“Anyone can love the mountains, it takes a soul to love the prairie.”
— Willa Cather

Co-founders and Editors


  • Co-Founder and Editor

    Angela is a poet, farmwife, mom, editor, and publisher. She was born and raised in the farmland of northeast Nebraska. She spent her childhood immersed in family and everything outside: the grove of trees, the crooked bridge down by the creek, and the surrounding countryside. She was writing stories on her blue typewriter by the age of eight. Angela attended country school, graduated from Wayne High School, and received her bachelor’s degree in English Writing from Wayne State College, where she first met Stephanie. Angela’s dream of writing and illustrating children’s books gave over to the practicality of working steady jobs, which over the years included librarian, assistant manager of a bookstore, baker at a college coffee shop, paraoptometric, paraprofessional at an elementary school, house painter, and presently, a cellar person/event planner at Divots Brewery in Norfolk, NE.

    Angela lived in St. Louis, MO, and LaGrange Park, IL, before moving back to Nebraska. She bought an acreage between Wayne and Carroll, where she lives with her husband, Scott, two of their six children, goats, chickens, and a Derby dog. Angela enjoys baking, woodworking, gardening, creating, and finding just the right word. She started writing poetry in 2017, using it to heal from an abusive first marriage. Her poetry has been published in Nebraska Life magazine and most recently in her very own chapbook, Fencelines, by The Poetry Box, Portland, OR. Angela returned to WSC and earned her master’s in Writing & Publishing in May of 2025. She was a member of the 2025 Willa Cather Writers Residency Cohort and recently was a Finalist for the 2025 Kate Sommer Memorial Poetry Prize.

    Angela reconnected with Stephanie in the fall of 2022 when painting the interior of her house. They are most definitely kindred spirits and enjoy coffee and poetry every chance they get. Angela tends to reach for the poetry of Ted Kooser, Mary Oliver, James Wright, and William Stafford. She loves using metaphor and imagery to capture the strength and tenacity of the plains. She knows firsthand that the roughest roads lead to the most beautiful views and that dreams are the whispers of the soul.


  • Co-founder and Editor

    Stephanie A. Marcellus is a professor of English at Wayne State College where she teaches creative writing and literature. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Colorado State and a PhD in Nineteenth-Century British Literature from the University of South Dakota.

    A fifth-generation Nebraskan, Stephanie grew up on the family farm near Atkinson, Nebraska, and has a deep love and appreciation for rural life, its people, and its landscapes. Her passion for writing and literature took her on academic adventures to the mountains of Colorado and to the plains of South Dakota until she settled back in Wayne, America. She loves teaching at Wayne State College, where she first began her studies in English as an undergraduate and where she made so many lifelong connections, including her husband, Shawn, another English major and supporter of literary arts, and kindred spirit and fellow editor, Angie. Together, Stephanie and Shawn reside in Wayne with a view of fields of soybeans and corn with their mischievous mini-Aussie, Scout, and two spoiled housecats, Sophie and Scarlett.

    Stephanie’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Plainsongs, Three Drops from a Cauldron, and Alligator Juniper, among others. Her chapbook What Is Left Behind: Garden Elegies was published by Finishing Line Press in 2017 with her upcoming chapbook How to Say slated for publication in April 2024 with The Poetry Box. She has previously edited for Colorado Review, South Dakota Review, and WSC Press.