Marian Blue

Marian Blue's award-winning journalism, essays, fiction, and poetry appear in publications such as: The Christian Science Monitor, Colorado Review, Snowy Egret, ACM (Another Chicago Magazine), Raven Chronicles, Tiller and the Pen (anthology/Eighth Moon Press), and A Hundred White Daffodils (Graywolf Press). She is an editor/writer for One World Journeys (www.oneworldjourneys.com), an online production combining wilderness expeditions and environmental education. Marian teaches creative writing and literature for Skagit Valley College and Writers Digest Schools; she is partner of Blue & Ude Writers' Services (www.blueudewritersservices.com).

Oliver de la Paz

Oliver de la Paz was born in Manila, Philippines, and raised in Ontario, Oregon. He has a B.S. in Biology and a B.A. in English from Loyola Marymount University, and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Arizona State University. He has taught at Arizona State University, Gettysburg College, Utica College, and he currently teaches creative writing at Western Washington University. A recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, his work has appeared in journals such as Quarterly West, The Asian Pacific American Journal, North American Review, and elsewhere. His book of prose and verse, Names Above Houses, was a winner of the Crab Orchard Award Series and published by Southern Illinois University Press. His second book, Furious Lullaby, is the editor’s selection for 2007, published by Southern Illinois University Press.  www.oliverdelapaz.com

Richard Robbins

Richard Robbins was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Southern California and Montana. He studied as an undergraduate with Glover Davis and Carolyn Forché at San Diego State University, and as a graduate student with Richard Hugo, Madeline DeFrees, and Tess Gallagher at the University of Montana. His first collection, The Invisible Wedding, was published by the University of Missouri Press in 1984 as part of its Breakthrough Series. His second book of poems, Famous Persons We Have Known, was published in 2000 by Eastern Washington University Press. Over the years, he’s been fortunate to receive various awards and fellowships, including those from The Loft and the McKnight Foundation, The Minnesota State Arts Board, The Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers, The National Endowment for the Arts, and The Poetry Society of America. He currently directs the creative writing program and Good Thunder Reading Series at Minnesota State University, Mankato.  www.english2.mnsu.edu/robbins

Gary Thompson

Gary Thompson studied with Richard Hugo and Madeline DeFrees at the University of Montana, and taught in the creative writing program at California State University, Chico, for nearly 30 years. His poems have been published in a wide range of magazines, from American Poetry Review to Writers’ Forum; several anthologies; and three collections, most recently On John Muir’s Trail from Bear Star Press. To the Archaeologist Who Finds Us  will be published by Turning Point Books in October. He lives with his wife, Linda, on San Juan Island, and likes to think of himself as the novice skipper of a modest boat, an old trawler named Keats.

Carolyne Wright

Carolyne Wright has published eight books of poetry, four volumes of translations from Spanish and Bengali, and a collection of essays. Her latest collection, A Change of Maps (Lost Horse Press, 2006), nominated for the LA Times Book Awards, finalist for the Idaho Prize and Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the PSA, won the 2007 Independent Book Publishers Bronze Award for Poetry.  After a return trip to Chile this past fall, she is completing her investigative and literary memoir, The Road to Isla Negra, portions of which have received the PEN/Jerard Fund and the Crossing Boundaries Awards.  Wright, who served on the Board of the AWP from 2004-2008, moved back to her native Seattle in 2005, and teaches for the Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA Program, the U of Washington - Bothell, and Seattle's Richard Hugo House.  In 2008, she was Thornton Writer in Residence at Lynchburg College and Distinguished Northwest Poet at her alma mater, Seattle University.