Below are bios for the writers who’ve written for and are actively writing for H and H. Our “Regular Contributors” consist of those who have had several pieces accepted by H and H, who comment to provide feedback and help other writers find insight to their particular craft. These writers are the engine that drives Haggard and Halloo and are, for the most part, daily visitors. House writers come and go, but here you can learn more about them.
Dirk Michener
Dirk Michener is from Colleyville, TX and is the co-founder of Business Deal Entertainment, an arts collective in Austin, TX. His first chapbook of poetry, FAKE BLOOD: Architect Exclusively in the Field of Labyrinth was released by Haggard and Halloo in 2003. Dirk (aka Cavedweller) released his latest album on Instincto Records in 2009 and now releases music on his own. He currently lives in Austin, TX. Visit his blog.
Brandon S. Roy
Brandon S. Roy is the editor of The Panulaan Review. He has been published extensively. People insist on calling him a poet, though, he much prefers being referred to as Brandon.
Beth Cortez-Neavel
Beth Cortez-Neavel is a freelance multimedia journalist living in Austin, Texas. She enjoys cooking, writing, sarcasm, good art and video games set on “easy.” She writes empowered erotic poetry and can bee seen around austin photographing different events for pleasure and for pay. She is currently working towards her Masters degree at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of Texas.
Gene Defcon
Gene Defcon lives in Austin, TX. As a long time Business Deal associate he’s released albums with K Records, Look Out Records, Business Deal and his newest album Throw Up and Die was released by Retard Disco Records in 2006. He currently plays in the band The Potlikkers and The Carrots. Gene is also growing a single ear of corn in his backyard.
Guest Writers Section
Guest Writers is the special section for the the talented and brave individuals passing through Haggard and Halloo. This section is for (and of) hundreds of different artists who’ve submitted writing to H and H over the years. Over time, this has become a mainstay for Haggard and Halloo and many of our House Writers and good friends have started here. This is a very important and vast section for H and H.
Halifax
has been completely convinced by photographic evidence and overwhelming coraborating verbal accounts that he was born to a woman. It happened so long ago he doesn’t remember- he just takes it on the faith he has in his sources that it did. That said, he’s had to take everything else on faith too. With so much shared subjectivity, he’s decided that reality is tangible. His core belief is that someone went to a lot of trouble to construct what he experiences, so it must be important. And since all of it is made from the faith he carries- he must trust whoever it is that makes it.
Jim Benz
Jim Benz is a husband, father and United Steelworker. Doesn’t care for biographies. Likes to write.
Kimberly E. Ruth
Kimberly E. Ruth is a recent graduate of SUNY New Paltz where she studied photography and journalism. Her first full-length chapbook, Said the Oyster to the Fly, was recently accepted by Pudding House Press. She has appeared in a number of journals including elimae, Shoots and Vines, and Gold Wake Press.She plans to attend graduate school in the fall where she will work towards an MFA in fine art. You can view samples of her art at kimberlyruth.blogspot.com
Matt Ronquillo
Matt Ronquillo’s physical presence tends to cause complex systems and mechanical processes to mysteriously break down. He hails from Southern California.
Meghan Tennison
Meghan was born and raised in Samoa. Meghan is thus incredibly naive, but still attempts to decipher the universe. Somehow. She plays the forgettable roles of society, such as dishwasher and cashier, while pretending that humans are just grouchy little animals. She loves what she doesn’t understand, which is everything and this makes her one of the only happy people in town.
Nicole Kuwik
Nicole Kuwik is prone to walking into mirrors. Â She will not step on that bug, and hopes that if you catch him, you let him go right away. Â She prefers to walk and takes her coffee black.
Oscar Smiles
Oscar Smiles lives in Dallas, TX in an old art church hidden from corruption. He descends from a line of crazy musicians and spends lots of time on the highway. He works as the private driver for a wealthy stranger.
Pat A. Physics
Pat A. Physics was born in El Paso, TX and lives in Austin, TX. He plays guitar and sings for The Zom Zoms, who recently retired their polka dots. Pat’s solo musical project, Pat A Physics, evolved into a full ensemble that performs regularly and touring the west coast in the spring of 2009. He also plays children’s music with The Telephone Company and The Charles Edward Cheese Band. Pat likes to go swimming a lot.
