Our Authors

Lynn Wallace
serves as Contributing Editor for the regional literary and arts anthology, Postcards from Pottersville. Originally a native of the American Southwest, he spent much of his youth between the clear sky and the parched sand of desert country. As a balance, he lived for five-and-a-half years in the lush tropics of Costa Rica, a place that continues to provide him with much content and inspiration for his work. After earning an M.A. in Fiction from the Pennsylvania State University, Wallace was awarded a Fullbright Fellowship to Costa Rica (1987-88) where he worked on several fiction projects and taught at the University of Costa Rica. Entering his twelfth year teaching English at Gulf Coast Community College in Panama City, Florida, he lives with his wife and two daughters in Marianna.


Aaron Bearden
is a writer, musician, and college student who dedicates A Sudden Uncoupling to anyone who has been forced to go shopping against his will. He has written short stories, poems, and a screenplay—none of which were scribbled on post-it notes or legal pads—and is currently working on a novella about cult life, and a comedic fantasy novella. In his spare time he is a film enthusiast who counts among his favorites The Rules of the Game and The Seven Samurai. He owns no nail guns.

Kendal Bushnell
is a native of Pennsylvania but has lived in Panama City, FL, since 1982. For over 15 years she has been the co-owner and operator of The Frame Shed, a custom picture framing shop in downtown Panama City. Kendal's photography has appeared in local and national publications, including U.S. Airways' Attaché magazine, Florida International magazine, Peachtree's Symbol of the South. Her work was selected for the covers of the 2000 and 2001 Panama City telephone directory. In additional to working as a professional photographer for individuals, businesses, and non-profit organizations, she works as an outside contractor for The News Herald. Kendal shares her life and loves with husband Larry, two American Eskimo dogs, a flying squirrel, and two fish.

Brent Michael Davis
was born and raised on Florida's Gulf Coast and is currently Creative Director and Chief Copywriter and Producer for a large broadcasting company in Birmingham, Alabama. He has won nine American Advertising Awards and is a Radio Mercury Award Nominee. His writing achievements include 1st and 2nd place for the short story in the 1999 Panama City Professional Writers' Association Writers' Contest, and the Page Edwards 1st Prize in the 2000 Florida First Coast Short Story Competition.

Jerry Decker
originally from Miami, Florida, vowed to return to the coastline of Florida. In 1993, he did, by moving from Illinois with his wife. He has worked as a welder, among other professions. Fifteen years ago, Decker came to photography. What began as a hobby became a way of seeing the world, and that special vision continues to define who he is. He is currently working on a series of floral still-life close-ups.

Helene Gardner
was born in Châteauroux, France. Her best subjects in school were writing, painting, and music. Her worst subject was English, which nevertheless became her first language after marrying an American, with whom she raised two children. Gardner and her family have lived in France, Turkey, Germany, several parts of the U.S., and now Florida. Three years ago, she attended a creative writing class offered by Education Encore at Gulf Coast Community College and began to write. The next Christmas, she gave each of her four grandchildren a book copy of her best poems and short stories. Thus began a tradition, and she continues to write for them.

Rusty Garner
a musician, artist, actor, composer, published poet and writer, is avid at most things pertaining to the arts. He was recently named Conductor of the Saint Andrew Bay Orchestra. He enjoys travel, especially to Native American areas and events. Playing the cedar flute in a high, lonely place in the Southwest or performing music or theatre on stage, are favorite activities. His only daughter, Holly, is also pursuing a career in the arts. Rusty is a professor of music and theatre at Gulf Coast Community College.

Barbara Gribble
currently a professor of English at Gulf Coast Community College in Panama City, Florida, was born in Seattle and received her Ph.D. from The University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Previously employed at The University of Memphis, she has served as managing editor for the TPA [Tennessee Philological Association] Bulletin and has published in Language and Style and The Journal of the William Morris Society.

Mary E. Halliburton
has published in more than twenty-five publication. A native of Hope Hull, Alabama, Mary Halliburton has appeared in The Quarterly; High Tide 2000; Grandmother Earth, and Ordinary and Sacred as Blood, Alabama Women Speak. Her poems have been selected as contest winners for four consecutive years by Ohio Poetry Day and most recently won both first and second prize in the 2nd Annual Writers' Contest of the Panama City Professional Writers' Association,

Harry Hammond
grew up in the heart of northwest Florida in the small town of Chipley. He received a degree in Fine Art from Auburn University in 1980. For most of his work, Hammond draws on the people and places of the South: “My work represents a realism that exemplifies the light, textures, and shapes of rural America. I paint what I know and emotionally relate to, mainly life in the South,” His work has won many awards for excellence in competitions and exhibitions nationally. His art has been selected for exhibit at the Wiregrass Museum, the Huntsville Museum of Art, the Florida State University Museum of Fine Art, and the National Arts Club in New York City. His work is in corporate and private collections throughout the United States, including the Detroit Medical Center, which commissioned Hammond to paint portraits of two former chairmen. He considers his artistic style to be ever-evolving.

Lola Haskins
received her most recent book, Desire Lines, New and Selected Poems (Story Line Press) in June, 2001. Story Line also published Extranjera in 1998, and reissued Hunger, which won the Iowa Poetry Prize in 1992. A further collection, The Rim-Benders, is forthcoming from Anhinga Press in October, 2001. For a day job, Ms. Haskins teaches Computer Science at the University of Florida. (Editor's note: Lola Haskins' readings of her work are noted for their vitality and immediacy, reacquainting listeners with the poetry's oral tradition.)

