Dori Appel

Dori Appel is an Ashland writer whose poems have been widely published in journals and anthologies, including When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple and The Best Is Yet To Be, the audio recording of which was a 1997 Grammy finalist. Her recent collection of poems, Another Rude Awakening, was published in 2008 by Cherry Grove Collections.

Dori is the author of eighteen full-length plays, plus many one-acts and monologues. She was the winner of the Oregon Book Award in Drama in 1998, 1999, and 2001, and her most recent play, Hat Tricks, published by Samuel French, was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award in 2008. Girl Talk and Hot Flashes, both co-authored with Carolyn Myers, are also published by Samuel French.

Two full-length plays, WHEN GOD CAME TO BABYLON and I'D KNOW YOU ANYWHERE, are being translated into Bulgarian for presentation by director and actress Victoria Koleva to professional theaters throughout Bulgaria.

Dori Appel's official website: http://www.doriappel.com/

David Lee

Since the publication of his first book of poems, The Porcine Legacy (1974), David Lee has written sixteen volumes of poetry, including So Quietly the Earth, Driving & Drinking, and News from Down to the Cafe. Two new collections will be released in 2009; the first, A House Made of Time, is a collaboration with former poet laureate of Nebraska, William Kloefkorn (Logan House Press); the second is Texas Wild Flowers: A Triptych (Wood Works Press).

David Lee, first and former poet laureate of the State of Utah, has studied in the seminary for the ministry, was a boxer and is a decorated Army veteran, played semiprofessional baseball as the only white player to ever play for the Negro League Post Texas Blue Stars, and was a knuckleball pitcher for the South Plains Texas league Hubbers.

David has raised hogs, worked for years as a laborer in a cotton mill, earned a Ph.D. with a specialty in the poetry of John Milton, and is the recently-retired Chairman of the Department of Language and Literature at Southern Utah University. He has received the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award in Poetry, and the Western States Book Award in Poetry, the Utah Governor's Award for lifetime achievement in the arts, and been honored as one of Utah's top twelve writers of all time by the Utah Endowment for the Humanities. David splits his time between Bandera, Texas, and Seaside, Oregon, where he scribbles and wanders available roads, trails and beaches, all at about the same rate and pace. After an 8 year hiatus, which may or may not relate to the bush administration, he has returned to the narrative format in his new work.