of Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and has served as regional vice president and co-chair of the Triad contest, as well as co-editing the 2012 Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar and the Winter, 2019 issue of Bramble with her husband Jeffrey.

During 34 years as a high school English teacher, she taught literature, poetry and creative writing, and co-advised the award-winning literary/art journal Bloodstone. Now she is happily retired in the village of Port Edwards, WI where she never tires of watching wildlife, including white deer, coyotes, sandhill cranes, turkeys, and an occasional bear in the field behind the house she shares with her husband Jeffrey and their golden retriever Sophie.

Lois Baer Barr

The Tailor’s Daughter

With degrees from Georgetown University and Middlebury College’s Spanish School and a Ph.D. from University of Kentucky, Lois Baer Barr lives in Riverwoods, Illinois with husband Lew and Goldendoodle Aggie. Barr is a literacy tutor for recent refugee children in Chicago. Her chapbook Biopoesis won Poetica Magazine’ s first prize in 2013, and Tracks: Poems on the ‘El,” was a finalist in the New Voices Contest and was published atFinishing Line Press. An emerita Spanish professor at Lake Forest College, Barr’s books include a study of Latin American Jewish Literature and a work of short fiction from Red Bird Chapbooks, Lope de Vega’s Daughter. Her poems and stories have been published in English and Spanish here and abroad. The Tailor’s Daughter is her first novel.

Marilyn Zelke Windau

The Water Poems & The Aging Poems

Born and raised in Chicago, Marilyn Zelke Windau lives in Sheboygan Falls, WI. Her careers have been as a middle school and elementary school art teacher, manager of the Appleton Gallery of Arts, a workshop facilitator, and a docent at John Michael Kohler Art Center. She has enjoyed painting with words since she was a teenager. Her free verse poems have appeared in many printed and online venues and anthologies. Her chapbook Adventures in Paradise(Finishing Line Press) and self-illustrated book of poems Momentary Ordinary (Pebblebrook Press), were published in 2014. Two more poetry books followed, published by Kelsay Books: Owning Shadows (2017) and Hiccups Haunt Wilson Avenue (2018).

Kathleen Serley

Statements Made in Passing

Kathleen Serley is a lifelong Wisconsin resident and retired educator. She has a Ph.D from UW-Madison and serves as Mid-Central VP for Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets. Her poems have appeared in The Solitary Plover, Volga River Review, Peninsula Pulse, Verse Wisconsin, and Verse and Vision where she won the Artists’ Choice award.

Lisa Vihos

The Lone Snake: The Story of Sofonisba Anguissola & From Everywhere a Little: A Migration Anthology

The poems of Lisa Vihos have appeared in numerous poetry journals, both print and online, and she has published four chapbooks. She has two Pushcart Prize nominations and several awards from the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters. She is a founding editor of Stoneboat Literary Journal and the Sheboygan organizer for 100 Thousand Poets for Change. In 2020, she was named the first poet laureate of Sheboygan where she hosts the podcast Poetry on Air for Mead Public Library. The Lone Snake: The Story of Sofonisba Anguissola is her first novel.

Catherine Young

Geosmin

Catherine Young is a writer and performing artist whose work is infused with a keen sense of place. She worked as a national park ranger, educator, farmer, and mother before putting her heart into her writing. Her prose and ecopoetry is published internationally and nationally, and her writing has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best American Essays. Catherine holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia. Rooted in farm life, Catherine lives with her family in Wisconsin’s Driftless bioregion where she is totally in love with meandering streams.

Georgia Ressmeyer

Leading a Life & The Water Poems & The Aging Poems

A native of Long Island, New York, Georgia Ressmeyer has lived happily in Wisconsin since 1974, first as an attorney and now as a poet. She taught English at a women’s junior college in Tokyo, Japan, served as a staff attorney with legal services programs in Wisconsin and Minnesota, worked as a legal consultant and grant-writer for feminist groups in Milwaukee, and for eighteen years provided defense representation to individuals diagnosed with mental illnesses and disabilities as a staff and managing attorney with the Wisconsin State Public Defender’s Office.

