Columbia College Chicago : Part-Time Faculty

Andrew Micheli earned his MFA from Columbia College and teaches in the Fiction department. He is the Executive Director of the Arts & Business Council in Chicago (A&BC). His short story "Spaghetti Urban" appeared in NOCTURNE and his play Train of Thought was produced at American Theater Company in Chicago. He's also written numerous monologues and short works for the stage and has performed in over 40 productions and solo works for the theatre throughout Chicago and New York. Andrew recently completed his novel, Arlo.

With more than 6 million books in print, Patricia Pinianski, writing as Patricia Rosemoor, has written 89 novels for Harlequin, Silhouette, Carina Press, Del Rey, HarperCollins and Dell. RT Book Reviews honored her with two Career Achievement Awards and two Reviewers’ Choice Best Intrigue Awards for her Harlequin Intrigues. Her latest release is Purebred.

Devon Polderman teaches fiction writing at Columbia College. With the Schultz Group, Inc., he directs creative writing programs in the city and suburbs for children grades 4 through 12. Portions of his current novel-in-progress, Famous Kalamazoo Bullshit Stories, appear in Hair Trigger 23, Hair Trigger 24, and f5. In 1998 he won the John Schultz and Betty Shiflett Story Workshop® Scholarship. He is from southwest Michigan but now lives in Chicago.

Tom Popp is the Managing Editor of F Magazine, a nationally distributed literary journal with a unique emphasis on publishing excerpts of novels-in-progress. He is the Faculty Coordinator of Fiction Writers at Lunch, a successful program of the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia College Chicago that hosts readings, visiting writers and editors, and open forum discussions on student life and writing process. He was a featured reader and speaker for the Writing Life series at Binghamton University/SUNY and has hosted and been a featured reader and panelist at various literary and publisher events in the U.S. and Canada. He was the Fiction Editor and a columnist for Velocity Magazine, a nationally distributed publication of "accelerated culture." He was a winner in the Red Sky Books contest, "Writing About the Teaching Experience." His winning story, "A Hasty Conclusion," appeared in the anthology, Pass/Fail. He is an adjunct faculty member at Columbia College Chicago, having taught all levels of the core Fiction Writing Department classes as well as three specialty classes: Dreams and Fiction Writing, Story and Journal, and Small Press Publishing.

Mica Racine, Midwestern son, earned an MFA in Fiction Writing from Columbia College Chicago, a BA in Communications/Advertising from Sioux Falls College, and attended Marquette University Law School. He currently teaches fiction writing and film classes at Columbia College Chicago, literary appreciation classes at the Illinois Institute of Art, and creative writing and film classes at the International Academy of Design and Technology -- all in Chicago's Loop. In addition, he teaches a variety of English and liberal education courses online. And as a member of the AmeriCorps program, he taught and supervised after-school programs for Atlanta Public Schools. Work outside of the classroom includes award-winning design and layout contributions to Columbia College Chicago's annual lit anthology Hair Trigger, as well as the fiction writing department's F Magazine. He also served as fiction editor for bowwow¸ a Chicago-based zine that was recognized with a Writer's Digest small press publishing award. His writing and photography have been featured in Pigeon, Sleepwalk, Hair Trigger, The Atlanta Citizen, Chicago Life, and for four years he was a regular contributor of fiction and nonfiction to South Dakota Public Radio. His parody of Nikolai Gogol's "The Nose" was given a first place award for experimental fiction in college magazines by the Columbia University Scholastic Press Association. At the institutions he teaches at, Racine has been nominated four times for recognition as educator of the year, and in 2002 he was recognized as Educator of the Year at IADT, Chicago. A native of Wisconsin, Mica now lives just outside Chicago with his wife, son, daughter, and Lucie, their little black cat. In his spare time he likes to read, fix things, drink coffee, and play guitar.

Arnie Raiff, writer, has taught at the Columbia College Chicago Fiction Writing Department and at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside since 1989, came to the teaching of writing from a background of social activism that has included organized protest, social work, union organizing, and work in an adolescent treatment center. His involvement in the arts has roots in acting (with Friends Mime Theater and other venues) and play and poetry writing. His poem "The Awakening" has been published and translated into Spanish and Polish. His fiction appears in The Best of Hair Trigger. His political pamphlets have found their ways into hearts and hands across communities and cultures. His recent projects include writing a poetry chapbook, serving on the P-Fac (part-time faculty union) Negotiation Committee, and participating with colleagues at Columbia in a teach-in about the War on Terrorism.

Lisa Redmond earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing here at Columbia College. She is currently at work on her debut novel, Blackberries and Sweet Juice. Excerpts of this work have been published in Hair Trigger 26 and F Magazine. Her article "African-American English: Dialects in the Classroom" was published in AIMprint: New Relationships in the Arts and Learning, and her creative nonfiction has been published in The South Loop Review. She is also a Teaching Artist within Columbia’s Office of Community Arts Partnerships working with K-12 schools. Her students’ writing and photography are annually displayed at the Museum of Contemporary Photography. The exhibit is entitled, Talkin’ Back: Chicago Youth Respond. She was a fellow within the Illinois Consortium for Educational Opportunity Program (ICEOP). She has also won the finalist award for the John Schultz and Betty Shiflett Story Workshop Scholarship for the years, 2002, 2003, and 2004, and the Graduate Opportunity Award in 2000 and 2001.

Chris Maul Rice Christine Rice’s most recent fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared on CellStories.net and her audio essays can be heard (and read) on Chicago Public Radio’s daily magazine Eight Forty-Eight. Chris is also the editor of the new online magazine HypertextMag.com. Chris’ fiction has appeared in F Magazine, Banditlit.com, Pigeon, Emergence II, MetroTimes fiction edition and Hair Trigger. Her feature stories have appeared in Chicago Tribune’s Health and Family Section, Columbia College Chicago’s Gravity magazine and Detroit’s MetroTimes and MetroParent newspapers. Chris has been an adjunct professor in the Fiction Writing Department since 1992, has chaired the Fiction Writing Department’s national Young Authors writing competition since 2000, and has been the faculty advisor for the Fiction Writing Department’s award-winning student anthology Hair Trigger 23 through Hair Trigger 33. She has also presented at the 79th-83rd Columbia Scholastic Press Association conferences at Columbia University in New York City.

Gus Rose

A native of San Francisco California, Augustus Rose earned his MA in creative writing at University of California, Davis, and has a novel, Conman, forthcoming from Pugilist Press. He has published fiction and non-fiction in f7, The Berkeley Fiction Review, Readymade Magazine, Whole Earth Review, and Publishers Weekly, among others. He won F Magazine's first novels-in-progress contest for an excerpt from his novel Revolutionaries. Rose has received fellowships to the Squaw Valley Writer's Conference and the Eastern Frontier Society's Norton Island Residency. He currently teaches at University of Chicago's creative writing program and at the Columbia College Fiction Writing Department.