About Our Staff

FutureCycle Press is based in Athens, Georgia, USA, but not all of us live here. We work together in that great big building called “The Internet.” In addition to our permanent staff, we sometimes invite guest editors to work on special projects. Each year, the prior-year FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize winner serves as one of the judges for the prize and may subsequently be asked to join our staff.

Diane Kistner
Director, Editor-in-Chief/Books
Book acquisitions editing, copyediting, book design and production, Kindle programming, book prize judging, webmastering, promotion and management

Author Central
Poets & Writers Directory

A small press editor/publisher since the early seventies and winner of several national awards for her poetry, Diane Kistner stopped writing poems in her twenties but still vibrates to its psychology, mystery, and music. She’s spent most of her life working as an editor and typographer; writing non-fiction and software utilities; and, in general, happily making huge messes while learning how to do and grow new things. Before retiring in the late nineties, she worked as a trauma therapist and also developed and composed the music for Ultradia, a 90-minute ultradian rhythm entrainment cycle used in balancing and healing work. Diane’s “partner in crime” is the poet Robert S. King. She served as “press grunt” from FutureCycle Press’s inception in 2007 and took over as Director in 2012. A second edition of her one volume of poetry, Falling in Caves (first published by Bootlaig Press almost half a century ago) is available through FutureCycle Press.

Robert S. King
Editor-in-Chief/Good Works Projects, Book Editor, Web Advisor
Anthology/magazine acquisitions editing, book prize judging, web programming/support

Personal Website
On Goodreads
Author Central
Poets & Writers Directory

Robert S. King lives in Athens, Georgia, where he serves on the board of FutureCycle Press. He has published poems in hundreds of magazines, including The Kenyon Review, Southern Poetry Review, Main Street Rag, Pirene’s Fountain, Midwest Quarterly, California Quarterly, Chariton Review, Negative Capability, The Hollins Critic, Chattahoochee Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, The Atlanta Review, etc. He has published eight collections of poetry, most recently Diary of the Last Person on Earth (Sybaritic Press, 2014), Developing a Photograph of God (Glass Lyre Press, 2014), and Messages from Multiverses (Duck Lake Books, 2020).

George Bishop
Book Editor
Book acquisitions editing, book prize judging                                                              

Author Central
Poets & Writers Directory

George Bishop lives and writes in Saint Cloud, Florida. His work has appeared in Carolina Quarterly, Lindenwood Review, Flare and others. His chapbook Following Myself Home was the winner of the 2013 Peter Meinke Prize in Poetry from Yellow Jacket Press. He is the author of two full-length collections of poetry and six chapbooks.

Gloria Boyer
Book Editor
Book acquisitions editing, book prize judging                                                              

Personal Website
Personal Blog

Gloria Boyer (publishing as G. F. Boyer) is the author of Missile Hymnal Amulet (FutureCycle Press, 2018) and the editor of the Clementine Unbound poetry journal. She spent most of her professional life in the technical and editorial worlds. She earned an MFA at the University of Washington, where she had the pleasure and honor of driving visiting poet Denise Levertov to school a few times a week. Gloria’s work has been published in The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, RHINO, and Heron Tree, among others. Now retired, she enjoys painting, hiking, gardening, and watching the local wildlife.

Temple Cone
Book Editor
Book acquisitions editing, book prize judging                                                              

Personal Website
On Goodreads
Author Central

Temple Cone is Professor of English at the United States Naval Academy and the former Poet Laureate for the City of Annapolis. He is the author of four books of poetry: Guzzle, from FutureCycle Press (2016); That Singing, from March Street Press (2011); The Broken Meadow, which received the 2010 Old Seventy Creek Poetry Press Series Prize; and No Loneliness, which received the 2009 FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize. He has also published seven poetry chapbooks, as well as reference works on Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Walt Whitman, and 20th-Century American Poetry. He holds a Ph.D. in Literature from the University of Wisconsin, an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Virginia, an M.A. in Creative Writing from Hollins University, and a B.A. in Philosophy from Washington and Lee University.

David Chorlton
Book Editor Emeritus, Good Works Editor
Book prize judging, anthology and magazine acquisitions editing                                                              

On Goodreads
Author Central
Poets & Writers Directory

David Chorlton has lived in Phoenix since 1978 when he moved from Vienna, Austria, with his wife. Born in Austria, he grew up in Manchester, close to rain and the northern English industrial zone. In his early twenties he went to live in Vienna and from there enjoyed many trips around Europe. In Arizona, he has grown ever more fascinated by the desert and its wildlife. He especially enjoys the mountain ranges of southern Arizona, a region that appears frequently in his writing, including The Lost River (Rain Mountain Press) and two Slipstream chapbook competition winners; also full-length books, including A Normal Day Amazes Us (Kings Estate Press) and Waiting for the Quetzal (March Street Press). As much as he loves the Southwest, he has strong memories of Vienna, and that city is the setting for his first work of fiction, The Taste of Fog from Rain Mountain Press. FutureCycle Press published three of his books, including his Selected Poems. David joined the press as an editor in 2010 and served tirelessly as a book acquisitions editor until late 2017, when he lightened his editorial load to devote more time to another of his many talents, painting. He still is actively involved in giving readings.

Joan Colby
Book Editor, Good Works Editor (deceased)
Book acquisitions editing, book prize judging, anthology/magazine acquisitions editing                                                              

Personal Website
On Goodreads
Author Central
Poets & Writers Directory

Before her death in 2020, Joan Colby published 25 books and received numerous awards for her poetry, including the 2013 FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize for Joan Colby: Selected Poems, Glass Lyre Press’s 2015 Kithara Book Prize for Ribcage, two Literary Awards plus a Fellowship in Literature from the Illinois Arts Council, and countless Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has appeared in several thousand periodicals. For 33 years she was the editor of Illinois Racing News, then joined FutureCycle Press as senior book editor and associate editor of Good Works Review. Joan died on August 18, 2020, less than six months after losing her husband of sixty years. Together, she and Alan gave the world three children and six grandchildren. The Salt Widow (FutureCycle Press, 2020) is the last book Joan Colby wrote. We are so saddened by her departure but so very grateful to have had the privilege of working with Joan and publishing many of her books. She is a shining star in the firmament of poetry, always with us.

Julie Shavin
Assistant Editor
Book copyediting, proofreading, production assistance                                                              

Julie Shavin’s favorite book when a toddler was Harold and the Purple Crayon; she loved the idea of creating reality by drawing it. Her first edit concerned her mother’s piano playing. Shortly after beginning the instrument at age 6, she yelled, from another room, “f!f SHARP!”—displaying the gift of concert pitch. Shavin edited her high school newspaper and literary magazine, was poetry editor of her college magazine, and later became a journalist and typesetter/proofreader at major printing outfits. She holds bachelors’ degrees in Philosophy and English and a master’s in Creative Writing. She is the recipient of Pikes Peak Arts Council’s highest awards for performance and page poetry and was awarded the Mark Fischer Prize in 2016. Shavin has published prose, poetry, and artwork—including four books, most recently This Grave Oasis. A skilled freelance editor and proofreader, she prepares novels, short stories, memoirs, and poetry for submission/publication. Raised in Georgia, she relocated to the Rocky Mountains in 1993. She currently lives in a centenarian under-lipsticked pig on an old dream of land in Fountain, Colorado.