Ruth Maassen’s poems have appeared in West Branch, Tar River Poetry, and other journals. She is the poet laureate of Rockport, Massachusetts.

Laura LeHew is an award winning poet whose poems have appeared or are forthcoming in such journals as Alehouse Press, Arabesques Review, Big Pulp, HeartLodge, Her Mark Calendar .07/.09, Outrider Press, Pank, PMS, and Tiger.s Eye. Her chapbook .Beauty. is due out in May .09. She received her MFA in writing from the California College of The Arts.

Carl T Abt is an English major at the Ohio State University where he has been admitted to advanced creative writing classes in fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. He has been an Editors’ Choice in Bewildering Stories, and has over a dozen previous or forthcoming publications in The Houston Literary Review, Expressions, The Denney
Stall, Ink, Sweat and Tears and other journals.

Kristine Ong Muslim More than six hundred poems and stories by her have been published or are forthcoming in over two hundred journals and magazines worldwide. Her work has recently appeared in Blue Fifth Review, Dog Versus Sandwich, Farrago’s Wainscot, Frigg Magazine, Grasslimb, GUD Magazine, Merge Poetry, Pank, and
Paradigm.

Ingrid Swanberg is a native Californian transposed to the Midwest. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her poetry has appeared in numerous small press venues. A chapbook, Eight Poems, currently appears in the online Light & Dust Anthology of Poetry. Earlier books include Flashlights and Letter to Persephone & Other Poems. Kirpan Press has just released her broadside “the pure.” Recent poems have appeared or are pending in Osiris, Presa, Indefinite Space, Big Hammer, Napalm Health Spa and 12×2 (Marseille). She is the editor of the poetry journal Abraxas and the director of Ghost Pony Press. In 1991, under the Ghost Pony imprint, she published Zen Concrete & Etc., a full-length collection by avant-garde American poet d.a.levy, and she continues to contribute to the growing scholarship on levy’s work. She is also a collagist and a prose writer. A future project is a book on modern lyric poetry (Hölderlin, Rimbaud, Trakl, levy, Wright).

Adrienne Rose Johnson is a Marin County native and UC Berkeley student. At Berkeley, she majors in American Studies and minors in Creative Writing. Her literary non-fiction has been published in Margins Magazine, Matchbox
Magazine, Cal Literary Arts Magazine, The Blue Print Review, among others.

Caroline Hagood is currently completing an MA in English at Buffalo State University and plans to begin working towards a PhD in 2009. She is a poet, film critic, and freelance writer. She recently finished a poetry collection entitled Cinemagination: My Life in Film. Her poetry has appeared in Hanging Loose, Oxymoron, Movin’, and Verse on Vellum.

Phebe Davidson, Reviews Editor of Yemassee and a staff writer for The Asheville Poetry Review, is the author of several collections of poetry. Two books of poems will appear over the next several months: Milk, Brittle Bone from Main Street Rag, The Surface of Things from David Robert Books.

Amy Unsworth earned her M.A. in British and American Literature from Kansas State University. Prior poetry publications include Sojourn, Tar River Poetry, 60 Seconds to Shine: 221 Monologues for Women, and The Briar Cliff Review. She previously was an editor for Three Candles Journal. She currently lives with her husband and three sons in Leavenworth, Kansas.

Nancy Esposito’s first book of poems was Changing Hands (Quarterly Review of Literature Contemporary Poetry Series VI). Mêm’ Rain, a winner of the National Looking Glass Poetry Chapbook Competition, was published in 2002 by Pudding House Publications, which also published Greatest Hits 1978-2001 in 2003. She has completed a manuscript of poems, entitled Lamentation with June Bug. She received the Discovery/The Nation Award, Massachusetts Arts Lottery Grant, the Colladay Award, PSA Gordon Barber Memorial Award, Fulbright Grant to Egypt, and grants to Vietnam and Cambodia. Her poems and translations have appeared in APR, The Nation, The Antioch Review, Southwest Review, Indiana Review, and Prairie Schooner, among others. Her poems have been translated into Spanish and Vietnamese.

Edward Butscher Books: Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness (Schaffner Press, 2004), Child in the House: Poems (Canio’s Editions, 1995), Eros Descending: A Selection (Dusty Dog Press, 1992)

Tree Riesener is the author of Liminalog, a collection of ghazals and sijo. Two new collections are forthcoming: inscapes from Finishing Line Press and angel poison from Pudding House Publications. She has published poetry and short fiction in numerous literary magazines, including 5_Trope, Evergreen Review, Ginosko, Blue Fifth Review, Loch Raven Review, Pindeldyboz, Identity Theory, Blood Lotus, Belletrist Review, NEBO, Acclaim, The Source, Hinge, Schuylkill Valley Review, Diner, Mad Poets Review, Albatross/ Anabiosis, Lynx, The Ghazal Page, Fine Print, Anthology of the Philadelphia Writers Conference, Hidden River and Ernest Hilbert’s E-Verse Radio. Three short stories—On The C Bus, Lighted Ships, and The BVM—have been staged in the Writing Aloud productions of InterAct Theatre, Philadelphia. A winner in the Authors in the Park Short Story Competition, she also won a double first at the Philadelphia Writers Conference for the Short-Short Story and the Literary Short Story and was a Semi-Finalist in the Pablo Neruda Poetry Competition. During summer 2002, she was a Hawthornden Writing Fellow at Hawthornden Castle, Scotland. In 2004, she was awarded the inaugural William Van Wert Memorial Fiction Award by Hidden River Arts. Active in Philadelphia-area spoken word activities, she has been a featured reader at The Well Fed Artist, La Tazza, The Philadelphia Ethical Society (on behalf of Poets & Prophets), Kelly Writers House, Robin’s Bookstore (for the Women’s Writing and Spoken Word Series and the Moonstone Series), The Book Corner, Barnes and Noble, and the Monday Night Poets series at the Philadelphia Free Library. She is the Managing Editor of the Schuylkill Valley Journal.

Craig Saunders: I like to write in the evenings, when my wife has gone to sleep and I can use dirty words.
For the last few years I have been writing full time. I have had the good fortune to have several short stories published, but I still live in ignominy in a small pauper’s shack in the Norfolk countryside…that’s on the right hand side of England…but only if you look at it the right way up…no, turn the map the other way. I have great plans for the future. My seventh Magnus Opium will soon be rejected, whereupon I can shelf it and continue writing short stories, which is much more fun, far less demanding and only costs a pound to submit, which ideal as that’s all I get from my yearly crop of turnips, less turnip tax.

Ellen Reich teaches creative writing for Emeritus College, a division of Santa Monica College. She has had hundreds of poems and stories published in the Los Angeles Times, Artlife, Slant, Mudfish, Lynx Eye, ACM, Spillway, Coe Review, Oyez Review, etc. She has won writing awards from DA Center for the Arts, Blue Unicorn, Verve, Z Miscellaneous, Cape Cod Times, and others. She was a finalist in the 2004 Pearl Poetry Prize and a semifinalist in the 2005 Flume Press Poetry Contest. Her work has been included in a number of anthologies, among them, Blue Arc, Tebot Bach Press. She served as judge for the first poetry contest held by Ventura County Writers association. A collection of her poetry along with three other poets is entitled 4 Los Angeles Poets. Her chapbook, Reverse Kiss, was editor’s choice and published by Main Street Rag in 2005. Also in 2005 a full length book of her poetry was released by Conflux Press entitled The Gynecic Papers. Ellen is also an artist and has had her work in the Weisman Museum of Art and Ojai Valley Gallery. She recently received two first place awards from the Malibu Art Association. Her art has been published in Red Dancefloor, Vernal Calibrations, and Isis Rising. She was profiled in the Los Angeles Times as a poet and artist in 2004.

Christine Lê’s short stories and poems have been accepted by the journals Rain Bird, The Autism Perspective and The Tipton Poetry Journal. Her completed manuscript Vietnam Moon obtained a grant from the Ludwig Vugelstein Foundation, and is currently under review with an outside reader for a midsize press. She lives in Hawaii, and works as a psychologist with children and their families.

Matthew Kearney has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He has been published widely in such places as Cold Mountain Review, The Chattahoochee Review, The Journal of New Jersey Poets, The Hollins Critic, Lynx Eye, The Amherst Review and Plainsongs.

Leonore Wilson lives and teaches in Napa, California. Her work has been in such magazines as California Quarterly, Quarterly West, Third Coast, Madison Review, Laurel Review, etc. She won fellowships to Villa Montalvo and University of Utah.

Kate LaDew was born in the backwoods of Louisiana clutching a nutria by the tail. Elmonte was to be her only friend. Upon moving to Carolina del Norte, Kate and Elmonte, prompted by a conversation with a hitchhiker known only as ‘The Reverend’, founded the two member group The Organization for Respectification. Their main goals are asking questions, wandering off for a bit and taking names when they feel like it. Though few names have been collected, Kate and Elmonte continue to spread the message of respectifying. The pair currently live over an abandoned Food Lion, receiving money for favors.

Mary Ann Mannino is a lecturer at Temple University. Her book Revisionary Identities: Strategies of Empowerment in the Writing of Italian American Women published by Peter Lang in 2000 discusses the work of leading writers such as Helen Barolini, Maria Mazziotti Gillan and Maria Fama. In 2003, along with Justin Vitiello, she edited a collection of essays by Italian American women writers and critics which explores the ways Italian heritage impacts writing choices for women. Breaking Open was published by Purdue University Press . Her poem “Jimmy Fahey” took first prize in the Allen Ginsberg Awards in 2001. She is both a fiction writer and a poet and her work has appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies.

