Michelle is the architect of The Howler storytelling nonprofit, whence Magpie emerged. She is a multidisciplinary artist and writer who has led a nomadic, kaleidoscope life—everything from a classically trained chef to a social worker to a PhD walkout. She is a licensed therapist. She is a school librarian. She still doesn't know who she wants to be when she grows up.

Michelle earned an MFA from the University of Nebraska Omaha, where she was awarded an Academy of American Poets Prize. Her prose and poetry appear in a variety of places online and in print and are forthcoming in Booth and Palette Poetry. Her art and photography appear in magazines such as Wine Enthusiast, Orion, and The Sun. 

She has a deep affinity for found objects, fresh air, and tiny houses. Her novel is finished. It needs a home.

Shyla is an analytical Virgo from Iowa who rewrites her bio every week. From the smorgasbord of life, she selected motherhood (of humans and cats), bike riding, woolgathering, and writing. Though she often feels that writing chose her. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Pinch, New York Quarterly, Moon City Review, Drunk Monkeys, and elsewhere, and she has flash essays in Nelle and Write or Die Magazine. She has published two poetry collections.

This week, she is splitting her time between managing a healthy household, curating a nonprofit journal, The Good Life Review, and planning her escape. She would also love to read some poems that will surprise her or make her laugh-cry and hopes you will send some her way.

Rebecca received her MA from Hollins College in Virginia, where she was the recipient of the Academy of American Poets prize. Her work has appeared in Santa Clara Review, America magazine, and The New York Times, among others. The essay, Proteus on the Vasa was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her novel, Last Night at the Blue Angel, received the Friends of American Writers Award, the Nebraska Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Dublin International Literary Award. A collection of poems, All the Animals We Ever Were, was published in November 2017. Understory, a book-length poem, was published in 2020. Rotert lives in Omaha, NE.

After a teaching and academic career that took him from Alaska’s Tongass Rainforest to the Levant and North Africa and many points between, Jack embraced the poetics of North American ecosystems. He is a poet, naturalist, nature writer and founder of The Naturalist School, and he teaches eco-spirituality at Creighton University School of Medicine, where he also leads retreats for students and faculty.

Jack seeks advice from cottonwood murmurs and grandmother oaks, sonic frogs and bluebird sutras, dragonfly rattles and the cosmogonic cracking of pond ice, and helps other seekers do the same. Wild nature – the heart of every living thing – sprouts and grows creativity; every generative act, when born of the wildest self, offers our hands and voice, body-souls, and feral imaginations to the fertile pulse of the cosmos, and hers to ours. Healing and compassion are rooted here.

In wider circles, he is the author of a few books and has published a bunch of poems, is a Pushcart nominee, and was the keynote speaker and featured poet for the 56th annual Neihardt Day at the John G. Neihardt Center. However, the potency of a poem is found in the act of composing; many of his poems are returned to the earth or mixed with pond water or given to the campfire.

Hotspur walks a fine line between earnestness and resignation in the foothills of Fayetteville, Arkansas.  Born to a pair of English professors, he carved out a career as a public librarian in order to avoid academia and somehow wound up perfunctorily teaching creative writing anyway.  He believes in art, poetry, the Golden Rule, and the Oxford comma.  A misanthropic aesthete at heart, he’s a sensitive man who’s not afraid to throw hands over inconsequential matters.  He has experienced the whole and genuine meanness of life and is convinced that the best writing is that which most accurately addresses the human condition.  Sometimes, he wishes he were a cowboy.  Most of the time, he wishes he were somewhere else.  His superpowers include boundless trivial knowledge and the uncanny propensity to disappoint.  When he’s not writing, he’s doing his best to retain his sense of humor while kicking against the pricks.  He still hasn’t set the clock on his microwave

Rachel is a recovering academic and writer wending her way (often on foot) across the streets, paths, and trails of the Omaha area. She has written a dissertation, the best part of which was the writing itself along with those little moments in the margins of the novels where magic happened.

She currently collaborates with students in writing, literature, and life design classrooms, and she has supported students in retention-based programs at two different universities.

She writes about family, travel, and the seeking of small delights. She has a passion for storytelling and agrees with Patti Smith that a good coffee shop is a "portal to where."

Though recently retired from 32 years in the classroom, Lee Baker will always be a high school English teacher. So much time with teenagers and teenaged writing has gifted him a finely-tuned BS Meter with a paradoxically low tolerance for said BS. He compensates with dry-delivery sarcasm—on the resulting consternation, he feeds with much joy. He loves Jesus, his wife, his kids, his grandbabies, Star Trek, Shakespeare, vocabulary (specifically the words usurp, penultimate, equivocation, and the phrase “eschew obfuscation”), his motorcycle, and days-at-sea while cruising. He loves insight. He loves mercy. He loves the magic of the mundane. He loves the wisdom of comedy. He loves the power of silence. 

Who is Tre? Bio en route.