Georgian Henry-Pearson
has frequently won awards for her poetry and has published in many nationally circulated journals and literary magazines. She has a chapbook titled Mother Is A Woman. She was founding president of the Emerald Coast Poets, the Bay County chapter of the Florida State Poetry Association, and past president of the Georgia State Poetry Society. A retired teacher and national consultant on matters in early childhood and elementary education, she was founding writer and director for Project Head Start in Bay County and director of the Head Start program for Florida State University.

Ric Hunter
is a retired Air Force fighter pilot with a combat tour in Southeast Asia and 11 years flying the F-15 Eagle. He is now a freelance writer and photographer who has feature articles published in many out door and aviation magazines. He has recently completed a historical novel about an F-4 “Phantom” squadron in the Vietnam War.

Lou Krueger
from a long line of storytellers, including a pioneer, Krueger has lived in Northwest Florida for twenty years. Before that, she lived for thirty year in Montana, where the novel that she is currently working on is set. She frequently attends the Summer Writing Festival at the University of Iowa and actively lives the writing life, currently teaching creative writing at UWF's Center for Lifelong Learning. Her first published short story appeared in the Florida magazine, Changes, and her work has since appeared in Writer's Digest and The Writer. This summer, Thema published her short story “Mourning in May.” The story in this anthology won the 1st prize for the short story in the year 2000 from the Panama City Professional Writers' Association.

Carole Petit Lapensohn
a native of Charleston, S.C., employs her love of language in both her professional and personal lives. A recovering English teacher, she currently manages public relations and marketing for Gulf Coast Community College and is executive director of the GCCC Foundation. A poet by inclination, she is completing a comic mystery novel set in Northwest Florida. In developing Hyacinth, her 70-year-old Southern sleuth, Carole Lapensohn succumbs to a more antic bent.

Leona McNulty O'Sullivan
writes, draws, paints, and sends rants to her local periodicals in rural upstate New York when she is not enjoying the Emerald Coast. She lettered all four years in her college literary magazine, and once won 2nd place in an American Penwomen, Syracuse Chapter, poetry contest. Otherwise she has bloomed unnoticed except by friends and family, and is pleased to be included here.

Logan M. Pope
spent his childhood in Georgia, Florida, and Kentucky. After military service, he interned as a reporter and later as a drama critic for The Courier-Journal in Louisville, KY. To his family's horror, he ran away with a touring Shakespeare troupe, which led to acting jobs in summer stock, off-Broadway, and Hollywood, where he got an agent and a few bit parts in soap operas and obscure films. He once auditioned right after Anthony Hopkins. In 1984, he came to Panama City. He met his now wife Mary, and they, along with two dogs and thirteen cats, make Panama City their home. Logan Pope continues to act, appearing in major roles in every season of the Martin Ensemble Theatre. He also began to write. This story was a prize winner in the Panama City Professional Writers' Association's writing contest, 2000, and he is proud to have that story included here.

Bette Adams Powell
is a native of Panama City, and her three grandsons represent a fifth generation of Bay County residents. Office manager for a manufacturing company, she writes advertising copy professionally, adding a third dimension to her passion for language. Writing poetry and prose, editing, and gardening are among her personal pleasures, but she allows little to interfere with kissing grandsons and reading. Her poems have appeared in Southern literary journals.

Noël Rivera
was born in Panama City in 1980. Since then, she has moved across Florida with her family several times. However, she returned and is a graduate of the Bay High AICE program as well as Gulf Coast Community College. She plans to attend the Art Institute of Ft. Lauderdale to study Computer Animation.

Tony Simmons
Tony is a Florida boy. He’s the assistant managing editor for news at The News Herald in Panama City, where he lives with his wife, Debra, and their children, Nathaniel and Jessica. He was born and raised in Century, and graduated from Century High School in 1982, sixth in a class of 60. He has degrees in television production and print journalism from, respectively, Pensacola Junior College and the University of West Florida, both located in Pensacola.


Denzil Strickland
is a writer for an advertising agency and lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with his wife Caroline and two daughters. His fiction has appeared in Yemassee and is forthcoming in The Louisville Review. He is also a recent Hackney Award recipient for one of his short stories. In Austin, Texas, one night, he asked a motel desk clerk if she knew of any good live music. She pointed him toward a bar down the street, where she said a new kid was playing: “They say he's the next Merle Haggard.” He went, he listened, and he imagined the story that is included here.

Clell Warriner
was born, reared, and educated in Oklahoma. Dr. Warriner has practiced clinical psychology in Panama City, Florida, since 1964. His book, He Eats His Sandwich Upside Down, released in the summer of 2001, derives from his and his client's experience and struggle to understand and make sense of modern relationships. The chapter “What's Going on in the Bathroom?” is an example of the flavor and the unique perspective of the book.

Douglas Wells
has taught writing at colleges and universities in Florida, Tennessee, Maryland, and Virginia. He will join the faculty of Gulf Coast Community College this fall. He has had a play produced for the stage, he received a faculty award to work on a novel, and an excerpt from one of his novels was selected for presentation at the 20th Century Literature Conference at the University of Louisville.

Terry Wright
acquired a wide range of experience in non-fiction writing in both academia and industry. Following his education in engineering at Georgia Tech, he worked for Westinghouse Research Laboratories. Dr. Wright left industry in the mid-1980s to become a professor of mechanical engineering. He has published many research papers and has written an engineering textbook on turbo-machinery. Dr. Wright is now an Emeritus Professor of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and is active in writing non-fiction, fiction, and poetry.