Gary Lundy lives in dillon, montana where he is a professor of english at the university of montana-western. his writing has appeared in various magazines and journals, most recently red owl, iodine poetry journal, edgz, plain brown wrapper, moria poetry journal, and pacific coast journal. he has work forthcoming in pudding magazine, snow monkey, karamu, ginosko, buckle &, fluent ascension, clara venus, and heeltap. in his spare time he builds guitars and mandolins.

Grace Cavalieri is the author of several books of poetry and produced plays; she founded and still produces/hosts public radio’s “The Poet and the Poem,” now in its 33rd year, now from the Library of Congress. Her new book is Anna Nicole: Poems (Goss183:: Casa Menendez, 2008.) She is book review editor for The Montserrat Review and a poetry columnist for MiPOradio. Her play in progress, on Anna Nicole, received its premiere DC reading at The Writer’s Center in 2009.

Andrena Zawinski, Features Editor at PoetryMagazine.com, lives and teaches writing in Oakland, CA. Her poetry appears widely in print and online. Her latest collected work, Taking the Road Where It Leads, is from Poets Corner Press, in which “Girl with Umbrella” appears. www.poetrymagazine.com/zawinski

Michael Hettich most recent books are LIKE HAPPINESS (Anhinga 2010) and THE ANIMALS BEYOND US (New Rivers, 2011). His most recent chapbook, THE MEASURED BREATHING, won the 2011 Swan Scythe Chapbook contest. He lives with his family in Miami

Stephanie Dickinson’s fiction has appeared in Waterstone, Northwest Review, Mudfish, Portland Review, Green Mountains Review, Columbia Review, Feminist Studies, among others. Along with Rob Cook she co-edits the literary journal Skidrow Penthouse. Half Girl, her first novel, will be published this year by Spuyten Duyvil. Her story “A Lynching in Stereoscope” was reprinted in 2005 Best American Series Nonrequired Reading, edited by Dave Eggers. And she is a 2006 fellow in Fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Road of Five Churches, a short story collection, recently was released by Rain Mountain Press.

Larissa Shmailo has recently been published in and/ or heard on About: Poetry, The Facebook Review, Babel, Big Bridge, Fulcrum, CLWN WR, Naropa’s We (Creative Cannabilism), i-Outlaw, Nefarious Bovine Radio, Wordsalad, and many other media. (please see www.myspace.com/thenonetworld for a complete listing). Her poetry CD, The No-Net World, has been heard on radio and Internet stations around the world. Larissa translated the Russian Futurist opera Victory over the Sun which was performed at theaters and museums internationally; a DVD of the original English-language production is part of the collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art. She is a director of TWiN Poetry, an informal collective of 7,000 audio poets, and a translator for the international poetry organization UniVerse. This year, she contributed translations to the anthology New Russian Poetry published by Dalkey Archive Press. She is pleased to join the masthead this year of the acclaimed annual Fulcrum as public coordinator.

David Appelbaum: I am a hiker and biker, former editor of Parabola Magazine, publisher of Codhill Press, whose work has appeared in such places as APR, Commonweal, Verse Daily, and Rhino.

Lisa Harris’ fiction explores hope and contradiction, establishes the landscape as one of the characters, and uses lyrical language to create beauty when the truth is hard. Her short stories have been published in ginosko, The MacGuffin, Zone 3, The Habersham Review, The Distillery, Word Thursdays, and other literary journals.

Robert Wexelblatt is professor of humanities at Boston University’s College of General Studies. He has published essays, stories, and poems in a wide variety of journals, two story collections, Life in the Temperate Zone and The Decline of Our Neighborhood, a book of essays, Professors at Play, and the novel Zublinka Among Women, winner of the First Prize for Fiction, Indie Book Awards, 2008. A new collection of stories, The Artist Wears Rough Clothing, is forthcoming in 2009.

Michael Cadnum is an award-winning poet, a professional photographer, an amateur archaeologist, and he is learning new respect for spiders.  He lives in Albany, California, with his wife Sherina.

Ernest Williamson III is a 32 year old Christian polymath who has published poetry and visual art in 200 online and print journals. He is a self-taught pianist and painter. His poetry has been nominated twice for the Best of the Net Anthology. He holds the B.A. and the M.A. in English/Creative Writing/Literature from the University of Memphis.  Ernest is an Adjunct Professor at New Jersey City University and an English Professor at Essex County College. Professor Williamson is also a Ph.D. Candidate at Seton Hall University in the field of Higher Education, and a member of The International High IQ Society based in New York City. Professor Williamson is also a chess expert with an internet rating in the 2000-2200 range. Currently he is rated 2010. View Professor Williamson’s listing in Poets & Writers Directory.

Lyn Lifshin’s Another Woman Who Looks Like Me was just published by Black Sparrow at David Godine October, 2006. It has been selected for the 2007 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence for previous finalists of the Paterson Poetry Prize. (ORDER@GODINE.COM ). Also out in 2006 is her prize winning book about the famous, short lived beautiful race horse, Ruffian: The Licorice Daughter: My Year With Ruffian from Texas Review Press. Lifshin’s other recent prizewinning books include Before it’s Light published winter 1999-2000 by Black Sparrow press, following their publication of Cold Comfort in 1997. Her poems have appeared in most literary and poetry magazines and she is the subject of an award winning documentary film, Lyn Lifshin: Not Made of Glass, available from Women Make Movies. Her poem, The No More Apologizing, the No More Little, Laughing Blues has been called among the most impressive documents of the women’s poetry movement, by Alicia Ostriker. An update to her Gale Research Projects Autobiographical series, On the Outside:Blues, Blue Lace, was published Spring 2003. What Matters Most and August Wind as well as She was Found Treading Water Deep out in the Ocean, In Mirrors, An Unfinished Journey and Novemberly were recently published Tsunami is forthcoming from BLUE UNICORN. World Parade Press will publish Poets, (Mostly) Who Have Touched me, Living and Dead. All True. Especially the Lies.. Texas Review Press will publish Barbaro, Beyond Brokenness in Fall 2008 and World Parade Books just published Desire in March 2008. Red Hen will publish Persephone fall 2008. Coatalism Press has just published 92 Rapple Drive and Drifting is online. Goose River Press will publish Nutley Pond. Finishing Line Press will publish Lost In The Fog October 2008For interviews, photographs, more bio material, reviews, interviews, prose, samples of work and more, her web site is www.lynlifshin.com

Mary Stojak has degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, University of Iowa, and an MA in writing from Johns Hopkins University and is now working on her language requirement for her next degree. Her short stories have appeared in a variety of journals and most recently in an anthology of Maryland Writers entitled New Lines from the Old Line State. She’s worked at a variety of policy and operational positions in the Federal Government including a period as a Fraud Investigator in the Midwest and also (in her spare time?) plays flute professionally and is now a grandmother! Mary is currently working on another novel.

Sarah Dawson grew up in the sunny city of Durban on the east coast of South Africa. She was once a lifestyle journalist, is now a freelance writer, poet and student, and is trying to be a filmmaker. She is currently studying towards a masters degree in Film Studies in her home town.

Christopher Hart is a writer and scientist living in Ottawa, Ontario. He holds a B.Sc. (Honours) in chemistry from Queen’s University, and is currently pursuing an LL.B. and M.Sc. at the University of Ottawa. For the past three years, he has been a columnist for a newspaper from his hometown, The Seaway News, where he writes creative
nonfiction and political commentary. His own online journal, thinkpiece.ca, is currently under construction.

Reine Dugas Bouton teaches English at Southeastern Louisiana University. Scholarly interests include Eudora Welty, Louisiana literature, and the travel writing of Italy. Last year, she edited a collection of essays on Welty’s Delta Wedding. Each summer, she takes students to study the literature and culture of Italy with Southeastern’s study abroad program. Recent nonfiction has appeared in Italy from a Backpack and Literary
Mama Magazine.

Rina Ferrarelli is an immigrant from Italy. Her work, original poetry and translation, has been collected in five books, the most recent, Winter Fragments (Chelsea editions, 2006), a translation of the lyrics of Bartolo Cattafi, a Sicilian poet. Her poems have been published in journals such as Barrow Street, The Chariton Review, Chelsea, College English, 5 A.M., Laurel Review , The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Poet Lore, Runes, Tar River Poetry, VIA, and in dozens of anthologies and textbooks.

Stephen Busby is a traveller, writer and photographer based in the Findhorn Community, northern Scotland. His prose and poetry have appeared recently in Cezanne’s Carrot, r.kv.r.y, Slow Trains, The Battered Suitcase, Visionary Tongue, and Secret Attic. He works in the corporate and not-for-profit sectors, running Tran formative learning events there – see www.stevebusby.com

Suzanne Roberts is the author of three books of poetry, Shameless (2007), Nothing to You (2008), and Plotting Temporality (forthcoming from Red Hen Press). She writes and teaches in South Lake Tahoe, California. For more information, please visit her website at www.suzanneroberts.org

John T. Hitchner is a graduate of Glassboro State College (now Rowan University) and Dartmouth College. He has also studied at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom and the New York State Summer Writers Conference. Presently, he teaches Coming of Age in War and Peace at Keene State College, Keene, New Hampshire.
He has been a Robert Penn Warren Free Verse winner for the Anthology of New England Writers and a Featured Poet in the Aurorean. His poetry has been published in Chantarelle’s Notebook, Avocet, Timber Creek Review and, most recently, in Tar Wolf Review. His short fiction has appeared in First Class and Lunch Hour Stories.

