Pilot Light
A Journal of 21st Century Poetics and Criticism
 
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Contributors
Erik Anderson Issue: March 2012
Erik Anderson is the author of The Poetics of Trespass (Otis Books/Seismicity Editions, 2010). He has taught in the MFA program at Naropa University and is currently a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Denver.
Erik Anderson
 
Brian Barker Issue: On the Work of Jake Adam York
Brian Barker is the author of The Animal Gospels (Tupelo Press, 2006) and The Black Ocean (SIU Press, 2011), winner of the Crab Orchard Open Competition. His poems, reviews, and interviews have appeared or are forthcoming in such journals as Poetry, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review Online, Indiana Review, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, The Writer's Chronicle, The Washington Post, The Cincinnati Review, Blackbird, and Pleiades. He teaches at the University of Colorado Denver.
Brian Barker
Photo by: Julie Harris
 
Hadara Bar-Nadav Issue: On the Work of Jake Adam York
Hadara Bar-Nadav is the author of Lullaby (with Exit Sign), awarded the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize (Saturnalia Books, 2013); The Frame Called Ruin (New Issues, 2012), Runner Up for the Green Rose Prize; and A Glass of Milk to Kiss Goodnight (Margie/Intuit House, 2007), awarded the Margie Book Prize. Her chapbook, Show Me Yours (Laurel Review/Green Tower Press, 2010), was awarded the Midwest Poets Series Award. She is also co-author of the textbook Writing Poems, 8th ed. (Pearson, 2011). Hadara is currently an Associate Professor of English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Hadara Bar-Nadav
Photo by: Sharon Gottula
 
Bruce Bond Issue: March 2012
Bruce Bond is the author of several collections of poetry, most recently including Choir of the Wells (a tetralogy of new books; Etruscan Press, forthcoming), The Visible (LSU, 2012), Peal (Etruscan Press, 2009), and Blind Rain (Finalist, The Poets’ Prize; Finalist, TIL Best Book of Poetry Award, LSU Press, 2008). He has received fellowships from the NEA, the Texas Commission on the Arts, The Institute for the Advancement of the Arts, and other organizations, and his poetry has appeared in Best American Poetry, The Paris Review, The Yale Review, Harvard Review, Raritan, and many other journals. Presently he is a Regents Professor of English at the University of North Texas and Poetry Editor for American Literary Review.
Bruce Bond
Photo by: Gary Payne
 
Marianne Boruch Issue: September 2011
Marianne Boruch is the author of six poetry collections, most recently Grace, Fallen from and Poems: New and Selected, two books of essays, Poetry’s Old Air and In the Blue Pharmacy, and a memoir, The Glimpse Traveler, just out this summer. A new collection of poems, The Book of Hours, will be published in the fall. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, APR, Poetry and elsewhere, and her awards include Guggenheim and NEA fellowships as well as residencies from the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center and Isle Royale National Park. She teaches in the MFA program at Purdue University, and since 1988, in the low residency graduate Program for Writers Warren Wilson College.
Marianne Boruch
Photo by: Will Dunlap
 
Susan Briante Issue: December 2012
Susan Briante is the author of Pioneers in the Study of Motion (2007) and Utopia Minus (2011) both published by Ahsahta Press. Her chapbook, The Market is a Parasite that Looks like a Nest, part of an ongoing lyric investigation of the stock market, was recently published by Dancing Girl Press. She is an associate professor of literature and creative writing at the University of Texas at Dallas.
Susan Briante
 
Stacey Lynn Brown Issue: On the Work of Jake Adam York
Stacey Lynn Brown is a poet, playwright, and essayist from Atlanta, Georgia. Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Crab Orchard Review, Copper Nickel, Poetry Daily, Volta, The Rumpus, and Southern Quarterly Review. She is the author of the book-length poem Cradle Song (C&R Press, 2009) and is the co-editor, with Oliver de la Paz, of A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry (The University of Akron Press, 2012). She teaches at Indiana University in Bloomington.
Stacey Lynn Brown
Photo by: Salvatore Cincotta
 
Sarah Browning Issue: On the Work of Jake Adam York
Sarah Browning is Executive Director of Split This Rock: Poetry of Provocation & Witness. Author of Whiskey in the Garden of Eden and co-editor of DC Poets Against the War, she is an associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. She has received fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities and the Creative Communities Initiative and is winner of the People Before Profits Poetry Prize.
Sarah Browning
Photo by: Melissa Tuckey
 
Adam Clay Issue: March 2012
Adam Clay is the author of A Hotel Lobby at the Edge of the World (Milkweed Editions, 2012) and The Wash (Parlor Press, 2006). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Boston Review, Ploughshares, Denver Quarterly, Iowa Review, New Orleans Review, and elsewhere. He co-edits TYPO Magazine and lives in Kentucky.
Adam Clay
Photo by: Kimberley Clay
 