Quasimofo
Quasimofo Snyder is the bastard son of Anne Sexton and Dr. Seuss. Additionally, he is a Mack truck driver, poet-warrior, and slave to the occasional homemade zine. Snyder dabbles in experimental poetry of coitus imagination, high-jinx jingles, spontaneous bebop prosody, and the art of wacky spasticalitous linguistic analysis through lost and accurate ramblings that are likely to blow your panties off into new dimensions of the cosmoverse, and standing there naked, you will feel no remorse giving God back the fig leaves…. Quasimofo has authored one book of poetry, ‘Poems Written Near A Laundromat’, and is currently working on another to be entitled: ‘Peyote Milkshakes On A Roller Coaster Descending Hell: Pre-Apocalyptic Closet Romanticist Poems for the 21st Century’.
Reed Posey
Reed Posey is a painter, musician and cyclist. He lives in Oakland, CA. He has an increasing collection of scars from bike and art show incidents. He recently started a band called, Light by Fire and they are rock and roll. His art work is featured in galleries all around, quite frequently. Visit his blog.
Oswald James
Oswald James (aka James E Oswald, aka Senataur Ferguss) lives in Austin, TX. A drummer since childhood, he’s been in too many bands to mention. He is the co-founder of Walking Mountain Range and Haggard and Halloo. Oswald is a photographer, film maker, writer and is currently working on a book of stories for the screen. He is the founder of Alta Real Pictures and a producer of the annual Austin Psych Fest. See more of his photos here: http://oswaldjames.tumblr.com/
Shannon Baker
Shannon Baker is between Portland, Oregon and Sterling, Virgina writing a novel, making songs and walking in the woods.
Shawn Misener
Shawn Misener lives in a declining urban center in Michigan. His real jobs have included teaching high school, caretaking for the severely disabled, selling liquor to alchoholics and college students, and cleaning out old apartments that others have abused. He’s just about thirty and writes poetry and short fiction. Writing a novel is just too much for him at the moment. You can visit him at his blog: http://misener.wordpress.com
Shon Toney
Shon Toney lives in Pahoa, Hawaii and Portland, Oregon. He releases music under the name Hard Rock Zombie. His first album, LA PAZ, was released by Business Deal Entertainment for which he is now a financial consultant. He is one of the founders of Haggard and Halloo and focuses his time on writing movie scripts, short stories and paving his driveway with smokestack ashes.
Softserve
Softserve lives in Kansas and works in child welfare. Is a mennonite. Thinks poetry is a formless, senseless, mutated escape from the cold world around us. Cares deeply about people, morals, and the family unit. Used to be into philosophy, but discovered that it gets too distorted, abstracted, at a certain point, and becomes worthless. Softserve read somewhere that there are tiny caterpillar-like organisms that live on people’s eyelashes.
Wynn Everett
Wynn Everett has been published in River Poets Anthology, 63Channels Magazine, Wilderness House Literary Review (Volume 4.3) and three online journals. She and her husband live between Atlanta and Los Angeles. She loves short stories by Ron Rash, poetry by Edna St. Vincent Millay and anything about cabins, trains or The South.
Former Writers:
Amy Poland lives in Walla Walla, WA after a long journey through the rain forests of Hawaii. She has produced 3 chapbooks of her poetry and various zines.
Anna Eyre grew up playing in the crumbling adobes of commune Reality. Her first chapbook Metaplasmic was released by Effing Press in Austin TX. She currently lives in Taos, New Mexico.
Anthony Liccione has been writing poetry for 13 years and recently started writing magazine articles. His poems have appeared in My Favorite Bullet, Nuvein, The Flow Magazine, ESC! Magazine and Underground Voices. In 2005 he was nominated for a Pushcart and released his first chapbook Heaven’s Shadow with Foothills Publishing.
Brandon Follett: Thrive Magazine calls Brandon Follett the twenty-first century’s answer to the Renaissance Man for his involvement in a wide variety of creative projects spanning poetry, photography, stand-up comedy, acting, music, omelet reviews, spoken word, travel writing, and documentary filmmaking. His body of work is “The Mental Foreplay Experience,†and you can experience it yourself at www.brandonfollett.com.
Bryon D. Howell has been writing poetry on and off for over 20 years. He started as a rhymer, and only very recently conceded to the writing on the wall that screams sonnets and other such fixed forms are indeed, sadly, dying. Mr. Howell’s poetry has appeared in Censored Poets, PULSE, The Quirk, Red River Review, and poeticdiversity. He has been writing and submitting profusely these days. Soon, Bryon’s newer works will be featured in The Houston Literary Review, Yellow Mama, and of course, Haggard and Halloo.Cheyenne Gallion is from Texas and has lived in many of its cities working as a graphic designer. He is a co-founder of Mad Swirl and currently lives in Austin, TX. He is a founder of americanxanthos.com
Chris Walker was born on February 4th, 1985 in Upper Hayford, England. Despite this fact he is and will always be seventeen years old. His hobbies include reading, writing, listening to music, watching movies, sleep deprivation and malnutrition. He is currently in his sophmore year at George Mason University (because it beats having a job), where he majors in Theatre and Sociology. He was introduced to H and H by his good friend Shannon Baker, to whom he is consistently eternally grateful. If you have not already stopped reading this bio then you probably should right……now.
