Presenters
Dr. Randy Brooks
Dr. Randy Brooks recently retired as the Dean of Arts & Sciences but continues to teach courses on haiku at Millikin University. He and his wife, Shirley Brooks, are publishers of Brooks Books and co-editors of Mayfly haiku magazine. In 1976 they started publishing a magazine called High/Coo: A Quarterly of Short Verse. They have been editing and publishing mini-chapbooks, chapbooks, paperbacks and clothbound editions of haiku ever since. Two of their most recent collections: Walking Uneven Ground: Selected Haiku of Bill Pauly, and My Red: The Selected Haiku of John Stevenson, won both Touchstone Book Awards from The Haiku Foundation and Haiku Merit Book Awards from the Haiku Society of America. Randy’s most recent books include Walking the Fence: Selected Tanka of Randy Brooks and The Art of Reading and Writing Haiku: A Reader Response Approach.
Marjorie Buettner
Marjorie Buettner is a Pushcart nominated, award winning haiku, tanka, sijo and haibun poet who has published widely throughout the U.S. and U.K. and has previously been an editor for the online journal
Contemporary Haibun Online. She has taught haiku and tanka at the Loft in Minneapolis and has presented various poetry workshops throughout Minnesota. Her new collection of haibun,
Some Measure of Existence (published by Red Dragonfly Press, 2014), won first place in the 2015 Mildred Kanterman Merit Book Awards; it was also nominated for the Minnesota Book Awards. She has a collection of haiku and tanka published by Red Dragonfly Press:
Seeing It Now, 2008. She writes book reviews for various haiku and tanka journals.
Michael Dylan Welch
Michael Dylan Welch lived in England, Ghana, Australia, and Canada, and now resides in Washington state, U.S.A. Editor, publisher, as well as haiku poet, translator, critic, and organizer. Among his accomplishments are editing and publishing journals including Woodnotes and Tundra, founding Press Here, a haiku publishing company, and National Haiku Writing Month, co-founding and directing the biennial Haiku North America conferences, founding the Tanka Society of America and the annual Seabeck Haiku retreats, and involvement in many other haiku- and poetry-related
activities.
Scott Mason
Scott Mason wrote The Wonder Code: Discover the Way of Haiku and See the World with New
Eyes, recipient of the Kirkus Star from Kirkus Reviews, the Touchstone Distinguished Books
Award from The Haiku Foundation and a Merit Book Award (“Best Prose”) from the Haiku
Society of America. He also conceived and edited Gratitude in the Time of COVID-19: The
Haiku Hecameron, another Merit Book Award recipient (“Best Anthology”). Both can be
accessed through the Digital Library of The Haiku Foundation. (Please consider a donation!) A
former longtime editor with The Heron’s Nest, Scott currently serves on the Foundation’s board.
His own haiku have placed first in over two dozen competitions.
Tanya McDonald
Tanya McDonald is the founder and editor of Kingfisher, a pocket-sized haiku/senryu journal.
Her own haiku, senryu, haibun, rengay, and occasional tanka have appeared in journals and
anthologies since 2008. She has also edited various anthologies, including the HSA members’
anthology in 2019, which helped her launch Kingfisher in 2020. For fifteen years, she lived near
Seattle, Washington, where she was active with Haiku Northwest. In 2022, she moved back to
her home state of Oregon to be closer to family. Known for her bright plumage, she is frequently
distracted by birds and interesting rocks.
Michele Root-Bernstein
Michele Root-Bernstein has devoted herself to assorted haikai arts for over twenty years, with
her work appearing in journals and anthologies at home and abroad. She has served as associate
editor of Frogpond from 2012-2015 and as book review editor of Modern Haiku from 2019-
2022. Since 2016, Michele has facilitated the Michigan-based Evergreen Haiku Study Group,
now meeting monthly by Zoom. Her e-chapbook, Wind Rose, is published (and available for free
download) by Snapshot Press. She recently won The Snapshot Press Book Awards 2022 for her
full-length collection, Plainsong.
Shan Thomas
Shan Thomas is the Archivist for the Mineral Point Library Archives. She came out of retirement to take on the position. Shan lives in Mineral Point with her partner Gerry Glaeve, who, ten years ago, introduced her to Gayle Bull and the art of Haiku. While not a poet herself, she sat at the feet of some of the best Haiku writers in the country as they met around Gayle's dining room table and came to admire the art form. Caring for the American Haiku magazine collection is her small way of honoring the cultural contributions of Haiku and the memory of Gayle.