Nicole Cooley Issue: December 2011
Nicole Cooley grew up in New Orleans and is the author most recently of two collections of poems, Breach (LSU Press, 2010) and Milk Dress (Alice James Books, 2010). She has also published two other collections of poems and a novel. She has received the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America, and a National Endowment for the Arts Grant. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, Poetry, American Poet, and Callaloo, among other journals. She directs the new MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Queens College-City University of New York where she is a professor of English. She lives outside of New York City with her husband and two daughters.
Nicole Cooley
Photo by: Nancy Bareis
 
Laura Donnelly Issue: September 2015
Laura Donnelly’s first book of poems, Watershed, won the 2013 Cider Press Review Editors’ Prize. She is also the author of a chapbook, Nocturne — Schumann’s Letters (Finishing Line Press, 2010). Her poems have appeared recently in PANK, Rhino, Typo, Front Porch, and elsewhere. Originally from Michigan, she lives in Central New York and is on the creative writing faculty at SUNY Oswego.
Laura Donnelly
 
Nancy Eimers Issue: September 2011
Nancy Eimers’ fourth poetry collection, Oz, was published in January 2011 from Carnegie Mellon University Press. Her three previous collections are A Grammar to Waking (Carnegie Mellon, 2006), No Moon (Purdue Univ. Press, 1997) and Destroying Angel (Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1991). She has been the recipient of a Nation “Discovery” Award, two National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships, a Pushcart Prize and a Whiting Writer’s Award, and her poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and literary magazines. Eimers teaches creative writing at Western Michigan University and at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and she lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Nancy Eimers
Photo by: Jim Ferreira
 
Tarfia Faizullah Issue: On the Work of Jake Adam York
Tarfia Faizullah is the author of Seam (SIU Press, 2014), winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, The Missouri Review, The Journal, New England Review, Poet Lore, and elsewhere. A Kundiman fellow, she lives in Detroit, MI, where she is a writer-in-residence with Inside Out Literary Arts Project and serves as an editor for The Asian American Literary Review and Organic Weapon Arts Chapbook Press. 
Tarfia Faizullah
Photo by: Jamaal May
 
Ailish Hopper Issue: On the Work of Jake Adam York
Ailish Hopper is the author of Dark~Sky Society, selected by David St. John as a runner up for the New Issues poetry prize, and the chapbook, Bird in the Head, selected by Jean Valentine for the Center for Book Arts prize. Individual poems have appeared in journals including Agni, American Poetry Review, The Baffler, Ploughshares, and Poetry, among other places. She has received support from the Baltimore Commission for the Arts and Humanities, MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo. She teaches at Goucher College and lives in Baltimore.
Ailish Hopper
 
David Keplinger Issue: On the Work of Jake Adam York
David Keplinger is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently The Most Natural Thing (New Issues Press, 2013). He's the recipient of an NEA fellowship, the T.S. Eliot Award, the Colorado Book Award, and his essays, translations, and poetry have appeared widely in journals including The American Poetry Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, Agni, Crazyhorse, and The Paris Review.
David Keplinger
Photo by: Jake Adam York
 
Brandon Krieg Issue: September 2015
Brandon Krieg is the author of Invasives, a finalist for the 2015 ASLE Book Award in Environmental Creative Writing. He lives in Kalamazoo, MI. His website is brandonkrieg.com.
Brandon Krieg
 
Michael Lauchlan Issue: September 2015
Lauchlan’s poems have landed in many publications including New England Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The North American Review, Southword, The Dark Horse, Tar River Poetry, Harpur Palate, and The Cortland Review. His most recent collection is Trumbull Ave., from WSU Press.
Michael Lauchlan
Photo by: Deb McEvoy
 
Michael Levan Issue: December 2012
Michael Levan received his MFA in poetry from Western Michigan University and PhD in English and Creative Writing from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. Currently he is an Instructor of Writing at California University of Pennsylvania. His work can be found in recent or forthcoming issues of Mid-American Review, Moon City Review, American Literary Review, Natural Bridge, and Harpur Palate. He lives in southwest Pennsylvania with his wife, Molly, and son, Atticus.
Michael Levan
 
Andrew Nurkin Issue: December 2012
Andrew Nurkin’s poems have appeared in the North American Review, the Massachusetts Review, Drunken Boat, Rattle, Solstice, Peregrine, and Palimpsest, among others. He is the recipient of the Solstice Poetry Prize and two Pushcart nominations. Originally from Atlanta, he lives in New Jersey, where he directs a public interest nonprofit and teaches writing at Garden State Correctional Facility. He holds degrees in literature and religion from Duke and Yale and earned his MFA in poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Andrew Nurkin
Photo by: Joe Primo
 
