Maria Pavlova
Maria Pavlova was born in the second largest city in Bulgaria, Plovdiv. Her short story, "The Fire Dancer," was first published in HSE's Voice from the Planet. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been published in Cezanne’s Carrot, Forge, Yellow Medicine Review, and Etchings. She has a degree in Slavic studies and has worked as a journalist for various Bulgarian newspapers. Maria writes essays, poetry, short stories, and novelettes, some of which have been published in the press. When she started working on her first novel, The Rival, Maria took a leave of absence so she could concentrate on the process of writing. The novel tells the story of a blind girl who simultaneously discovers love, life and the feeling for colors.
Paula Brancato
Paula Brancato is an award-winning fiction writer, poet and filmmaker, and is on faculty at the University of Southern California. Paula was a May Swenson and Holland Prize finalist and has won the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Prize for Poetry, the Brushfire Poet Award, first prize Chester H. Jones Foundation, the Karlovy Vary film festival award, National Screenwriters Award, Pacific Northwest Writers Association and the Organization of Black Screenwriters, SCIFF Family Focus and WINFEMME awards. She has been a Sundance finalist twice. Paula has been published in HSE's Voice from the Planet, Mudfish, Georgetown Review, Litchfield Review, Southern California Anthology, Rattle, and Natchez Anthology, among others.
Tom Dolembo
Tom Dolembo, Harvard '67 English cum laude, MBA '71, David McCord writing scholar. An excerpt of his novel The Grapes and the Fox appears in HSE's Above Ground anthology. Tom lives on a farm and bird sanctuary in the village of Kewadin in Northwest Michigan. A native Hoosier born in Michigan City, Indiana, he is the author of numerous tracts, novels, poems, and articles. He can be found near lakes, rivers, streams, and low marshy places often looking for wildlife who are effortlessly avoiding him. His recent writing projects have included an enormous Civil War Trilogy, a shorter book of children's poems, and filler articles for rural newspapers on raising chickens and astronomy.
Stan Duncan
Stan G. Duncan (HDS, ‘90) has published a book on human rights in El Salvador, four books on economic development in the Third World, and a collection of devotional writings, plus numerous articles, essays, and National Public Radio commentaries. An excerpt of his first work of fiction—a novella written for his collection of short fiction, The Fire on Poteau Mountain—appears in HSE's Above Ground. Stan is a Huffington Post blogger and has worked as a protestant pastor, campus minister, college instructor, jazz pianist, and development economist. He has lived in five states and six countries and speaks broken English in three languages. He has three children and four grandchildren.
Charity Shumway
Charity Shumway's writing has appeared in HSE's Above Ground anthology, Glamour, Oregon Coast Magazine, on glamour.com, LadiesHomeJournal.com, FitnessMagazine.com, SocialWorkout.com, Soon Quarterly, and Slice Magazine. She has held jobs as a speechwriter, lawn care expert, night janitor, LSAT tutor, tuxedo shop girl, farm worker, restaurant hostess, and reader for the blind. She grew up in Centerville, Utah and lives in Brooklyn. Charity holds an MFA in creative writing from Oregon State University and a BA in English from Harvard University. She's a graduate of the Columbia Publishing Course and has a certificate in horticulture from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
Geoffrey Fox
Geoffrey Fox's story "On a Page from Rilke" appears in HSE's Above Ground anthology. He has published a novel and many stories including the short-story collection Welcome to My Contri. His nonfiction books include Hispanic Nation: Culture, Politics and the Constructing of Identity (U. Arizona Press); The Land and People of Argentina (HarperCollins); The Land and People of Venezuela (HarperCollins); Working Class Émigrés from Cuba (Ph.D. dissertation and book); and Gabriel García Márquez's 100 Years of Solitude (Monarch Notes).
Maya Levantini
Maya Levantini
Alan Swyer
Alan Swyer
Jonathan Facelli
A native Ohioan, Jonathan Facelli received a BA from Ohio State and a JD from Harvard Law School. He spent a year in Argentina, working as a volunteer in the slums of Buenos Aires and writing in his spare time. His short story, "La Criada's Guide to Stain Removal" first appeared in HSE's Above Ground. He is currently putting the finishing touches on a travel memoir, excerpts of which have been published, and is also working on a novel. Since returning from Argentina, Facelli's work has appeared in the Humanist, Haruah, South American Explorers Magazine, and BiblioFiles, and is slated to appear in the book Global Issues: Local Perspectives.
Jorge Contreras
Jorge Contreras collects and writes about nineteenth-century art and literature. He won the prestigious Pre-Raphaelite Society's John Pickard Essay Prize for his essay "The Best of the Brethren." His story "The Widow Interview" was first published in Above Ground. His regular column "Works and Days" appears in the Review of the Pre-Raphaelite Society, and his short story "The Enduring Specimen" appeared in the May 2009 issue of the Historical Novel Society's magazine Solander. He also occasionally practices and writes about law.
Phyllis Mattson
Phyllis Mattson was recognized as an “Achiever in Letters” by the National League of American Pen Women, February, 2006. An excerpt from her memoir, War Orphan in San Francisco: Letters Link a Family Scattered by World War II, appeared in HSE's Above Ground.
RK Marfurt
Growing up in a small, historic Swiss town where everyone knew each other’s business, R.K. Marfurt let the stories of its inhabitants, their joys, heartbreaks, quarrels, discontent and dreams fill her heart. They echo in her to this day. However removed her writing might seem from its origin — transformed through new experiences and locations, through education in different countries, through family and work life — early impressions rarely fade, and much living and writing is done in reaction to them. Her stories have appeared in American and Canadian literary journals.