GCWL is unique is that we have a noted poet/educator critique member poems at each meeting. Below are listed some of the fine Critics we continue to have honor us with their poetic wisdom. This is a veritable Who’s-Who of the Ohio poetry scene!

 

GEORGE BILGERE has published six collections of poetry, including Imperial (2014); The White Museum (2010), which was awarded the Autumn House Poetry Prize; Haywire (2006), which won the May Swenson Poetry Award; and The Good Kiss (2002), which was selected by Billy Collins to win the University of Akron Poetry Award. He has won numerous awards, including the Midland Authors Award and a Pushcart Prize. Bilgere has received grants from the Witter Bynner Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fulbright Commission, and the Ohio Arts Council.

Bilgere’s poetry, while residing firmly in the every-day world of janitors, college students or siblings, is noted for its controlled poignancy and limpid free-verse line. Billy Collins has described him as “a welcome breath of fresh American air.” His poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Ploughshares, the Kenyon Review, Fulcrum, and the Best American Poetry series.  A resident of Cleveland, Ohio, George Bilgere teaches creative writing at John Carroll University.

JOHN DRURY earned his BA in Comparative Literature from Stony Brook University in 1976, his MA from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University in 1978, and his MFA from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1980. He began teaching at the University of Cincinnati in 1985. He is the author of four full-length poetry collections (The Disappearing Town, Burning the Aspern Papers, The Refugee Camp, and Sea Level Rising) and two books about poetry (Creating Poetry and The Poetry Dictionary). He has won the Bernard F. Conners Prize in Poetry from The Paris Review, two Ohio Arts Council grants, and an Ingram Merrill Foundation award, as well as the UC Dolly Cohen Award for Distinguished Teaching. His narrative nonfiction has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Evansville Review, Alligator Juniper, and Ploughshares.

DAVID LEE GARRISON’s work has appeared widely in journals and anthologies, and two poems from his book Sweeping the Cemetery were read by Garrison Keillor on his national radio show, The Writer’s Almanac. The title poem from his Playing Bach in the DC Metro was featured by Poet Laureate Ted Kooser on his website, American Life in Poetry, and read on the BBC in London. He won the Paul Laurence Dunbar Poetry Prize in 2009 and was named Ohio Poet of the Year in 2014. His most recent book is Carpeing the Diem: Poems About High School.

GERRY GRUBBS is an attorney who practices law in Cincinnati. He has had poems appear in numerous literary magazines and reviews. His latest book, The Palace of Flowers is his fourth collection from Dos Madres Press. His last collection, The Hive is a Book We Read for its Honey, was a finalist for the Ohioana Library poetry book of the year in 2015. In addition to writing, he conducts workshops for other artists, which sport course titles like “Wordshop” and “Bringing more creativity to your practice through the practice of creativity”.

DICK HAGUE is a native of Steubenville, Ohio. His most recent poetry titles are Public Hearings (Word Press, 2009), During The Recent Extinctions: New & Selected Poems, 1982-2012 (Dos Madres Press 2012) and he is a winner of the Appalachian Studies Association’s Weatherford Award. His other titles include Where Drunk Men Go (Dos Madres Press 2015), and Beasts, River, Drunk Men, Garden, Burst, & Light: Sequences and Long Poems (Dos Madres Press 2016). He is Writer-in-Residence at Thomas More College in Crestview Hills, Kentucky and is also the editor of the anthology, Realms of the Mothers: The First Decade of Dos Madres Press.

PAULETTA HANSEL Poet, memoirist, teacher and editor Pauletta Hansel served as the first Poet Laureate of Cincinnati from April 2016 through March 2018. She is author of seven poetry collections, most recently Coal Town Photograph (Dos Madres Press, 2019) and Palindrome (Dos Madres Press, 2017), which was awarded the prestigious Weatherford Award for the best Appalachian poetry book of 2017. Other recent books include Tangle (Dos Madres Press, 2015), The Lives We Live in Houses (Wind Publications, 2011) and What I Did There (Dos Madres Press, 2011). Pauletta’s poetry and prose has been featured in such journals as Rattle, Main Street Rag, Literary Accents, Poetry South, Talisman, Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine, Atlanta Review, ABZ Journal, Postcard Poems and Prose, Still: The Journal, The Mom Egg, Appalachian Journal and others. Her poems have been featured on The Writer’s Almanac, Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry and Verse Daily.

JEFF HILLARD, (M.F.A., Warren Wilson College; M.A., University of Colorado; B.S., University of Cincinnati) is an Professor of English in the Department of English and Modern Languages at Mount St. Joseph University. He teaches courses in modern and contemporary literature and drama, communication studies, advanced composition, and creative writing. A prolific and award-winning author, publisher, and literary advocate, he is the author of four books of poems, two chapbooks of short stories, and is currently editor and publisher of RED! the breakthrough ‘zine, an internet publication based on his many years of teaching in jails and prisons and showcases stories of transformation and healthy life-changes in the lives of inmates and ex-inmates, as well as innovators who help make these changes happen. Among his awards are the Post-Corbett Award for Literary Artist (1993), the Sister Adelle Clifford Award for Teaching Excellence (1998), and Ohio Arts Council Writer-in-Residence (2000) at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center in Massachusetts.

