The Sand Hill Review               http://www.sandhillreview.org 2008

Contributors

Sona Avakian lives in San Francisco and received her MFA in creative writing from Mills College. She is a member of the San Francisco Writers' Workshop and writes a monthly column for The Progressive Reading Series which can found at http://www.progressivereadingseries.org.

Elizabeth Chapman was born in Boston in 1943 and now lives and works in Palo Alto, California.  Her work has appeared in many journals, including Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Blueline, Yankee and Poetry.  Her chapbook, Creekwalker, won the (M)other Tongue Press international  competition (1995). Her debut collection, First Orchard, was published by Bellowing Ark Press in 1999.  Robert Creeley selected her poem, “On the Screened Porch,” originally presented in Poetry, for inclusion in Best American Poetry, 2002 (Scribner Poetry; David Lehman, Series Editor; published September, 2002). Candlefish, her second collection, chosen by Enid Shomer as one of four books to inaugurate the University of Arkansas Press’s new Poetry Series, was published in March, 2004.

David Cummings has been published in Poetry Flash, Bellowing Ark, The Sand Hill Review, Cuts From the Barber Shop, and Convergence. He reports that he once did physics and poetry was a side interest, albeit a strong one; now it's the other way around! He also admits that every once in a while, as a sort of secret ingredient, he likes to mix some physics into his poetry -- but in a sneaky way! And lately, he's been buying physics books by the bushel. He says he's not sure why. (Is his past life catching up with him?)

Margaret Davis of Belmont CA is a member of the California Writers Club, San Francisco/Peninsula Branch, and has served on the board for several years. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University and was a senior research sociologist at SRI International. Later, she became the director of the internal management consulting section for Pacific Gas & Electric. She has published numerous business and academic articles and two non-fiction books. In recent years, she has completed two book-length works of fiction and is seeking an agent. Contact Margaret@rebn.net.

Rebecca Foust’s book about raising a son with Asperger’s Syndrome, Dark Card, won the 2007 Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Award (Texas Review Press) and her full-length manuscript was a finalist in three national book competitions including Poetry’s 2007 Emily Dickinson Book Award. Foust’s poetry won two 2007 Pushcart nominations, appearing in Atlanta Review, Dos Passos Review, JAMA, Margie, North American Review, Nimrod International Journal and others. 

Merrill Joan Gerber lives in Sierra Madre CA. She is a prize-winning novelist and short-story writer who has published seven novels--among them The Kingdom of Brooklyn, winner of the Ribalow Award from Hadassah Magazine for "the best English-language book of fiction on a Jewish theme"--as well as six volumes of short stories and three books of nonfiction.  Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Mademoiselle, Redbook, Commentary, The Sewanee Review and elsewhere. Her newest novel is titled The Victory Gardens of Brooklyn. Merrill teaches fiction writing at the California Institute of Technology. She was a Wallace Stegner fiction fellow at Stanford.

Charles Haddox of El Paso, Texas, has had work appear in numerous journals including Commonweal, The Christian Century, America and Perspectiva Popular. He works for Centro Chicano, an organization dedicated to preserving and improving the quality of life in El Paso's historic Segundo Barrio.

Tory Hartmann's stories have appeared in The Hurricane Review, descant, Tattoo Highway, and the anthology Ship's Log: Writings at Sea. Her articles have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle as well as many other magazines and newspapers. Her screenplay, Castro Confidential, is currently under production. A resident of San Mateo CA, Tory is a long term member of the California Writers Club, San Francisco/Peninsula Branch and currently serves as Vice President. Last year she received the Jack London Award for her role in the successful 2007 Jack London Writers Conference.

Allegra Hunt has been immersed in poetry from the womb onward. She was named after two poets' (Byron and Longfellow) daughters. She lived in London for part of her childhood, where she spent many long walks passing by poets' blue plaques, including T.S. Eliot and William Blake. Her favorite game as a child was to match the unnamed poet to the poem read aloud. So it is probably inevitable she writes poetry now. Allegra graduated with high honors in the History of Art from Mount Holyoke College and has an honors graduate degree from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. She lives on the San Francisco Peninsula where you might just find her running along a beach.

Amy MacLennan's work has been published or is forthcoming in River Styx, Hayden's Ferry Review, Linebreak, Cimarron Review, Rattle, Wisconsin Review, Folio and South Dakota Review.

Diane Lee Moomey is a sculptor, a writer, a gardener, a dreamer, and a storyteller who lives in El Granada, California. She has had gallery exhibitions showing claywork and framed paper sculptures accompanying poems.  Her poetry and short prose has appeared in Earth Prayers, (Roberts/Amidon, Harper-Collins, 1991) Northwest Literary Forum, Two-Twenty-Four Poetry Quarterly, Blis, Icon, Anabasis’ “The Love Project”, and Writing For Our Lives.   One prose piece from this last, “Grandmother, Geothermally Yours,” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. While on the Way Home was published by Day’seye Studios in 1988. She is currently working on a collection entitled Place, and reads frequently at La Honda Poets, at Waverley Writers in Palo Alto, and at benefits for worthy causes.

Ingrid Satelmajer’s fiction is published or is forthcoming in the minnesota review, The Massachusetts Review, and Talking River.  She also has articles published in Book History, American Periodicals, Textual Cultures, the Blackwell Companion to Emily Dickinson, and Cultural Narratives (forthcoming).  She earned in 2004 a Ph.D. in English from the University of Maryland, College Park, which is where she currently teaches.  Her self-designed courses include “New York City and the American Dream,” “Literary Prizes and Their Controversies,” and “How to be Famous: Celebrity Culture and British Literature, 1800-present.”

Patty Somlo has gotten up early to write for many years.  Her articles, short stories and creative nonfiction have appeared in newspapers, journals and anthologies, including the San Francisco Chronicle, the Baltimore Sun, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Santa Clara Review and Fringe Magazine, among others. Her short story, Bird Women, was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She was a finalist in the 2004 Tom Howard Short Story Contest. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Aline Soules' work has appeared in journals, e-zines, and anthologies such as The MacGuffin, 100 Words, Literature of the Expanding Frontier, Variations on the Ordinary, and The Size of the World.  Prose poems from Meditation on Woman have appeared in Kaleidowhirl, Tattoo Highway, Edifice Wrecked, Poetry Midwest, Binnacle, Long Story Short, Newport Review, and the Kenyon Review.  She earns her living as a library faculty member at Cal State East Bay and teaches workshops, reads her work at events, and engages in editorial work and professional voice work (reading/singing).

Kate Swoboda of Alameda CA is a creative force of many folds: artist, photographer, writer. Inspired by the way images and text come together to tell a story, narrative is a theme that shows up across her mediums. Her writing publications span literary journals, websites, and regional magazines, and she is a member of the San Francisco Writer’s Workshop. In 2006, her first novel, Leaving Normal, received an Honorable Mention nod from the Maurice Prize in Fiction. Kate is also a Life Coach.  Visit http://www.kateswoboda.com to learn more.