BIOGRAPHIES

JoAnn Balingit was appointed Delaware's 16th poet laureate by Governor Ruth Ann Minner in May 2008. Her poems appeared most recently in On the Mason-Dixon Line: An Anthology of Contemporary Delaware Writers and in the national anthology, Best New Poets 2007. Awards include a Delaware Division of the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship in 1995 for fiction, and the 2008 Dr. Norman H. Runge Award for her essay, "Some Boy Somewhere." For more about her work as poet laureate see http://www.artsdel.org/services/poetlaureate.shtml.

Mark Bowden's current work, The Best Game Ever, is an analysis of the 1958 NFL Championship battle between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants, and made the New York Times best-seller list. He is the author of six books, and is best known for 1999's Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War, which became a major motion picture - for which he wrote the original screenplay. Bowden is also a columnist for the Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer, a national correspondent for Atlantic Monthly, and an adjunct professor teaching creative writing and journalism at his alma mater, Loyola College of Maryland. In addition, he's writing another screenplay, this one for Jerry Bruckheimer.

Jamie Brown is the Founder, Publisher and Editor of The Broadkill Review, a PDF Literary Journal, the Founder/Director of The John Milton Memorial Poetry Festival, and is Director/Coordinator of The Dogfish Head Poetry Prize. His workshop, "Poetry: Form Function and You" was the first Creative Writing Workshop ever held at the Smithsonian Institution. His poetry has been published in American Literary, Delaware Beach Life, The Delmarva Quarterly, The Cafe Review, Connecticut River Review, Galley Sail Review, Gypsy Blood Review, Howling Dog, Midwest Poetry Review, Nebo, Negative Capability, Parnassus Poetry Journal, Phase and Cycle, Poet Lore, Poetry Motel, Potomac Review, The Review, San Fernando Poetry Journal, Spontaneous Combustion, Sulphur River Literary Review, Tekintet, Voices International, Winners, and Wordwrights Magazine.

Dawn Fallik is an award-winning reporter specializing in feature writing medical coverage and database analysis. She has 20 years of daily reporting experience for The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Associated Press and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She spent a month in India covering the tsunami. In September 2007, she became a full-time assistant professor at the University of Delaware, teaching Beginning Journalism, Advanced Reporting, Feature Writing, Critical Writing and Medical Reporting. Although she left full-time reporting for full-time teaching, she continues to cover medical issues for The Boston Globe, AARP Magazine and Neurology Today. She also reports on trends for The Philadelphia Inquirer's feature section.

Maribeth Fischer's first novel, The Language of Goodbye was awarded Virginia Commonwealth University's First Novel Award for 2002. Fischer's second novel, The Life You Longed For, chosen as an April 2007 BookSense Notable Book, as well as an alternate book selection the Literary Guild, was cited by The Library Journal as "a perfect book-group selection, comparable to Jane Hamilton's A Map of the World or Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres." Currently it has been released in five foreign countries. Fischer's literary essays have appeared in such journals as The Iowa Review and The Yale Review, and have twice been cited as notable in Robert Atwan's Best American Essays. She has also received a Pushcart Prize for her essay Stillborn, as well as a Smart Family Prize for her essay Lottery, written after learning of her nephew Zachary's diagnosis of mitochondrial disease. Fischer lives in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. In addition to founding the Rehoboth Beach Writers' Guild and serving as executive director of the annual Writers At The Beach: Pure Sea Glass writing conference, Fischer teaches workshops in writing. She also speaks at medical conferences and to healthcare workers about writing. She is currently working on her third novel, which she is writing through three-minute writing prompts.

Piotr Florczyk is a poet and translator who is originally from Krakow, Poland.  He has had work published or forthcoming in Slate, Boston Review, Notre Dame Review, New Orleans Review, Pleiades, The Southern Review, West Branch, The Louisville Review, World Literature Today, Chelsea, and Poetry International.  He is the editor and translator of Been and Gone: Poems of Julian Kornhauser (Forward by Adam Zagajewski), forthcoming from Marick Press, as well as the editor of the special issue of An Sionnach dedicated to the work of the Irish poet, Ciaran Carson.  A recipient of the 2007 Anna Akhmatova Fellowship for Younger Translators and a 2008 Artist Grant from the Delaware Arts Council, Florczyk currently teaches at the University of Delaware and Cecil College

Maria Hess, senior editor of Delaware Today magazine, has earned several awards from the Delaware Press Association and the National Federation of Press Women. Prior to joining the regional magazine's staff, she was arts reporter for Channel 2's First State News, where she edited, produced and reported the only news segment dedicated to the arts in Delaware. She moved on to a PBS television station in the Shenandoah Valley, where she wrote, produced and hosted the series "Living in Virginia," for which she won two Emmy Awards, the National PBS Communications Award, the Virginia Association of Broadcasters Award and the NETA (National Educational Television Association) Award. Maria has written for numerous publications and is an adjunct professor at Wilmington University.

