Judah Leblang is a Cleveland-raised and Boston-based writer and storyteller. His commentaries and essays have been broadcast on 200 NPR and ABC-radio network stations including WKSU in Northeast Ohio, and WGBH in Boston. He is the author of the memoir Finding My Place (Lake Effect Press, 2012), and a regular columnist for Bay Windows, Boston’s gay newspaper. He has performed his one-man shows at Fringe Festivals in Minneapolis, Chicago, and in Winnipeg, Canada.
Sara Holbrook is the author of over a dozen books for children and teens and two poetry books for adults. Along with her co-author Michael Salinger, she is also the author of four teacher professional books on poetry, vocabulary instruction, and performance. She is a frequent speaker at schools all over the world where her life has been enriched by talking to children of all backgrounds. Her prior jobs included serving as the Public Information Officer for the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority and Director of Communications for Jones Day. A mother and a grandmother, she lives in Mentor, OH.
Ray McNiece has earned a national reputation as a poet and performer for almost two decades through his solo theater pieces, his poetry and music shows, his captaining of 2 National Poetry Slam Championship teams, his “edutaining” children’s shows and workshops, and his yearly country-wide tours of performance poems, stories and songs.
Ray is the author of six poetry books – Dis, The Bone-Orchard Conga, The Road that Carried Me Here, Song that Fathoms Home, and Wet Sand Raven Tracks –New Haiku, and Us? Talking Across America, two solo theatre works – Dis – Voices From a Shelter, Us? Talking Across America, two music/poetry collaborations – Mouth Music, A Rust bowl Hootenanny, and one collaborative theatre work – Homegirl meets Whiteboy — with Shawn Jackson. He also co-edited the anthology of Contemporary Buddhist Poetry, America Zen. The Orlando Sentinel reporting on Ray’s solo show at the Fringe Festival called him “a modern day descendant of Woody Guthrie. He has a way with words and a wry sense of humor.” In a review of his second theatre work, Us? Talking Across America, the Star-Phoenix said, “His thoughtful writing combines with perfectly timed delivery to create a powerful wordscape that owes as much to jazz as drama.” He was the voice of Woody Guthrie in WCPN/NPR’s award winning radio documentary, Hard Travellin’
Yoko Morgenstern has been working as a writer and translator in Canada, Japan, and Germany. Her recent works have appeared in The Great Lakes Review, The Globe and Mail, The Montreal Review, Canadian Voices, among others. Her translation of The Printmakers Daughter by the Canadian novelist Katherine Govier will be published in Japan in 2014. Currently, she’s completing her M.A. in Literature in Germany.
Mike DeCapite has been a dishwasher, a motel janitor, a bookstore clerk, a hospital worker, a cab driver, a factory worker, an adult-bookstore cashier, a cleaning-crew member, a gardener, a construction worker, a painter, a van driver, a parking-lot attendant, a ditch digger, a paralegal, and a copy editor, in that order. He’s grateful he’s never had to do a prison stretch, report for military service, or wear one of those fuzzy costumes flagging down traffic outside a phone store, but you never know. DeCapite is the author of the novel Through the Windshield, the chapbooks Sitting Pretty and Creamsicle Blue, and the collection of short prose Radiant Fog. His story “Sitting Pretty” was included in the Italian American Reader. Excerpts from his second novel, Ruined for Life!, have appeared in 3:AM and Sensitive Skin. His writing has appeared in angle, Cleveland Free Times, CUZ, Evergreen Review, No Tokens, Spin, Vanitas, and numerous other publications. DeCapite lives in New York City, where he is working on a novella.
Jake Snodgrass is a graduate of Otterbein University, currently residing in Columbus, Ohio. He has published several zines, and has had stories appear in various publications. His forthcoming collection of short stories A Sock Full of Holes will be published by Red Giant Books in May 2014.
Terry White has published two hardboiled detective fiction novels under the name Robert White: Haftmann’s Rules (Grand Mal, 2011) and Saraband for a Runaway (2013). His noir, crime, and mainstream stories have appeared in several webzines. His feature-length film script, East Palestine, has been nominated for an award in the action category at this year’s TrindieFest in Trinidad, Colorado. He is an almost lifelong resident of Ashtabula, Ohio, is married, has three children, and two grandchildren in Austin, Texas.
David Megenhardt lives in Shaker Heights, Ohio with his wife, two daughters, and, of course, a dog. He is director of a non-profit that fights for social justice and against economic inequities. He has published several shorter pieces of fiction in handmade zines and woefully ignored journals. Dogs in the Cathedral is his first novel. Previously, he was the Managing Editor of Muse, a literary magazine of The Lit and is currently an editor of the Great Lakes Review, a literary journal covering the Great Lakes region.
Erin O’Brien writes the blog The Owner’s Manual for Human Beings and is the author of the novel Harvey and Eck. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Cleveland Scene and the Cleveland Free Times where she wrote the column Rainy Day Woman. She currently writes for Fresh Water Cleveland and hiVelocity. She lives in the Cleveland area with her husband and daughter.
Grant Bailie is the author of the novels Cloud 8, Mortarville, and New Hope for Small Men. He lives in Lakewood, Ohio with his wife Erica and two cats, Dr. Strange and Dr. Fate.
Rick Ridgway lives is Mentor-on-the-Lake, Ohio. His previously published work includes the novel Three Squirt Dog.