PETER SEARS

Peter Sears, a poet and literary activist, recently had his fifth chapbook Luge, published by Cloudbank Press (June 2008). His third full-length collection, Green Diver, is due out in the fall of 2009.

Sears' poetry collection, Tour: New & Selected Poems, was published by Breitenbush Books in 1987. The Brink, his fourth poetry collection, won the 1999 Peregrine Smith Poetry Competition, and the 2001 Western States Book Award in poetry.

He is also the author of Secret Writing, published by the Teachers & Writers Collaborative, and Gonna Bake Me a Rainbow Poem, published by Scholastic Inc. Both are supplementary teaching texts.

Peter Sears' poems have appeared in The Atlantic, Saturday Review, New York Times, Rolling Stones, Mademoiselle, The Christian Science Monitor, Mother Jones, Orion, and many literary journals and anthologies. His poem, When the Big Blue Light Comes a Whirling up Behind was read by Garrison Keillor on The Writers Almanac.

Originally from New York City, Sears is a graduate of Yale and the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. He taught English at the middle-school and high-school levels for several years before coming to Oregon in the mid 1970s to teach creative writing at Reed College. He has also taught at the Northwest Writing Institute of Lewis & Clark College, and at the Pacific University Writing Program in Forest Grove.

Sears is the founder of the Oregon Literary Coalition, co-founder of The Friends of William Stafford, co-founder of Community of Writers, and has served on the Oregon Arts Commission. He is the recipient of the Stewart Holbrook Award for his efforts to Oregon's literary community.

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Shaindel Beers

 A Brief History of Time, Shaindel Beers’ first collection of poetry, is at once an exploration of what it is to grow up in rural America and a treatise for social justice. These poems, many of them award-winning, span a wide range of styles—from plainsong free verse to sestinas to nearly epic works.

The characters/speakers in Beers’ poems range from the rural working class to mythological characters. These poems look at the world with an honest, unflinching eye. She is one of the up-and-coming poets from Generation X we will be hearing a great deal from in the future.

Shaindel Beers’ poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She is currently an instructor of English at Blue Mountain Community College in Pendleton, Oregon, in Eastern Oregon’s high desert and serves as Poetry Editor of Contrary (www.contrarymagazine.com). She hosts the talk radio poetry show Translated By and was recentely interviewed on Oregon Public Broadcasting's "Think Out Loud." She's also been hitting the blog interview circuit, experiencing first-hand the limits and opportunities in the changing publishing world.

Her book is available through Salt Publishing.