About Amarillo Bay 1999-2016
Note: To see the About page for Amarillo Bay from 2017 on, go here.
Amarillo Bay intends to be the online literary magazine containing the finest modern literature.
What Is a Literary Magazine?
Most magazines contain feature stories, advertising, opinion, and maybe one or two works of fiction. The fiction is designed to appeal to the casual reader.
A literary magazine, however, contains only works of literary merit. Since the objective is to present carefully crafted literature—fiction, poetry, and nonfiction—rather than to make money, the editors select works based on the excellence of the writing rather than for commercial viability, confident that their readers recognize and appreciate fine writing.
Literary magazines allow writers to explore new ways of writing free from concerns about the commercial marketplace. They are also a showcase for works of professional writers who have written works that are not appropriate for traditional magazines.
Amarillo Bay continues the tradition of literary magazines in the new medium of the Web. The Web eliminates the cost of printing, the major expense of most literary magazines. In addition, all work is done by volunteers and authors receive no monetary compensation.
Check out the works in our issues 1999-2016 or our current issue and enjoy!
Amarillo Bay History
Jerry Craven and Bob Whitsitt met in 1979. They’ve never lived closer than 100 miles apart—and currently live nearly 2,000 miles apart—but they have remained in contact because of the common interests of literature and computers. (The name Amarillo Bay refers to Jerry’s former residence in the Texas Panhandle and Bob’s former home in the San Francisco Bay area.)
In the first few months of 1997 Jerry mentioned combining their abilities and starting an online literary magazine. Jerry has published poetry magazines and has had many stories and books published. Bob has been working heavily with the Web for the last few years. After some discussion (mostly by e-mail), they agreed to go ahead. Jerry rounded up editors for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and Bob designed the look of the magazine and created the HTML code to make it work. Early in 1999, they produced the first issue of Amarillo Bay.
In 2016, Bob ran into health issues with his hand, his vision, and his mind. As a result, he abruptly stopped working on Amarillo Bay just before Volume 18 Number 3 was to have come out. After a search, Jerry found Julie Wise, who took over the publishing starting in 2017. You can see the beautiful new issues here.
Amarillo Bay Staff
The Amarillo Bay staff (all volunteers) manage the day-to-day running of the magazine.
Note: You’ll get the fastest answers to your questions if you contact us using the information on the Contact page.
Volunteer Staff at end of 2016
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Jerry Craven
Jerry Craven
Jerry Craven, director of Lamar University Literary Press and Ink Brush Press, has published 25 books including fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. He has taught for five universities in three countries and has lived for extended periods of time in South America, South-East Asia, the Middle East and Europe. For further information, visit jerrycraven.com.
— Editor-in-Chief, March 1999 - -
Robert Whitsitt
Robert Whitsitt
Bob has been a high school math teacher in Pennsylvania, a service station attendant in Illinois and California, an office worker and programmer at Chevron, a technical writer for Texas Instruments and various Texas, California, New York, and Washington companies, a Web site designer and producer on the Internet, and a software quality assurance engineer in Texas and California. He retired in 2005 after a stint at Google. He dabbles in writing short stories and is working on a novel about a robot named Gulliver.
Bob and his wife Lana Bryan are both writers, so their company is The WriteTeam (writeteam.com). But they are retired, so don’t offer work.
— Publisher and Technical Editor, March 1999 - May 2016 -
Richard Moseley
Richard Moseley
Richard Moseley is professor emeritus in English at West Texas A&M University who taught literary courses in modern short fiction, film and literature, Southwestern literature, and the contemporary American novel. His degrees are from the University of Texas at Austin (B.A.) and the University of Cincinnati (M.A. and Ph.D.).
— Fiction Editor, March 1999 - -
Katherine Hoerth
Katherine Hoerth
Katherine Hoerth is the author of a poetry collection, The Garden Uprooted (Slough Press, 2012). Her work has been included in journals such as Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, BorderSenses, and Front Porch. She teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Texas Pan American and serves as Assistant Poetry Editor of Fifth Wednesday Journal.
— Poetry Editor, August 2014 - -
Gretchen Johnson
Gretchen Johnson
Gretchen Johnson lives in Beaumont, Texas, and works as an Assistant Professor of English at Lamar University. Her short stories and poems have appeared in The Blue Bear Review, The Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Poetry Harbor, Spout Press, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, and others. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from Southwest Minnesota State University and her MFA in Creative Writing from Texas State University. Her first book, The Joy of Deception, was published by Lamar University Literary Press in 2012, and her second book; A Trip Through Downer, Minnesota
, was published by Lamar University Literary Press in 2014.