Dan Odell was born in Texas and has been a long time resident of Long Beach, CA. He paints, writes, plays music and creates beautiful sculptures that he refuses to sell.
David Meiklejohn co-produces The Awesome Triannual Review of Art and Literature. His first book of poetry, PLOTS was released by Effing Press in 2004. While reading a hundred books this year (www.onehundredbooks.blogspot.com) he lives in NY, NY and is frequently on the road with FOUND Magazine.
DIY-Danna was born on a little island to an Afro-Bohemian mother and sensitive American Indian artist father, and raised in town called Beaumont, TX (which she affectionately refers to as Boremont). Also known as Danna Williams, diy-danna currently resides in a small suburb of Austin, TX working as a permanent temporary employee, freelance music journalist, blogger and publicist. She relishes the idea of being a struggling fiction writer and poet, and enjoys satirizing the American Dream and other obsessions involving sexuality, class, and race – in poetry, short fiction, plays – and possibly one novel before her death from unnatural causes. Her humorously surreal style could be described as loquaciously whimsical or ridiculously wordy, depending on the reader’s mood. Danna passed away after a battle with cancer in 2014.
El Guero lives, works, and loves somewhere among the Seven Cities of Cibola. Presently at work on his master’s degree, he enjoys teaching writing (and writing about teaching), listening to Weezer on road trips, and climbing lonely windblown mesas in the desert with his wife and best friend.Ellhan is the person in the crowd and the crowd holding a baby easter goose with no one in particular. A group of wry smiles with access to the same account posting anonymous collections of absurd ideas brought about by too many late nights of talking on couches and kerbs.
Eric Sterling lives in Austin, TX. He records country music under the name The City Hall Gambler and plays live with the band, Eric Sterling and the Brown Sugar Band.
E.T. Leverson was born in Louisiana and grew up in East Texas. He currently lives in Bellingham, WA where he works as a head chef at an upscale joint. He plays professional darts and every instrument known to man. You can find him on his skateboard around the Waterfront Tavern or at the bar in his house.
Hummingirl, AKA Gie Gie, lives in Austin, TX where she is active in numerous plays, cabarets and working as a school teacher. She is a long time Business Deal Entertainment associate.
J. D. Nelson experiments with text and sound in his subterranean Colorado laboratory. His work has appeared in many online and print publications, including ‘The Best of The Dream People Poets’ chapbook. Visit J. D.’s website for more information: http://www.MadVerse.com
Jenn Frank sings in the band, Citizens on Patrol. In 2004 Jenn said: Sometimes these ideas strike me as funny in my dumb poo brain, and I have to say them fast as possible, without taking the time to moderate, modify, or articulate properly, and as soon as I say them this horrible black void settles on whoever I’m with, and they just look at me like ‘What did you say?’ and I spend four days feeling this awful weird guilt, like I accidentally murdered someone, and all because, in the great end, I’m simply not very funny. Visit Jenn at www.manufacturingmystique.com
John Penn was born and raised in Kinder, Louisiana. He is 35 yrs old, unmarried and has a high school diploma in diplomacy. He is unabashedly elitist in his literary tastes (Frost, Eliot, Yeats, Hemingway, Joyce, Pound), loves what was being done in progressive music between 67 and 73 (Soft Machine, King Crimson, Can…), is a sucker for Chic flicks and can cook a mean Ped Nang(thai food), and is a personal friend and fan of Matt Miller.
Josiah McLuv lives in southern California w/ his wife and daughter. He is a co-founder of the now defunct, stream of conciousness zine Walking Mountain Range. He has appeared in the magazines In Style and US either as a fashion “don’t” or an acclaimed hair colourist.
Justin K. Mansion lives in Katy, Texas where he keeps his guns and truck locked up.
Justin Ulmer lives and works in East Texas. He says, ‘I have tempermental parts. I struggle with impulsiveness. I’m honest to the point of insult. I have never watched ‘The Chapelle Show’. And, once I destroyed something old and beautiful when I was just a boy and still, I feel very, very bad about it’.
