Staff

Cassie Deever, Writer/Editor

Cassie Deever hails from Cody, Wyoming, a small town named for Buffalo Bill just south of Yellowstone National Park where she learned emotional suppression and bareback riding, both at a young age.

She received her undergraduate degree in English literature from Dartmouth, and her MFA in fiction from Sarah Lawrence. She does not write poetry. She is not working on a novel.

Along with contributing at least half of the daily entries on The Murky Fringe, Ms. Deever has an actual job, which mostly goes to her Chase card bill. She lives with her dog Vinnie in Portland, OR.

Rachel Tate, Writer/Editor

Rachel Tate  studied Asian art history at the University of Washington and somehow ended up with a degree. She has an MFA in poetry from Indiana and no collection yet worth mentioning. Most of her poems are above Ms. Deever’s head.

She too has a job besides writing and editing The Murky Fringe. It pays considerably more than Ms. Deever’s, which is fine by Ms. Deever because Ms. Tate picks up most of the tabs. And she doesn’t rub Ms. Deever’s nose in it too much. And they get appetizers a lot.

She also lives in Portland, OR, with her boyfriend and her tropical fish, some of which are from Costa Rica, so there.

Stephanie Wemmers, Writer/Editor

Stephanie Wemmers’s childhood can best be described as analogous to that of the heroine of Reba McIntyre’s “Fancy,” except that instead of being turned out on the streets of New Orleans, she was awarded a scholarship to Philips Exeter Academy, which whisked her away from the squalor of Baytown Texas, and instead of amassing unassailable wealth through prostitution, she is (and will be for many, many years hence) deeply in debt to the federal government and private lending institutions for her tuition to Harvard University, where she was accepted on the strength of her entrance essay, “My Mother, The Town Pump,” and where she majored in Women’s studies and Comparative Literature.

After dropping out midway through the Masters in Journalism program at UC Berkeley, she decided to hole up in the Pacific Northwest and ask herself the essential question. You know the one.

In the midst of this querying, she met Ms. Deever and Ms. Tate. Which will do for now in lieu of a definitive answer. One thing’s for certain: she’s never going back to Baytown. Not a chance in hell.

Dominic Killebee, Writer/Editor

From the feature film "Antennae Man"

Dom Killebee comes to The Murky Fringe from a long familial line of box cutters. His father, Dervis Killebee, was the inventor of the push-button safety lever that a man now uses to raise and lower the blade of his box cutter. Of course, Dervis was only improving upon the ingenuity of his own father and grandfather, Dempsey Killebee Jr. and Sr., respectively, who brought the box cutter from its roots (a strong man’s thumbnail) to damn near what it is today. Minus the push-button safety lever, of course. That was Dervis, like I said. But that thin blade and the metal casing? The Dempseys.

Dom is an avid writer of children’s stories and the popular comic Antennae Man, and when he’s not in The Murky Fringe’s overly cold Portland office, he can often be found taping right angles of cardboard with wide heavy-duty tape, in silent defiance of three generations of Killebee men. Well, it’s almost silent; that clear packing tape sure can be loud.

Colleen Stuyvesant, Intern

Ms. Stuyvesant comes to The Murky Fringe from Willamette University where she will be entering her junior year in the fall of 2010.

She takes over from Jesse Tuckerman reading submissions, reaching out to strange writers on our behalf, and handling most of our website issues, of which there are many.

Ms. Stuyvesant is a classics major at Willamette. She also loves N.W.A., Patti Smith, and every Coen Brothers movie ever made (except the one with Tom Hanks).