2026 Chapbooks – About the Authors

Jan Mordenski is a native Detroiter who received her bachelor’s degree from WSU’s Monteith College and her master’s from Wayne State’s English Department, with a concentration in Poetry Writing and Folklore Studies. She taught those two subjects, along with various courses in American and World Literature at Mercy High School for thirty-seven years.  Her poetry has appeared in journals across the U.S. as well as in Canada, Ireland, Australia, England and Singapore. Most notably Ted Kooser chose her poem “Crochet” to be part of his American Life in Poetry series. Aside from writing, she spends time on photography, art, playing liturgical and folk music.  Her first pet was a Pomeranian-Pekinese whom her mother named Buttons; the rest of that story is legendary.

April DeOliveira is a Michigan-based writer, educator, and editor. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Spring Arbor University, and teaches community creative writing classes. April is the founder and editor-in-chief of Cereal City Review, a place-based literary journal inspired by her hometown of Battle Creek, Michigan. April explores themes of place, memory, and human connection in her work, often employing magical realism, and has been published in Amethyst Review Fiction on the Web, Walloon Writers Review, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Eunoia Review, and other journals. When she is not writing or teaching, she enjoys reading, gardening, and exploring Michigan and beyond with her husband and daughter—and wishing she weren’t allergic to cats.

Timothy C. Smith is the author of Crashproof Your Kids: Make Your Teen a Safer, Smarter Driver (Simon & Schuster), and his essays, short stories, and articles have appeared in books, magazines, newspapers, and websites. Essays from Lifelong Apprentice, his memoir-in-progress, have appeared in literary journals including Chicago Story Press, The Brussels Review, and In Short: A Journal of Flash Fiction. Other essays will appear in 2026 in The Threepenny Review, and Passages North. Smith has won a Westmoreland Award for fiction, and holds a master’s degree in biology from the University of Michigan. He and his wife Sherri live in the Lake Michigan town of Douglas, near their children and grandchildren. Timothy enjoys hiking, biking, scuba, tennis, and boating.