Contributor Bios

Kate Anger is a writer who teaches playwriting at the University of California, Riverside and UCR Palm Desert Low Residency MFA Program. Her work has appeared at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, Stella Adler Theatre, and Ensemble Studio Theatre, as well as UC Riverside and local theatres in the IE. Other writing has appeared in Faultline, Crate, Mosaic, the Press-Enterprise and Inlandia’s Online Journal.

Born in Las Vegas in 1979, Demond Black moved to Los Angeles in the 80s and spent his childhood moving from his parents’ in LA, his grandparents’ in Las Vegas and his Uncle’s in Manhattan. After graduating high school he briefly enrolled at Redlands University and wrote his first book “Limbo” about a group of recent high school graduates trying to figure out what to do with themselves as the main character goes through the motions of having and losing his first love. After a year of not being able to find a publisher his friends helped him self-publish it and they sold copies at campuses around Southern California pricing the book in such a way to just recoup printing costs. He was unsatisfied with this process of years doing odd jobs, going to school here and there and sharpening his writing skills through reading and constantly writing poetry. Settling down in Colton a few years ago after living in Oregon he felt he had moved past the themes covered in ‘Limbo’ and had something to say about his generation as a whole and “Slackass” is the result. Currently he is working on it’s prequel, “Sputnik”, and his sixth book of poetry, ‘Lady Luck is a Quadriplegic’. He blogs at slackass.wordpress.com.

Mark Cox teaches in the Creative Writing Department at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington and in the Vermont College MFA Program. His books are Smoulder (David R. Godine), and Natural Causes and Thirty-seven Years from the Stone, both published in the Pitt Poetry Series.

Shery Dameron was born in Maryland, and as an Air Force brat grew up in many states and lived for three years in France as a child. She has lived in Riverside California since nineteen-sixty -seven. She graduated from Rubidoux High School and has attended Riverside Community College off and on for the last thirty-eight years. In 2010 while at RCC she received the Student of Distinction Award from the English Department. She has had poems published in Slouching Toward Mount Rubidoux Manor, More Than Oranges, and in the Quaker publication What Canst Thou Say?

Charlotte Davidson was born and raised in Southern California. After college, she spent eleven years in Paris, France. Upon returning to the States, she received a Masters in English from Syracuse University followed by an M.F.A. in poetry from U.C. Irvine. She now lives in Riverside, California, where she runs an organic orange ranch and takes care of her six horses, five dogs, four cats, and one husband. She has published poems and stories in various journals and anthologies including The Santa Monica Review, Gulf Coast, The Fiddlehead, Faultline, and Poemeleon. She is expecting her first book of poems, Fresh Zebra, this fall.

Sheela Sitaram Free (“Doc Free”) was born in Mumbai, India and has spent equal halves of her life in India and in America. Her B.A. in English Literature and Language, M.A. in English and American Literature and Language, M.A. in Hindi, Ph.D. in the Contemporary American Novel-novels of John Updike-and her twenty four years of teaching all across the United States in Universities, colleges, and community colleges   reveal her lifelong passion for the power of words especially in the context of world literature and writing.  Her collection of poetry entitled Of Fractured Clocks, Bones and Windshields was published in February 2009 and nominated for the Association of Asian American Studies as well as the Asian American Workshop awards in 2010. She has been writing for over 20 years but it was the Inland Empire that inspired/motivated her to publish and she has simply loved being a part of it for 9 years now. It is home to and for her, and she draws on a great deal of material from it in her poetry.

Debbie Graber received an MFA from the low residency program at the University of California, Riverside. Her work has appeared in Hobart, Knee-Jerk and Word Riot.

Karen Greenbaum-Maya is a clinical psychologist in Claremont, California.  She has been writing since she was nine.  In another life, she was a German Lit major and read poetry for credit.  She has placed poems and photographs in many publications, including Off the Coast, Umbrella, Abyss & Apex, qarrtsiluni, Poemeleon, Lilliput Review, In Posse Review, and Sow’s Ear Poetry Review. She was nominated for the 2010 Pushcart Prize. Her first chapbook, Eggs Satori, received an Honorable Mention in Pudding House Publications’ 2010 competition, and will be published in 2011.

