Staff & Contributors

Randy Brown
Editor & Publisher

Randy Brown traveled the world as a child in an active-duty U.S. Air Force family in the 1970s, then landed permanently and happily in the American Midwest. A former editor of community and metro newspapers, as well as national trade and “how-to” consumer magazines, he is now a freelance writer and editor based in Central Iowa.

His journalism, essays, and poetry have appeared widely in print and on-line, including graphic novels and anthologies. He is the author or named editor of more than six books, chapbooks, and collections.

Brown holds an undergraduate degree in journalism and mass communications from Drake University, Des Moines, and a Master of Science in Architectural Studies (MSAS) from Iowa State University, Ames. As a retired 20-year veteran of the U.S. Army National Guard, Brown is active in various veteran-facing literary organizations.

Launched by Brown as a sole proprietorship in 2003, Middle West Press first focused on providing freelance writing, editing, and editorial project-management services to the print-magazine sector. In 2015, it was reorganized as a limited liability corporation in the State of Iowa, and expanded business operations as an independent book publisher of journalism, non-fiction, and poetry. The press publishes from one to four titles annually, often with a focus on the people, places, and history of the American Midwest.

Lisa Stice
Associate Editor

Lisa Stice is an award-winning poet and literary activist. Stice has been an associate editor at Middle West Press LLC since 2023. She is also a poetry editor for Inklette Magazine, and often serves as an editor and mentor with various other writing organizations. The poet holds a Bachelor of Arts in English literature from Mesa State College (now Colorado Mesa University), Grand Junction, Colo., and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and Literary Arts from the University of Alaska, Anchorage.

Lisa Stice is the author of the previously published poetry collections Uniform (Aldrich Press, 2016), Permanent Change of Station (Middle West Press, 2018), FORCES (Middle West Press, 2021), Letters from Conflict (2024), and the poetry chapbook Desert (Prolific Press, 2018). Her work appears widely in literary journals and anthologies worldwide, the latter including Beyond the Hill (Lost Tower Publications, 2017); and Nuclear Impact: Broken Atoms in Our Hands (Shabda Press, 2017). 

Stice’s poem “Pursuit” was the 2020 military-family category poetry winner in the Col. Darron L. Wright Memorial Writing Awards, administered annually by the literary journal Line of Advance.

In 2017, her poem “Dear Wadih Sa’adeh” was selected as an honorable mention in the poetry category in that year’s volume of the Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors anthology series, published by Southeast Missouri State University Press. Her poem “A Quick Lunch from the Noodle Stand” was nominated for a 2016 Pushcart Prize by The Magnolia Review.