Susan Niz has published with Cezanne’s Carrot, The Summerset Review, flashquake, and Opium Magazine. Her short fiction is set in Guatemala and inspired by her husband’s childhood. She has written a novel set in her native Minneapolis. It is yet unpublished. She is finding new and miraculous sources of inspiration these days. Links to her published writing can be found at susannizfiction.blogspot.com

Kelley White studied at Dartmouth College and Harvard Medical School and worked as a pediatrician in inner-city Philadelphia for more than twenty-five years. Mother of three, she is an active Quaker, and has recently returned to her small New Hampshire village and begun work at a rural health center in the North Country. Her poems have been widely published over the past decade, in journals including Exquisite Corpse, Nimrod, Poet Lore, Rattle and the Journal of the American Medical Association and in several chapbooks and full-length collections. She is the recipient of a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant in poetry.

Yelena Dubrovin I was born in St. Petersburg, Russia and in 1978 moved to the United States. I am the author of two books of poetry “Preludes to the Rain” and “Beyond the Line of No Return”. I co-authored with Hilary Koprowski a novel “In Search of Van Dyck. In addition to this, my short stories, poetry and literary essays appeared in different periodicals, such as HyperTexts, The World Audience, 63 Channels and others. My short stories are accepted by Cantaraville, Bent Pin Quarterly, Bewildering Stories,Pensonfire and etc. I am a bilingual writer, published in two languages, Russian and English.

April M. Oswald is a thirty-three year old mother of two. She grew up in Park City, Utah where she learned to appreciate the natural beauty of small town life. April graduated from Westminster College with a Bachelors degree in Accounting, but has always felt the need to write. She lived in California for two years while married to a Marine. They lived outside of Palm Springs on a military base. After they divorced she moved back to her home town in hopes of reconnecting with past friends, finding a comfortable space to write, and re-discovering the joys of a simple life. Dear Isaac is April’s first published work.

Olga Abella teaches creative writing and literature at Eastern Illinois University. She received her BA from Southampton College at Long Island University, her MA and PhD from SUNY at Stony Brook. Her poems have appeared in black dirt, CALYX, Urban Spaghetti, Natural Bridge, The MacGuffin, poetrybay.com, poetpourri, Long Island Quarterly, Kalliope and others. She has published two chapbooks, Grasping to What Is (A Short Book Press, 1993) and What It Takes (Birnham Wood Graphics, 2000), and a recent book of poems Watching the Wind (Writers Ink Press 2008). She is editor of the literary journal KARAMU.

Kaber Vasuki is an electrical engineering student at SASTRA University, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu currently. He is interested in music, literature and green tech. He blogs at http://kaber-vasuki.blogspot.com

John Handley is a Ph.D student and Golden Gate Theological seminary in Berkeley, California where he is studying Art & Religion. He is a former pastor to the homeless and creates various forms of art.

David Appelbaum: I am a hiker and biker, former editor of Parabola Magazine, publisher of Codhill Press, whose work has appeared in such places as APR, Commonweal, Verse Daily, and Rhino.

Sofia Starnes [The Soul’s Landscape (Aldrich, 2002); A Commerce of Moments (Pavement Saw Press, 2003)] is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Poetry Fellowship from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, Editor’s Prize in the Marlboro Poetry Awards, the Rainer Maria Rilke Poetry Prize, Editor’s Prize in the Transcontinental Poetry Award, and the Aldrich Poetry Chapbook Award. Her poetry appears in various journals, among them the Notre Dame Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Pleiades, Southern Poetry Review, and Gulf Coast. Her essays and criticism also have been featured in Christianity & the Arts, Christianity & Literature, and ImageUpdate. Her professional homepage can be accessed at www.sofiamstarnes.com.

Judith Terzi’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming both in English and Spanish in various journals and anthologies including An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind: Poets on 9/11, Borderlands, Broken Bridge Review, Chest, Moondance, The Pedestal Magazine, Picayune, and The Teacher’s Voice. An essay on Alzheimer’sand caregiving is included in Voices of Alzheimer’s: the Healing Companion.She taught writing at California State University, Los Angeles, and French at Polytechnic School in Pasadena, CA, for many years.

P. Alanna Roethle is a writer, editor, photographer, journalist and whatever else comes along. She currently lives in Austin, TX and works at an ad agency after floating around the country for most of her life, and has decided to settle there for the moment. She has had poems and short stories published in several online magazines and print publications/anthologies, but is mostly working on selling her first novel. www.alannaroethle.com or blog.myspace.com/angelsthumbprint

Derrick Weston Brown holds an MFA in Creative Writing from American University. He has studied poetry under Dr. Tony Medina at Howard University ,Cornelius Eady and Henry Taylor at American University, and Sharon Olds at The Squaw Valley Summer Writers Retreat. He is a former Lannan Fellow and a Cave Canem fellow. His work has appeared in such literary journals as Warpland, DrumVoices, The Columbia Review and the online journals Capital Beltway and Howard University’s Amistad. His work has also appeared in The Washington Post and New Orleans Times-Picayune newpapers and such anthologies as, When Words Become Flesh ( Mwaza Publications), Taboo Haiku ( Avisson Press), and Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade (University Of Michigan Press). In 2006 he released his first chapbook of poetry entitled The Unscene and has recently completed a full-length manuscript entitled Gist. He is a native of Charlotte North Carolina, and currently resides in Mount Rainier Maryland. He teaches two poetry classes at The Duke Ellington School Of Performing Arts in Washington D.C. He is the Poet-In-Residence at Busboys and Poets bookstore, which is operated by the non-profit Teaching For Change and restaurant.

Mira Coleman writes from western Maine. Her work has recently appeared in the Daily Bulldog LLC Farmington, Maine; flashquake; Ink, Sweat and Tears; Red Fez; and has appeared or is forthcoming in Ranfurly Review; Wings of Icarus; Ghoti; Word Riot; The Externalist and Centrifugal Eye. Her work was first published in “Flowering After Frost, An Anthology of Contemporary New England Poets” Branden Press, 1975 Boston. She worked for 27 years in the Massachusetts Trial Court before retiring as a probation officer in 2002.

P. V. LeForge lives on a farm in north Florida with his wife, Sara Warner, and horses. His fourth book of poetry, Ways to Reshape the Heart, is due out from Main Street Rag early in 2009. “Copse,” the poem included in this issue, is part of his collection of farm poems, My Wife Is A Horse. Stuff about him, his writing, and the farm can be found at http://www.BlackBayFarm.com.

James Miranda currently lives and writes in Kalamazoo Michigan where he serves as the fiction editor for Third Coast Magazine and teaches composition and creative writing at Western Michigan University while pursuing his MFA. This is his first published piece of fiction.

Jacob Erin-Cilberto, originally from Bronx, NY, now resides in Carbondale, Illinois. He teaches English at John A. Logan and Shawnee community colleges. Cilberto has been writing and publishing his work since 1970. His work has appeared in many small journals and magazines and he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in Poetry in 2006 and 2007. His 10th and latest book is called “against the current.” Cilberto teaches poetry workshops for Heartland Writers Guild and Southern Illinois Writers Guild and this gives him the opportunity to share his love of poetry with aspiring poets.

Amy MacLennan’s work has been published or is forthcoming in River Styx, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Linebreak, Cimarron Review, Pearl and Rattle.

Dawn Paul’s stories, essays and poems have been published in anthologies in the US and Wales. She also has short fiction in numerous journals including Junctures (New Zealand), The Sun Magazine, 14 Hills, Talking River and The Redwood Coast Review. She is the editor of Corvid Press, a small literary press. Her novel, The Country of Loneliness, will be published by Marick Press in 2009

Andrea Cumbo is a writer and writing teacher living in North East (yes, the town is called North East), Maryland. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Science and Spirit, Santa Monica Review, South Loop Review, and other publications. Currently, she balancing writing with the world of two new kittens and basement remodeling.

Zyllah Zala was born in Transylvania and educated in the US to qualify as a teacher, but an MFA is still in the works. Her writing is often a mixed media of prose and poetry, but so far only her poems have appeared in print (Ambit, Hotel Amerika, Language and Culture, Left Curve, Pennine Platform, etc).

Carol Frith: Co-editor of Ekphrasis, Carol Frith has had work in Willow Review, Seattle Review, Measure, Switched-on Gutenberg, Quarter After Eight, Chariton, Lake Effect, Cutbank, Redivider, Asheville, 150 Contemporary Sonnets & others. She has chapbooks from Bacchae Press, Medicinal Purposes, and Palanquin Press & a poem of hers received Special Mention in the 2003 Pushcart Anthology.

Natalie Safir has been publishing poems in national literary journals since the 1980’s and anthologized in college texts: Her books published are Moving into Seasons, 1981, To Face the Inscription, 1987, Made Visible in 1998.and A Clear Burning, in 2004.. She teaches Writing as Healing at the Hudson Valley Writers Center and is a certified coach and gestalt therapist.

Laurie Zupan has had work published in Lost and Found, Plymouth Writers Group, Medicinal Purposes, Writer’s Digest and others. She earned a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Creative Writing from Antioch University in 2001. Laurie currently lives in Southern California with her son.

