Bill Nevins
Bill Nevins, born August 4, 1947, is a poet, a songwriter, a journalist, and a retired University of New Mexico educator who has worked in various media including film and video. Bill grew up in the US northeast and has lived in New Mexico since 1996. Bill graduated from Iona College, did graduate work in literature at U. of Connecticut and U. California at Berkeley and visited Ireland, Spain, Mexico, NYC, New Orleans and other places during both troubled and happier times. Bill is also a member of La Raza Unida, The National Writers Union, and Irish-American Writers and Artists. bill_nevins@yahoo.com
FROM A RECENT REVIEW of Light Bending:
Bill Nevins takes us on a journey through this past century in this little gem of a collection of wonderful poems. I will be brief, as the power of poetry is in the few words chosen to tell the big things without baggage or bragging. This book speaks volumes in a few perfect brush strokes which paint a people’s history.
“Tunnel Rat” brings back memories of the worst, nightmarish jobs the Americans sent to Vietnam had to do, in these days when honesty has been set aside and truth murdered. It brings me back to days with friends who did return, but sat in a crowded room, alone and their eyes focused on things no one else in the room could have seen.
He writes of the generational difference between fathers and sons, the things which shaped those differences that we can know but never in the bones understand, from Pearl Harbor to Dien Bien Phu, and Mountbatten’s demise.
And he writes of the moment, the razor sharp now. Those who are strangling history. He sits us down in the deadly cold of the ICE detention disgrace, but also to the defeat and victory of Greasy Grass.
But also, the poetry of our Celtic past, the mists of time and heroic memory. This is the soul of Irish America, but also the soul of America, those original Nations, and the people who are coming and will be the us, the USA of tomorrow. It is a great collection.
~Lorcan Otway, Former owner of Theatre 80 and The Museum of the American Gangster
Gregory Luce
Gregory Luce was born in Dallas, Texas, and grew up in Texas, Kentucky and Oklahoma. He holds a BA and MA from Oklahoma State University and did additional graduate work at the University of Southern Mississippi. He lives in Arlington, VA.
Gregory Luce is the author of Signs of Small Grace, Drinking Weather, Tile, and Riffs & Improvisations. His poems have appeared in numerous print and online journals and in the anthologies Living in Storms (Eastern Washington University Press), Written in Arlington (Paycock Press), and
This Is What America Looks Like (Washington Writers Publishing House).
In 2014, he was awarded the Larry Neal Award for adult poetry by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. In addition to poetry, he writes a monthly column for the online art journal Scene4.
PRAISE FOR LUCE’S POETRY
On DRINKING WEATHER : “...The poems in Greg Luce’s Drinking Weather look squarely and wisely at the wounds, the red wine stains of human experience...” ~Moira Egan, author of Cleave, Bar Napkin Sonnets, and Spin
“The poems radiate like heat lightning in a distant sky.” ~Dean Smith, author of American Boy
On RIFFS & INSPIRATIONS: “Luce’s carefully crafted poems are as elegant as the songs which they so deftly capture.” ~Nathan Leslie,
On TILE “To read the beautiful poems in Gregory Luce’s Tile, one must listen closely. Spare yet intimate, they are filled with whispers, breaths, and breezes. But don’t be deceived, beneath these sounds other worlds exist...” ~Jane Shapiro, author of Mrs. Cave’s House and Tapping This Stone
B.B. Riefner
B,B, Riefner wrote with chalk on blackboards; then, with a 1918 typewriter on tailgates and picnic tables in South America, Europe, and Africa. Today, he and his wife live near Washington, DC, with their canine muse and a computer — each which must be fed daily. He has been published in Iconoclast Magazine, Danse Macabre, and in Stress City.
He is also the other of several collection of short stories, including Mind Travels, The Tarnished Horseman Comes Home, Slices and Bites from the Pie, and I. M. Lawless.
Naomi Thiers
Naomi Thiers is an accomplished poet and editor. She’s also active in the DC poetry and arts scene—particularly at events sponsored by Day Eight.
Perhaps what distinguishes her poetry the most is her sense of craft. Like a Bird Released is like a collection of polished gems. Open this book and prepare to be enchanted.