— Creative Nonfiction Editor, March 2015 - -
Nikki Carr
Nikki Carr
Nikki Carr is an editor for the Vine Leaves Literary Journal and her work has appeared in ELJ Publications, London Journal of Fiction, Cardinal Flower Journal, Dual Coast Magazine, and Jitter Press among others. Her poems are forthcoming in the Poetry and Place Anthology from Close Up Books in April 2016. Her book, Paige Inside Out is forthcoming in June 2016 from Pink Girl Press. She is a poetry award recipient from the California Poetry Society, the Lillian Osborn Memorial Foundation.
— Copy Editor, February 2016 - -
Lana Bryan
Lana Bryan
Lana Bryan was an English major, taught school, got a librarian's certificate, discovered technical writing, and never looked back. Lana served as a technical writer for several start-up software companies, some of which failed spectacularly and three that did spectacularly well. Editing is what she really likes, but there may be a book lurking. Now that she is retired, there should be time for that book, right? Besides a Microsoft Windows trade book, co-authored with spouse Bob Whitsitt, her published book is online, The Culinary Scrapbook, for which she collected and edited recipes from Google chefs.
— Copy Editor, May 2016 - May 2016
Former Volunteer Staff
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Julia Morrison
Julia Morrison
Julia Morrison has an MA in Teaching from Concordia University. She has spent the last eleven years teaching English literature to high school students in Vancouver, Washington. Julia recently wrote her first children’s book, which addresses LGBT relationships, and she is contemplating a second.
— Copy Editor, August 2015 -
Rebecca Balcárcel
Rebecca Balcárcel
Rebecca Balcárcel teaches creative writing and literature at Tarrant County College. Her work has appeared in over twenty journals and magazines, including North American Review, Concho River Review, South Dakota Review, 5AM, and Aura Literary Review. Trilobite Press published Ferry Crossing, a chapbook of her poems in 2002. She took her MFA from Bennington Writing Seminars in 2002 and received their Jane Kenyon Poetry Prize. Her Web site is sites.google.com/site/rebeccabalcarcel/.
— Creative Nonfiction Editor, March 2005 - February 2015 -
Laura Kennelly
Laura Kennelly
Laura Kennelly is an arts writer in the Cleveland area. She, like many journalists today, wears multiple hats to feed her writing habit. She has worked as a freelance arts columnist and reporter for the Morning Journal in Lorain, Ohio. She currently serves as associate editor for BACH, a scholarly journal about J. S. Bach and his circle, published by the Riemenschneider Bach Institute at Baldwin-Wallace College. (She minored in journalism as an undergraduate at the University of North Texas where she was editor of The Avesta, the campus literary magazine, as well as an arts writer for the Campus Chat. After teaching college English and raising a family, she’s returned to journalism. Funny how things circle round.) She writes a weekly column for the webzine CoolCleveland.com.
— Poetry Editor, November 2012 - May 2014 -
Jeffrey DeLotto
Jeffrey DeLotto
Jeffrey DeLotto, Professor of English at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth, teaches writing and literature, when not working on his own poetry and prose. A native of Florida and graduate of the University of Florida and Florida State University, he has also taught writing and literature at Texas Tech University, Yarmouk University (in Jordan), and as a Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Plovdiv in Bulgaria. He has published poetry and nonfiction in more than fifty journals, magazines, and anthologies.
— Poetry Editor, June 2004 -August 2012 -
Abigail Seville
Abigail Seville
Abigail Seville is a published writer, and has been a proofreader for a number of magazines. These include the London Magazine and Swings and Roundabouts, which Abigail also founded in 2005. With a previously eclectic career in administration, events and finance under her belt, Abigail now devotes her time to proofreading for Amarillo Bay and writing her first novel.
— Copy Editor, August 2009 -November 2011 -
Denise Durham
Denise Durham
Denise Durham graduated from the College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY. She has an MA in English, with a concentration in writing. For several years she has edited the works of friends and acquaintances, and recently began freelance editing. Denise is currently writing a still-untitled novel about a recently unemployed B-list actor. Although she enjoys writing, she hopes to make a career out of editing.
— Copy Editor, July 2006 - November 2011 -
H. Palmer Hall
H. Palmer Hall
H. Palmer Hall taught writing and directed the library at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas, where he also directed Pecan Grove Press. His books include A Measured Response, The Librarian in the University, From the Periphery and Deep Thicket & Still Waters. His poetry and prose have appeared in Amarillo Bay, as well as in Ascent, North American Review, The Texas Review, and other literary magazines. You can find out more about him through his home page.