Nina Sharma is a writer living in New York City. She is in the Liberal Studies, American Studies Graduate Program at Columbia University, where she is specializing in diaspora and immigrant studies. She is an editor at DesiLit Magazine, an online literary journal of writing and art focused on South Asia and the diaspora and currently works at The Asian American Writers’ Workshop, a literary arts nonprofit based in New York City, where she is the Programs Coordinator. She recently acquired a set of drums and wants you to come jam with her.

Alix Reeves Born in post-revolutionary Cuba in the sixties, Alix’s family fled to South Pasadena, California. She attended California State University at Los Angeles were she received her Master’s of Science Degree in Psychology. Widowed at a young age, she began to write prolifically, in an attempt to manage grief. She was driven to explore the little known experience of the children of pedophiles, which inspired her first screenplay, WHY THINGS BURN a finalist at The Sundance Institute of Film, winner of the Key West IndieFest, finalist at both the London Independent Film Festival and the Beverly Hills Film Festival. Her most recent screenplay, a children’s comedy written for animation won the Kid’s First Screenplay Competition and is currently a finalist at the Screenwriting Expo. She signed with Santa Fe Films in 2008. Happily engaged, she lives both in Milwaukee, WI and Pasadena, CA with her fiance Todd and their daughter Lydia.

Austin Alexis has published poetry and fiction in The Cherry Blossom Review, Tuesday Shorts, Six Sentences, Conceit Magazine, RogueScholars.com, The Writer, The Journal and elsewhere. His chapbook, Lovers and Drag Queens, was published by Poets Wear Prada in the fall of 2007. Originally from Erie, Pennsylvania, Tricia Asklar received her MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She teaches writing at Nazareth College and lives in Rochester, New York, with her wife, two dogs and a cat. Her poems have recently appeared in Blue Earth Review, Boxcar Poetry Review, The Dos Passos Review, Neon, Redactions: Poetry and Poetics, and on Verse Daily.

Marjorie Kowalski Cole An Alaskan since 1966, writes fiction, poetry and essays at her home in Ester, an old mining town south of Fairbanks. Her first novel, Correcting the Landscape, received the 2004 Bellwether Award. Her short stories and poetry have appeared in Antigonish Review, Grain, Passages North, The Chattahoochee Review, Room of One’s Own, Kalliope, Beloit Fiction Journal, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Seattle Review, and others. Essays have appeared in Commonweal, the Los Angeles Times, and National Catholic Reporter. Her second novel is A Spell on the Water.

Jay Michaelson is the founding editor of Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture, a columnist for the Forward, and the author of God in Your Body: Kabbalah, Mindfulness, and Embodied Spiritual Practice. His work has appeared in Slate, The Jerusalem Post, Blithe House Quarterly, Blueline, White Crane, and Beliefnet, and in anthologies including Mentsh: On Being Jewish and Queer and Righteous Indignation: A Jewish Call for Justice. He lives in upstate New York.

Jeffrey Ihlenfeldt lives and writes in Lancaster, PA, where he also teaches creative writing and literature. His short stories have appeared in a variety of literary journals and anthologies, including Southern Humanities Review, Columbia Review, and Louisville Review. He holds an MFA from Goddard College.

Adam Burnett lives and writes (whichever comes first) in Toronto, Ontario. He has had stories published in Down in the Dirt, Rhapsoidia, Peeks and Valleys, and Midnight Times. He is currently working on an Epic Poem entitled “Ode to a Pint of Guinness,” which he swears he would have finished long ago if only he didn’t keep finishing the pints first. He promises he’ll never write a book in which any character belches for comedic effect.”

T. Alan Broughton lives in Burlington, VT. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and NEA Award, he has published novels, poems and stories. His most recent books are his sixth collection of poems, The Origin of Green (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2001), and a collection of short stories, Suicidal Tendencies (Colorado State University Press, 2003). A seventh collection of poems, A World Remembered, is forthcoming from Carnegie Mellon.

Michael Cuglietta recently moved from Tampa to Orlando, FL. He has a bachelor’s degree in American History with a minor in Creative Writing from the University of South Florida. He has been published in numerous small literary magazines including Opium Magazine, Zygote in My Coffee, Word Riot and others.

Vincent Berquez is an artist, poet, and curator who sometimes also works in Broadcasting. He has published in Britain, Europe, America and New Zealand. His work appears in various anthologies, including My Gun is Bigger Than Your Gun and A Passion For Poetry Anthology. He was requested to write a Tribute as part of Poems to the American People for the Hastings International Poetry Festival. He has also been commissioned to write a eulogy by the son of Chief Albert Nwanzi Okoluko, the Ogimma Obi of Ogwashi-Uku to commemorate the death of his father. He has been a judge for Manifold Magazine and had work read as part of Manifold Voices at Waltham Abbey. He has read his work many times, including at The Troubadour and at the Pitshanger Poets, in Ealing, and was nominated for Poet of the Year with the Forward Prize for Literature. He will be contributing to a London Voices anthology soon. With his artwork he has shown world wide, winning first prize at the Novum Comum 88’ Competition in Como, Italy. He has worked with an art’s group, called Eins von Hundert, from Cologne, Germany for over 16 years. He has recently shown his work at the Lambs Conduit Festival and had a one-man show at Sacred Spaces, St John the Baptist, Westbourne Park in November and at the Foundlings Museum in May, 2008.

Anca Vlasopolos has published a detective novel, a memoir, various short stories, over 200 poems, the poetry collection Penguins in a Warming World, and the forthcoming non-fiction novel The New Bedford Samurai.
She was born in 1948 in Bucharest, Rumania. Her father, a political prisoner of the Communist regime in Rumania, died when Anca was eight. After a sojourn in Paris and Brussels, at fourteen she immigrated to the United States with her mother, a prominent Rumanian intellectual and a survivor of Auschwitz. Anca is a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. She is married to Anthony Ambrogio, a writer and editor; they have two daughters: Olivia Vlasopolos Ambrogio and Beatriz Rosa Jimenez Ambrogio.

Judith Terzi holds an MA in French language and literature. She taught high school French at Polytechnic School in Pasadena, CA, and college English at California State University, Los Angeles, for many years. Her work has appeared both in print and online, including in the anthology An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind: Poets on 9/11, The Teacher’s Voice, Moondance, and Borderlands. A personal essay on caregiving and Alzheimer’s is included in Voices of Alzheimer’s: the Healing Companion (2007).

Kelley White A New Hampshire native, studied at Dartmouth College and Harvard Medical School and has been a pediatrician in inner-city Philadelphia for more than twenty-five years. Mother of three, she is an active Quaker. Her poems have been widely published over the past decade, in journals including Exquisite Corpse, Nimrod, Poet Lore, Rattle and the Journal of the American Medical Association and in several chapbook and full-length collections. She is the recipient of a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant in poetry.

Rachel Halls is best known by her friends as a sound designer, poetic fashionista, and avid tea drinker. She is greatly inspired by the sounds of electronic music and all things haute couture, often making references to both in all of her works. Interested in learning more? Seek her out at http://www.myspace.com/christinasdream

Jonathan Greenhause travels the land as a Spanish interpreter and translator, but his true love lies in the intricate architecture of poetry, with its capacity for epiphany and its concomitant potential for extraordinary failure. His poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in numerous publications throughout the country, including The Bitter Oleander, Bryant Literary Review, Interim, Many Mountains Moving, and Nimrod.

Bradley R. Strahan is a Former Fulbright Professor of Poetry & American Culture (2002-2004). For 12 yrs. he taught poetry at Georgetown Univ.. He is the director of VISIONS INTERNATIONAL ARTS and publisher of Visions-International. Since 1976 he has developed a worldwide following for his work, which includes several books of poetry and over 500 poems in such places as America, Christian Century, Cross Currents, Rattapallax, Virginia, Apostrophe, The Seattle Rev., The Christian Science Monitor, Poet Lore, Confrontation, First Things, Midstream, The Hollins Critic, Soundings East, Gargoyle, Southwestern Rev., Negative Capability, Sundog, etc.; in the U.K. in Orbis, Tribune, Nottingham Rev., Krax, etc. and elsewhere: Sources (Belgium), Poetry Monthly Shimunhak (Korea), The Salmon (Ireland), Poetry Australia, etc.. He has been anthologized in many places and translated into French Spanish, Dutch, Serbian, Macedonian, Korean, etc.. He has lectured and read his work in America, Europe and Asia, For over 20 years he sponsored a series of international poetry readings at Rock Creek Gallery and other locations. He has won many awards for his poetry. He was in Holland on a Vogelstein Foundation program from Nov., 2001 to Jan., 2002 (when he replaced John Ashbery as the American poet at the “Literaire Podia Amsterdam”). He was a Fellow during 2006 at the “Vertalershuis” in Leuven, Belgium.

Sankar Roy, originally from India, is a poet, translator, activist and multimedia artist living near Pittsburgh, PA. He is a winner of PEN USA Emerging Voices, author of three chapbooks of poetry– Moon Country, The House My Father Could Not Build and Mantra of the Born-free (all from Pudding House). He is an associate editor of international poetry anthology, Only the Sea Keeps: Poetry of the Tsunami (Rupa Publication, India and Bayeux Arts, Canada). Sankar’s poems have appeared or forthcoming in over forty-five literary journals including Bitter Oleander, Crab Orchard Review, Connecticut Review, Harpur Palate, Icon, Runes, Rhino, Tampa Review and Poetry Magazine.

