BILL NEVINS
Bill Nevins, born August 4, 1947, is a poet, a songwriter, a journalist, and a retired University of New Mexico educator who has worked in various media including film and video. Bill grew up in the US northeast and has lived in New Mexico since 1996. Bill graduated from Iona College, did graduate work in literature at U. of Connecticut and U. California at Berkeley and visited Ireland, Spain, Mexico, NYC, New Orleans and other places during both troubled and happier times. Bill is also a member of La Raza Unida, The National Writers Union, and Irish-American Writers and Artists. bill_nevins@yahoo.com
FROM A RECENT REVIEW of Bending Light:
Bill Nevins takes us on a journey through this past century in this little gem of a collection of wonderful poems. I will be brief, as the power of poetry is in the few words chosen to tell the big things without baggage or bragging. This book speaks volumes in a few perfect brush strokes which paint a people’s history.
“Tunnel Rat” brings back memories of the worst, nightmarish jobs the Americans sent to Vietnam had to do, in these days when honesty has been set aside and truth murdered. It brings me back to days with friends who did return, but sat in a crowded room, alone and their eyes focused on things no one else in the room could have seen.
He writes of the generational difference between fathers and sons, the things which shaped those differences that we can know but never in the bones understand, from Pearl Harbor to Dien Bien Phu, and Mountbatten’s demise.
And he writes of the moment, the razor sharp now. Those who are strangling history. He sits us down in the deadly cold of the ICE detention disgrace, but also to the defeat and victory of Greasy Grass.
But also, the poetry of our Celtic past, the mists of time and heroic memory. This is the soul of Irish America, but also the soul of America, those original Nations, and the people who are coming and will be the us, the USA of tomorrow. It is a great collection.
~Lorcan Otway, Former owner of Theatre 80 and The Museum of the American Gangster
GREGORY LUCE
Gregory Luce was born in Dallas, Texas, and grew up in Texas, Kentucky and Oklahoma. He holds a BA and MA from Oklahoma State University and did additional graduate work at the University of Southern Mississippi. He lives in Arlington, VA.
Gregory Luce is the author of Signs of Small Grace, Drinking Weather, Tile, and Riffs & Improvisations. His poems have appeared in numerous print and online journals and in the anthologies Living in Storms (Eastern Washington University Press), Written in Arlington (Paycock Press), and
This Is What America Looks Like (Washington Writers Publishing House).
In 2014, he was awarded the Larry Neal Award for adult poetry by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. In addition to poetry, he writes a monthly column for the online art journal Scene4.
PRAISE FOR LUCE’S POETRY
”The poems radiate like heat lightning in a distant sky.”
~Dean Smith, author of American Boy
B.B. RIEFNER
B,B, Riefner wrote with chalk on blackboards; then, with a 1918 typewriter on tailgates and picnic tables in South America, Europe, and Africa. Today, he and his wife live near Washington, DC, with their canine muse and a computer — each which must be fed daily. He has been published in Iconoclast Magazine, Danse Macabre, and in Stress City.
He is also the other of several collection of short stories> Mind Travels, The Tarnished Horseman Comes Home, Slices and Bites from the Pie, and I. M. Lawless.
PAUL CATAFAGO
Paul Catafago is a first generation Palestinian-Lebanese-American spoken word poet, independent journalist & cultural organizer. He has a Masters in Theological Arts from Maryknoll School of Theology where he studied with Marc Ellis, the author of Towards a Jewish Theology of Liberation. After 9/11, Catafago founded an arts non-profit that organized the Queens International Poetry Festival
“I am very moved by the original, clear voice of Paul Catafago. We need his poems.”
~Naomi Shihab Nye, poet, editor, songwriter, novelist