MANUEL IRIS has a Ph.D. in romance languages from the University of Cincinnati. He has a degree in Latin American Literature from the Autonomous University of the Yucatan, and a masters in Spanish from New Mexico State University. Iris was an experienced, published poet before he ever left his homeland. In 2003, at age 20, he published his first book while living in Mérida, Yucatán. He’s received several awards including the National Award of Poetry Merida (Mexico, 2009) for his book, “Notebook of Dreams.” His third book, 2014’s The Disguise of Fire, won the Rodulfo Figueroa Regional Award for Poetry and was one of the 10 finalists for the Latin-American award for published books, Ciudad de la Lira, in Cuenca, Ecuador. Translating Silence was his first book published in the U.S. and is bilingual — he sought to avoid using a translator but rather tried to write in English, as if he was first composing the poems in that language.

ROBERT MURPHY is the co-founder of Dos Madres Press and a prolific poet and scholar. Until the age of forty he was not a part of the vibrant literary community of the Greater Cincinnati Area. He was not an academician but made his living in the building trades. Until… he entered a competition sponsored by the Greater Cincinnati Writer’s League. His poem won, and a year’s free membership to the League came along with it. That was 32 years ago. The rest is history. In 2004 he decided to give back to the literary community. His wife Elizabeth, a gifted graphic designer, portraitist, and iconographer, is Dos Madres Press’s book designer. Dos Madres, two mothers in Spanish, in honor of their own mothers, early supporters of the Press. He is the author of a number of books of poetry.

CLAUDIA SKUTAR is an associate professor of English at the University of Cincinnati. She teaches composition, literature, creative writing, and liberal arts at the university’s Blue Ash College. Professor Skutar writes poetry and nonfiction and as a scholar is interested in animals and culture and environmental literature. She’s taught creative writing and poetry workshops to university students in Michigan and Ohio and to community members in the Cincinnati area. She’s also been a guest poet at Michigan State University, University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College, and Wright State University.

SHERRY COOK STANFORTH is the founder/director of Thomas More University’s Creative Writing Vision/MFA program, co-editor of Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel and a regional performer in Tellico, a multi-generation Appalachian family band. She is also the author of the poetry collection Drone String (Bottom Dog Press, 2015).

SARAH MOORE WAGNER is a Pushcart nominated poet whose work has appeared most recently or is forthcoming in Gigantic Sequins, IDK Magazine, Reservoir, The Wide Shore, and the Pittsburgh Poetry Review, among others. Her chapbook, Hooked Through, was published by Five Oaks Press in early 2017. She lives in Cincinnati with her filmmaker husband Jon and their children Daisy, Vivienne, and Cohen. She teaches at Xavier and Northern Kentucky University.

CATHRYN ESSINGER  is the author of five books of poetry–Wings, or, Does the Caterpillar Dream of Flight? and The Apricot and the Moon from Dos Madres Press; A Desk In The Elephant House, which won the Walt McDonald First Book Award from Texas Tech University Press; My Dog Does Not Read Plato, which was the runner up in the Main Street Rag book competition in 2004; and What I Know About Innocence. Her poems have been anthologized in The Poetry Anthology: 1912-2002, Poetry Daily: 366 Poems, and in O Taste and See: Food Poems. Her work has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. Her new work has appeared in such places as The Southern Review, New England Review, and Quarterly West. She received an Ohio Arts Council grant and was Ohio’s Poet of the Year in 2005. She is a member of The Greenville Poets, a small but well-published poetry group that does workshop presentations and supports the work of younger writers.

KARI GUNTER-SEYMOUR is a ninth generation Appalachian and editor the Women of Appalachia Project™ anthologies, “Women Speak,” volumes 1-6 and “Essentially Athens Ohio,” an anthology focused on landmarks, tales and experiences of those living in or deeply connected to Athens county. She holds a B.F.A. in graphic design and an M.A. in commercial photography and is a retired instructor in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University.  A poem she wrote in support of families living in poverty in Athens County, OH, went viral and has been seen by over 100,000 people, resulting in thousands of dollars donated to her local food pantry. Her current collection, A Place So Deep Inside America It Can’t Be Seen, is the winner of the 2020 Ohio Poet of the Year Award. She is the Poet Laureate of Ohio.

Her work was selected by former US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey to be included in the PBS American Portrait crowdsourced poem, Remix: For My People. Her poetry appears in several publications including, The NY Times, Verse Daily, Rattle, Crab Orchard Review, Main Street Rag, Stirring, Still, CALYX and The LA Times.  Her chapbook “Serving” is available from Crisis Chronicles Press. She is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee. She teaches a monthly workshop series and has worked with incarcerated men, women, teens, and women in recovery housing.

​Her award winning photography has been published nationally in The Sun Magazine, Light Journal, Looking at Appalachia, Storm Cellar Quarterly, Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Vine Leaves Journal and Appalachian Review.