Maureen Shay lives and writes in Salisbury, North Carolina. She is currently an English teacher at Salisbury High School, where she has also taught Theatre Arts and where she encourages young people to investigate their interests in creative expression. Her poetry has appeared in Tar River Poetry, as well as in anthologies such as Mountain Time and Wildacres Poetry.

Jean Anderson’s first collection In Extremis and Other Alaskan Stories received several awards, including a PEN Syndicated Fiction selection. Anderson has lived in Alaska since 1966 and writes mostly short stories. “Smallpox” is part of a collection-in-progress, “Bird’s Milk: Stories of Alaska and Siberia.”

Geer Austin’s poetry and short fiction has appeared in Big Bridge, Colere, Parting Gifts, and Potomac Review,among others. He lives in northern Manhattan.

Daniel Coshnear – dan@coshnear.org – lives in Guerneville with wife and two children. He woks at a group home for men and women with mental illnesses and substance issues and he is author of a collection of stories, Jobs & Other Preoccupations (Helicon Nine 2000) Willa Cather Award winner.

Dane Myers lives in Albuquerque with Melinda and their three daughters Emily, Madeleine, and Natalie. His publishing credits include Willard and Maple, North Dakota Quarterly, and Fresh Boiled Peanuts. Although he has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of New Mexico Dane continues to work part-time as a paramedic and full-time as a Mr. Mom/ next-to-last-place trophy husband.

Stephen Kessler is the author, most recently, of Burning Daylight (poems, Littoral Press); his translation (with Daniela Hurezanu) of Eyeseas, poems by Raymond Queneau, is due this summer from Black Widow Press, and his book of essays Moving Targets: On Poets, Poetry &Translation will be issued in the fall by El León Literary Arts. He is acontributing editor of Poetry Flash and the editor of The Redwood Coast Review.

Walter Bargen has published eleven books of poetry and two chapbooks. The latest are: The Feast, BkMk Press-UMKC, 2004, a series of prose poems, was winner of the 2005 William Rockhill Nelson Award; Remedies for Vertigo (2006) from WordTech Communications; and West of West from Timberline Press (2007). Theban Traffic is scheduled for publication in 2008. His poems have recently appeared in the Beloit Poetry Journal, New Letters, Poetry East, and the Seattle Review. He was just appointed to be the first poet laureate of Missouri. www.walterbargen.com

Kosrof Chantikian is the author of two earlier works of poems – Prophecies & Transformations and Imaginations & Self-Discoveries. He is editor of Octavio Paz: Homage to the Poet, and The Other Shore: 100 Poems by Rafael Alberti. In 1979-80, 1980-81, and 1981-82 he was poet-in-residence at the San Francisco Public Library. He edited KOSMOS: A Journal of Poetry from 1976-1983, and from 1980 to 2001, was general editor of the KOSMOS Modern Poets in Translation Series. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, and the San Francisco Foundation. His poems and prose have appeared in Amerus, Ararat, Arete, Bleb, Blue Unicorn, California Quarterly, Green House, KOSMOS, and Margins. He lives in Larkspur, CA with his family.

Livio Farallo is co-founder and co-editor of Slipstream and a Professor of Biology at Niagara County Community College. He has been published extensively in the small press over the past 25 years and has been nominated for 3 Pushcart Prizes for Poetry.

Corinne Robins, poet, art historian and widely published art critic is the author of the text THE PLURALIST ERA, American Art 1968-80 and of five poetry collections, most recently TODAY’S MENU from Marsh Hawk Press. She teaches art criticism at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, N.Y. and is the coordinator of the Poets for Choice reading series at Ceres Gallery in New York City.

Judith Cody’s poetry won awards from Atlantic Monthly and Amelia magazines, honorable mention from the Emily Dickinson Poetry Award 2002, was put forward for theLyric Recovery Award, 2004. A poem with its archives is in the Smithsonian Institution’s permanent Collection. Poems are published in: Nimrod, New York Quarterly, South Carolina Poetry Review, Poet Lore,Cumberland Poetry Review, Xavier Review, Texas Review, Primavera, Phoebe, Louisville Review, Madison Review, Eureka Literary Magazine, Westview, Anthology of Monterey Bay Poets, 2004. Anthology of Contemporary Poetry 2007, PEN Anthologies: Oakland Out load 2007, and Words Upon the Water 2006. She composes music, and wrote the composer biography, Vivian Fine: A Bio-Bibliography, Greenwood Press, 2002; also, Eight Frames Eight, poems. She has finished a poetry manu-script,The Rumor (a Vietnam saga). Forthcoming: a photography book, Roses in Portraiture. www.judithcody.com

Patricia Cumming I have two poetry collections, Afterwards, and Letter from an Outlying Province from Alice James Books. I have taught at M.I.T. and most recently at Wheaton College. Poems have appeared in The Women’s Review of Books, ACM, Home Planet News and elsewhere.

Richard Dokey’s “The Barber’s Tale” won The Hoepfner Award for the best story published in Southern Humanities Review in 2006. His stories are published widely and have won other awards. They have been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and have been cited in Best American Short Stories and Best of the West. “Pale Morning Dun,” his most recent collection, was published by University of Missouri Press in 2004. It was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award and The American Book Award. He has other collections to his credit, notably “August Heat,” published by Story Press, Chicago, and the novel “The Hollow Man,” published by Delta West. River’s Bend Press will publish his novel “The Hollywood Cafe.”

Randall Brown teaches at Saint Joseph’s University. He holds an MFA from Vermont College and a BA from Tufts. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hunger Mountain, Connecticut Review, The Saint Ann’s Review, The Evansville Review, The Laurel Review, Dalhousie Review, and others. He’s recently finished a collection of (very) short fiction, Mad To Live. Also, as an editor with SmokeLong Quarterly, he’s had the pleasure of publishing short shorts by Dan Chaon, Steve Almond, Stuart Dybek, Sherrie Flick, Robert Shapard, Melanie Rae Thon, and many other exceptional writers. He’s also had the privilege of working closely with some amazing teachers, including Douglas Glover, Abby Frucht, Nance Van Winckel, Tern-Brown Davidson, Ellen Lesser, Kathi Appelt, and Pamela Painter.

Morrie Warshawski lives in Napa, CA. He makes a living helping nonprofits do strategic planning. He’s been writing poems on and off for forty years, has appeared in a number of the small literary magazines, published a chapbook OUT OF NOWHERE (Press-22) and a number of limited edition artist books, one of which (PATTERNS OF OPPRESSION) is in the collection of MOMA NYC.

Alan Catlin recently retired from his unchosen profession as a barman to devote more time to his written work. His most recent book of poetry is Self-Portrait as the Artist Afraid of His Self-Portrait from March Street Press.

Cathy Capozzoli was the guest editor of Many Mountains Moving: The Literature of Spirituality, a collection of creative works from 88 writers and artists from 6 countries and many spiritual traditions. Recent work has appeared in The Griffin, New Millennium Writings, Evansville Review, Owen Wister Review, The Binnacle, Meridian, Willard & Maple, Carquinez Poetry Review, Lake Effect, Tin Fish, Karamu, Mudfish, RiverSedge, Oregon East, Rock & Sling, and Hawai’i Review. She holds an MFA from Naropa, a Buddhist university in Colorado.

George Couch i’m 62 with two grown children, and the same wife for 27 years. i’m retired, so i have the the luxury of time, to think and write, and try not to get in a rut. some of my heros are brautigan, twain , and some stuff i pick up on bathroomwalls. i live on the banks of the Arkansas river in the arkansas delta, a great place
to observe. it’s like living at cannary row.

Cheryl Hicks I have had prose published in The First Line, Crate, Halfway Down the Stairs, and Southern Hum, and one of my memoirs is to be included in The Remembrance Project at Howard University. My poems have been published in Urban Spaghetti, Blue Fifth Review, Heliotrope, Makar, Snakeskin, Her Circle, Creative Soup, The Orphan Leaf Review, the delinquent, Autumn Sky Poetry, Silent Actor, Avatar Review, Word Riot, Halfway Down the Stairs, Monkey Kettle, and 103: The Journal of the Image Warehouse. I have been a featured poet at C/Oasis, am a previous recipient of the Paddock Poetry Award and presented poems from my series titled Conversations with the Virgin at the 2006 Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association Conference in Tucson, Arizona.

Marguerite Guzman Bouvard is the author of 15 books including 6 books of poetry. Her first book of poems “Journeys Over Water,” was a winner of the quarterly Review of Literature contest. Her poems and articles have been widely anthologized. She is a Resident Scholar with the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University.

Emilio DeGrazia, a long-time resident of Winona, Minnesota, founded Great River Review, a literary journal, in 1977. A first collection of short fiction, Enemy Country (New Rivers, 1984), was selected by Anne Tyler for a Writer’s Choice Award, and a novel, Billy Brazil (New Rivers, 1991), was chosen for a Minnesota Voices award. A second collection, Seventeen Grams of Soul (Lone Oak Press), received a Minnesota Book Award, and Lone Oak published a second novel, A Canticle for Bread and Stones. He and his wife Monica also have co-edited anthologies for Nodin Press of Minneapolis, Twenty-Six Minnesota Writers (1995) and Thirty-Three Minnesota Poets (2000). Burying the Tree, published in 2006 by Plain View Press of Austin, Texas, is his first collection of creative prose.
Currently he continues to write fiction and essays, and hopes to be a poet when he grows up.