H. Palmer Hall, 1942 - 2013
H. Palmer Hall died in February of 2013. Palmer was the Amarillo Bay Poetry Editor from August 2001 through February 2005, and contributed five poems to Volume 3 Number 1 and six poems to Volume 14 Number 4.
Jerry Craven, co-founder of Amarillo Bay, released this statement.
Palmer Hall was a man of many talents who had the discipline and energy to make use of his talents. Twenty-five years ago he single-handedly set up Pecan Grove Press, a fine university press that specialized in publishing books of poetry. As long as I have known Palmer, he has been a talented fiction writer and, especially, a fine poet. In fact I published his first poem to see print some 50 years ago in the Lamar University student literary magazine. I can still remember some of the lines in that remarkable poem.
The US military discovered in the young Palmer Hall a remarkable ability with language, so they trained him in Vietnamese and sent him into the war in Vietnam. After that he earned a Ph.D. in literature, and eventually became library director for St. Mary’s University in San Antonio. He published a number of his own books with other presses, mostly poetry and all truly wonderful. In 2011 he published a wonderful collection of short stories, Into the Thicket, with Ink Brush Press.
A publishing writer, a distinguished professor, an innovative publisher, and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, H. Palmer Hall added much to Southwestern letters. His is a presence that will be much missed. Those of us fortunate enough to know him personally feel the loss of a good man who happened to be a talented man of letters.
For more information about H. Palmer Hall, see his entry in Wikipedia.
— Creative Nonfiction Editor, August 2001 - February 2005 -
Jerry Craven
Jerry Craven
Jerry Craven is a writer who supports himself by teaching. He has published over two dozen short stories in magazines and anthologies, dozens of poems in literary journals, and many pieces of creative nonfiction. He has published 20 books, the most recent of which are:
Tickling Catfish, a Texan Looks at Culture from Amarillo to Borneo (creative nonfiction):
tamu.edu/upress/books/1996/craven.htm
Snake Mountain (a novel):
tamu.edu/upress/BOOKS/2000/craven.htm
— Poetry Editor, November 2003 - May 2004 -
Sherry Craven
Sherry Craven
Sherry Craven has been writing and teaching in West Texas for many years having taught English and creative writing at Midland College in Midland, Texas for eleven years before moving to the Amarillo area last year. Now she teaches part-time in the English Department at West Texas A and M University and continues to write poetry and short fiction. She has published poetry in both English and Spanish in various literary journals and read her work at numerous writers conferences and for NPR radio. Currently, Sherry is at work on a collection of love poems in the form of haiku that she co-wrote with her husband, and she is writing a collection of essays centered on the pains and foibles of growing into the middle years. She believes, as Mary Oliver says, that "poetry is a life-cherishing force."
— Poetry Editor, March 2001 - August 2003 -
Jeff Todd
Jeff Todd
Jeff Todd is assistant professor of English at West Texas A&M where he teaches technical communication, composition, and literature. He has degrees in creative writing from the University of South Alabama and a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition from Texas A&M. He worked for three years as associate editor at Texas Center for Writers Press. He has published critical pieces, reviews, and fiction, and he co-edited with James P. White the Gulf Coast Collection of Stories and Poems.
— Creative Nonfiction Editor, March 1999 - May 2001 - Sandra Gail Teichmann — Poetry Editor, March 1999 - February 2000
Amarillo Bay Directors
The Amarillo Bay Board of Directors provides advice on running the magazine, what kinds of literature to include, and the general direction the magazine will take.
- Jerry Bradley
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Marie Jordan
Marie Jordan
Marie Jordan has authored and co-authored over thirty books. She has written for newspapers and magazines and had a regular column for Total Health Magazine. Her books, articles, essays have been translated in fifteen languages including Chinese and Arabic. Marie is a performance poet, actor and playwright and has written and produced plays for stage and television in New York and Hollywood. Awards and prizes include the Gold Medallion Award, the Chicago News Book of the Year Award, two Angel awards for outstanding contribution to the media, a Cornerstone Book of the Year Award, The Gold Book Award and two Campus Life awards for poetry. Grants include an AAUW Merit Grant and a playwriting development grant with the Los Angeles Theatre Centre. She has also won awards from the National Writers Union, the California State Poetry Society, New Letters Literary Quarterly, The Spoon River Anthology, and her fiction and poetry appears in literary quarterlies in English and Spanish. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College, Norwich University. She has been Poet in the Schools and teaches fiction, poetry and playwriting at Mira Costa College in Cardiff, California. She is currently completing a novel about growing up as an Italian immigrant in Minnesota.
