Advisory Board

The Queue is guided by an advisory board whose members have extensive experience in the fields central to The Queue’s activities. They bring experience as writers, as well as experience in the fields of teaching, editing, publishing and bookselling.

Emilio DeGrazia moved to Winona, Minnesota to teach at Winona State University in 1969. From Winona he launched Great River Review and began his writing career. His books include two collections of short fiction, Enemy Country (1984) and Seventeen Grams of Soul (Minnesota Book Award, 1995), and his two published novels are Billy Brazil (1991) and A Canticle for Bread and Stones (1996). In the meantime he and his wife Monica co-edited Twenty-Six Minnesota Writers (1995) and Thirty-Three Minnesota Poets (2000). He also has published a play, Winona: A Romantic Tragedy, and a collection of essays, Burying the Tree. He has served with several arts and literary organizations, including The Loft Literary Center and (currently) the Jon Hassler Theatre in Minneapolis.

Marly Cornell is a writer, editor and artist who worked more than 30 years in the corporate non-profit sector in behavioral health care and marketing, mental health law and physician recruitment. She is a member of the Professional Editors Network (PEN) and serves on the steering committee of the Twin Cities Chapter of the National Writer’s Union and the board of Midwest Independent Publishers Association (MIPA). She is chair of the MIPA Midwest Book Awards. She received her MFA from Moore College of Art in Philadelphia, and her Master’s degree is in Liberal and Integrated Studies from St. Mary's University in Minneapolis.

Ian Graham Leask, the London-born publisher of Scarletta Press, Inc., is also a literary consultant, radio talk show host and author of The Wounded and Other Stories About Sons and Fathers, available from New Rivers Press. During the many years of his residency in Minneapolis, he taught writing and literature at the University of Minnesota, at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and at COMPAS Writers and Artists in the Schools. He produces and hosts KFAI’s “Write-On! Radio,” a popular program for writers through which he has been fortunate to meet with some of the best authors in the world. He founded Scarletta Press in honor of his great uncle, the London poet Wilson Benington, who loved the passion of American literature.