J. D. Riso’s short fiction and travel writing have appeared in numerous publications, including Prick of the Spindle, Identity Theory, Eclectica, BluePrintReview, and SmokeLong Quarterly. Her first novel, Blue (Murphy’s Law Press), was published in 2006. She lives with her husand in Poland.

Donna D Vitucci helps raise funds for local nonprofits, while her head and heart are engaged in the lives of the characters mounting a coup in her head. If her eyes appear vacant, you’ll know she’s in her alternate universe, following her “people” as they muck up their lives. Her stories can be found in dozens of print and online journals. Recent work appears, or is forthcoming, in Salt River Review, Front Porch Journal, The Whitefish Review, Diner, Storyglossia, Cezanne’s Carrot, Boston Literary Magazine, Insolent Rudder, and Another Chicago Magazine.

Elizabeth Bernays grew up in Australia then, in England, she obtained a PhD, worked for the British Government, and studied agricultural pests in developing countries. In 1983 she immigrated to the United States as a professor of entomology at the University of California Berkeley. Later, she was appointed Regents’ professor at the University of Arizona. Following twenty-five years in biology, she turned to creative writing, obtaining a Master of Fine Arts also at the University of Arizona. She has published essays and poems in a variety of literary journals, and was awarded first prize in the 2007 X.J. Kennedy nonfiction contest. Website: elizabethbernays.com.
yes, of course you may. please note that “Fragile, Perishable” is a reprint, and was first published in Turnrow, Summer 2004, by the University of Louisianaat Monroe.

Joneve McCormick’s poetry, articles and short stories have been published in a wide variety of hard copy and online literary and art periodicals and in several poetry anthologies. Small Bird Bones, a solo collection of poems, was published by The New Press (NYC) in 1993. Recently she edited the international anthology of poetry, World’s Strand (academici, UK), for publication. She hosts online journals, Soul to Soul and The Peregrine Muse.

Robert Wexelblatt is professor of humanities at Boston University¹s College of General Studies. He has published essays, stories, and poems in a wide variety of journals, two story collections, Life in the Temperate Zone and The Decline of Our Neighborhood, a book of essays, Professors at Play, all from Rutgers University Press, and the recent novel Zublinka Among Women from Ken Arnold Books.

Dianna Henning is author of two poetry books: The Tenderness House & The Broken Bone Tongue. She has published in numerous magazines and has taught creative writing through California Poets in the Schools, The William James Association, several CAC arts grants and recently worked with Native Americans through a CA Humanities Stories Grant

Carol Graser lives in the Adirondacks of upstate New York. She has read her poetry at many community events including fund-raisers, anti-war rallies and as a featured reader at poetry events around NY state. She hosts a monthly poetry reading series at Saratoga’s historic Caffe Lena that happens on the first Wednesday of every month. Her poetry has appeared in regional journals such as Screed, Salvage and Metroland as well as in numerous national publications like Lullwater Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, The Worcester Review, The MacGuffin and Eureka Literary Magazine.

Donna Hilbert’s latest poetry collection is Traveler in Paradise: New and Selected Poems, Pearl Editions 2004. Earlier books include Transforming Matter, Deep Red and Women Who Make Money and the Men Who Love Them (short stories), winner of England’s Staple First Edition biennial prize. Ms. Hilbert appears in and her poetry is the text of the short film, “Grief Becomes Me,” the first in a trilogy of her poems to be included in a documentary on her work and life by award-winning filmmaker Christine Fugate. Her biography is included in the Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poetry. She lives in Long Beach, California where she is working on a play and conducting a master class in poetry. Learn more at www.donnahilbert.com

Joan Payne Kincaid I live with Rod, 3 cats, and a Russell fox terrier named Fancy who is smart enough to be a circus dog! I write and paint in Sea Cliff, Long Island. My roots are on L.I. and my family goes back to the early settling of SuffolkCounty. In 2005 Pudding House Publications brought out a collection of my poems covering 20 years of published work.Currently have work in Big Scream, Main Street Rag, Santa Clara Review, Green Hills Literary Lantern, South Central Review, The South Carolina Review, Georgetown Review, Edgz, 88, Modern Haiku, Iconoclast, Lynx Eye, Yalobusha Review, Mother Earth Journal, Tule Review, Cairn, Unexpected Harvest, Ruth Moon Kempher’s Anthology from Kings Estate Press. *New book of poetry, with Wayne Hogan just off the press entitled Blue Eyes Wise and Dancing.

Fraida Liba Levine earned her B. A. in English from UCLA, with a concentration in creative writing. She served as assistant poetry editor on the staff of Westwind, UCLA’s Literary Journal. Fraida Liba has contributed poetry to Transformation, Westwind, Vulcan, The Kerf, Heartlodge, Pepperdine University’s Expressionists, Fusion Literary Magazine, and Hunter College’s Olivetree Review. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and her three children.

Fred Ferraris Books: The Durango Chronicles, Book One (Blue Marmot Press, 2004), Older Than Rain (Selva Editions, 1997), Marpa Point (Blackberry Books, 1976) Anthologies: Prayers for a Thousand Years (Harper, 1999).
Journals: Audience, Cafe Irreal, Caveat Lector, Cold Mountain Review, Diner, Heaven Bone, Mad Blood, Marginalia, Orbis, Soundings East, Spout, Switched-On Gutenberg, thieves jargon, Wavelength, Worcester Review, Yalobusha Review.

Luis Benítez was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina (1956). Member of the Latin-American Academy of Poetry (USA), the International Society of Writers (USA), World Poets (Greece), the Advisory Board of Poetry Press (India) and the Argentinean Society of Writers. He has received the tittle of Compagnon de la Poésie, from La Porte des Poétes Association, France. His 9 books of poetry, 2 essays and 2 novels were published in Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Uruguay, USA and Venezuela. Between another local and international awards, he has received: La Porte des Poétes International Award (Paris, 1991); Biennial Award of the Argentinean Poetry (Buenos Aires, 1991); Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat Foundation Award of Poetry (Buenos Aires, 1996); International Award of Fiction (Uruguay, 1996); Primo Premio Tusculorum di Poesia (Italy, 1996) and 10me. Concours International de Poésie, accesit (Paris, 2003).

Sara J Sutter is a recent graduate of the University of Scranton. She holds a B.A. in Philosophy and a minor in English. She’s interested in feminist art, with a concentration in poetry. SJSutter@Gmail.com

Karen Neuberg’s poetry has appeared or is pending in Barrow Street, Columbia Poetry Review, DIAGRAM, Diner, Free Verse, Phoebe, Riverine: An Anthology of Hudson Valley Writers, Stirring, and others. She is a Pushcart nominee and lives in Brooklyn NY and West Hurley NY.

Yvette A Schnoeker-Shorb
Anthologies: The Blueline Anthology (Syracuse University Press, 2004), 90 Poets of the Nineties: An Anthology of American and Canadian Poets (Seminole Press, 1998) Journals: Clackamas Literary Review, Entelechy, Eureka Literary Magazine, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Karamu, Midwest Quarterly, Pedestal Magazine, Poem, Puerto del Sol, Slant: A Journal of Poetry, Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments, Weber Studies, Wild Earth.

Mary Duquette has been a writer ever since she can remember, and sent in her first submission of a short story to a publisher when she was seven years old. Although the publishing company mainly dealt in scientific journals, they were kind enough to send her a very polite, slightly incredulous rejection letter.

Vic Compher’s poetry has appeared recently in International Poetry Review (in both English and German) and in Mad Poet’s Review. Vic is a poet, clinical social worker, and peace activist who lives in Philadelphia.

Pete Lee’s fiction has appeared in In Tenebris Lux, At Play, An Anthology of Maine Drama, The Licking River Review, Maine Lawyers Review, The Connecticut Review and will appear shortly in Nerve Cowboy. In the daylight hours, he is a lawyer in private practice. Currently, he is at work on a longer piece of (as yet) undetermined length entitled Call Him Lenny. Pete lives in Yarmouth, Maine with his wife, Lynne, and their two sons, Spence and Travis.

Roy Scheele Books: From the Ground Up: Thirty Sonnets by Roy Scheele (Lone Willow Press, 2000), Keeping the Horses (Windflower Press, 1998), Short Suite (Main-Traveled Roads, 1997). Anthologies: To the Clear Fountains (Dolphin Press, 2002) Journals: American Scholar, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, The Formalist.

Graham Hardie: I am currently living in the west end of Glasgow. I have been writing poetry since I left University in 1997. I have an MA Honours Degree in Sociology and Social Policy. I spent seven years of my childhood in Nigeria and then I lived with my family in Helensburgh until I left home when I was seventeen. I attended The Glasgow Academy for six years and this is where my interest in poetry began. My poetic influences include Ted Hughes, Patti Smith, Rupert Brooke and Michael Longley. The critic Andy Manders said I wrote about “love, pain and consciousness” . My favourite book of poems is “Crow” by Ted Hughes. I have an interest in the Tarot, Astrology and the symbolism of myths, legend and nature. Also there is a sense of urban realism in some of my poetry which is indicative of the environment I have lived in. I admire the novels of Camus, Sartre, Octave Mirbeau, Thomas Hardy, Orwell, Laurie Lee and the “Outsider” by Colin Wilson and I am interested in the art of Turner, Picasso, Monet, Rembrant, El Greco and Jacques Louis David. I remember writing some of the lyrics of a U2 song on the album Joshua Tree into an English essay for school and this was a time when I first became aware of the power and significance of words to express the deepest of emotions; furthermore, Led Zeppelin were to shape my early sense of the ability of language to convey the true meaning of life, love and loss. Finally my poetry has religious overtones which represents my faith in a divine being and the spiritual awareness of the journey I have been on so far.

