Tracy Lamb
Trained as a fine artist at Minneapolis College of Art and Design, she found that her experience and skills in graphic design was much more effective in paying the rent. Many of her clients are foundations and non-profits as well as small businesses and corporations. She holds several awards for her work in design and photography. As a board member, she brings her experience of design and marketing to Whit. She also brings the experience of an active board member with other not-for-profit organizations and the financial skills garnered from running a successful full service design and advertising agency.

"To be able to meld my love of design and communication with the support of literature aimed toward environmental and social justice makes Whit Press a most perfect match for my skills. This work promotes change where needed and it fulfills my desire to be a part of that change."

Anita Montgomery
Anita Montgomery is a theatre director, teaching artist, and arts administrator. For the last five years, she has been Literary Associate and Director of Education and Outreach at ACT Theatre in Seattle where she manages the literary and new-play development departments. Anita also created and manages ACT's Young Playwrights Program (YPP), which teaches the craft of playwriting to Seattle-area middle and high schools students; now in fourteen schools, serving over 300 students. In Seattle she has taught and/or directed for ACT, Book-it, Jack Straw Productions, Seattle Center Academy, Seattle Children's Theatre, Theater Schmeater, & the YMCA, as well as teaching residencies in over 15 Seattle public schools. Anita is a member of Actors Equity Association, The Screen Actors Guild & AFTRA. She attended the University of Texas at Austin, receiving her BFA in acting in 1979.

"In this age of mass production and consumption, with diminished attention paid to the truly unique voice, Whit Press stands out like a beacon of light; an oasis from which to drink deep and have ones faith restored in the power of the word and the notion of community. I am thrilled to be a part of the Whit Press family."

Jill McKinstry Morrison
Jill McKinstry is the Head Librarian of the Odegaard Undergraduate Library at the University of Washington. As a librarian at the UW for the past 18 years, Jill is a passionate advocate for libraries and partnerships within the community. She led planning activities for the opening events, lecture and film series with Seattle Public Library and Science Fiction Museum around the traveling ALA, NLM, and NEH exhibit, Frankenstein: Penetrating the Secrets of Nature. In 2003, Jill created a program to celebrate and reward students' research and creative activities, called the UW Library Research Award for Undergraduates. Jill has also had some fun with video tours and promotions in the last couple of years: Libraries tour [video recording]/with Jill McKinstry; UWTV Production, won a Bronze Award at the 21st Annual Telly Awards and the video "Jill and Linda" was chosen as "Spot of the Day." by Ad Critic, October 16, 2003 as a television spot to promote support for the homeless through the newspaper, Real Change. In addition to a Master of Librarianship from the University of Washington, Jill also has a Master and Bachelor of Arts from the UW in Spanish Literature.

"I look forward to working with fellow board members to help promote the literary arts through the innovative and much needed voice of Whit Press."

Susan Rich

A transplanted Bostonian, Susan Rich is the winner of the PEN USA Poetry Award as well as the Peace Corps Writers Poetry Award for The Cartographer's Tongue: Poems of the World, (White Pine Press, 2000). Her second book, Cures Include Travel is recently released from White Pine Press (2006). She has worked as a staff person for Amnesty International, an electoral supervisor in Bosnia, and a human rights trainer in Gaza. Rich lived in the Republic of Niger, West Africa as a Peace Corps Volunteer, later moving to South Africa to teach at the University of Cape Town on a Fulbright Fellowship. Rich's international awards include invitations from the USIS to work in Zimbabwe as a writer-in-residence, a residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Ireland, and a Ruben Rose Award from Israel. Other poetry honors include an Artist Trust Fellowship from Washington State, a GAP Award, the Rella Lossy Award from the San Francisco State Poetry Center, the Sojourner Poetry Award chosen by June Jordan, and the Glimmer Train Poetry Award.

