Intersections 2018: Writing from Planet Earth

Marcela Fuentes

Marcela Fuentes is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her stories have been published in the Indiana Review, Vestal Review, Blackbird, Bodega Magazine, The Stoneslide Corrective, Juked, and other literary journals. Recent work has been included in the anthologies Flash Fiction International by W.W. Norton, Best of the Web, and New Stories from the Southwest. Her awards include the 2016-2107 James C. McCreight Fellowship in Fiction from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and the Virginia Spencer Carr Fellowship in Fiction at Georgia State University. Currently, she teaches in the Chicanx/Latinx Studies program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Jason Labbe

Born in New Britain, Connecticut and raised by a machinist and a waitress, Jason Labbe earned his MFA from the University of Virginia, where he was a Henry Hoyns Fellow. He is the author of a full-length collection Spleen Elegy (2017) and a handful of chapbooks, including Blackwash Canal (2011) and Dear Photographer (2009). His poems and prose appear widely in such publications as Poetry, Boston Review, A Public Space, Conjunctions, Colorado Review, DIAGRAM, and many others. Also a drummer and recording engineer, he has worked with many artists in New England and New York City. He splits his time between Bethany, Connecticut and Brooklyn, New York.

Kate Viera

Kate Vieira is a writer, a writing teacher, and a writing-studies scholar. Her academic books are about writing among undocumented immigrants in the U.S. (American by Paper, University of Minnesota Press, 2016) and writing in immigrant families in Eastern Europe and South America (Writing for Love and Money, Oxford University Press, under contract). Her newest project involves writing for peace among youth in Colombia. She is at work on a memoir, Fieldwork, about single-parenting and international research. Her creative writing has appeared on the Tin House website and in Writing on the Edge, where her essay “Fieldwork with a Five-Year-Old” won the 2018 Donald R. Murray Prize. A recipient of awards from the Spencer Foundation, the National Academy of Education, and the Fulbright Program, she is an English professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where she lives with her daughter.

Michael Malone

Michael Malone is a writer based near Chicago, IL who fell in love with Wisconsin as a youth as his family towed their pop-up camper behind a faux-wood paneled station wagon from Kenosha to Eau Claire, Plattville to Green Bay. For as long as he can remember, his love of Wisconsin and the outdoors has fueled his passion for protecting the environment.

Kevin Koch

Kevin Koch teaches Creative Nonfiction in the English Department at Loras College, including such courses as Nature Writing and Writing the Midwest Landscape. He is author of Skiing at Midnight: A Nature Journal from Dubuque County, Iowa and The Driftless Land: Spirit of Place in the Upper Mississippi Valley, as well as nature-based articles and essays that have appeared in magazines and newspapers throughout the Midwest. When not teaching or writing, he can most frequently be found bicycling, hiking, or kayaking in the Driftless Region.

Catherine Young

Catherine Young is a writer and performing artist whose work is infused with a keen sense of place. She is author of the ecopoetry collection Geosmin (scent of soil). Her writing has been published in the anthologies The Driftless Reader, Contours, Permanent Vacation II: Eighteen Writers on Work and Life in Our National Parks, Imagination and Place: Cartography and is forthcoming in Essential Voices. Her work appears internationally and nationally in literary journals, including About Place Journal, Ascent, Minding Nature, Cold Mountain, River Heron, Fourth River, Hippocampus, and Midwest Review among others. Her poetry has been published as broadsides for Fermentation Fest Farm Art / Dtour Passwords and Madison Metro Buslines.

A nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best American Essays, Catherine Young worked as a national park ranger, farmer, educator, and mother before completing her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. She holds degrees in... Read More

Chuck Tennessen

Chuck Tennessen chairs Sustain Iowa County, a volunteer group that opposes Cardinal-Hickory Creek and promotes sustainable practices. As the Community Organizer for the Driftless Area Land Conservancy, the land trust for Southwest Wisconsin, he helps lead its efforts to stop this powerline proposal. Chuck will read an expanded version of an essay from his “Earthbound” column found in Iowa County’s leading news weekly.

Michael McDermott

Michael McDermott is the co-founder and director of the Black Earth Institute. He is chair of the Vermont Citizens Powerline Action Committee in western Dane County. He will give a brief overview of the proposed Cardinal Hickory Creek 345 KV transmission line proposed to go through the heart of the Driftless Area. He will read 2 poems by his BEI co-founder and late wife Patricia Monaghan calling on us to be guided by voices of Indigenous people's stories.

Kabel Mishka Ligot

Kabel Mishka Ligot is currently a first-year MFA candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he also works as an instructor in Creative Writing. Originally from Quezon City, he received his bachelor’s degree in Comparative Literature at the University of the Philippines-Diliman. Mishka has poems published in Akda: The Asian Journal for Literature, Culture, and Performance and in Bukambibig Poetry Folio; he also writes articles for CNN Philippines. Very new to America and the sprawling Midwest, Mishka can be found either hiding from the cold or lurking in the aisles of the only Asian grocery in the city.

Morgan Harlow

Morgan Harlow studied English literature, journalism and film at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and completed the MFA at George Mason University. She is the author of a full-length poetry collection, Midwest Ritual Burning (2012), with fiction, poems and other writing in Blackbox Manifold, Tusculum Review, Washington Square, The Moth, Seneca Review, and elsewhere. Harlow’s commentary on Ray Bradbury’s work has been reprinted in Contemporary Literary Criticism and Novels for Students. She lives in rural Wisconsin and is working to complete a novel while teaching college English.

Nathan J. Reid

Nathan J. Reid is a poet, spoken word artist, and actor currently living in Madison, Wisconsin. His work has appeared in the Fox Cry Review, Penguin Review, Teen Ink Magazine, GREAT: Poems of Resistance & Fortitude poetry anthology, as well as other journals. In 2014, he was the featured spoken word artist for the art exhibitions “Home” and “Milwaukee Macabre”, both curated by Kyle J. Krueger. He was also the guest spoken word artist for two fashion shows: Blest Clothing’s “Respect the Rebellion” in 2014, and Silversärk’s “Byzantium (the Fallen Empire)” in 2015. He is a member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, former competitor for Madison’s 2015 National Poetry Slam Team, and former senior editor for UW-Oshkosh’s literary journal, the Wisconsin Review. His first collection of poems, Thoughts on Tonight, was published in November of 2017 by Finishing Line Press.

Intersections 2018: Writing from Planet Earth

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