Since the publication of his first books of poem, the Porcine Legacy in 1974, David Lee’s unique force has touched and inspired people from a variety of locations, background and ages, including hundreds of students and aspiring writers.  A Texas native, Dave studied in the seminary for the ministry, was a boxer, 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, he raised hogs, worked as a laborer in a cotton mill, earned a Ph.D. with a specialty in the poetry of John Milton and retired after 32 years of teaching at Southern Utah University, serving for many of those years as the Chairman of the Department of Language and Literature. 

Dave was named Utah’s first Poet Laureate in 1997 serving in this capacity until 2002.  Hi 1999 collection News From Down to the Café was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.  In 2001, he was chosen as a finalist for United States Poet Laureate.  Dave has written 22 books, the most reason, Rusty Barbed Wire, a book of his selected poems. 

Terry Tempest Williams has been called "a citizen writer," a writer who speaks and speaks out eloquently on behalf of an ethical stance toward life. A naturalist and fierce advocate for freedom of speech, she has consistently shown us how environmental issues are social issues that ultimately become matters of justice. "So here is my question," she asks, "what might a different kind of power look like, feel like, and can power be redistributed equitably even beyond our own species?" 

Williams, like her writing, cannot be categorized. She has testified before Congress on women’s health issues, been a guest at the White House, has camped in the remote regions of Utah and Alaska wildernesses and worked as "a barefoot artist" in Rwanda.

Known for her impassioned and lyrical prose, Terry Tempest Williams is the author of the environmental literature classic, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place; An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field; Desert Quartet; Leap; Red: Patience and Passion in the Desert; and The Open Space of Democracy. Her book Finding Beauty in a Broken World, was published in 2008 by Pantheon Books. She is a columnist for the magazine The Progressive. Her new book is The Story of My Heart by Richard Jeffries, as rediscovered by Brooke Williams and Terry Tempest Williams (Torrey House Press), in which she and Brooke Williams expand upon the 1883 book by Richard Jeffries. Her most recent book is The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks (Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux). The book was published in June, 2016, to coincide with and honor the centennial of the National Park Service.

A writer and poet, J V Brummel lives in western Wayne County where his family runs a horseback cattle ranch. He holds a B.A. in psychology and English and a MA in creative writing from Syracuse University. He’s taught at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Wayne State College and in the New York State Poets-in-Schools Program. He’s served as editor for Nebraska Territory.  Honors include receiving an NEA Literature Fellowship; the Elkhorn Review Poetry Prize in 1987; and the Nebraska Book Award for Poetry (2008) for Book of Grass. His book Cheyenne Line and Other Poems was named one of the Nebraska 150 Book in 2017. A longtime professor at Wayne State College, he’s also written and published short fiction and a novel. For the last 20 years he’s served as publisher of Logan House, co-founded with Jim Reese, which specializes in contemporary American poetry. In 2006 he was named director of the newly created WSC Press. WPAFind more at https://www.facebook.com/people/JV-Brummels/100026536271624/