Twice a Pushcart Prize nominee, Georgia has published numerous poems, an award-winning poetry chapbook, Today I Threw My Watch Away (Finishing Line Press, 2010), and two full-length poetry collections, Waiting to Sail (Black River Press, 2014) and Home/Body (Pebblebrook Press, 2017). She lives near Lake Michigan in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. 

Ed Block

Shell Dreams

Ed Block is Emeritus Professor of English at Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, where he taught courses on— among others—Denise Levertov and Czeslaw Milosz and workshops in creative writing. He began publishing poetry in 1997 with a poem in CrossCurrents. Since then he has published over fifty poems in journals like Plainsongs, Nebraska Life, Janus Head, Parabola, Bramble, and Lake Country Journal. His collection, Anno Domini, appeared in 2016; Seasons of Change in 2017. His interviews, essays, and reviews on literary topics, have appeared in a variety of journals. He continues to write poetry, tend a garden, and enjoy retirement in Greendale, Wisconsin.

Nancy Austin

Something Novel Came in Spring & Stitching Earth to Sky

Nancy Austin, a member of the PaperBirch Poets, was born in Whitefish Bay, WI, but has lived on both coasts, and points between. She holds a master’s in psychology and ran a Community Support Program for individuals with mental illness for many years. She now resides in the Northwoods in a setting she had always hoped to move to. Austin serves as the Northwest Region VP of Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets (WFOP). She has been published in various journals and has poetry collections titled Remnants of Warmth (Aldrich Press/Kelsay Books, 2016), The Turn of the Tiller, the Spill of the Wind (Kelsay Books, 2019), and a collaborative anthology with the PaperBirch Poets titled Stitching Earth to Sky (Water’s Edge Press 2019).           

Daniel Smith

Ancestral and Poems From The Winter House

Daniel Smith’s poetry is grounded in the rural Midwest, particularly his family’s dairy farm where he lived and farmed for over 50 years. His poems, in language direct and accessible, speak of his commitment to an ancestral place and way of life, and to the emotional turbulence leaving such a life presents. With the practicality of a farmer and the syntax of a poet, Smith explores the changing landscape of rural America. His writing has appeared in literary journals nationwide. Since retiring from active farming in 2008, Smith has worked as a counselor for farm families in crisis. Today, he lives with his wife, Cheryl, on a small farm in Wisconsin’s Driftless Region.

Kathryn Gahl

The Velocity of Love

Kathryn Gahl’s poetry, fiction, and non-fiction appear in many journals and have won awards, including Glimmer Train, Margie, and the Lorine Niedecker Poetry Award. A former registered nurse, Kathryn knows the transformative power of ballroom dance, dark chocolate, deep sleep, and—of course—red lipstick. She lives in Eastern Wisconsin.

Ed Werstein

Communiqué: Poems From The Headlines

Ed Werstein, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is a regional VP of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets. He is a sustaining member of Blue Collar Review. His poems have appeared in over 50 different journals and anthologies. Werstein’s poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In 2018 he received the Council of Wisconsin Writers Lorine Niedecker award. His book, A Tar Pit To Dye In, is available from Kelsay Books.

Jeff Elzinga

Pigeon Falls and The Distance Between Stars

Jeff Elzinga graduated from St. Olaf College and Columbia University. He has lived two rewarding careers. As a foreign service officer of the U.S. State Department, he served in Tunisia and Malawi. Then, for more than 20 years he was a college instructor, retiring in 2018 as Emeritus Professor of Writing at Lakeland University in Wisconsin. He is married and has three children.

Sylvia Cavanaugh

Icarus: Anthropology of Addiction

Sylvia Cavanaugh grew up in a red brick row house in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with neighbors always close at hand. Irish coal mining relatives lived about an hour north, and the family frequently left the city to visit these immigrants in the mountains. There, Sylvia encountered enormous trees that turned red and gold in fall, cavorting hoards of beagles, bee hives, introversion, tin cans strung up in trees, long abandoned Fords, a boy turned to stone, shotguns, and strip mining.

