Author Bios

David Athey teaches creative writing at Palm Beach Atlantic University. He is obsessed with early and medieval Christianity, does not own a phone, has never sent a text, and drives an old truck named Goatbutt. His latest novel is Joan of the Everglades.

Betsy K. Brown is a writer and teacher who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. She received her Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Seattle Pacific University.

William Coleman has served as managing editor of Image and executive editor of nonfiction for DoubleTake. A former teching fellow at Harvard University, he teaches literature and writing for Northfield School of the Liberal Arts in Wichita, Kansas. His poems have been published in Poetry, The Paris Review, The New Criterion, Image, Western Humanities Review, Phoebe, Third Coast, and others.

John Ellis has lived in Africa, Europe, and across the East Coast of the United States, but much of his nonfiction recounts his life in the city he calls home—San Francisco.  He earned his MFA at Saint Mary's College of California where he was also a teaching fellow, and his work has appeared in Able Muse: A Review of Poetry, Prose, and Art. 

Michial Farmer is assistant professor of English at Crown College and one-third of the Christian Humanist Podcast. His book Imagination and Idealism in John Updike's Fiction was published earlier this year. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife, Victoria.

Randall Freisinger’s poems have appeared in many literary magazines, including New Letters, Sugar House Review, The Atlanta Review, The Marlboro Review, The South Carolina Review, Interim, and Black Warrior Review. He has published four collections: Running Patterns (1985 Flume Press National Chapbook Prize), Hand Shadows (Green Tower Press, 1988). Plato’s Breath (1996 May Swenson Poetry Prize, Utah State University Press), and Nostalgia's Thread: Ten Poems on Norman Rockwell Paintings (Hol Art Books, 2009). He lives and writes in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

Charity Gingrich’s work has appeared in Ruminate, Quiddity, Zone 3, Moon City Review and other journals, and is forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, Redivider, and others. Arts & Letters nominated her poem, “Mountains, Sunset, Redbird, River” for Best New Poets 2015. Her full-length manuscript, After June was a semifinalist in Crab Orchard Review’s Poetry Series, Fall 2014. She teaches creative writing part time at the University of Mount Union, as well as ESL for current big tech companies. The life of an adjunct-poet is not easy, but she strives to live gratefully. 

Melissa K. Hite recently moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, where she works in the communications department of a nonprofit. If she could be anything other than a writer, she’d be an Avett Brothers groupie. She tweets at @rockymtnhite and blogs at melissakhite.com. This is her first publication.

Sage Graduate Fellow of Cornell University (MFA) and Professor of English and Creative Writing at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox has published eleven collections of poetry—including True, False, None of the Above (Poiema Poetry Series and Illumination Book Award medalist); Local News from Someplace Else; Wives' Tales; Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation (Yellowglen Prize); and Perpendicular As I (Sandstone Book Award)—and the short story collection What She Was Saying (Fomite Press). She co-edited Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (Penn State Press), and has also published four children’s books. Visit marjoriemaddox.com for more.

Andrew Miller’s poems have appeared in The Massachussett’s Review, Iron Horse, Shenandoah, Spoon River Reivew, Hunger Mountain, Rattle, New Orleans Review, and others, as well as in the anthologies How Much Earth: The Fresno Poets (2001) and The Way We Work: Contemporary Literature from the Workplace (2008). He is the author of Poetry, Photography, Ekphrasis: Lyrical Representations of Photography from the 19th Century to the Present (2015). He holds an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and a PhD from Copenhagen University, and lives in Denmark.

Terry Minchow-Proffitt is a retired pastor who lives in St. Louis, MO. His poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in Arkansas Review, Big Muddy, Black Fox, Christian Century, Crack the Spine, Crux, decomP magazinE, Deep South Magazine, Desert Call, Freshwater Review, Moon City Review, Mud Season Review, Oxford American, Pisgah Review, Prick of the Spindle, Tower Journal, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Wild Violet, and others. His chapbook, Seven Last Words, was recently published by Middle Island Press. 

Amy Peterson is a writer and adjunct professor whose work has appeared or is forthcoming from River Teeth, St. Katherine Review, The Millions, The Other Journal, The Cresset, Books and Culture, and elsewhere. She is the author of Dangerous Territory: My Misguided Quest to Save the World (Discovery House, 2017).

David Rensberger is a scholar and writer on the Bible and Christian spirituality, living in Atlanta. He has published both scholarly and popular books and articles in those fields (including an article selected for The Best Spiritual Writing 2000, edited by Philip Zaleski), as well as a small amount of poetry in journals such as Poem, Bitterroot, The Georgia State Review, and The Chattahoochee Review.

Debra Rienstra is a professor of English at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the author of three books: Great with Child: On Becoming a Mother (Tarcher/Putnam, 2002), So Much More: An Invitation to Christian Spirituality (Jossey-Bass, 2005), and Worship Words (Baker, 2009). She blogs regularly at The Twelve (blog.perspectivesjournal.org/). Her poems have appeared in The Christian Century, Ruminate, The Other Journal, Rock & Sling, Sojourners, and others. 

