Three Candles Press: Poets

Erin Elizabeth Smith received her MFA in Poetry from the University of Illinois and is currently a PhD candidate at the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her poetry has previously appeared in Third Coast, Crab Orchard, Natural Bridge, West Branch, The Pinch, Rhino, and Willow Springs among others. She is the managing editor of Stirring as well as the Best of the Net anthology.

Andrew Demcak is an award-winning poet who has been widely published and anthologized both in print and on-line. He has an M. F. A. in English/Creative Writing from St. Mary's College in Moraga, CA , where he studied with Robert Hass, Brenda Hillman, Michael Palmer, Carol Snow, Frank Bidart, Gary Snyder, Charles Wright, and Sharon Olds. Andrew is also a member of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, where he studied with Galway Kinnell, Richard Howard, and Lucille Clifton. His poems, including Young Man With iPod (Poetry Midwest, #13), are taught at Ohio State University as part of both its English 110.02 class, "The Genius and the Madman," and in its "American Poetry Since 1945" class. At the age of 23, Andrew published his first chapbook, The Psalms (Big 23 Press), which was favorably reviewed by Dr. Clifton Snider in the Small Press Review (issue 226, vol. 23, no. 11.) When he is not hard at work driving the Bookmobile for Oakland Public Library, he can be found attending "GuyWriters" poetry readings at Anthony's house in San Francisco, or eating Tibetan momos with his partner, Peter. Viva Wallace Stevens! Visit Andrew at: http://www.andrewdemcak.com.

Tony Trigilio's poems have appeared in numerous publications, including Beloit Poetry Journal, Black Clock, Denver Quarterly, Hotel Amerika, The Iowa Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, three candles journal, and the anthologies Digerati: 20 Contemporary Poets in the Virtual World and America Zen.

A musician as well as a poet, Tony recorded and toured with the avant-pop band Drumming on Glass. He collaborates with Michael Trigilio on The Starve Site (http://www.starve.org), an online home for experimental video, writing, music, and performance.

Tony was born in Erie, Pennsylvania, and has lived most of his life in Boston and Chicago. While in Boston, Tony edited Lotus Arrow, the newsletter of the Kurukulla Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies, and was one of the founding members of the Fenway Skills Exchange, a grass-roots alternative economic system for the Fenway neighborhood.

He teaches at Columbia College Chicago and co-edits the poetry magazine Court Green.

RJ McCaffery was born in Manchester, Connecticut. He attended Providence College from which he graduated magna cum laude with Distinction in English Literature. He subsequently completed his M.F.A. in Writing at Sarah Lawrence College. Since that time he has lived in: Providence, Rhode Island; Athens, Georgia; Hartford, Connecticut; and Washington, D.C.

Following the tradition of many writers whose loyalty is first given to writing, he has held a bevy of jobs, working as a technical writer for an environmental engineering group, a public librarian, an immigration interviewer, a census taker, a handy-man, a mortgage processor, a receptionist for a health center, a teaching assistant, a student loan counselor, a warehouse palate-jockey, an eggplant picker, a car-deliverer, a book binder, a photo-developer, a web-site designer, book-store clerk, an office manager, a night shift connivance store clerk, a comic book editor, and a theatre manager.

An avid bicyclist, he builds his own bicycles which range from junkyard recumbents to fixed-gear uprights.

In the fall of 2004, he entered Georgetown University Law Center in D.C., in pursuit of a J.D., and not being able (or willing) to escape from poetry, he's recently been as pleased as punch to take up an editorial position at the New Hampshire Review.

More information about RJ can be found on his blog at http://scoplaw.blogs.com/