John Sweet, b. 1968, single father of 2. believer in writing as catharsis. eater of souls. plenty of tummy-ticklin’ fun to be found at blog.myspace.bleedinghorsedenied.com

Ronda Broatch is the author of Some Other Eden, (Finishing Line Press, 2005). Nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Web, Ronda is the recipient of the 2005 Kay Snow Poetry Award, 2006 WPA William Stafford Award, and 2007 Artist Trust GAP Grant. Her work appeared recently on Verse Daily.

Jane Ormerod was born on the south coast of England and moved from London to New York City in 2004. Her work appears in numerous US and UK publications including 21 Stars Review, Arsenic Lobster, eratio postmodern poetry, failbetter, and Word Riot. A spoken word CD, Nashville Invades Manhattan, was released in 2007 and an anthology, A Cautionary Tale: Peer into the Lives of Seven New York Performing Poets (Uphook Press), will be published in early 2008. A regular on the New York live poetry circuit, in January 2007 Jane toured the west coast – Vancouver, Canada, down to San Francisco – as part of the Perpetual Motion Roadshow. Recently she returned to California for more readings and an interview on KFJC Radio. Her website is www.janeormerod.com.

Thomas Hedlund Several years following his graduation from Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan with a B.A. in Psychology. He has earned honors for his short story “Power Windows” in The Writer’s Journal, a national publication, has published several articles, poems, and other fiction in publications and collections such as More Sugar, Painted in the Forest, and Immortal Verses. His story “Ripples” appeared in the spring 2006 issue of The Storyteller. He was a contributing member of Morningside Writers Group based in New York City, a professional network of writers and editors, for six years. Enrolled in an MFA in Creative Writing program at National University and earning honors in the process with an emphasis on Screenwriting. www.GThomasHedlund.com.

Terri Glass has coordinated the Poets in the School program in Marin County, CA for many years and teaches poetry workshops for educators nationally. Her poetry has appeared in: Anthologies: My Song is my Light (California Poets in the Schools, 2007), Hope In the Form of Stripes (California Poets in the Schools, 2006), Volume 13 (Drumvoices Revue, 2005), My Pencil of Dreams (California Poets in the Schools, 2004), Nest of Freedom (California Poets in the Schools, 2002), Year 2000, an anthology (Nevada County Poetry Series, 2000), To Honor a Teacher (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 1999), Beside the Sleeping Maiden (Aretos Press, 1997)
Journals: Avocet, Convolvulus

Karen K. Ford was born & raised in the City of Orange, in Southern California. She began her writing career in high-school, as editor-in-chief of the Villa Park “Oracle,” and later put herself through Cal State Fullerton by freelancing ad copy. She moved to Ashland, Oregon in 1989 and worked as marketing director for a small winery (some grape stomping was involved) and, later, for a manufacturer of high-end audio equipment, where she mostly kept her shoes on. After 13 years in Southern Oregon she returned to Los Angeles to pursue fiction writing full-time. She lives in Mandeville Canyon with her husband, writer S.L. Stebel, and their Welsh Corgi, Indigo. She is a contributing editor for “Launchpad” magazine, and her short stories have appeared in “Goliards” and “Man’s Story 2.” She is a two-time winner of the Excellence in Writing Award from the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. She recently completed her first novel, “Salvage,” which is currently being offered for publication by the Congdon Agency.

Robert Joe Stout Books: They Still Play Baseball the Old Way (White Eagle Coffee Store Press, 1994), They Still Play Baseball the Old Way (White Eagle Coffee Store Press, 1994), The Blood of the Serpent (Algora, 1994), Swallowing Dust (Red Hill Press, 1976), Miss Sally (Bobbs-Merrill, 1973). Journals: Beloit Poetry Journal, Beloit Poetry Journal, Confluence, Georgetown Review, Georgetown Review, Interim, Interim, Mid-American Poetry Review, Mid-American Poetry Review, South Dakota Review, South Dakota Review, Whetstone .

Mary Dugan: Hailing from the NW suburbs of Chicago, Beth earned her BA in Psychology at the University of Iowa. Beth is an MFA candidate in the Fiction Writing program at Columbia College and works full time as a writer for a small financial consulting firm. She is a contributing reviewer for Time Out Chicago, New City, Bookslut.com and UR Chicago; her writing has appeared in The Banana King, The South Loop Review and Fictionary.

Sheila E. Murphy’s work has been published widely in books and magazines. A book-length collection entitled A SOUND THE MOBILE MAKES IN WIND: 50 AMERICAN HAIBUN has just been released from Mudlark, and is viewable at www.unf.edu/mudlark. Her FALLING IN LOVE FALLING IN LOVE WITH YOU SYNTAX: SELECTED AND NEW POEMS appeared from Potes & Poets Press in 1997. Sun & Moon Press will bring out LETTERS TO UNFINISHED J. as the winner of its 1996 Open Poetry Competition judged by Los Angeles poet Dennis Phillips. Murphy has been writing poetry and submitting work for publication since 1978. Her first appearance in print was in SALT LICK magazine, edited by James Haining.

Gunta Krasts Voutyras was born in Liepaja, Latvia. Am multi lingual, a writer and a fiber artist. Spent the start of WW II in underground trenches in my parents’ homestead. Due to politics of the time were sent with my family, minus my father, to Nazi Germany. Traveled across the Baltic sea in the hold of a Nazi hospital ship. With the horses. Criss crossed Germany in cattle cars with the doors bolted from the outside. Periodically we were dumped off in Nazi detention camps, situated in the same way as Dachau, without the ovens. Treatment of all of us refugees was inhuman. Mass showers, our hair washed with gasoline, cold water for the so called “shower”, beatings, rotten potatoes cooked in water as our once a day meal. Once the war ended we found ourselves in the American Zone, in a Displaced Persons Camp in Esslingen am/Neckar. From there traveled to USA under a law issued by Pres. Harry Truman. With a fine tooth comb UNRRA (United Nations Relif and Rehabilitation Agency) scrutinized our health, education, intellect, political affiliations of the past, our goals. In 1949 arrived in New York without a word of English. And with thirty dollars between five of us given to us by the Church World Service. Went to public schools in New York City. After graduation from High School married. Have two grown children. I started writing in the DP Camps, at age eleven. At that time wrote poems, short biographical essays. My passion was and is reading. Am published on the Internet in Helium.com, Poetry.com, in Hugh Downs last book, “My America”, have essays in various other venues. Am working on a novel.

Rita Dahl (born 1971) is a Finnish writer and freelance-editor. She graduated in Political Science at the University of Helsinki and also holds a BA in Comparative Literature. Her debut poetry collection, Kun luulet olevasi yksin, was published in 2004 (Loki-Kirjat), and her second book, Aforismien aika (PoEsia), came out in the spring of 2007. Her travel book about Portugal, Tuhansien Portaiden lumo – kulttuurikierroksia Portugalissa (Avain) was published a month later. She was editor-in-chief of the poetry magazine Tuli & Savu, in 2001 and also edited a cultural magazine, Neliö (www.page.to/nelio), which had a special issue on Portugal, for whose printform Dahl was responsible. In 2007 she is publishing a portrait about the Finnish poet Jyrki Pellinen (PoEsia). Dahl is also editing an anthology of Central-Asian (and international) women writers (Like). This anthology includes speeches that will be given in the meeting of Central-Asian women writers arranged by the Finnish PEN, as well as pieces of fiction. She is editing and translating an anthology of Contemporary Portuguese Poetry into Finnish. Dahl is a vice-chairperson of Finnish PEN.

William Jablonsky is the author of The Indestructible Man: Stories (Livingston Press, 2005). His work has appeared in many literary journals, including Phoebe, the Beloit Fiction Journal, the Florida Review, and the Southern Humanities Review. He lives in Waukesha, Wisconsin with his wife and three surly cats, and teaches writing and interdisciplinary humanities at Carroll College.

Lisa Haviland Journals: Another America, Dufus, Other, Pedestal Magazine, Poetry Superhighway, Wicked Alice.
hazeablaze.blogspot.com

Michael Ogletree is the poetry editor for SUB-LIT Literary Journal. He just wrapped up a ten-year stint as an undergraduate. Michael recently defected to Germany with a graduate fellowship at Johannes Gutenberg Universität in Mainz to study English literature. Weird, huh? His new work recently appeared or is forthcoming in BlazeVOX, Lily Literary Review, Right Hand Pointing, and Identity Theory, among others. His mother says his poems sound pretty, but she doesn’t always know what they mean.

Regina O’Melveny is a writer, assemblage artist, and teacher at Marymount College in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. Her prize-winning work has been published in literary magazines including The Bellingham Review, Rattapallax, The Sun, The LA Weekly, and Passages North. Her first book Blue Wolves, won the Bright Hill Press poetry award in New York. Recently she was the 2007 Poetry Award Winner for Conflux Press, where her work will be published as an artist’s book.

