Margaret Benbow's poems have been published in numerous magazines such as Poetry, The Kenyon Review, The Georgia Review, The Antioch Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Triquarterly; and in several anthologies, including The Journey Home, Wisconsin Poetry, Love Over Sixty: An Anthology of Women's Poems and in a new anthology published by Fearless Books. Benbow's collection Stalking Joy won the Walt McDonald First Book award in 1997 and was published by Texas Tech University Press. She has now completed a second collection, and is wavering between the titles Evil Twin and Vampire Meets Maiden. Benbow also writes short stories, which have appeared in magazines such as Zoetrope: All-Story, Rosebud, The Georgia Review, and The Antioch Review. She was awarded a Wisconsin Arts Board Grant in 2003 for fiction, and received the 2005 Best Short Story award from the Council of Wisconsin Writers. In 2008 her short story collection Boy Into Panther was a finalist in the Iowa Short Fiction Award contest.
Marne Bruckner is a 19 year old poet and spoken word artist who grew up in Washington Heights, New York City. She writes the stories of her neighborhood as an inner-city child, her journey and the intriguing journeys of others. She has been writing poetry since the age of eight, and began her spoken word career at the age of 15 when she made the 2007 Urban Word slam team. Her slam team competed at Brave New Voices, teen poetry nationals in California, placing 3rd on final stage out of 40 teams. Since 2007, Marne has placed 3rd in the Knicks Poetry Slam winning scholarship money and prizes. At 17 she wrote her one woman show entitled “The Insides Ain’t Pink Enough” and performed it in collaboration with Dance Theatre Workshop, in NYC. She is the proud recipient of a First Wave scholarship to the Univeristy of Wisconsin for her poetry, and was a part of the 2010 UW-Madison CUPSI team, which took the 1st place championship in Boston. Marne has performed in and around all of the greater New York City area with features and gigs at the The Nuyorican Poets Café, The Bowery, Winter Gardens with Cocoa Rosie, Queen Godis’ Video Release, BAM, The Point, Hammerstein Ballroom, The Malcolm X & Dr. Betty D. Shabazz Memorial Educational Center, Contacting the World Theatre in Manchester England and much more. Her work is published in Connect. Politic. Ditto Urban Word NYC Publications and she hopes to continue to publish and put her work out in the air for the entire world to inhale.
Anne Sexton is the author of eight collections of poetry, culminating in The Awful Rowing Towards God. Soon after her first poetry workshop, Sexton’s work found homes in some of the country’s most prestigious publications. A Pulitzer Prize winner, she is best known for her confessional style, themes which challenged social taboos, and her personal struggle with depression. She is also one of the most transfixing readers of the 20th century, and may, with a reappearance here, own the 21st as well.
