Our Humble Staff

The eccentric people behind the curtain

A literary journal of such repute as NMU's Passages North calls for only the best and the brightest. But when the best and the brightest failed to answer the call, it settled for this dedicated-though-motley crew, who have willingly given their time and sanity to putting out the best damned literary journal they can, once a year, every year.

Editor-in-Chief Kate Myers Hanson is Associate Professor of English at Northern Michigan University. Katie grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. She received her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1998. Her short stories have appeared in North American Review, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, The Journal, South Carolina Review, Tampa Review, Mississippi Review, William and Mary Review, and elsewhere. Her collection of short stories, Narrow Beams, was published by Carnegie Mellon University Press in 2001.

Managing Editor Amanda Giracca is working toward an MA in creative writing at Northern Michigan University. She completed her undergrad at Prescott College in Arizona with a degree in creative writing and environmental studies, and hopelessly dreams of the day where combining the two will present lucrative rewards.

Austin Hummell, Poetry Editor, is Associate Professor of English at Northern Michigan University. His publications include Audible Ransom, from Northern Lights Press, The Fugitive Kind, from the University of Georgia Press, and Poppy, winner of the first annual Del Sol Press Poetry Prize.

Fiction Editor John Smolens’s new novel Fire Point, which is set in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, was published in August 2004 by Shaye Areheart Books/Random House, and the paperback edition was released in July 2005 by Three Rivers Press/Random House. Fire Point was voted the Best Book by a Michigan Author in 2004 for the Detroit Free Press, and was a 2005 finalist for the Great Lakes Book Sellers’ Association Award.

Paul Lehmberg, Nonfiction Editor, is Professor of English at Northern Michigan University. He teaches creative nonfiction writing and American Literature. The author of In the Strong Woods, he is also a Zen Buddhist priest.

Fiction Editor Jennifer A. Howard is a homegrown writer of fiction and an assistant professor of creative writing at Northern Michigan University, where she earned her MFA. She also holds undergrad degrees in English and mathematics from the University of Detroit and an MA in English literature from Indiana University. Her short-short story, “How to End Up” appears in the 2006 W.W. Norton anthology Flash Fiction Forward.  Other fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Sycamore REview, Blue Mesa Review, Redivider, and Smokelong Quarterly.

Fiction Editor Rebecca Johns is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the Missouri School of Journalism.  Her Novel, Icebergs, was a 2007 PEN/Hemingway Finalist.  Her writing has been widely published in such publications as Bride's, the Chicago Tribune, Cosmopolitan, Fitness, Ladies' Home Journal, Mademoiselle, and Seventeen.  

Poetry Editor Jennifer Yeatts is completing her MA in poetry at Northern Michigan University.  She enjoys saunas, Kombucha, and experimental cooking.

Poetry Editor Casey Thayer is completing an MFA in poetry at Northern Michigan University.  He spent the summer researching Native American boarding schools in preparation for a fictional story he is currently writing.