Stephanie Barbé Hammer is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee who has published fiction, poetry, and non-fiction in Square Lake, the Café Irreal, CRATE, Hot Metal Bridge, Locus Novus, NYCBigCityLit, Argestes, Soundings, Pearl, Hayden’s Ferry and the Bellevue Literary Review. An intermittent actor, she has performed poetry at Beyond Baroque and makes a spectral appearance in Erika Suderburg’s film Somatography. Both an instructor and a student, she teaches Comparative Literature at the University of California, Riverside (where she has been a faculty member since 1986), and studies writing at the Whidbey Island Writers Residency.

Jackie Haskins is a biologist of wild wet places, from cypress swamps to glacial cirque swales. She is also an MFA student at the Whidbey Writer’s Workshop. Jackie’s fiction has received finalist in Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers, second place in a Lunch Hour Stories contest, and first in a Soundings Review contest. Jackie’s poetry, fiction, or creative non-fiction have appeared or will soon appear in Raven Chronicles, Meadowland Review, Shark Reef Literary Magazine, Six Minute Magazine, Soundings Review, and Bacopa Literary Review.

Jonar Isip lived in Corona, California for over a decade before moving back to Santa Ana. In that span of time, he attended the University of California – Riverside, earning a BA in Creative Writing. He also participated in the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, California, as well as the Idyllwild Arts program. Jonar currently works and writes in Orange County, but often visits Corona to see friends, family, and his dog, Bam Bam.

Photography is a lifelong avocation for Riverside writer, educator, potter and transpersonal psychotherapist, Joan Koerper who holds a Ph.D. in Humanities.  Joan has published a book of creative nonfiction (UMI, 2004), memoir, poems, fiction and nonfiction in such venues as Sacred Fire (Adams Media), Moondance, Clay Times, Inlandia publications, radio scripts, videotape scripts and audiotape scripts for children.  Joan has taught graduate and undergraduate courses at four universities. She and her dog Sage have just completed their novel Dumped, Dazed and Dazzled for young readers, generously illustrated with Joan’s photos.

W.F. Lantry, a native of San Diego, spent many years walking the deserts and climbing the coastal mountains of Southern California. He holds a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston. In 2010 he won the Lindberg International Poetry for Peace Prize (in Israel), Crucible Poetry Prize, CutBank Patricia Goedicke Prize and National Hackney Literary Award in Poetry. Recent work has appeared in Asian Cha, Tower Journal and Aesthetica. His chapbook, The Language of Birds (Finishing Line Press 2011), is a lyric retelling of Attar’s Conference of the Birds. He works in Washington, DC and is a contributing editor of Umbrella.

Marcia LeBeau has had poems published in Rattle, NO/ON: Journal of the Short Poem, Poemeleon and Inertia among others. She was named “Most Outstanding Writing Coach”by New York Scores, an after-school literacy program She has an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and lives in New Jersey with her husband and son.

Kim Lohse holds degrees from Hunter College (BA) and Vermont College (MFA) in Creative Writing.  Her work has appeared in Margie, Caesura, The Squaw Valley Review and in 2006, she won an Iowa Source Poetry prize and was also a finalist for the Dana Awards.  In addition to writing poetry, Kim translates early French surrealist poetry and essays and received a certificate in translation from Vermont College.  Some French translations most recently appeared in Pilot (pilotpoetry.com).  She has worked as a programming director for Poetry Center San Jose and the Squaw Valley Writer’s Conference.  In Palo Alto California, she teaches English and Creative Writing.  She has an eight-year-old daughter and lives in Redwood City, California.

Matthew Nadelson is an English instructor who lives in Riverside, CA, where he spends his days undermining the assumed power structures and squabbling with the sparrows for the spare crumbs occasionally rained down from the hands of those in power. His first poetry collection, American Spirit, was published in September 2011 by Finishing Line Press.

Richard Nester teaches at UC Irvine. This is his second publication in Inlandia. The experience referred to in the poem occurred on a family vacation when his son was young and when he himself was still athletic enough to ride along.

Jay Rubin, raised in So Cal, now teaches writing at The College of Alameda in the San Francisco Bay Area and publishes Alehouse, an all-poetry literary journal.  He holds an MFA in Poetry from New England College and lives in San Francisco with his son and Norwich terrier.