Billy Collins once commented that poet George Bilgere "has shown that imaginative wonders and deep emotional truths can be achieved with plain, colloquial American speech." Bilgere has done so in his six collections of poetry, most recently "Imperial" (Pitt Poetry Series). His numerous awards include the May Swenson Poetry Award and a Pushcart Prize. A professor of English at John Carroll University in Cleveland, he is also host of the public radio program WORDPLAY, an offbeat mix of poetry and comedy.
John W. Evans is the author of The Fight Journal (Rattle, 2023), winner of the 2022 Rattle Chapbook Prize, and also, Should I Still Wish: A Memoir (University of Nebraska Press, 2017), Young Widower: A Memoir (University of Nebraska Press, 2014), and The Consolations: Poems (Trio House Press, 2014).
His books have won prizes including the the Rattle Chapbook Prize, the Peace Corps Writers Book Prize, a ForeWord Reviews Book Prize, the River Teeth Book Prize, the Sawtooth Poetry Prize, and the Trio Award. Should I Still Wish was selected by Poets and Writers magazine as a “new and noteworthy” title of January/February 2017, and is published in the American Lives Series.
His work appears or is forthcoming in The Missouri Review (2016 Editor’s P