William Olsen Issue: September 2011
William Olsen has published five books of poetry, including Sand Theory (Northwestern, 2011). His awards include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Breadloaf. Magazine awards include Poetry Northwest, Crazyhorse, and two Pushcart Prize awards. His poems and essays have appeared in many anthologies and magazines, including Poetry, Poets of the New Millenium, Triquarterly, Ploughshares, Gettysburg Review, and The New Republic. He is co-editor with Sharon Bryan of Planet on the Table: Poets on the Reading Life (Sarabande, 2003). He teaches in the MFA and Ph.D. Creative Writing programs at Western Michigan University and at the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College. He lives in Kalamazoo.
William Olsen
Photo by: Marianne Swierenga
 
Ali Rachel Pearl Issue: On the Work of Jake Adam York
Ali Rachel Pearl is a Ph.D. Candidate & Doctoral Fellow in English Literature & Digital Humanities at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Her work can be found at Quarterly West, The Fiddleback, LIES/ISLE, and other places. Obsessions include: furniture, ampersands, amateur photography, aquariums, music, modern & contemporary art, the desert, the desert, the desert, and repetition.
Ali Rachel Pearl
 
Jennifer Perrine Issue: December 2011
Jennifer Perrine’s first collection of poems, The Body Is No Machine (New Issues, 2007), won the 2008 Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award in Poetry. Her second book, In the Human Zoo (University of Utah Press, 2011), received the 2010 Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize. She lives in Des Moines, Iowa, and teaches writing and gender studies at Drake University.
Jennifer Perrine
 
Joshua Poteat Issue: On the Work of Jake Adam York
Joshua Poteat has published two books of poems, Ornithologies (Anhinga Poetry Prize, 2006), and Illustrating the Machine that Makes the World (VQR/University of Georgia Press, 2009), as well as two chapbooks, Meditations (Poetry Society of America, 2004) and For the Animal (Diagram/New Michigan Press, 2013). A chapbook, The Scenery of Farewell (and Hello Again), is forthcoming from Diode Editions, 2014. Joshua lives in Richmond, Virginia.
Joshua Poteat
Photo by: Allison Titus
 
Nicholas Regiacorte Issue: March 2012
Nicholas Regiacorte’s poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly, Phoebe, 14 Hills, and Third Coast, among other journals. He currently teaches creative writing at Knox College, in Galesburg, Illinois, where he lives with his wife and the Campione del mondo.
Nicholas Regiacorte
 
Michael Robins Issue: On the Work of Jake Adam York
Michael Robins is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently Ladies & Gentlemen (Saturnalia Books, 2011) and In Memory of Brilliance & Value (Saturnalia, 2015). He teaches literature and creative writing at Columbia College Chicago.
Michael Robins
 
Jon Tribble Issue: On the Work of Jake Adam York
Jon Tribble is the managing editor of Crab Orchard Review and the series editor of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry published by Southern Illinois University Press. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Poetry, Crazyhorse, Quarterly West, and The Jazz Poetry Anthology. He directs internships in editing and publishing for the Department of English at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
Jon Tribble
Photo by: Allison Joseph
 
Heather A Warren Issue: September 2015
Heather A Warren is a poet and musician from Fairbanks, Alaska. Her work can be found in LGBTQ themed journals Iris Brown , Skin 2 Skin and Polari. She holds a MFA in Poetry from the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Heather A Warren
 
Jake Adam York Issue: December 2011
Jake Adam York is the author of three books of poems—Murder Ballads (2005), winner of the Elixir Prize in Poetry; A Murmuration of Starlings (2008), co-winner of the Crab Orchard Open Competition and winner of the Colorado Book Award; and Persons Unknown (2010), published by Southern Illinois University Press as an editor’s selection in the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry. His work has appeared in numerous literary journals including The Southern Review, Kenyon Review, Pleiades, New South, Ninth Letter, Shenandoah, The Northwest Review, and Poetry Daily. An associate professor at the University of Colorado Denver, York co-edits Copper Nickel. In 2009, York was the University of Mississippi’s Summer Poet in Residence, and in 2011, he was the Richard Thomas Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Kenyon College. He is a 2011-2012 Visiting Faculty Fellow at the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference at Emory University. Originally from Alabama, York was educated at Auburn and Cornell. He is also the author of a work of literary criticism, The Architecture of Address: The Monument and Public Speech in American Poetry, published by Routledge in 2005. He is currently at work on a book of poems entitled Abide and a critical study of artistic responses to the Civil Rights Movement entitled Monument and Memento.
Jake Adam York
Photo by: Sarah Skeen (c) 2008