Samuel Prestridge
“Samuel Prestridge’s poem “Loose Gravel” is a gorgeous 7-part piece of work that ends with this: “I caught the jonquils wagging / their temporal sass while lifting, / lifting themselves from the blank, ruined mix. / Out of the rusty darkness, such yellow.” Having read that, and considered it, I begin with a big Wow. The poems in this book unfold, many from a long-title premise or factual assertion, given the way titles occasionally function as a trumpet-fl ourish of sorts. The poem that called me back most often was (and is) “Seven guys all wearing refl ective ge ar and hard hats have taken a break from trenching a sewer line, and they’re standing in a row and looking straight up into the trees, maybe at the cross arm of an old wooden power pole”—I am struck by: It’s not my job. It’s not my line / of sight, so I can’t say. Which, for this writer, serves to anchor this book in a well of hard-won Truth we yet trust. I’m grateful for Samuel Prestridge.” ~ROY BENTLEY, finalist for the Miller Williams Prize for Walking with Eve in the Loved City.
“From Yazoo City to Robert Johnson’s crossroad and on to our bloody ragged Afghanistan retreat via the Fredericksburg battlefi eld, this poet brings the mad blues razor edge of surreal musicality along Highway 61 Redux, and man, nobody can poem the blooze like Samuel Prestridge.” ~BILL NEVINS, journalist, songwriter, educator, poet, and author of Light Bending
SAMUEL PRESTRIDGE lives and works in Athens, Georgia. His work has been nominated for Best of the Net, and he has published work in numerous publications, including Literary Imagination, Style, The Arkansas Review, As It Ought To Be, Poetry Quarterly, Appalachian Quarterly, Paideuma, The Lullwater Review, Poem, Juke Joint, and The Southern Humanities Review, Delta, Better than Starbucks, Synkroniciti, where he was a featured poet, Untelling, and Hog River Press.
He is a post-aspirational man and is currently an Associate Professor of English at the University of North Georgia. His children concede that he is, generally speaking, an adequate father.
Ed Ruzicka
“It might have been said that the soul is no traveler, but I’m here to tell you the heart sure is, and Ed Ruzicka’s new collection, In the Wind, takes us all on a heck of a tour. From Amazonian jungles, to peaks in Peru, to trails in Ecuador, to jaunts through the American South, these poems sizzle with clarity and insight like the jangle of bells hanging around an alpaca’s neck on a steep mountain trail. I promise you’ll cherish the time you spend following these lines around the world.” ~Jack B. Bedell, author of Ghost Forest, Poet Laureate of Louisiana, 2017-2019
“With the wonderful eye of a wanderer, Ed Ruzicka’s “In the Wind” whips us through his world, his visions, and his changes. From North American to South, from Ecuador to Louisiana and many places inbetween, from poem to poem, this book is alive and restless.” ~Ariel Francisco Henriquez Cos, poet and translator, author of All the Places We Love Have Been Left in Ruins and many other titles.
Ed Ruzicka has published three full-length books of poetry, most recently Squalls, by Kelsay Books. Ed’s poems have appeared in the Atlanta Review, the Chicago Literary Review, Rattle, Canary, and many other literary publications. He has had poems nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has been a finalist for the Dana Award and the New Millennium Award. Ed is also president of the Poetry Society of Louisiana. He was raised in a quiet, corn-green town in Illinois. Ed has two adult children. He lives quietly as a retired occupational therapist under the green of live oaks in Baton Rouge, LA with his warm and caring wife, Renee.
Dina Greenberg
My trauma-sensitive writing and advocacy gives voice to survivors of war, displacement, and sexual violence. This work coalesced in Nermina’s Chance (Atmosphere Press), a novel whose protagonist escapes war in 1992 Bosnia. As an adjunct to my research on war-related trauma, this work of historical fiction approaches the aftermath of war in an intensely personal way.
I lead creative writing workshops, both in person, and in virtual spaces spanning the globe. The Nermina's Chance book tour throughout Bosnia (Aug-Sept 2022), and a return visit in 2024, provided me opportunities to engage with people of all ages in discussions about the impact of intergenerational trauma resulting from war and displacement.
My Prose and poetry has appeared in a range of literary publications, such as: Pembroke Magazine, Split Rock Review, Thrice Fiction, Bellevue Literary Review, Tahoma Literary Review, Barely South, and Wilderness House Literary Review.
I earned an MFA in fiction from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where I served as managing editor for the literary journal Chautauqua.
Recently, I've turned my attention to hybrid forms like prose poetry, flash fiction, and flash creative non-fiction. These compressed works provide me the opportunity to tinker to my heart's content, choosing each word with utmost intention and alacrity. Though my work often prods darker elements of human emotion, I remain primarily hopeful.