Leon Hohandel: I was born in one of the former Soviet Republics. Was then adopted by a Southern American family. I have a great affinity for uniforms. I write poetry. I write prose. I tune pianos for money. We heard he lives in Seattle, WA now.
Matt Miller was born and raised in the New Orleans area. He is 30 years old, unmarried, and has a Bachelor’s Degree in Languages. He will begin graduate school soon in Classical Studies. He has been writing for 25 years, was a professional theologian for seven years, and a professionally-trained French chef for three years in New York City. He has been published multiple times in two international theological journals, ‘Guardian of Truth’ and ‘Preceptor;’ and multiple times in local newspapers. Matt currently works as a professional business writer and his ultimate goal in life is to be the first human to decipher Linear A, a project that he has now been working on for three years.
Michelle Greenblatt lives in Plantation, Florida. She is a Writing Rhetoric Student and has published over 50 poems, two Pushcart Prize nominations, two chapbooks published, one more on the way from Jukka-Pekka Kervenin’s X-press(ed), a book being printed thru Thomas Lowe Taylor’s anabasis. You can find her work in AUGHT, Frank’s Home, X-stream and numerous other places. She enjoys making fun of people who sacrifice kittens. Two-sided shoe Two-sided shoe Two-sided shoe.
Misti Rainwater-Lites is a native Texan currently residing in New Mexico with her husband. She has published three novels and several collections of poetry at lulu.com. Misti is also the editor and publisher of Instant Pussy, a print poetry zine that features tits and ass and the occasional cock.Preston Dukes lives in Austin, TX and drives a truck with nails in the window. Preston plays guitar for Count Dracula’s Weed Smuggling Jam Engine, guitar for Maya Bond, sings and plays guitar for The Wyndyms and has recently started another band called Preston Dukes. He reads tons of books and saw the monkey cages in Athens, TX.
St. Nowhere has lived in seven major cities, and liked all of them, but loved none. Her geographic shifts are thinly-disguised attempts to avoid her lunatic family. This has proven difficult over the years, as they become more nomadic and numerous. Sadly, they are also possessed with her stubborn aversion to expiration. To compensate she has adopted several gypsies, and taught them to seek truth and beauty—concepts which, she is fully aware, do not exist.
Sallow Tallett, AKA Sophie T. Mishap, lives in Texas again. So far so good. Her stories are short, her poems are shorter, and that’s how it’s going to stay.
Smokey Farris lives in Walla Walla, WA and operates Farris Engraving. One of the original founders of Business Deal Entertainment he’s written and recorded more songs, chants, poems and mantras than a double-headed siren. His last project had him singing for Count Dracula’s Weed Smuggling Jam Engine because he owns way too many cars.
Ron Scott lives in Austin, TX and says, ‘I never tried trying to learn how to blast words from my eyes, and now really am into all the stuff in the back of my mind I stashed away for the time when dirt and sidewalk and silence and rhythym and laughter would stir not me not the outside but would just sit there, waiting for the end-of-days-within to break thru, for all that is repressed to speak, to converse with the strands of Is-ness in these moments. This be that time.
Tara Przybille Bradley is a displaced and irate Canadian and has been writing since she could use a crayon. Her first book, at the age of 4, was a 50 page spiral notebook (later titled “Compilation in Repetition”). In self-inflicted exile for the past six years she has recently taken refuge in the obscure-yet-charming town of Walla Walla, WA. Her husband, Brandon, and two confused kids harbor her knowingly. Her career path in the USofA in corrections and detention has been seemingly dichotomous with her other life as a poet gardener. This does not disturb her.
T.W. Bond was born to a runaway from a Cherokee reservation and a small time hustler (deceased) from New Orleans. Also: 1. Founder of short-lived, organized crime front-business, Bayside Austin Recording Studios. 2. Allegedly smoked from Vincent Price’s personal opium stash. 3. Scored the Italian film Il Circo Cinese 4. Member or former member of: The Wyndyms, Count Dracula’s Weed Smuggling Jam Engine, Business Deal SoupOrGroup, Barrington Garwood’s Herbvendors, Tyrone Azzam Quartet, The Stomps, The Traditions, The Great Upheavals, The Good Feelings, Communist Kato and the Soviet All-Stars, Voila, Peter Mountain, The Charles Potts Magic Windmill Band, Daisuke Yamamoto Band, Barry Micron, Gimmie Golo-Worm (the Amazing Cadaver), Tim and Claudia, and other music groups less memorable. 5. Father of performance artist Maya Bond. He currently lives in an undisclosed city in Texas.
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