Brennan Bestwick is a reader and writer from the Flint Hills of Kansas. His poems have been published in or are forthcoming from Hobart, Winter Tangerine, The Colorado Review, and others. He is the winner of a 2016 AWP Intro Journals Project Award. When he's not writing, he's drinking too much chamomile and killing houseplants.

Chrysta Brown hails from Philadelphia, PA. She received her BFA in Dance Performance from Southern Methodist University and her MFA in Creative Writing with a concentration in Creative Nonfiction from Seattle Pacific University. She performs and teaches dance in the Philadelphia metro. When she is not writing or dancing, she is either writing about dance or scouring the internet for cheap plane tickets. Visit her at chrystabrown.com.

Lynn Domina is the author of two collections of poetry, Corporal Works and Framed in Silence, and the editor of a collection of essays, Poets on the Psalms. Since last publishing in Relief, her work has appeared in The Southern Review, The Gettysburg Review, Prairie Schooner, The New England Review, Christianity & Literature, and other periodicals. She currently lives in Marquette, Michigan, along the beautiful shore of Lake Superior. 

Jayne English is a blogger, essayist and poet whose work has appeared in American Libraries, Saint Katherine Review, and Woman’s Touch, among other magazines. She is smitten with poetry and often turns to poets to translate the language of life into “motes/of gold moving/from shadow to shadow.”

Zoe Fowler is a writer, parent, university professor and foster mom who lives in a house filled with children and animals on the side of a mountain in Vermont. Recent work has been published in journals such as Green Mountains Review and The Copperfield Review. She is currently completing her first novel about immigration to America in the early 1900s.

Jeffrey Galbraith’s poetry has appeared in Windhover, Southern Humanities Review, RHINO, Florida Review, and Yemassee. He is an assistant professor of English at Wheaton College. 

Carrie Heimer teaches and writes in Fairbanks, Alaska. She runs poetryissalt.com, which features a new poem and writing prompt each week, as well as her digital advent calendar: The Other Stars Hover & Wait: Poems & Prayers for Advent.

Laurie Klein’s debut poetry collection is Where the Sky Opens (Wipf & Stock Poeima Series). Her award-winning chapbook is Bodies of Water, Bodies of Flesh. A co-founder of Rock & Sling, she is a grateful past recipient of The Thomas Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred. Her work has appeared in The Southern Review, Books & Culture, ATR, Midwest Quarterly, The Christian Century, Plough Quarterly, Barrow Street, and other journals and anthologies.

Michelle McMillan-Holifield studied poetry at Delta State University in the Mississippi Delta. Her work has been included in or is forthcoming in Boxcar Poetry Review, Deep South Magazine, Halfway Down the Stairs, First Class Lit, The Found Poetry Review, poemmemoirstory, A Quiet Courage, Red Savina Review, and Windhover, among others. She is an MFA Candidate at the University of Arkansas/Monticello. 

Devon Miller-Duggan has published poems in Rattle, Shenandoah, Margie, Christianity and Literature, and Gargoyle. She teaches Creative Writing at the University of Delaware. Her books include Pinning the Bird to the Wall and a chapbook of poems about angels, Neither Prayer, Nor Bird.

Julie L. Moore is the author of Particular Scandals, published in The Poiema Poetry Series by Cascade Books. Her other books include Slipping Out of Bloom and Election Day. A Best of the Net and two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Moore has had poetry published in Alaska Quarterly Review, Image, Nimrod, Poetry Daily, The Southern Review, Verse Daily, and in anthologies such as Becoming: What Makes a Woman, published by University of Nebraska Gender Programs, and Every River On Earth: Writing from Appalachian Ohio, published by Ohio University Press. Visit julielmoore.com for more.

Melissa Reeser Poulin is a poet and educator whose poetry appears in Sugarhouse Review, basalt, Catamaran Literary Reader, Ruminate, Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art, and Water~Stone Review. She holds an MFA from Seattle Pacific University and co-edited Winged: New Writing on Bees, an anthology on the relationship between humans and honeybees.

Catherine Ricketts is an essayist and songwriter who lives in Philadelphia. By day, she books concerts at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Ricketts studied creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania and is currently pursuing her MFA in creative non-fiction at Seattle Pacific University. Her writing has been published in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Paste, and Measure Journal, and her music can be found at catrickettsmusic.com.

Amie Sharp’s poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Atticus Review, Badlands, The Bellevue Literary Review, Forge, The Lascaux Review, New Plains Review, The Penwood Review, The Saint Katherine Review, and Tar River Poetry, among others. She holds an MFA in poetry from Seattle Pacific University and lives in Colorado. 

Sally Thomas is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Fallen Water (2015) and Richeldis of Walsingham (2016), both from Finishing Line Press. Her poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in Dappled Things, First Things, Kindred, The Lost Country, Ruminate, and Windhover. She lives in North Carolina with her theologian husband and two of their four children.