T.C. Marshall, AKA “Rev Doc,” AKA “Grampa Tom,” enjoys life in the California mountain village of Felton where he reads and writes and walks and talks much as he has ever since Norman O. Brown first dragged him up that hill as a nature guide and conversational foil once upon a time a long long time ago. He also teaches at Cabrillo College.

Maggie Paul was born in Boston, Massachusetts. After working for ten years on Madison Avenue in publishing and advertising, Maggie completed her B.A. in English at Rutgers University. She then received her M.A. in Literature from Tufts and an M.F.A. in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. The mother of a daughter and son, Maggie lives in Santa Cruz, where she teaches Writing and Social Justice at both the University of California and Cabrillo College. Her first collection of poems is Borrowed World (Hummingbird Press, 2011).

Read five poems by Maggie Paul on the Hummingbird Press website.

Read a review of Borrowed World in Rattle.

Debra Spencer invented her own alphabet when she was three. She wrote her first book in the second grade and went on to earn a BA from UCSC in 1972 and an MA from San Jose State University in 1988, where she won the Anne Lillis Memorial Scholarship for Poetry. In her desk she keeps a Bart Giammati baseball card, a fossilized shark’s tooth, the tuning key to an Anglian harp, and a piece of the Berlin Wall. She works at Cabrillo College as a learning disabilities specialist, and sings with Community Music School of Santa Cruz. Her first collection of poems is Pomegranate (Hummingbird Press, 2004).

Read & listen to three poems by Debra Spencer on The Writer’s Almanac:
“The Discovery of Sex”, “At the Arraignment”, and “Day Bath”.

Robert Sward has taught at Cornell University, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and UC Santa Cruz. A Guggenheim Fellow, he was chosen by Lucile Clifton to receive a Villa Montalvo Literary Arts Award. His 30 books include: Four Incarnations (Coffee House Press), Rosicrucian in the Basement, The Collected Poems, and God is in the Cracks (Black Moss Press, Canada), now in its second printing. His latest, New & Selected Poems, 1957–2011, is published by Red Hen Press.

Watch Robert Sward reading his poem “Iowa” on Youtube.

Watch an animation of Robert Sward reading his poem “Shelby the Dog” on Youtube.