Staff

Staff Bios

Chila Woychik

Chila Woychik ("Sheila Y-Check") is the managing editor and publisher at Port Yonder Press, a 2 year old small press that has published several New York Times bestselling authors, Spur Award winners, and a Selah Award winner. She is open to newbies as well as established authors, and is primarily interested in strong mainstream/crossover material. She refers to PYP's book focus as "family-friendly-mature," i.e., more Bourne Conspiracy and Sylvia Plath than Disney.

PYP is open to most genres but will focus primarily on out of the ordinary speculative fiction and top-notch mainstream poetry in 2012. Her personal specialties are creative nonfiction (think Annie Dillard), poetry (think Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson), westerns, short stories, and slipstream fiction (think Margaret Atwood and China Mieville). Her editors handle the rest.

"I love hearing rumors about myself. They always make me sound so much more interesting than I actually am ..."

****************************

Lisa Cantrell
Lisa has a BA in English, an MA in Education and has worked toward an MDiv (with a campus ministry focus). She served as Intern Chaplain at DePauw University (her alma mater), coordinating weekend work projects for non-profit organizations throughout the greater Indianapolis area. Extended missions trips took her to Georgia to build homes with Habitat for Humanity and to Maine to lead a group of students in building a community center. A former educator and home educator, she lives with her husband, four children, five dogs and three cats in Wisconsin .

Lisa is a consulting editor.

****************************

Glynda (G.L.) Francis

Glynda is a Midwestern writer and artist married to her best friend G.J. She has worked in machining, electronics, animal health care, and sundry other jobs. She pursues a variety of skills and arts with the combined enthusiasm/boredom threshold of a toddler plus the tenacity of a terrier. Through the years, her fiction and poetry has been published in several magazines.

Glynda is being trained as an editor, helps with occasional illustrations, and is a general adviser to the publisher.

***************************

Suzanne Hartmann

Suzanne writes fiction with a twist of NASCAR, operates the Write at Home Critique Service (http://suzanne-hartmann.blogspot.com/2009/04/suzannes-critique-service.html), and blogs about tips on how to polish and prepare your novel for publication at Suspense with a Twist (http://suzanne-hartmann.blogspot.com/). She and her family live in Illinois.

Suzanne is one of our consulting editors.

************************

Andra Legge

Andra has a bachelor of science degree in sociology with an emphasis on anthropology. She is a rabid bibliophile, and has been a voracious reader from the moment letters quit being gibberish and started to make sense. Andra found an early love of fantasy when she was introduced to The Hobbit at the age of six, and more recently has discovered the joy of mystery novels. She loves Charles Dickens, Mercedes Lackey, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Terry Pratchett, but happily reads a wide selection ranging from children’s books to the history of mathematics. Two of her favorite books are The True Story of Hansel and Gretel: A Novel of War and Survival by Louise Murphy, and Red Alley by Charles J. Bready. She lives in Iowa with her husband and children.

Andra is one of our slushpile editors.

************************

Lisa Lickel
Lisa has a bachelor of science degree from the University of Wisconsin in History and Russian Studies. She is a multi-published author. She and her husband live in a 150-year-old Great Lakes ship captain's house in eastern Wisconsin and have two grown sons. Read more about her novels, radio theater work, and children's books at http://lisalickel.com. She can be e-mailed at lisalickel@netzero.com.

Lisa is our primary copyeditor, the Publisher's Liaison, and also assists with marketing on occasion.

*************************

Anna O'Brien
Anna says this about her talents: "My mother was always creating new designs in clothing and had a flair for interior design, so I claim my talent through genetics. My grandmother and uncle did glass engraving so maybe it’s been building through multiple generations. Differing art mediums encouraged my desire to create. I studied commercial and fine art through my high school years. With the release of the Macintosh in 1994 and PageMaker in 1995 opportunities presented themselves in the publishing field that had only been dreamt of previously. Add a mission trip to Paris and an hour in the Louvre and my direction was set. My work today includes clay, stained glass, acrylics, illustrations in pen & ink and watercolors, calligraphy, 3D art, graphic design and publication layout. I am currently an artist (in different media -- my husband is going to teach me welding next; I'm so excited!), mother, and illustrator/cover designer. You can view some of Anna's work at: behindthegift.com.

Anna is a consulting illustrator and cover designer here.

****************************

Kevin Spencer

Ever since Kevin Spencer devoured his Dick and Jane reading textbook in one night back in first grade, he has been reading everything he could get his hands on. Early on it was Stewart Little, The Hardy Boys and Tom Swift. By 6th grade he was devouring The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, and when he ran out of things to read at home he worked his way through the World Book Encyclopedia.

A native of North Carolina, Kevin was educated at Montreat College, North Carolina State University, and the University of North Carolina. He now lives in Tennessee with his lovely wife Charlotte and grandson Caleb. His favorite authors include John D. MacDonald, Issac Asimov, Mark Twain, John Le Carre, Michael Crichton, Dashell Hammett, Stephen King, William F. Buckley, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, the sciencefFiction of Larry Niven and Jerry Pournell, Harry Turtledove, S.M. Sterling and David Weber; Gore Vidal, Frederick Forsyth, Victor Hugo, Leo Tolstoy, William Faulkner, George Orwell, Ian Fleming, and more.

Kevin is one of our slushpile editors.

*************************

LoriAnn Weldon

LoriAnn is a college student in the Midwest earning a degree in English and Rhetoric. She's been published thrice but decided that she was neither a) good enough nor b) prolific enough to make writing for publication her career, and has instead discovered that her love of reading lends itself well to the editing and publication field. (Being a bit bossy doesn't hurt either, as her dad points out.)

LoriAnn is a student intern copyeditor here at Port Yonder Press.

**************************

Linda Yezak
Linda lives in Texas, where ego is hereditary and exaggeration is an art form. She has a degree in English and teaches a creative writing class to a small group of women. Christian Romance Magazine has published several of her writing tips and articles. Linda also has served as a freelance editor for both published and unpublished authors. Her first novel, Give the Lady a Ride, was a finalist in the 2008 ACFW's Genesis Contest.

Linda and her husband live in an empty nest with three cats and a pond full of ducks. You can contact her at pprmint155@yahoo.com for more info and pricing on her freelance editing services.

Linda is a consulting editor for PYP.

*****************************

PORT YONDER PRESS

A Horizon Beyond