After studying English Literature and Language and completing a Masters in Women’s Studies, Jo Hemmant spent many years working as a journalist and editor. She started writing poetry in 2007, the day her youngest son started school, and has been published online at qarrtsiluni, Canopic Jar, blossombones and Blue Fifth Review. She has also been published in the British journals Equinox, Decanto, South, Horizon Review, Obsessed with Pipework and has work upcoming in the journals Dream Catcher, Iota and Fire. She lives in the burbs outside London with her husband, two sons and dog, Lucy, and home plays headquarters to her new independent poetry press, Pindrop.
As a trained journalist, Carolee Sherwood learned how to find the elements of a story and write from a place of curiosity about people, specifically how they experience the world and why they do what they do. After nearly a decade of work in communications (writing, editing, managing and designing), she left that career in 2003 to stay at home when the birth of a third son meant she was responsible for three boys under the age of four. She turned immediately to poetry in an attempt to preserve her sanity, a concept that has proven elusive. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in ouroboros review, Awakenings Review, Umbrella, Qarrtsiluni, Literary Mama, JuiceBox: A journal of the ordinary, Tipton Poetry Journal and Ballard Street Poetry Journal, which nominated her poem “How to let wild birds out” for a Pushcart Prize in 2008. Carolee grew up in Maine and earned her bachelors degree in West Virginia. She now lives in farm country just outside Albany, New York.
Jill Crammond Wickham earned her Master’s in English from the College of St. Rose, in large part due to the encouragement of a soft spoken nun who praised her writing. Though not Catholic, and not acquainted with nuns, Jill felt it was a sure sign that writing was her thing. That same year, a kind professor entered Jill’s poetry in a contest, Jill sent out her first submission and everything was published! It hasn’t all been this easy. To help feed her family (and get paid for painting), Jill opened a children’s art studio and gallery. She still sends out poems, and sometimes they are published in fantastic journals such as ouroboros review, Crab Creek Review, Blue Fifth Review, Naugutuck River Review, Boxcar Poetry Review and Weave. She lives across the Hudson River from Carolee, in a suburb of Albany, NY.
