September 1 Guests

MELISSA MORPHEW
A graduate of the University of Georgia’s PhD program in English, Melissa is the recipient of several national and international poetry prizes, including The Academy of American Poets College Prize, The Randall Jarrell International Poetry Prize, The Cecil J. Hackney Literary Award in Poetry, The W.B. Yeats’ Society Poetry Prize, several Pushcart Prize nominations, and most recently, she was the 2010 Sacramento Poetry Center manuscript winner. Her chapbook, Hunger and Heat: The Missionary Letters, won the Anabiosis Press Chapbook Award, and was subsequently published by Anabiosis Press in 1995. Her first full-length collection, The Garden Where All Loves End won the La Jolla Poets Press National Poets’ Series Award, and as part of the award, received publication in 1997. In 2006, her full-length collection of poems, Fathom, was published by Turning Point Press. Many of Morphew’s poems have a magical realist quality. Morphew said of her poem “The Barker’s Song” in an explanation of the work for Iron Horse Literary Review that she has been striving to write in a magical realist idiom. She currently teaches English and creative writing at Sam Housteon State University in Huntsville, Texas.

CHASE McMICHAEL
Chase McMichael has over 15 years of senior level product development and management experience in consumer messaging and marketing technologies, including social media, advertising software and collaboration. While at UNBOUND he created the world’s largest social marketing database, receiving the Viral Hall of Fame from award Marketing Sherpa in 08 and many blogs/news inclusion in the field of Social Intelligence.  At Oracle Corporation, Chase managed the Real Time Collaboration and Instant Messaging services in Oracle10g. While working for Sprint, he created the Enhanced Messaging Services (EMS) and launched Instant Messaging services.  He served as Vice President of Product Development – Internet Services for Chase Manhattan Bank and developed a direct marketing, ad serving, and sales engine that leveraged user feedback.  He began his career in a research position at the Texas Center for Superconductivity and holds a B.S. in Physic from the University of Houston.  He is inventor or co-inventor on 13 U.S. patents. His specialties include social intelligence, affinity/viral database marketing, and social ad targeting programs.