Below you will find a list of the writers who have contributed to this project. If you wish to get in touch with one of our writers about their work, you may write them at editor@renegadebusdallas.com and your message will be forwarded to them. This website is a forum and its strength lies in the collection of voices and perspectives it gathers together. The views represented in the content are those of the authors and not the website. If you would like to join our team, contact us at the above address.

Joan Arbery
Co-founder
Senior Editor
Joan Arbery has always wanted to go to Tehran, wishes she had lived in France, and longs for Dublin like a lost kidney. But she’s happy in Dallas, which she never thought she’d love and is glad not to miss. Aside from writing for the Bus, she’s finishing up her doctorate in literature from Notre Dame, writing a monthly events column for D Magazine, and teaching a few first-year writing classes at SMU.

Teresa Burkett
Co-founder
Development Coordinator
Teresa is a nomad at heart, attempting roots in Dallas after a stint in Philadelphia where she was artistic director for the journal Dappled Things. She loves wine almost as much as studies that say wine will prevent you from dying. Teresa lives in South Irving, teaches third grade, and longs for summer break. Happy to get a pulse on Dallas and content to stay a few years, she is currently romantically involved with the Dallas skyline.

Lucia Simek
Co-founder
Art Director
Lucia’s writing has appeared in THE Magazine and People Newspapers, and her art has shown at Craighead Green, 500X, and Zephyr Gallery in Los Angeles. A recovering prop designer, she studied painting at the University of Dallas. Married to the most excellent Peter Simek, they raise basil plants, fire ants, and the jubilant Eva and Felicity in Oak Cliff.

Peter Simek
Co-founder
Editor-in-chief
In his mind, it is late in the second half of the Champions League final and Peter is playing next to Danielle DeRossi in the Roma midfield, with the giallorossi up 1-0. In reality, he is living a double life as a financial analyst for a commercial real estate company and as a writer, contributing to D Magazine and D CEO. Previously, he covered Dallas, Highland Park, University Park, and Plano city halls for People Newspapers, and helped launch Oak Cliff People. In some distant yesteryear, Peter chased saints and sinners around Rome for Inside the Vatican Magazine, Fox News, and The American, a monthly magazine distributed by the International Herald Tribune. He is married to the lovely Lucia and lives in Oak Cliff with their two daughters.

CONTRIBUTORS

Alan Birkelbach
Alan Birkelbach’s volumes of poetry include No Boundaries, Grand Prize Winner of the Pat Stodghill Book Publication Award, and Weighed in the Balances, Grand Prize Winner of the Steves Poetry Manuscript Competition. His work has been included in eight anthologies, including Texas in Poetry 2 (TCU Press, 2002). Birkelbach has served on the board of directors for the Poetry Society of Texas for over ten years and was the 2005 Texas State Poet Laureate. A native of Texas, he lives and works as an engineer in Plano.

Alexandra Bonifield
Alexandra is a theatre performer, director, producer, coach and teacher. Published author. Arts advocate, theatre critic and feature writer. Progressive political organizer and activist. Latin tutor. Non-profit arts and environmental education event coordinator. Accomplished horsewoman and equestrian entrepreneur. In 2008 she was named an Annneberg/ National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in theatre criticism. Alexandra is also a Hockaday graduate and a 2008 UNT/Mayborn Conference winning author. She blogs on sjamaanka.wordpress.com.

Steve Cruz
Steve is a an artist and the owner of mighty fine arts, a gallery located in the scenic and historic Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas. Steve started the gallery in June of 2004 with the intention of providing an alternative space for innovative and underrepresented artists. Mfa presents an eclectic array of shows with the guiding criteria of presenting work that is resonant, thoughtful and highly accomplished. From mid-career to fresh and unknown artists, mfa hopes to enlarge the perceptions of contemporary art in North Texas.

Ruth Frank
Ruth married a captain in the United States Army in February 2009 and was whisked off to a little German town outside an army base in northern Bavaria. There she shares a life of leisure with a collection of African masks. Previously, she survived Bishop Dunne High School, acted on and off stage at the University of Dallas, and lived in Oak Cliff, where she wrote for People Newspapers and THE Magazine.

Joshua Goode
Joshua is an installation artist who received his BFA from SMU and his MFA from Boston University. He has exhibited his work internationally in venues such as the Zendai Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai, China, the Museum of the National Library in Madrid. Spain, National Library of Argentina, Buenos Aires, Argentina and at Loyola University, Rome, Italy, as well as the Boston Center for the Arts, Janet Turner Print Museum in California, Austin, Houston and Dallas and is represented in public and private collections around the world including the Zendai Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai and the Naval Academy Museum in Annapolis. He is currently head of the printmaking and art history program at Tarrant County College South in Fort Worth, Texas and lives in Richardson, TX. His work can be seen at www.joshuagoode.com

Peter Granser
Peter was awarded numerous prizes and received much support for his work. He was appointed to the WPP Masterclass in the Netherlands in 2001 and given the Arles Discovery Award in 2002, as well as the Oskar-Barnack Award in 2004. In 2006 Peter Granser received a stipend from the Kunststiftung Baden-Wuerttemberg (Germany) and photographed SIGNS in Texas in 2006/207. His works have been exhibited internationally and are presented in public collections as the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, USA, the Fundación Ordóñez-Falcó, Spain or the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland.