Her poems have appeared in journals both in the United States and internationally including the Christian Science Monitor, Harvard Magazine, Massachusetts Review, North American Review, Poet Lore, Poetry International, Alaska Quarterly Review, Southern Poetry Review and Witness. Anthologized poems, essays, and interviews are included in Best Essays of the Northwest, Family Matters: Poems of Our Families, O Taste and See: Food Poems, South African Poets on Poetry 1992-2001, Literary Lunch, To Touch the World: the Peace Corps Experience, Voices From the Field: Peace Corps Worldwise Schools and Writing the Journey: Essays, Poems, Stories of Travel. Educated at the University of Massachusetts, Harvard University, and the University of Oregon, Susan Rich lives in Seattle and teaches at Highline Community College and the Antioch University MFA Program in Los Angeles. She is an active member of the Somali Rights Network, a non-governmental organization, an alum of Hedgebrook, and an editor at Floating Bridge Press.

"Whit Press is poetry in action. I love the interconnection of focused activism and fabulous writing. I've always believed that poetry can change the world but now Whit Press has made the simple purchase of a book and support for the environment one and the same."

Amal Sedky Winter, Ph.D.
Amal Sedky Winter, Ph.D. is a psychologist who, in addition to her clinical practise, was a court-appointed specialist, a professor and dean in doctoral programs, president of a community college district board, and an Arab American national figure. She has been a consultant with the United States Department of State, served on a mission to investigate post-war Iraq's capacity to hold elections, and trained politically active women in various countries of the Middle East. She is currently consulting to the Egyptian Ministry of Justice in establishing a country-wide, mediation-based, family court system.Dr. Winter has served on many national and local boards ranging from the national board of Psychologists for Social Responsibility to the board of the Explorer West Middle School in West Seattle. She joined the Whit Press board because;

"The integrity of Whit Press leaps off of every page of every book it has ever published. You don't have to be a writer or poet to resonate to that."

Whit Press Advisory Board

Nassim Assefi
Nassim Assefi, MD, a 2nd generation Iranian-American, is an internist specializing in women's health and global medicine. Most recently, she has been an academic in Seattle, a humanitarian aid worker and underground salsa dance teacher in Kabul, and an aspiring musician in Havana. She has traveled to more than 40 countries, and currently lives in San Francisco when she is not abroad. She is a graduate of Wellesley College, University of Washington Medical School, and Harvard's Brigham and Women's residency program. She is the author of numerous scientific publications; Aria, to be published by Harcourt in spring of 2007, is her first novel. She is currentlywriting a second novel set in post-conflict Afghanistan.

H. Emerson Blake
H. Emerson Blake was trained as an ecologist and his first editorial job with a biology journal. After a decade as an editor at Orion, he assumed the role of editor-in-chief at Milkweed Editions, a book publisher. In 2005 he returned to Orion to serve as the magazine's editor-in-chief and as the executive director of The Orion Society. He is the editor of hundreds of magazine articles, as well as many books of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and children's fiction.

Kitty Harmon
The founder and former director of the nonprofit literary organization and annual celebration of the written word Bookfest Northwest. She is a book development specialist, and brings considerable nonprofit administrative ability to Whit Press.

Sandra McPherson
Honors and awards include three National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, a Guggenheim fellowship, two Ingram Merrill grants, an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and letters, and a nomination for the National Book Award. Ms. McPherson was featured on the Bill Moyers television series The Language of Life. She has edited poetry for Antioch Review, The Iowa Review, The California Quarterly, The Pushcart Prize, and an issue of Poetry Northwest ; been an NEA panelist and judge for the Lamont, National Book Award, National Poetry Series, Ruth Lilly, and many other competitions; and taught at writers' conferences including The Art of the Wild and the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. Several hundred poems have appeared in magazines from American Poetry Review to Zyzzyva , including The Paris Review, TriQuarterly, The Yale Review, and The New Yorker. In 1999 she founded Swan Scythe Press, a poetry chapbook publishing venture.

