Vice Principals:
The five Vice Principals listed below in alphabetical order by first name share responsibility for all workings of Public School Poetry.
David Ward
The skeleton in David Ward's Public School closet is that he attended a Catholic school through elementary and middle school. That school closed and became municipal offices, and is now, if you believe Google Maps, a wellness and fitness center. David's public school record includes Sedona Red Rock High School, Arizona State University, and the University of Michigan, where he now teaches writing. He has work published in Black Warrior Review, the University of Toronto Quarterly, and rivet, and is co-author of The University of Michigan in China (Michigan Publishing, 2017).
Ellen Stone
Ellen Stone is a graduate of Camptown Elementary and Wyalusing Valley Junior Senior High School in northeastern Pennsylvania. She taught in seven public schools in Kansas and Michigan though she vowed never to go into education like her parents. Ellen advises a poetry club at Community High School and co-hosts Skazat!, a monthly poetry series in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She is the author of The Solid Living World (Michigan Writers’ Cooperative Press, 2013) and What Is in the Blood (Mayapple Press, 2020). Ellen’s poems have appeared in Passages North, Rust & Moth, River Mouth Review, and on Verse Daily.
Julie Babcock
Julie Babcock performed a Midwestern spiral through public school systems in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan. She is the author of the hybrid poetry collection Rules for Rearrangement which won the Kithara Book Award, and Autoplay. Her poetry appears in PANK, december magazine, and New Poetry from the Midwest. She teaches in the Minor in Writing program at University of Michigan and is finishing her first novel which originated from a short story she published in The Rumpus. Her favorite book in high school was Lord of the Flies.
Megan Levad
Megan Levad attended Forest City Community Schools, The University of Iowa, and the University of Michigan. She is the author of Why We Live in the Dark Ages and What Have I to Say to You. A MacDowell Fellow, her poems have appeared in Tin House, Poem-a-Day, Granta, and Fence. Megan also writes lyrics and libretti; she is currently completing Gilded, a chamber opera about gentrification and S/M. Her favorite place in FCHS was the fly above the auditorium stage, where she could hide out and read instead of attending class.
Scott Beal
Scott Beal attended Woodland Hills Elementary School in Lawton, Oklahoma; Union City Junior High School in Union City, Tennessee; Hoover High School in North Canton, Ohio; and Brighton High School in Brighton, Michigan. He is the author of Wait ‘Til You Have Real Problems (Dzanc Books, 2014) and The Octopus (Gertrude Press, 2016). His poems have appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Rattle, Prairie Schooner, and The Rupture and have received a Pushcart Prize. Scott also writes songs including “Public School Theme Song” and co-hosts the Skazat! poetry series.