Holly Baker is from West Lafayette, Indiana and she’s double majoring in English Language and Linguistics. She is also minoring in editing. She will graduate this coming April. She has been a closet writer since the third grade and this is her first publication.
Ashley Mae Christensen is from Provo, Utah. She is getting her BFA in painting and drawing, and a minor in English. She served a mission in Uruguay. She is currently the co-director of a local not-for-profit contemporary gallery in Provo, Gallery OneTen. It is a space which promotes symbiotic community involvement in the arts, including poetry readings, lectures, local markets and workshops, urban art projects, etc. She doesn’t yet know what she plans on doing with her life, but something good. She is currently working on a project interviewing poets from Central America. She plans on grad school and hopefully making the world a better place.
Jackie Donkin is from Portland, Oregon. She comes from a family of ten kids, six boys and four girls, and is the oldest girl. She has her associate’s in vocal performance and is about to graduate with a BA in English and a minor in Portuguese. She served a mission in Porto, Portugal, and studied abroad in Brazil and Mozambique.
Lia Farnsworth is from Salt Lake City, Utah. She is double majoring in Physiology and Developmental Bio and Visual Arts: Painting/Drawing. She got into art for the first time last year when she decided against medical school and chose to dive into something entirely new and different instead. She hopes to attend graduate school, probably in art, and to remain close to the art industry afterwards.
Lina Maria Ferreira Cabeza-Vanegas is short, Colombian, and madly in love with her editor. She has three New Year’s resolutions: kill a man, hide the body, learn not to write incriminating bios. Also, she has one extra bone in her right foot, is lacking a ligament in her left knee, and has suffered approximately sixteen concussions in the last five years.
Hollis R. Hunt was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. He grew up in Alaska and Utah, worked on a cattle ranch for several years as a teenager, and served a Lao- and Khmer-speaking mission in Fresno, California, for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Following his mission, he graduated from BYU with a BA in Asian Studies and a minor in Physics. After working several years as a court interpreter, he attended law school at BYU and received his JD. He now works as an attorney in the State of Utah and is pursuing a PhD in Clinical Psychology and a graduate minor in music (vocal performance) at BYU. He is a past winner of the graduate division of the Hart-Larson Poetry Contest (2006).
Kevin Hawkins was born and raised. This happened in Las Vegas, Nevada, and he has spent the last six years of his life trying to graduate from BYU. He will soon complete a degree in English, after which he will pursue a master’s in architecture from the University of Texas, or any school that will accept him. This is his first published piece of fiction.
Mary Hedengren is a senior from Provo, Utah. Her works have appeared in The Deseret News, Inscape, The Collegiate Post, Segullah, and The Restored Gospel and Applied Christianity. She has received Mayhew prizes twice for her poetry. She welcomes comments to her poetry at mary.hedengren@gmail.com.
Michael Lavers is from Edmonton Alberta, Canada, and is the winner of the 2007 Vera Hinckley Mayhew Poetry Contest at BYU. Michael is pursuing a double major in English and Russian, and after graduation plans to pursue an MFA degree in creative writing. His first published poem is forthcoming in Tar River Poetry.
Mindy Lukins graduated from BYU in English and editing and is from a suburb of Los Angeles, California. The idea that someone could write a child’s book consisting of five words and become successful has been her driving force in believing she was capable of pursuing a career in writing. Since that realization hit, she has been writing nonstop and hoping others will understand it.
Maria Mercer was raised in the friendly, accent-free town of Lawrenceville, Georgia. She started to get involved in art when she was twelve, after having obtained a limited edition of Adobe Photoshop. She continued to pursue art as a hobby for the next six years, until she realized that she really loved art (and being an artist) and decided to make the rest of her worldly years revolve around its colorful splendidness. Currently, Maria is in the arduous process of becoming an illustration major at BYU. That means that, when she graduates, she is going to be one of the people who create the pretty drawings and paintings that decorate novels, posters, children’s books, medical books, text books, bedrooms, and so on and so forth. Before she kicks the bucket, Maria also hopes to write and illustrate her own stories, both for children and for adults. Maria currently resides in student housing with her three roommates and their pet, Joel.
James Phillips lives in Orem with his wife and three children and is a graduate student in mass communications. He has lived in Washington, Arizona, Oregon, Montana, New York, Hawaii and Japan (where he served a mission). He eventually hopes to teach, but what and where and whom he cannot say. His previous publications are limited to a weekly humor column in a local newspaper while a high school senior, and a co-authored article to be published this winter in the Newspaper Research Journal. This is his first published poem. It was written one day while working as a flower delivery driver.
Chris Purdie is a Utah native who has been studying and producing art, both as a musician and a visual artist, all of his life. Purdie began his formal art education at Utah Valley State College where he received his associate’s degree. He is currently attending Brigham Young University to obtain his BFA. After graduate school Chris plans to establish a professional studio practice and teach art at the university level. Purdie’s work demonstrates his ongoing exploration of materials, techniques, and concepts. His artwork has been featured in a variety of group and solo exhibitions.
Skoticus is a native of San Diego, California, though he has also lived in Northern California; Tucson, Arizona; and other parts of Southern California. He is a senior majoring in Leisure Services Management. His short story, The Sinking of the Mirandas, was published in the Winter 2007 issue of Inscape.
Sam Thayn was born and raised in American Fork. He has wanted to be a writer from his first days, filling notebooks with tales of time travel and dashing detectives. Since his return from the fall-leaf-framed East Coast, however, Sam has written only about love and heartbreak. He frequently dreams of sublime settings and colorful characters and forgets them on his way to the bathroom every morning. Nervous about poetry and self-conscious about prose, Sam hopes to write the next great American novel.
Johnna Thompson enjoys writing about her family. “I Promised the Clouds a Wedding” is about her grandmother who lived through the Oklahoma Dust Bowl in the 1930s. This is Johnna’s first time being published in Inscape, and it is also her first attempt at writing prose poetry.