Kim Johnson Bogart, PhD
Kim has a background in literary theory and criticism with a focus on the role of American literary humor in shaping national identity. Her current interests focus on the role stories play in cultural vitality and ecologies of knowledge and meaning. As UW Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Education from 1997-2005, she developed leadership, service learning, and research programs for students and fostered international learning through creative uses of technology that enable students and faculty to work with peers in other parts of the world on shared projects. Prior to returning to UW for graduate study, Kim served on arts councils and school boards at local, regional and state levels in Alaska. She has recently assumed new responsibilities as Director of Strategic Initiatives in the UW Office of Development and Alumni Relations. In her free time, Kim is developing We Live on the Blue, a line of children's clothing that fuses fabrics from different cultures. Most of Kim's metaphors come from her garden.

"I believe Whit Press is critical to cultural creativity and vitality. By giving voice to emerging writers and diverse perspectives, producing elegant and sustainable books, and partnering with sister organizations to pursue a shared vision, Whit models an innovative, beautiful, and ecologically hopeful approach to the power of the book we so dearly need."

Linden Ontjes
Linden Ontjes is the General Director of Eleventh Hour Productions and serves on the board of Whit Press. She served as the Poetry Editor of the Seattle Review from 2004-2006. She received her law degree from Harvard Law School and formerly practiced entertainment law for Loeb and Loeb in Los Angeles. Linden has extensive experience in arts administration, including Founding Board Member of Downtown Arts Development Association in Los Angeles; Co-Chairperson of DownArts Exhibition, Reading, and Performance Series in Los Angeles; Member of Alaska State Council on the Arts Performing Arts Grant Review Panel; Art Division Director University of Alaska Fairbanks Summer Fine Arts Camp; and Manager of Downtown Artists' Colony in Los Angeles. She has published her poetry in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Nimrod, The Louisville Review, The Exquisite Corpse, Poetry Daily, The Comstock Review, RE:AL, Atlanta Review and many other journals. She has published critical essays and journalism in The Writer's Chronicle, the Seattle Review, Cranky, and the Fairbanks Daily News Miner. Upcoming publications include Phoebe and Page to Page: Retrospectives of Writers from the Seattle Review.

"I support Whit Press for not only its impressive publications list and impeccable design sense, but its unique business model and vision."

Jeffery Shotts
Jeffery Shotts is currently Poetry Editor at Graywolf Press. He is also currently Advisory Poetry Editor for Post Road, and he is on the advisory board of Project Logos: The Center for Creative Writing at Saint John's University and the Literary Arts Institute at the College of Saint Benedict.Shotts completed his Master of Fine Arts in Writing at Washington University in Saint Louis, and has published poetry, essays, and reviews in several magazines and literary journals, including Agni, The Georgia Review, The Journal, Rain Taxi, and The Writer's Chronicle. He lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Staff

Claudia Mauro, Publisher
The Director of Whit Press, Claudia Mauro is an active member of The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses, Book Publishers Northwest, The Northwest Booksellers Association, The Northern California Booksellers Association, and the Triangle Publishing Group. She has served as the Northwest publisher's regional liaison to the Publishers Marketing Association, and has been a judge for the Lambda Book Awards. Claudia is also a commercially licensed pilot, and has flown extensively in support of private and public environmental projects in Alaska.

Claudia Mauro is the recipient of two Seattle Arts Commission Awards, a Hedgebrook Fellowship, Whiteley Center Fellowship and Jack Straw Writers Fellowship. She has published two collections of poetry, Stealing Fire (Whiteaker, 1996) and Reading the River (Whiteaker, 1999). Both collections were nominated for Lambda Book Awards. Her work appears in various journals throughout the Northwest, King County's Poetry on the Buses project, and as a permanent installation at The Seattle Public Library, Beacon Hill Branch.

E-mail: director@whitpress.org