William H. Clamurro is Professor emeritus of Spanish at Emporia State University. He is the author of six books. His three books of literary criticism are Cervantes's Novelas ejemplares: Reading Their Lessons from His Time to Ours (2015), Beneath the Fiction: The Contrary Worlds of Cervantes's Novelas ejemplares (1997), and Language and Ideology in the Prose of Quevedo (1991). His three books of poetry are Comfort & Lies (2016), The Vietnam Typescript (2018), and Private Archaeology (2020).

Seth Cuppy is a freelance guitarist, audio engineer, and videographer. He is attending Emporia State University and is working towards a bachelor’s of music in guitar performance. Seth enjoys composing and plays in several bands. He was awarded a summer 2021 research and creativity grant from Emporia State University to start the Spoken Sonatas project that is hosted on this website.

Riley Day is the 6-12 grade orchestra director for Emporia middle school and high school as well as the guitar and double bass instructor at Emporia State University. Riley graduated from Emporia State with a BME and from Wichita State with a masters in double bass per formance.

Along with teaching, Riley enjoys playing in numerous bands throughout Kansas in styles ranging from country, rock, classical, jazz, folk, funk, Hungarian gypsy, Paraguayan...basically anything he can get his hands on.

Riley is also the Composer/bassist/bandleader for a 9-piece horn band, Daydream.

Irene is a free-lance cellist and a dedicated pedagogue. She is instructor of cello at Emporia State University, director of Stringfully Academy and teaches cello from her private studio in Emporia, KS.

Irene is a graduate of Pittsburg State University with a Music Performance degree, Illinois State University with a Master in Music, and Emporia State University with a Performance Certificate. She has played as a soloist in Paraguay and the United States, and has been a member of several major orchestras including the Asuncion Symphony Orchestra, Universidad del Norte Orchestra, Peoria Symphony Orchestra, North Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, and the Midwest Chamber Ensemble.

She is a mother of two boys and enjoys yoga and gardening.

Linzi Garcia is the author of Thank You, co-author of Live a Great Story, and has published poems in a variety of anthologies and online journals. She works as a publicist for Meadowlark Press and Anamcara Press, and as a writer and editor.

Tara Laudie studied piano performance at Brigham Young University. She loves to make music in her hometown of Emporia, Kansas where she lives with her 4 kids and husband. Family and music are her favorite things.

Dr. Susan Mayo has been part of the musical landscape of Kansas for over 30 years and is active as a cellist, composer, and community arts organizer. She is passionate about using sound, the universal tongue, as a vehicle for creating community and celebrating peace. Vibrations unleashed in the atmosphere truly transform us. Each local has unique sounds, sharing these promotes and celebrates cultural conversations. Mayo blends genres creating unique sounds in both her performance groups and her compositions. She is intrigued by the blending of technology/nature - acoustic/electronic forces and is passionate about putting interesting music in interesting places. She has performed globally with both classical and alternative ensembles and is currently on the faculty of Friends University in Wichita, KS, music director for both Symphony in the Flint Hills fall event Woodfest and Prairie Muses, a nonprofit dedicated to bringing the arts to rural audiences, program and artistic director of Flint Hills Counterpoint an ecology arts project based in Marion County Kansas, and board chair of the Historic Sunflower Theatre.

Huascar is a poet, writer, and performer who lives in Topeka. He is the 2019-2021 Poet Laurate of Kansas. Medina currently works as a freelance copywriter and as the Literary Editor for seveneightfive magazine publishing stories that spotlight literary and artistic events in northeast Kansas. His poems can be found in his collection How to Hang the Moon published by Spartan Press. He is the winner of ARTSConnect’s 2018 Arty Award for Literary Art. His new collection of poems Un Mango Grows in Kansas is available at huascarmedina.com. From 2018-2021 Huascar presented readings and discussions about poetry in communities across the state.

https://huascarmedina.com/

Ramiro enjoys an active career as a musician, frequently changing guises between orchestral conductor, violinist, educator, and composer/arranger. As Associate Professor at Emporia State University, he teaches upper strings and conducts the Emporia Symphony Orchestra and the ESU Chamber Orchestra.

He guest conducts academic and professional orchestras in the United States and South America, and he has given solo violin recitals in the United States, South America, and China. In addition to performing the standard solo and chamber music repertoires, he enjoys improvisatory genres, and is a member of the Switchgrass String Quartet, a mind-and-genre-bending ensemble specialized in improvisatory music. This versatility has allowed him to enjoy collaborating with performers from many styles.

Kerry Moyer, a self-described “Dirt Road Poet” is the author of two collections of poetry from Kellogg Press. They are 2019’s release Dirt Road and 2020’s Rust & Weeds. Moyer writes about rural life, the Flint Hills of east central Kansas, cycling,his struggles, passions, musings and whatever serves to inspire his craft. He has been published in Astra Magazine and appeared on the television program “Positively Kansas.” His story was also featured in the Emporia Gazette prior to the release of Dirt Road. Moyer is active in the Kansas writing community with his involvement in Emporia Writer’s Group and Kansas Author’s Club. Moyer lives in Emporia, Kansas with his wife Sarah and their two boys Edward and Miles. He has a new collection of poetry coming out in July, 2021.

Poet Laureate of Kansas (2017-2019) Professor Kevin Rabas teaches at Emporia State University, where he leads the poetry and scriptwriting tracks. He has fourteen books, including Lisa’s Flying Electric Piano, a Kansas Notable Book and Nelson Poetry Book Award winner. Rabas is the winner of the Langston Hughes Award for Poetry and combines jazz and poetry in his readings. In the past, he performed steadily as a jazz drummer in KC with Bryan Hicks, Myra Taylor, Sharon James, and others. He currently plays original singer-songwriter folk, Americana, roots, and chamber music with The Petroglyphs and The Neighbors.

http://kevinrabas.com/

Olive L. Sullivan is a poet and bookbinder living in Pittsburg, KS. She has spent her lifetime crisscrossing the country and exploring the backroads, natural wonder, and beauty of this world. For someone from the Midwest, she has always been curiously drawn to oceans, perhaps because the heart of our country was once a prehistoric sea itself. Her poetry has appeared in the award-winning anthology Begin Again: 150 Kansas Poems, edited by former Kansas Poet Laureate Caryn Miriam-Goldberg, and her collection of traveling poems, Wandering Bone, was published by Meadowlark Press in 2017. She has also published short fiction and creative essays. She loves making things, taking long walks on the prairie with dogs, and traveling anywhere that requires a passport—and almost anywhere that doesn’t.

Amy Sage Webb-Baza is Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Emporia State University, where she was named Roe R. Cross Distinguished Professor and directs the Donald Reichardt Center for Publishing and Literary Arts. She is managing editor for Bluestem Press and Flint Hills Review. She publishes fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, and is author of Your Own Life: Kansas Stories.