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Clay Reynolds
Clay Reynolds
Native Texan novelist, scholar, and critic Clay Reynolds is the author of more than five hundred publications ranging from critical studies to novels to book reviews. Among his critical works is a study of fellow Texas author and Pulitzer Prize winner, Larry McMurtry. He additionally has served as fiction editor for several magazines and as editorial consultant for several university and small presses, bookstores, and individual writers.
Reynolds’ third novel, Franklin’s Crossing, was entered into the Pulitzer Prize competition for 1992; it also received the Violet Crown Award for fiction as well as other awards and honors; he has been named runner-up twice in the Western Writers of America Spur and runner-up for both essay and fiction prizes from PEN Texas. He has received grants from the Texas Commission for the Arts and is also a National Endowment for the Arts fellow.
His nonfiction work has appeared in several national magazines, including Chronicles, American Way, and Texas Monthly; his short fiction has been published in Writers’ Forum, South Dakota Review, High Plains Literary Review, and Cimarron Review, among other publications, and has been anthologized in such collections as Careless Weeds, New Growth (1&2), Higher Elevations, and That’s What I Like (About the South) and Other Stories, and Texas Short Fiction I & II. He regularly contributes book reviews and feature columns to such newspapers as The Dallas Morning News, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Houston Chronicle, The Fort Worth Star Telegram, and The San Antonio Express- News, and is also a contributor to such review publications as Texas Books in Review, Kirkus Reviews, and Publisher’s Weekly.
Reynolds has more than twenty years of university and college teaching experience. In the fall of 1998, he joined the University of Texas at Dallas’ faculty as associate professor of aesthetics and writing. In addition, he regularly conducts formal workshops and lectures on writing and the business of writing for both community writing groups and university and collegiate programs. In 1996, he taught Ethnic American Literature for Texas Woman’s University’s cooperative education program in conjunction with the Dallas Independent School District; in 1995, he worked as visiting writer and consultant to the University of South Dakota creative writing program; the previous summer, he served as a visiting professor of creative writing for the West Texas A&M University Writer’s Workshop. In the spring of 1994, Reynolds was visiting professor of English and writer in residence at Villanova University; he served for several years on the program of the Rice University Continuing Education writer’s workshop and has been a guest lecturer for the Rice University Publishing Program. He is listed on the Texas Literary Touring Program sponsored by the Texas Commission for the Arts and the Austin Writers League.
He previously served as a professor of English and Novelist in Residence on the faculty of the University of North Texas and Lamar University. Reynolds holds academic degrees from the University of Texas at Austin (B.A.), Trinity University (M.A.), and the University of Tulsa (Ph.D.). He is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, the Author’s Guild, PEN West, and Western Writers of America.
His published novels include The Vigil (St. Martin’s Press & SMU Press), Agatite (St. Martin’s Press; re-released as Rage, Signet), and Franklin’s Crossing (Dutton & Signet), and Players (Carroll & Graf, Pinnacle). His nonfiction books include Stage Left: The Development of the American Social Drama (the Whitston Press), Taking Stock: A Larry McMurtry Casebook (SMU Press), A Hundred Years of Heroes: A Centennial History of the Southwestern Exposition and Livestock Show (TCU Press), Twenty Questions: Answers for the Inquiring Writer (Browder Springs), and, as Hunter Lundy, Let Us Prey. Agatite/Rage has been optioned for motion picture by Benjamin Mouton and Associates. The Vigil, Players, and an unpublished novel, Monuments, have been optioned for film by Daydream Entertainment in Hollywood. Reynolds has written screenplays of both Players and The Vigil.
An avid baseball fan, Reynolds lives in Denton with his wife Judy, a Medical Technologist at Denton Community Hospital, and his daughter, Virginia, a student at Ryan High School. Reynolds’ son, Wesley, is a student at Colorado School of Mines.
Book List
Stage Left: The Development of the American Social Drama in the Thirties--The Whitston Press
The Vigil--SMU Press (Distributed by Texas A&M; First pub: St. Martin’s Press)
Rage--NAL/Signet First pub (as Agatite: St. Martin’s Press)
Franklin’s Crossing--NAL/Signet (First pub. Dutton Publishers)
Taking Stock: A Larry McMurtry Casebook--SMU Press
A Hundred Years of Heroes: A Centennial History of the Southwestern Exposition and Livestock--Show. TCU Press.
Players--Carroll and Graf
Twenty Questions: Answers for the Inquiring Writer--Browder Springs
[As Hunter Lundy] Let Us Prey--Genesis Press
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