Elise Juska is the author of three novels: The Hazards of Sleeping Alone; One for Sorrow, Two for Joy; and Getting Over Jack Wagner, a Critic's Choice in People magazine. Her short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies including the Harvard Review, The Hudson Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, Salmagundi, Black Warrior Review, The Seattle Review, Room of One's Own, Calyx, Good Housekeeping, Philadelphia Stories, The Carolina Quarterly, Philly Fiction, and Writes of Passage: Coming-of-Age Stories and Memoirs from The Hudson Review. Her novella "Perfect Weather for Driving" was included in the anthology Cold Feet and her nonfiction has appeared in publications such as the Philadelphia Inquirer and the essay anthology The Subway Chronicles: Scenes from Life in New York. Elise has taught fiction writing at The New School in New York City, in the MFA program at the University of New Hampshire, and at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where she received the Director's Award for Teaching Excellence. She has served on the fiction faculty at several writing conferences including the Rosemont Summer Writers' Retreat, the Penn Writers Conference at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Stonecoast Summer Writers Conference in Casco Bay, Maine. She is currently teaching at the University of the Arts and working on a new novel. Go to Esquire.Com to read a recent interview with Elise.

Matt McDonald was a member of Delaware National Poetry Slam teams from 2005 through 2007, and the Delaware representative at the Individual World Poetry Slam competitions in 2006 and 2007. Matt lives with his wife, Hannah, in Phoenixville, Pa, where he spends his days working as a mechanical engineer at a major electronics company, and his nights writing music and poetry for his band i, fanblades.

Elizabeth Mosier is the author of the novel My Life as a Girl and Calling, a novella and stories. A graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, she has taught creative writing in a variety of settings, including Bryn Mawr College, the University of Pennsylvania, Swarthmore Writers Room, the Bennington College July Program, and area schools as part of the Pennsylvania Young Writers Day program. More information can be found at www.ElizabethMosier.com.

Patsy Sims directs the MFA creative nonfiction program at Goucher College in Baltimore. She is the author of The Klan, Cleveland Benjamin's Dead, and Can Somebody Shout Amen!, which was named a Noteworthy Book by The New York Times Book Review. She also co-authored the narration for the award-winning documentary "The Klan: A Legacy of Hate." Her work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post Magazine, Texas Observer, and most major American newspapers. Her most recent book is the anthology Literary Nonfiction: Learning by Example. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and is associate editor of River Teeth, a journal of narrative nonfiction.

Curtis Smith's latest book, Sound and Noise, was published by Press 53 in the autumn of 2008. His story collection, The Species Crown, was published in 2007, and will soon be followed by another short story collection, Bad Monkey, in the spring of 2010. His collection of essays, The Agnostic's Prayer, is due to be released this year. He has published more than fifty stories and essays in literary journals. His work has been cited by The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories and The Best American Spiritual Writing.

Carla Spataro is the Fiction Editor and co-publisher of Philadelphia Stories and PS Books. She is a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship recipient for fiction. Her work has been both a finalist and won second place in the Philadelphia City Paper Fiction contest. Three of her works have been selected for InterAct Theatre's Writing Aloud series and her short fiction can be read in Wild River Review, XConnect, Hackwriters, and Parlor. She earned her MFA in creative writing from Rosemont College and currently is an adjunct professor of English and creative writing at Temple, Rutgers Camden, Rowan Universities, and Rosemont College. She also is the program director for the Rosemont Summer Writer's Retreat.

Wilson Wyatt, Jr. is the President of the Eastern Shore Writers' Association, a regional literary organization for writers across the Delmarva Peninsula, and a founder of The Delmarva Review, a literary review open to all writers of short fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction and short reviews.  He is Chairman of the Review's Editorial Board.  He is also coordinator of the annual Bay to Ocean Writers Conference at Chesapeake College.  Prior to moving to St. Michaels, on the Eastern Shore, he was the senior communications and marketing officer for three international corporations and a former journalist at The Courier-Journal newspaper in Louisville, Kentucky.  He is a communications consultant and photographer, and his work has been published in numerous newspapers and magazines.   

Bob Yearick spent 34 years with the DuPont Co. as an editor and writer before retiring in 2000 to become a full-time freelancer. His sports/suspense novel, Sawyer, was published in 2007. He is an editor and contributor to Out & About Magazine, where his column, "The War on Words," appears monthly. He also writes frequently for Delaware Today and other publications, and continues as a consultant to the DuPont Automotive Paint business. A winner of the Out & About short story contest, he is on the board of the Delaware Literary Connection and is a member of the Delaware Press Association.