Gunter-Seymour is the founder/executive director of the “Women of Appalachia Project,” an arts organization she created to address discrimination directed at women from the Appalachian region by encouraging participation from women artists (spoken word and fine art ) of diverse backgrounds, ages and experiences to come together, embrace the stereotype, show the whole woman; beyond the superficial factors people use to judge her. (www.womenofappalachia.com).

​FELICIA ZAMORA  is a poet, educator, and editor currently living in OH. She is the author of six books of poetry including: Quotient (Tinderbox Editions 2022), I Always Carry My Bones, winner of the 2020 Iowa Poetry Prize (University of Iowa Press 2021) and winner of the 2022 Ohioana Book Award in Poetry, Body of Render, winner of the 2018 Benjamin Saltman Award (Red Hen Press 2020), Instrument of Gaps (Slope Editions 2018), & in Open, Marvel (Parlor Press 2018), and Of Form & Gather, winner of the 2016 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize (University of Notre Dame Press 2017). She’s received fellowships and residencies from CantoMundo, Tin House, Ragdale Foundation, PLAYA, Moth Magazine, and Noepe Center at Martha’s Vineyard. She won the 2022 Loraine Williams Poetry Prize from The Georgia Review, a 2022 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the 2020 C.P. Cavafy Prize from Poetry International, the Wabash Prize for Poetry, the Tomaž Šalamun Prize, and a 2022 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award. She’s also authored two chapbooks and was the 2017 Poet Laureate of Fort Collins, CO. Her poems and essays are found or forthcoming in AGNI, Alaska Quarterly Review, Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, The American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry 2022, Boston Review, The Georgia Review, Guernica, Literary Hub, The Missouri Review, Orion, Poetry Magazine, Poetry Daily, Poetry International, Prairie Schooner, The Nation, West Branch, and others. She is an assistant professor of poetry at the University of Cincinnati and is the associate poetry editor for the Colorado Review.

JENNIFER HAMBRICK  is a Six-time Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee Jennifer Hambrick is the author of four poetry collections: a silence or two (Red Moon Press), In the High Weeds (NFSPS Press), winner of the Stevens Prize from the National Federation of State Poetry Societies; Joyride (Red Moon Press), winner of the Marianne Bluger Book Award; and Unscathed (NightBallet Press)  Hambrick’s poems appear in Rattle, The Columbia Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Santa Clara Review, Maryland Literary Review, San Pedro River Review, POEM, Modern Haiku, Frogpond, NOON: journal of the short poem, Contemporary Haibun Online, and in numerous invited anthologies.  Hambrick was featured by former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser in American Life in Poetry, was recently the featured guest poet with Rattle editor Tim Green on the livestream Rattlecast, and this December will be the featured guest with Jimmy Pappas on his monthly virtual gathering, Conversations with Jimmy and Friends. Hambrick has received numerous awards and prizes, including the Sheila-Na-Gig Press Poetry Prize, First Prize in the Haiku Society of America’s Haibun Award Competition, First Prize in the Martin Lucas Haiku Award Competition (U.K.), four first place awards and a Special Award in the inaugural (2024) Heliosparrow Haiku Frontier Awards for avant-garde haiku and short poetry, and many others, and is the frequent recipient of poetry commissions. Here in Ohio, Jennifer served as program chair for the Haiku North America 2023 biennial meeting in Cincinnati. A classical musician, public radio broadcaster, multimedia producer, and cultural journalist, Jennifer Hambrick is often presented in interdisciplinary collaborations. She lives in Columbus, Ohio. jenniferhambrick.com

RHONDA PETTIT, Ph.D., is a poet, scholar, and amateur musician who Emeritus Professor of English from the University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College where she is also editor of the Blue Ash Review. She also administered an annual poetry program that included poem and song writing contests for college and high school students; a Poetry Cafe that featured contest winners, guest poets, and live music; and a Poetry Wall and exhibits. As co-producer, co-editor, and host, she interviewed guest poets for the UCTV Online production of the Poetry Cafe Series. Her first full length collection of poems, Riding the Wave Train, was published in 2017 by Dos Madres Press. She is currently working on a new manuscript titled Burden of the Song. In addition to her chapbook Fetal Waters, and poetic drama The Global Lovers, she has published poems in online and print publications across the U.S. Currently at work on two manuscripts and a series of collages, she has been awarded writing fellowships to Hambidge Center, Hedgebrook, Hopscotch House, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her scholarship includes two books on the poetry and fiction of Dorothy Parker (A Gendered Collision and The Critical Waltz), and articles about a range of poets and poems. She also served as a poetry editor for both volumes of the Aunt Lute Anthology of U. S. Women Writers.

GRACE CURTIS  Excellent, widely published poet and critic. Grace Curtis’ book, The Shape of a Box, was published by Dos Madres Press. Her chapbook, The Surly Bonds of Earth, was selected by Stephen Dunn as the 2010 winner of the Lettre Sauvage chapbook contest. She has had prose and poetry in such journals as The Chaffin Journal, Red River Review, The Baltimore Review, Waccamaw Literary Journal, and Scythe. She blogs about poetry at. Her website is .at UC Clermont.