Ghost Sign

About the Authors

AL ORTOLANI’S poetry and reviews have appeared in journals such as Rattle, Prairie Schooner, New Letters, The Writer’s Almanac, and the New York Quarterly, and his poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. He has published several collections of poetry, including His Waving Mustard in Surrender (NYQ Books), which was short-listed for Binghamton University's Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award, and Paper Birds Don’t Fly, released in April 2016 by New York Quarterly Books. Al has served on the Board of Directors of the Writers Place, The Brick Mountain Foundation, The Little Balkans Press, and currently sits on the board of Woodley Press at Washburn University in Topeka. He regularly drank coffee at the White Buffalo Café and Emporium and was once photographed eating the largest baloney sandwich ever served at 7th and Broadway.

In 1984, the same year the White Buffalo Café and Emporium closed its doors, three-year-old MELISSA FITE JOHNSON moved to Pittsburg, KS. She never left. The town fostered in her a love of literature and writing. She earned a Master’s Degree in English Literature from Pittsburg State University and currently teaches English at her alma mater, Pittsburg High School. Her poems have appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Broadsided Press, Midwest Quarterly, Red Paint Hill Journal, and elsewhere, and her first collection, While the Kettle’s On (Little Balkans Press,2015), won the Nelson Poetry Book Award and is a Kansas Notable Book. Melissa and her husband, Marc, live in Pittsburg with their four backyard chickens.

ADAM JAMESON was born and raised in Pittsburg, Kansas. He is a 1995 graduate of Pittsburg State University, where he earned a B.A. in History. His Whitmanesque job history includes self-employed construction, UPS, and Kansas City Southern Railroad. He currently works as an estimator for Westar Energy. Adam started writing poetry in high school and has spent the last 25 years performing with White Buffalo Poetry and Blues. His poems have appeared in Harp, The Little Balkans Review, and To the Stars through Difficulty, and his first collection of poetry, #9 to Sallisaw, was released in 2013 by Little Balkans Press. Adam lives in rural Pittsburg with his wife, Meredith, and son, Cole; his favorite past times are chasing pheasants in the fields of western Kansas and catching slab crappie in the strip pits around Pittsburg.

Former co-owner of White Buffalo Café and Emporium and founding member of White Buffalo, J.T. KNOLL has twice been awarded first place in column writing by The Kansas Press Association as a columnist for The Morning Sun. He has performed original songs and poetry in a myriad of venues across the country and led mindfulness and training workshops throughout the Midwest. His poetry has appeared in journals such as The Midwest Quarterly, Another Chicago Magazine, Chameleon, and The Little Balkans Review. His published collections include Paperboy, True Stories, Entry / Exit Point, Chorus Line, Where The Pavement Ends, and Fetch Crazy. He lives with his wife, Linda, and Arlo the Labradorian on Euclid’s curve in Pittsburg, Kansas, where he operates Knoll Training and Consulting. An ambivert, he is equally at home meditating and reading in his room as singing and reciting poetry in a performance hall.