Water~Stone Review Editors:

EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Mary Francois Rockcastle
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Mary François Rockcastle is the author of the novel Rainy Lake (Graywolf Press), which was nominated for a Minnesota Book Award and selected as one of the New York Public Library’s Best Books for the Teen Age.  She has just completed a new novel entitled In Caddis Wood.  Her writing awards include a Loft-McKnight Award of Distinction, a Bush Foundation Fellowship, and a Loft Mentor Award.

A native of  Plainfield, New Jersey, Rockcastle received her B.A. from Douglass College, Rutgers University, and an M.A. with a double emphasis in English and creative writing from the University of Minnesota in 1980.  She taught in the creative writing program at the University of Minnesota for several years before joining the GLS faculty at Hamline in 1991.  In 1997 she founded Water~Stone Review, a national literary review published by GLS.  The review has won a bronze award for excellence from the Minnesota Magazine Publishers Association, won a Best American Poetry award, and won or been given special mention for several Pushcart Prizes.  In 2009 Rockcastle received the Stanley W. Lindberg Award for Excellence in Literary Publishing.

After years of teaching in GLS, Rockcastle was made the Director of the Graduate Liberal Studies Program in 1999 and the founding dean of the Graduate School of Liberal Studies in 2004.  She is married to Garth Rockcastle, Dean of the School of Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Historic Preservation at the University of Maryland.  They have two daughters, Maura and Siobhan.

CREATIVE NONFICTION EDITOR
Barrie Jean Borich
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Barrie Jean Borich is the author of My Lesbian Husband: Landscapes of a Marriage (Graywolf), winner of an American Library Association GLBT Nonfiction Book Award and finalist for the Minnesota Book and Lambda Literary awards. Her first book, Restoring the Color of Roses (Firebrand) is a memoir set in the Calumet region of Chicago, where she grew up.

Her essay "On a Clear Day, Catalina" recently won the Crab Orchard Review John Guyin Literary Nonfiction Prize, and she has essays forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, Ecotone, Hotel Amerika, New Ohio Review and Seattle Review. Her work has been anthologized in Riding Shotgun; Women Writers Write about Their Mothers, has been listed as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays and has received Special Mention in the annual Pushcart Prize Best of the Small Presses.

Borich holds an MFA from the Rainier Writer's Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University and is the recipient of many literary prizes including a Bush Artist Fellowship, two Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowships, a Loft McKnight Award in Creative Prose, and a Loft Mentor Award in Poetry. She was one of two writers chosen by Rosellen Brown to receive a Loft McKnight Award of Distinction, and was among those chosen by both Scott Russell Sanders and Gloria Anzaldúa to receive Loft Creative Nonfiction Mentor Series Awards.
About her work Rosellen Brown has written, "She writes with a rare deftness, clarity and sense of humor, never strident or defensive, as if she herself were curious to discover what she is thinking." Ms. Magazine described her as "an empathetic writer who can do justice to simple happiness and complicated love."

The nonfiction editor of Water~Stone Review, Borich is an assistant professor and faculty advisor in Hamline’s Graduate School of Liberal Studies MFA Program, where she has received the award for outstanding teaching and service. She is also a contributing editor of AWP’s Writer’s Chronicle and was a Loft Mentor Series featured author and mentor for the third time in 2008. She’s taught at the Loft, the University of Minnesota, the Minnesota College of Art and Design and St. Olaf College and lives in South Minneapolis with her spouse Linnea Stenson.

POETRY EDITOR
Patricia Kirkpatrick
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Patricia Kirkpatrick has published a poetry book, Century's Road (Holy Cow! Press), two letterpress chapbooks, Orioles and Learning to Read, and books for young readers, including Plowie: A Story from the Prairie (Harcourt), illustrated by her sister, artist Joey Kirkpatrick. Her poems have appeared in the anthologies What Have You Lost? (Simon and Schuster), The Writing Path (University of Iowa), Minnesota Writes: Poetry (Milkweed), and To Sing Along the Way (New Rivers). Poetry is forthcoming in The Poets Guide to the Birds, edited by Judith Kitchen and Ted Kooser, Prairie Schooner, and on Saint Paul sidewalks through the Everyday Poetry Project. Her awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Bush Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, Jerome Foundation, and in 2006 the McKnight Fellowship Loft Award in Poetry. She received degrees from the University of Iowa and San Francisco State University.