David Novinski
David is a Dallas native and professional actor who earned his B.A. in Drama from the University of Dallas and went on to earn his MFA in Acting at the University of Pittsburgh. After several years of regional Shakespeare festivals and summer stock he returned home to the metroplex to raise a family. Presently he makes his living as a designer/fabricator with novinskistudio, a design firm he founded with his father. He says he is excited to join Renegade Bus in its effort to shine a light on the excellent art taking place in north Texas.

Hans Roegele
Hans was born and raised in New York City, where truly the best bagels on the planet are found. He earned a bachelors in history and architecture from the University of Virginia, and a Masters in Architecture from the University of Notre Dame. He has traveled to South and Central America and Europe, where his first activity is to find the cafe with the best tea and honey. Hans Roegele has been an independent designer, working on projects such as affordable housing, shopping centers, and residences. He has been employed by firms specializing in international resorts, luxury residences, and ecclesiastical work. His business has taken him from Morocco to Paris. www.hansroegeledesigner.com

Ray Oldenburg
Ray Oldenburg’s influential book The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community was recognized as a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice. Dr. Oldenburg is also the author of Celebrating the Third Place and Parallel Utopias: The Quest for Community. Dr. Oldenburg’s articles include “Dining Out,” “Bars and Pubs,” “Our Vanishing ‘Third Places,’” “Food, Drink, Talk, and the Third Place,” and “People Need Hangouts,” and “There Was a Tavern in the Town…” The Project for Public Spaces honors Dr. Oldenburg as one of the pioneering thinkers listed in its hall of influential urban “PlaceMakers.”

Ed Schad
Ed is an independent writer living in Los Angeles. He writes visual art reviews, general cultural essays, and book reviews. You can find some his writing on his blog, I Call It Oranges.

Sarah Jane Semrad
Sarah Jane is a social entrepreneur and community organizer committed to cultivating creativity in Dallas. After producing art shows independently around Dallas for some time, Semrad founded Exposition Park’s IR Gallery in 2004, exclusively representing emerging Dallas artists in all media. She went on to co-create Pigeon-Stone Project in 2005, connecting local artists with new collectors in businesses’ public spaces. PSP earned Semrad a mention in the Dallas Observer’s 2005 “Best Of” issue as “Best Art Invasion.” She is the co-founder and trusted consigliere for all things Art Conspiracy (est. 2005) - a non-profit dedicated to connecting artists and musicians with each other for the benefit of the local art economy. In 2006, Semrad co-founded La Reunion TX, a non-profit org committed to creating an artist in residency program on 35 acres in Oak Cliff. Sarah Jane and her husband - musician Paul Semrad - live in Oak Cliff with their two children. Semrad holds a BA in chemistry from the University of Dallas. www.lareuniontx.org

James Michael Starr
James is an assemblage and collage artist whose work has appeared in galleries and exhibitions in both his native U.S. and abroad. He was selected for inclusion in four consecutive Critic’s Choice exhibitions at the Dallas Center for Contemporary Art and included by invitation in the 2001 International Exhibition of Contemporary Collage in Paris, France, as well as in Assemblage 100, which toured New Zealand in 2004. Images of his art have been selected for reproduction in several books, including the 2006 French survey of contemporary collage, “L’art du Collage a L’aube du Vingt et Unieme Siecle (The Art of Collage at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century).” He is represented in Dallas by Conduit Gallery. www.jamesmichaelstarr.com/

Joslyn Taylor
Joslyn raises two funny, bright, dramatic, impossible, lovely daughters Audrey (5) and Millie (2) with her stellar husband Bryan (who also happens to be the smartest person she knows and makes the world’s best quesadillas), works in online marketing and writes the blog Simple Lovely…She does all this in a city she loves (at last!)

Barry Vacker
Barry’s recent publications include the text for Peter Granser’s photography book Signs (Hatje Cantz 2008) and the first three books of the “Theory Zero” series: Zero Conditions, 2008, Crashing into the Vanishing Points, 2009, and Starry Skies Moving Away, 2009 (www.theoryzero.net). He also wrote and directed the experimental documentary, Space Times Square (2007), which has been screened in galleries and festivals around the world (www.spacetimessquare.net). A native Texan, Vacker earned his PhD at The University of Texas at Austin and teaches media, cultural, and utopian theory at Temple University, Philadelphia. www.barryvacker.net.