The Maynard
Fall 2020

Author Biographies

Danielle Badra

Danielle Badra is 2021 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize winner for her collection, Like We Still Speak, forthcoming from University of Arkansas Press in fall 2021. She is also the author of Dialogue with the Dead (Finishing Line Press, 2015), a chapbook of contrapuntal poems in dialogue with her deceased sister.

John Wall Barger

John Wall Barger’s fourth book is The Mean Game (Palimpsest Press, 2019). His work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (Tightrope Books, 2017). His poem, “Smog Mother,” was co-winner of The Malahat Review’s 2017 Long Poem Prize.

Moni Brar

Moni Brar is an uninvited settler on Treaty 7 land. She is a Punjabi, Sikh Canadian writer, exploring guilt, identity, and cultural oppression. She believes in the possibility of healing through literature. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in PRISM international, Hart House Review, Rogue Agent, Existere, and various anthologies.

P.W. Bridgman

P.W. Bridgman’s book of poems, A Lamb, was published by Ekstasis Editions in 2018. It was preceded by Standing at an Angle to My Age, short fiction published in 2013 by Libros Libertad. Bridgman’s writing has appeared in Antigonish Review, Grain, Moth Magazine, and Glasgow Review of Books, among others.

James Cagney

Oakland native James Cagney is the author of Black Steel Magnolias in the Hour of Chaos Theory (Nomadic Press, 2018), winner of the PEN Oakland 2019 Josephine Miles Award. His poems have appeared in Poetry Daily and Civil Liberties United, among others. Visit James and more writing at TheDirtyRat.blog

Louise Carson

Louise Carson is the author of eleven books, including: Dog Poems (Aeolus House, 2020), the mystery, The Cat Possessed (Signature Editions, 2020), and In Which (Broken Rules Press, 2018), historical fiction, shortlisted for a 2019 Quebec Writers’ Federation Prize. Louise lives near Montreal with her daughter, two cats, and one dog.

Sidi Chen

Sidi Chen is a traveling queer artist whose multidisciplinary practice addresses the intersectionality between bodies and communities. As an uninvited guest, Chen is inspired by his intercultural research on how structures and environments (de)construct identities and relations, and is passionate about fostering community developments and systemic changes through his practice.

Derek Thomas Dew

Derek Thomas Dew is the winner of the 2019 Test Site Poetry Prize for his debut collection, Riddle Field, forthcoming from University of Nevada Press, October, 2020. His poems have appeared in a number of anthologies and journals, including Interim, Twyckenham Notes, The Maynard, and Hawaii Pacific Review.

Iris Jamahl Dunkle

Iris Jamahl Dunkle, former Poet Laureate of Sonoma County, CA, is the author of four poetry collections including, West : Fire : Archive, forthcoming from the Center for Literary Publishing (2021), and a biography, Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer, University of Oklahoma Press (2020). Dunkle teaches at Napa Valley College.

Ryan Eavis

Ryan Eavis is a 35-year-old emerging poet from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. A recent graduate from Dalhousie University with a BSc in psychology, he works as a stonemason and a jazz musician. His writing is forthcoming in EVENT magazine.

A. N. Higgins

A. N. Higgins is a queer writer, living on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. She is an MFA candidate at the University of British Columbia. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in CV2, Pandemic Publications, and untethered.

Karen Kevorkian

Karen Kevorkian’s third poetry collection, Quivira, was published by 3: A Taos Press in early 2020. Her poems appear in VOLT, Antioch Review, Denver Quarterly, and Spillway, and her reviews appear in Colorado Review, Poetry Northwest, and LA Review of Books. She teaches at UCLA.

J.I. Kleinberg

Twice nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards, J.I. Kleinberg is an artist, poet, and freelance writer. Her poems have been published in print and online journals worldwide. She lives in Bellingham, Washington, USA, where she tears words out of magazines and posts occasionally on Instagram @jikleinberg.

Andrew Lafleche

Andrew Lafleche writes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction; recent poetry titles include: Eyes Wide (Pub House Books, 2020) and After I Turn into Alcohol (Cyberwit.net, 2019). Lafleche received an MA in creative and critical writing from the University of Gloucestershire. He lives in the Ottawa Valley. Twitter: @AndrewLafleche for more information.

Susan Landgraf

Susan Landgraf was awarded an Academy of American Poets Laureate award in 2020. Her books include: The Inspired Poet (Two Sylvias Press, 2019) and What We Bury Changes the Ground (Tebot Bach, 2017). More than 400 poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Margie, Nimrod, and others.

Anna Leahy

Anna Leahy is the author of the poetry books Aperture (Shearsman Books, 2017) and Constituents of Matter (The Kent State University Press, 2007) and the nonfiction book Tumor (Bloomsbury, 2018). Her essays have won top awards from the Los Angeles Review, Ninth Letter, and Dogwood. She edits Tab Journal.

Heather Simeney MacLeod

Heather Simeney MacLeod is a Métis writer and educator. Her most recent full-length poetry book, The Little Yellow House, was published with McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2012. She has recently completed a novel, Dead Reckoning, and lives with her son and cat in the interior of British Columbia. Twitter: @heathersimeney.

Kristi Maxwell

Kristi Maxwell is the author of seven books of poems, including My My (Saturnalia Books, 2020) and Bright and Hurtless (Ahsahta Press, 2018). She teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Louisville.

Amanda Merpaw

Amanda Merpaw is a Toronto-based poet, playwright, and educator. Her writing has appeared in the Literary Review of Canada, Pathways, Prairie Fire, and PRISM international. Amanda is an assistant editor at The /tEmz/ Review and lead artist-educator at Cultivate. She’s currently a PhD student at the University of Toronto.

Tureeda Mikell

Tureeda Mikell, Story Medicine Woman, has published seventy-two at risk student anthologies in the Bay Area, and was a featured poet for Soul of a Nation and Fire Thieves for the Academy of American Poets at De Young Museum. Synchronicity: The Oracle of Sun Medicine, was published by Nomadic Press, February, 2020.

Shareen K. Murayama

Shareen K. Murayama is a Japanese-Okinawan American poet and educator who lives in Honolulu, Hawai‘i. She spends her afternoons surfing and her evenings with her dog named Squid. Her art is forthcoming in Juked, Bamboo Ridge, The Margins, and Near Window. You can find her on IG & Twitter @ambusypoeming.

Tolu Oloruntoba

Tolu Oloruntoba, born in Ibadan, Nigeria, is the author of the Anstruther Press chapbook Manubrium (2019), and the full-length poetry collection, The Junta of Happenstance, forthcoming from Anstruther Books. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Pleiades, Columbia Journal, and Obsidian. He lives in Surrey, BC.

Dayna Patterson

Dayna Patterson is the author of If Mother Braids a Waterfall (Signature Books, 2020) and Titania in Yellow (Porkbelly Press, 2019). She is the founding editor-in-chief of Psaltery & Lyre.

Jesse Sensibar

Jesse Sensibar can usually be found in the ponderosa pine forests surrounding Flagstaff, Arizona or in the barrios of Tucson, Arizona. Otherwise, he is out on the highway, documenting the disappearing American West and pondering the fleeting nature of memory, sin, spirituality, and forgiveness.

Milla van der Have

Milla van der Have is a Gemini. Her poetry has been published in Cherry Tree, Otis Nebula, and Ninth Letter. Her poems also appear in her chapbook, Ghosts of Old Virginny (Aldrich Press, 2015). Milla lives and works in Utrecht, the Netherlands, with her wife and two rabbits.