Currently she teaches in the MFA program at Hamline University where she is Poetry Editor for Water-Stone Review. She also has taught at Macalester College, the University of Texas (Extension), and San Francisco State University, and has conducted workshops and residencies at the Princeton Theological Seminary in addition to many schools, libraries, and associations. She received a Hamline Distinguished Teaching & Service Award and was a 2002 Shannon Institute for Community Leadership Fellow.

Her interviews with notable poets, including Adrienne Rich, Brenda Hillman, Lucille Clifton, Li-Young Lee, Eavan Boland, and Sharon Olds, are published widely; in 2001 she interviewed W. S. Merwin onstage at the University of Minnesota. Her essay on Minnesota literature, "Where Dakota Drifts Wild in the Universe", appeared in a 1999 Hungry Mind Review issue. She has read and performed her work and work by other writers in Minneapolis (the Loft, Walker Art Center, Patrick's Cabaret), Saint Paul, San Francisco, Seattle, Iowa City, and Texas. As a founding member of the Minnesota Arts Alliance, she initiated creation of the "Silent Witness" figures commemorating women killed by domestic violence which were exhibited in the United States Senate and throughout the country.

FICTION EDITOR
Sheila O'Connor
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Sheila O’Connor is the author of two novels, Tokens of Grace and Where No Gods Came. Where No Gods Came won the Michigan Literary Prize and the Minnesota Book Award. It was also chosen as a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. Sparrow Road, a novel for readers 12 and up, is forthcoming from G.P. Putnam and Sons. Her work has been anthologized in Riding Shotgun; Women Writers Write about Their Mothers, The Next Parish Over, Mothers and Daughters, Best of Helicon Nine. Her short stories and poems have been published in magazines and anthologies including: Minnesota Monthly, Alaska Quarterly, Great River Review, Helicon Nine and others. Her short story, “Just Say the Word”, won the Tamarack Award for Fiction.

A graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, Sheila O’Connor has been awarded two Bush Fellowships, a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship, and a Loft McKnight Fellowship. She has also received the award for outstanding teaching and service in the MFA/MALS program at Hamline University.

In addition to her work as an assistant professor and faculty advisor at Hamline, Sheila O’Connor has worked extensively with educators and young people as a Writer-in-the-Schools. An active advocate for arts education, Sheila O’Connor has developed writing curriculum for students of all ages. She has also created writing programs for art museums. She is the editor of two collections of writing by young people Come Home Before Dark and In My Hand Forever. She has taught at the University of Minnesota, the Split Rock Arts Program, and the Loft Literary Center.

MANAGING EDITOR OF
PRODUCTION & MARKETING
Meghan Maloney-Vinz
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Meghan Maloney-Vinz worked as the Design Coordinator with the Hamline University Graduate School of Liberal Studies Student literary magazine rock, paper, scissors (a journal she helped create) for two years before coming on board with Water~Stone Review. As a student in the MFA program at Hamline, she served on the poetry editorial board for two issues including 2007 when she was Poetry Assistant Editor. Maloney-Vinz also created and managed the branding and design for the Hamline graduate student group, West Egg Literati during her time in the program. In addition to her duties as Managing Editor, she is the Teaching Assistant to poetry editor, Patricia Kirkpatrick this spring.

Maloney-Vinz hails from Lake Mills, Wisconsin, a small town near Madison. She received her B.A. from the University of St. Thomas and taught high school English for eight years at St. Paul Central before leaving the profession to pursue her MFA in poetry. Her poetry manuscript, World, was one of the finalists for consideration of Outstanding Thesis in its genre for 2007. She lives in St. Paul, MN with her partner, Lisa and their daughter, Maeve.

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