Sylvia attended undergraduate school in western Pennsylvania, then moved to the Midwest and earned her M.S. in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Wisconsin. After working in health care planning and marketing for a few years, she went back to school to become a social studies teacher. She teaches African and Asian history and cultural studies in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and has been the advisor for the breakdancing and poetry clubs. The poetry club has been actively involved in 100,000 Poets for Change. Sylvia is fascinated with cultures, and the ways in which they move through populations and change over time.

A Pushcart Prize nominee, Sylvia has published three chapbooks and her poems have appeared in various periodicals and anthologies, such as Gyroscope Review, Switched-On Gutenberg, and Stoneboat Literary Journal. She is a Contributing Editor for Verse-Virtual: An Online Community Journal of Poetry and is the editor of English language poetry for Poetry Hall: A Chinese and English Bilingual Journal. Her work has received awards from The Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, Wisconsin People and Ideas, the Poetry Society of Michigan, Milwaukee Irish Fest, Peninsula Pulse, and others. Sylvia also serves on the board of the Council for Wisconsin Writers.

Sylvia is the proud mother of three children, and although she read to them and shared her own tales as they were growing up, she has always loved the ways in which they create their own stories.

Karl Elder

Alpha Images: Poems Selected and New

Karl Elder is Lakeland University’s Fessler Professor of Creative Writing and Poet in Residence.  Among his honors are the Christopher Latham Sholes Award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers; a Pushcart Prize; the Chad Walsh, Lorine Niedecker, and Lucien Stryk Awards; and a score of appearances in anthologies, including two in The Best American Poetry series.  His novel, Earth as It Is in Heaven, is from Pebblebrook Press.

Elaine Strite

Stitching Earth to Sky

As a PaperBirch poet, Elaine Strite contributed to Stitching Earth to Sky. She spent nearly three decades in the Middle East—Egypt, the occupied Palestinian territory, and Lebanon. She taught English, administered income-generating projects for women, freelanced as a journalist, and managed scholarship and higher education support programs. She holds a Masters Degree in Near Eastern Studies from the University of Michigan.  She has been writing poetry since high school and has previously published a chap book, Eighth Street Apocalypse, and was part of a college anthology, Who Fear the Sun.  She has lived on Bearskin Creek in northern Wisconsin since May 2011 and is actively engaged in sharing Middle Eastern culture with the northern Wisconsin community.  She travels widely, both in North America and overseas, and loves to read, cook, swim and walk through the woods.

Mary Louise Peters

Stitching Earth to Sky

Mary Louise Peters is a contributor to Stitching Earth to Sky, an anthology of PaperBirch Poets. Her poetry has appeared in the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets (WFOP) calendars and in various online newsletters. She is a member of Writersandcritters, an international writing and critique group for women writers.  Mary is a Courage & Renewal® facilitator, providing retreats and renewal experiences since 2010. As an educational consultant she works at local, state and national levels to improve early childhood experiences, teaching practices and educational systems with a special focus on young children with disabilities and their families. 

Janet Taliaferro

Stitching Earth to Sky

Janet Taliaferro is a resident of Northern Virginia in winter and Northern Wisconsin in the summer.  She is a member of the PaperBirch poets and contributed to Stitching Earth to Sky. She holds a BA from Southern Methodist University in Comparative Literature and an MA in Creative Studies from the University of Central Oklahoma, where she received the Geoffrey Bocca Memorial Award for Graduate Studies.

Her short stories and poetry have appeared in numerous small magazines and anthologies.  Her novel, A Sky for Arcadia, was a finalist in the Oklahoma Center for the Book Award.  She has also published another novel, a collection of short stories and a chapbook.

Michelle Zanoni

Stitching Earth to Sky

Michelle Zanoni lives in northern Wisconsin with her husband and youngest son. She writes poetry, short stories, and essays. Besides writing, Michelle plays electric bass in a rock/blues/funk band called Big Road.

Dawn Hogue

Summit Road, A Hollow Bone, and Painting South Pier

Dawn Hogue is the principal and managing editor of Water’s Edge Press LLC. She is the author of the novels, Summit Road and A Hollow Bone and a collection of poems titled Painting South Pier. She is co-editor of From Everywhere a Little: A Migration Anthology. She is also a contributor to The Water Poems and The Aging Poems.