Alex Alviar was born of Filipino parents in 1976 and raised in the suburban outskirts of Detroit. He received his MFA in poetry at the University of Montana in Missoula. Winner of the 2002 Poetry Slam Championship in Libby, Montana, Alex also is a recipient of a 2003 AWP Intro Journals Award and two honorable mentions from the Academy of American Poets Student Poetry Prize. His poetry has appeared in The Journal at Ohio State University. He teaches in Arlee and St. Ignatius schools on the Flathead Reservation for the Collaborative.
David Cates has published numerous short stories in literary magazines, and nonfiction in The New York Times and Outside magazine. His novel Hunger in America (Simon & Schuster) was a New York Times Notable Book, and he recently published a second novel, X Out of Wonderland, to critical acclaim. He has taught creative writing at the University of Montana, participated in the Tumbleweeds and Montana Artists in the Schools projects, and received a Writer's Voice Fellowship. Dave also works as a translator and executive director for Missoula Medical Aid, an organization that takes medical workers to Central America. He teaches at Hellgate High School for the Collaborative.
Chris Dombrowski's poems have appeared in such journals as The Bloomsbury Review, Crazyhorse, Green Mountains Review, Mid-American Review, NewLetters, Salt Hill, Southeast Review, and others, and have received the AWP Intro Award and Alligator Juniper's National Poetry Prize. He received a Matthew Hansen Endowment and was a winner of the Atlantic Monthly Student Writing Competition. He received a Poetry Fellowship from the University of Montana, where he earned an MFA degree in Creative Writing. He teaches at C.S. Porter Middle School for the Collaborative.
Mark Gibbons is a poet born and raised in Montana. He has four books of poetry, has four books of poetry, Blue Horizon (Two Dogs Press, 2007), Something Inside Us (Big Mountain Publishing, 1995), Circling Home (Scattered Cairns Press, 2000), and Connemarra Moonshine (Scattered Cairns Press, 2002). Mark is a former high school teacher, furniture mover, and long distance truck driver. He teaches at Paxson and Franklin schools in Missoula for the Collaborative.
Jennifer Greene has been the publisher/editor of the Char-Koosta News, a weekly award-winning newspaper of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. She teaches at Salish Kootenai College and has taught at Northern Arizona University. She is the winner of the l998 Diane Decorah First Book Award for Poetry sponsored by the Greenfield Review Press and the North American Native Writers Circle of the Americas for her book of poetry, What I Keep. She teaches at Two Eagle River Alternative High School on the Flathead Reservation for the Collaborative.
Robert E. Lee is author of the epistolary fly-fishing novel Guiding Elliot (Lyons Press, 1997), which is in its third printing. His poems, stories, and essays have appeared in CutBank, cold-drill, Northern Journeys, Talking River Review, and the anthology New Montana Stories. He is a graduate of the University of Montana MFA program in Creative Writing, and he recently retired from the United States Postal Service. He has taught creative writing in Salmon, Idaho and teaches at Lowell School and Big Sky High School in Missoula for the Collaborative.
Marnie Prange has taught creative writing at the University of Montana, Florida International University, the University of Louisville, Northern Arizona University, the University of Alabama, where she was editor of The Black Warrior Review, and the University of Missouri-Columbia, where she was managing editor of The Missouri Review. Her collection of poems, Dangerous Neighborhoods, won a Montana Arts Council First Book Award. She teaches for the Collaborative at Lone Rock School, near Stevensville, Montana in the Bitterroot Valley.
Deborah Slicer earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of Virginia, where she was a Henry Hoyns Fellow. Her first book of poetry won the 2003 Autumn House Prize, which was judged by Naomi Nye. Her poems have appeared recently in the journals The Spoon River Poetry Review, Green Mountains Review, The Virginia Quarterly, and in the anthologies Red, White and Blues (University of Iowa Press) and The Autumn House Anthology of Best Contemporary American Poetry (Autumn House Press). Her poetry was featured twice in 2005 on national public radio's The Writer's Almanac. She currently teaches in the Common Ground program and at Hawthorne School for the Collaborative.
Jeremy N. Smith has taught creative writing with elementary school students in Chicago, Illinois; middle school students in Cambridge, Massachusetts; high school students in Salmon, Idaho; and college students in Beijing, China. His stories, articles, essays, reviews, and cartoons have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Reader, Gourmet, and World Trade. He is a graduate of the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Montana. He teaches for the Missoula Writing Collaborative at Rattlesnake School in Missoula.
Brandon Shimoda (substitute teacher) has lived in eight states and five countries. His poems, prose, and critical reviews have appeared in Barrow Street, Crab Creek Review, New Orleans Review, POOl, Spinning Jenny, Word for/Word, Xantippe, and elsewhere, including a book series “The Pines,” in collaboration with artist/writer Phil Cordelli. He runs the New Lakes reading and performance series in Missoula, and is a contributing editor for CutBank and Octupus magazines. A Pushcart Prize nominee (2004), he also has been a recipient of an AWP Intro Award in Non-Fiction (2001), and a Poetry Fellowship from the University of Montana (2005).
Jeremy Pataky Jeremy Pataky completed his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana in 2007, where he was awarded a Poetry Fellowship and a Bertha Morton Scholarship. His work has appeared in The Southeast Review, Square Lake, Crab Creek Review, Softblow, Jeopardy, The Anchorage Press, and The Anchorgae Daily News, among other publications, and on Alaska Public Radio. He grew up in northern Idaho and also lived in Washington and Alaska before coming to Montana. He teaches in the Flagship Program for the Collaborative.
Robert Schlegel - Rob Schlegel's manuscript Iceblink was a finalist for the 2005 UC Berkeley New California Poetry Series and his poems and reviews have appeared in Barrowstreet, The Boston Review, VOLT and elsewhere. In addition to teaching poetry for the Collaborative at Potomac School, he is an adjunct professor at the University of Montana and the University of Montana's College of Technology.
Claire Hibbs was born at the foot of the Wasatch Mountains and spent her childhood between Salt Lake City and Southwestern France. She holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Montana where she received a Poetry Fellowship and a Nettie Weber Scholarship. Claire has taught on the Navajo Nation where she was awarded a Tucker Fellowship and William T. Morris Foundation Grant to teach Creative Writing and has worked with students and teachers in Zuni Pueblo, Gallup area schools, and East Oakland. She has received the Sidney Cox Memorial Prize and Lockwood Prize for her poems. She teaches in Arlee on the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Reservation.
Kisha Lewellyn Schlegel (substitute teacher) received the 2005 Richard J. Margolis Award and full fellowship to Blue Mountain Center for her essays about farmers and ranchers in Montana’s Bitterroot Valley. In 2007 she received the Creative Nonfiction Award from Dislocate and another from Fugue. In 2007 she was also a finalist for the Iowa Review and Bellingham Review Creative Nonfiction Award. She currently writes a weekly online column called Spade & Spoon.
