Wayne Swanger has published poems and prose pieces in Friends Journal and other Quaker publications, as well as regional literary journals including Tobeco and The Bridge Literary Arts Journal. He published his first book of poetry, Fields of His Heart (The Watershed Journal Literary Group) in 2020. A retired special educator, he no longer prepares course syllabi, grades papers, supervises students, attends endless committee meetings, or myriad mind-numbing administrative tasks. He finds bliss trout fishing and birding in the spring, tending his garden and small orchard in the summer, going afield with Omega, his English springer spaniel in the fall, and snowshoeing in the winter. Year round pursuits include winemaking, reading, and wife, Mary (not necessarily in that order). Wayne and Mary live in Clarion, Pennsylvania.
Vincent Spina was born in Brooklyn, and studied at Fordham and Columbia Universities. He earned his doctorate from New York University in Latin American Literature, specializing in Andean Literature and Culture. He has published several articles in his field, as well as a study of the Peruvian novelist José María Arguedas. RECOVERY is Spina’s sixth book of poetry, drawing inspiration from Wallace Stevens, John Ashbery and César Vallejo. His poetry has been published in magazines and literary journals too numerous to name. He lives on Florida’s Gulf Coast.
Retired after a lifetime in radio– from on-air to management– Joe Taylor returns to his love of writing. The author and producer of award-winning regional and national radio documentaries and feature series, Joe has also been published in Cracked Magazine, Ink Money Magazine, The Watershed Journal, Tobeco Literary and Arts Journal, and the Rye Whiskey Review. Joe resides in northwestern Pennsylvania.
Patricia Thrushart writes poetry and biography. Her fifth and latest book of poems, Goddesses I Have Known, and an accompanying coloring book, benefit a local domestic violence shelter. She is coeditor of the annual anthology for North/South Appalachia, and cofounder of the group Poets Against Racism & Hate USA. She recently edited a collection of poetry about birds to benefit the Seneca Rocks Audubon Society, titled Beak, Bone and Feather. A frequent contributor to several journals, in 2021 her work was chosen for an award-winning anthology of Ohio Appalachian voices, I Thought I Heard a Cardinal Sing. She has poems in two of the Women of Appalachia Speaks anthologies. Her biography, Cursed: The Life and Tragic Death of Marion Alsobrook Stahlman, was published in December 2021 by Adelaide Books and republished by QPC Publishing in February 2025.
Peggy Zortman was born and raised in the part of Pennsylvania referred to as The Pennsylvania Wilds. She has been happily married to her husband Bill for more than fifty years. She loves exploring nature, reading, crochet, sewing, cooking and . . . oh yes, she writes books. Following a career as a Human Resource Manager, Peggy retired. Then, she got serious about writing a book. Encouraged when her articles were published in motorcycle magazines, Good Old Days magazine, and The Watershed Journal, she gathered her courage and entered the world of publication. She also writes regularly for her local newspaper, Reynlow News, and she and Chase appeared on ABC-23 TV’s show, All About Town.
Byron Hoot was born into a family of ministers in West Virginia, where he stayed until he went to college. He’s hunted since his youth and is as comfortable in the woods as he is reading poetry, sitting at a bar or sitting in church. The woods have shaped him as much as anything else, including his daily writing discipline and love of reading. Byron’s work has been published in Rattle, North/South Appalachia, Rye Whisky Review and elsewhere. He lives in northwestern Pennsylvania.
