Lisa Huffaker

The creator of White Rock Zine Machine, Lisa Huffaker is a poet, musician, visual artist, and teacher. Lisa’s poems have been published in Southwest Review, Poet Lore, Measure, Southern Poetry Review, Mezzo Cammin, The Texas Observer, Able Muse, One, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere. She won the Morton Marr Poetry Prize, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. A classical singer by training, Lisa holds a Master of Music degree in Vocal Performance from the New England Conservatory, and sings with The Dallas Opera. She teaches creative writing through The Writer’s Garret, presenting monthly creative writing adventures at the Nasher Sculpture Center, as well as zine workshops (her zine camp at Oil and Cotton won a “Best of Dallas” award!) She's not new to facilitating collaborative artistic endeavors: see www.bigblueumbrella.blogspot.com. Her home is the meeting place for Cloudwerks Poetry Workshop, and the factory in which its members created twelve hundred tiny, beautiful zines.

Christopher Stephen Soden

A native Texan, Christopher Stephen Soden is a writer, teacher, critic, lecturer and performer. Christopher received his MFA in Writing (Poetry) from Vermont College, and has taught classes and guest lectured on the subjects of craft, theory, genre, literature and publication. He was a film critic for The Fort Worth Ally and currently writes theatre critique for John Garcia's The Column, EDGEdallas.com and Examiner.com. He has written poetry, plays, performance pieces, literary, film and theatre critique. His honors include: Distinguished Poets of Dallas, Poetry Society of America's Poetry in Motion Series, Founding Member, President and President Emeritus of The Dallas Poets Community. His work has appeared in Ganymede Poets : One, Gay City 2, The Café Review, The Texas Observer, Sentence, Borderlands, Off the Rocks, The James White Review, The New Writer, Velvet Mafia, Poetry Super Highway, Gertrude, Touch of Eros, Gents, Bad Boys and Barbarians, Windy City Times, ArLiJo, and Best Texas Writing 2.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a Dallas visual artist and poet. His poetry has been published in the Blue Mesa Review, Naugatuck River Review, and the online journal [out of nothing]. He is a "Brain Trust" member of Pandora's Box Poetry Showcase.

Tim Cloward

Tim Cloward is a poet and educator. He has been active in the Dallas literary scene for many years. As former president of the board of WordSpace, he helped foster the city's literary community. As a performance poet with Poetry Circus, The Question Authority, and, most notably, his own troupe, Dancing Tongue, he has created multi-media performances in such venues as the Undermain Theater and Club Dada. He is currently at work on a book about Dallas culture and the Kennedy assassination. Parts of this manuscript have been published in Southwest Review, and recently won the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Award.

Michael Puttonen

Michael Puttonen is a freelance graphic designer. He was born in Wisconsin and moved to the Dallas area when he was a year old. Michael's poems have been published in Sulphur River Literary Review and Red River Review, and he was the founding creative director of Heritage Magazine for the Intelligent Collector.

Fran Carris

Fran Carris is whatever she decides to be when she wakes up each morning.

She has also been known to be a performance artist and poet, voice actor, and professional dabbler in other arts that express.

Logen Cure

Logen Cure is a poet and teacher. She is the author of three chapbooks: Still, Letters to Petrarch, and In Keeping. She teaches creative writing at Tarrant County College. She's an editor for Voicemail Poems. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Learn more at www.logencure.com.

Tamitha Curiel

Tamitha Curiel is an actor, writer, spoken word artist and educator. Her work has appeared in Inverse/Looped sound installation at The Nasher Sculpture Center, in Mad Swirl Online Journal and is forthcoming in Winter Tangerine’s "Mythology of Childhood" and Pink Drum. She performs spoken word with her trumpet-playing husband in the experimental jazz band, Swirve in art galleries, bars and churches. She is currently a curriculum advisor for the youth education arm of The Writer's Garret and will be the IB Film Instructor at The Alcuin School in the fall. She is the mom to three amazing adult children, Chaz, Caleb and Chloe.

Robin Turner

Robin Turner lives, works, and daydreams in East Dallas. She brings poetry and zine-making to museums, youth shelters, and community centers as a teaching artist for Writers In Neighborhoods & Schools, and serves as an online writing guide to homeschooled teens. Her work has appeared Anima Poetry, Friends Journal, Red River Review, Referential Magazine, the Silver Birch Press Mythic Poetry Series, and elsewhere in print and online. Her chapbook, bindweed & crow poison: small poems of stray girls, fierce women, is forthcoming from Porkbelly Press.

V. P. Crowe

V. P. Crowe has been puttering around the Dallas poetry scene off and on since it was pretty much confined to one wee strip of Elm Street. Her work has appeared in Illya's Honey, the Red River Review, Electron Press, the Texas Poetry Calendar, and an anthology or three. She lives in the suburbs with a mad scientist and a houseful of fur.

Paul Koniecki

Paul Koniecki is a poet, performer, and founder of Pandora's Box Poetry Showcase in the greater Dallas area. His chapbook Reject Convention was published by Kleft Jaw Press in 2015 and his poems appear a variety of places including Richard Bailey's film, One Of The Rough—which was recently picked up by AVIFF Cannes.