Shannon Prince is a creative writing major and junior at Dartmouth College. In addition to writing, she is an activist for indigenous and African issues, a ceramics maker, and a travel addict. She has been published in Frodo’s Notebook, Falcon Wings, KUHF magazine, Imprint, Rice University’s Writers in the Schools Magazine, Illogical Muse, Damn Good Writing, Lost Beat Poetry, Haggard and Halloo, Houston Literary Review, Words on Paper, Bewildering Stories, The Smoking Poet, Muscadine Lines, Ragand, Prick of the Spindle, International Zeitschrift, Conceit Magazine, Snow Monkey, Paradigm, Words Myth, and The Green Muse. She also won Dartmouth’s Thomas Ralston Prize for creative writing. Annie Clarkson is a poet and fiction writer living in Manchester, England. Her first collection of prose poems/poetry is Winter Hands, and will be published by Shadow Train Books in August 2007.
You could also put a link to my MySpace site: www.myspace.com/annieclarkson

Lisa Harris writes poetry, fiction, and essays.  She has a Master of Fine Arts from Milton Avery Graduate School and holds other degrees in educational leadership, literature and literacy.  Born of German and English descent in the Allegheny Moutntains of Pennsylvania, she has lived in Savannah, Georgia and Trumansburg, New York.  Her fictions have been published by Bright Hill Press, Westview/Harpercollins, ginosko, The Distillery, MacGuffin, RiversEdge, Nimrod International, Stillwater, The American Aesthetic, Argestes, The Habersham Review, Phoebe, Zone 3, The Coe Review, cantaraville, and the Anemone Sidecar.  Her poetry has been published in The Second Word Thursday Anthology, Puerto del Sol, The Cathartic, Karamu, Stillwater, Fennel Stalk, and exhibited in collaborative word and image installations with Susan Weisend, Nancy Valle and Carol Spence.

Louis E. Bourgeois was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and raised in the Slidell/LaCombe area, as well as East New Orleans on Bayou Sauvage. In 1996 he earned a B.A. from Louisiana State University in English and in 2002 was the first graduate of The University of Mississippi’s MFA program in creative writing. He has published translations, fiction, memoirs, poetry, and interviews in over two hundred magazine and journals in North America, Europe, and Asia. In 2004, he was the winner of the University of Milwaukee’s Cream City Review’s poetry contest for his poem “The Shed: The Daughter of Shadows Speaks from Max Beckmann’s The Dream (1921).” Other awards include, The Robert Penn Warren Award, the Common Ground Review’s poetry award, an Excellence Award from the Dana Literary Society, three Editor’s Choice Awards, four Pushcart nominations, as well as an artist grant from the Mississippi Arts Commission. Bourgeois’ books include, Through the Cemetery Gates, The Distance of Ducks, The Animal, Cora Falling Off the Face of the Earth, White Night, Fragments of a Life Thirty-two Years Gone, OLGA and a forthcoming collection of short prose, The Gar Diaries. In 2006, his poetry was accepted for inclusion in Scrivener’s Best American Poetry 2007. Bourgeois is also co-founder and editor of VOX, an independent experimental literary journal based in Oxford, Mississippi.

Mia Laurence lives in Fairfax, California with her husband and two children. She often finds herself telling (and sometimes writing) stories about talking bugs.

Adrianne Marcus is a full time writer. As a poet, Adrianne Marcus has published over 300 poems, ranging from small magazines such as Southern Poetry Review, Descant, Shenandoah, Painted Bride Quarterly, Thin Air, Vol. No., Puckerbrush, Miller’s Pond, Choice, Massachusetts Review, to anthologies such as White Trash, This is Women’s Work, New Poets: Women, Contemporary Poetry of North Carolina, and Imagining Worlds. Her poetry has appeared in such publications as The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry Ireland, Paris Review, Spark, Art Life, and The Nation. In addition, she has three books of poetry to her credit, The Moon is a Marrying Eye, (Red Clay Press) Faced With Love,(Copper Beech Press) and Child of Earthquake Country (New World Press), as well as two chapbooks, Lying Cheating and Stealing (Pteradactyl Press) and Journeys, Destinations, (Small Poetry Press, 1996) and Magritte’s Stones, a chapbook published in Belfast, Ireland. Her last poetry chapbook was published by Wicked Alice Press and is titled The Resurrection of Trotsky. As a free-lance journalist her non-fiction is primarily food and travel oriented. She has published widely in such newspapers and magazines as Parade, Menus, Food & Wine, Travel & Leisure, Good Food, Cooking Light, Detroit Monthly, Image, World & I, San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Chronicle, California Living, Town And Country and magazines devoted to Scandinavia, such as Ex. She has published one of the first books on Chocolate, The Chocolate Bible (G.P. Putnam’s Sons) and an alternate Book-of-The-Month Selection, The Photojournalist: Mark & Leibovitz (Petersen Press, Thames & Hudson).
In fiction, Marcus has published a book of humor with Co-Author William Dickey, Carrion House World of Gifts, (St. Martin’s Press) and her fiction has appeared in such magazines as Descant, Red Dog, Confrontation, Cosmopolitan, Force10; her story, The Paincaller, is in a new anthology of American women’s work, published by the University of Tennessee, Blair House, Prentice and Hall Publishers, 1997and her stories, Vintage Weather and The Singular Tense are due out in The Crescent Review .Singular Tense appeared in Ginosko. Her story, Hour of the Wolf, appeared in Pembroke Magazine from the University of North Carolina, Pembroke. Marcus lives in San Rafael, California with her husband, Ian Wilson, fours Silken Windhounds and two Borzoi.

Francine Witte Books: The Magic in the Street (Owl Creek Press, 1994) Anthologies: Poetry from Sojourner (University of Illinois Press, 2004) Journals: Bellingham Review, Calliope, Connecticut River Review, Florida Review, Outerbridge, Poet & Critic, Tar River Poetry Review

Kirby Congdon was encouraged to write poetry by his third-grade teacher at the West Chester, Pa., State Teacher’s College’s Demonstration School, but he was brought up in rural Connecticut where he was drafted, before he had shaved, for service in Europe in World War II. After college and post-graduate years on the G. I. Bill at Columbia he worked in New York City as a typesetter for encyclopedia houses and the Brooklyn Heights Press.
Professor Emeritus of English, Long Island University, Ray C. Longtin, who has followed Congdon’s work since his very first days in college, states, “Kirby has not been in the mainstream of his time, but he has been very much a part of the avant garde and a creative but independent force as poet, editor and critic. He deserves, and will some day get, the attention that he merits.” Meticulous in regard to both ideas and language, his collections cover industrial ma­chines of city life, motorcycle fantasies, comic-strip heroes, animals, a memoir of rural Amer­ica, regional subjects of Fire Island Pines and Key West, as well as miscel-laneous poems on conundrums of time and space in a new century. His crank letters, one-act plays, and select­ed poems are published. Small-press periodicals have printed over 75 essays along with countless reviews and letters on current activities. Poems have been reprinted in high-school course bo­oks, and in anthologies of literary surveys as well as in current collections of poetry.

Greggory Moore is a SoCal resident, a civil libertarian and a copy editor for Skratch Magazine. His short story, “I Dream of Bicycles,” is a section of his recently-completed first novel, Story Telling of Death and So Many Other Things.

Dennis Saleh
Books: This Is Not Surrealism (Willamette River Books, 1993), First Z Poems (Bieler Press, 1980) Journals: Art/Life Limited Editions, Bitter Oleander, Happy, Nedge, Ozone, Paris Review, Pearl Magazine, Phantasmagoria, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Psychological Perspectives, Social Anarchism, Wavelength

Philip Kobylarz
Recent work of P.Kobylarz appears or will appear in Connecticut Review, The Iconoclast), Visions International, New American Writing, Prairie Schooner, Dragonfire and has appeared in Best American Poetry.

Tim Bellows, with a graduate degree from the Iowa Writers´ Workshop, teaches writing at Sierra College in Northern California and is devoted to lakes, mountains, and inner travels. He’s twice been nominated for the Annual Pushcart Prize, and his book Sunlight From Another Day – Poems In & Out of the Body has just gone live from AuthorHouse Press out of Bloomington (see Amazon.com). He edits a monthly e-newsletter called Lightship News. It welcomes subscribers through star999@sbcglobal.net. If you’d enjoy some perspectives from “an unabashedly spiritual poet in an increasingly cynical world” (Todd Temkin), this is your golden spot. Finally, Tim is administrator of the blog at golden.timbellows.com – for trail-trekkers, mystics, and lovers of language.

Ivan Arguelles, of Mexican-American background, was born in 1939. He grew up in Mexico City, Los Angeles and Minnesota. Graduated from Rochester (Minn.) High School in 1956, he then attended the University of Minnesota and the University of Chicago, where he received his BA in Classics (1961). Later education includes a year at New York University (1962) and Vanderbilt University (1967-68) where he received an MLS (Library Science).
He has worked as bookstore manager in Chicago (1962-66); as a Berlitz teacher in Macerata, Italy (1967); and as a Professional Librarian: New York Public Library, 1968-78; University of California Berkeley ,1978-2001. He is now retired and lives in Berkeley CA. He is co-founder and editor of the now defunct Pantograph Press.
His many poetry publications include:
Instamatic Reconditioning, 1978
The Invention of Spain, 1978
Captive of the Vision of Paradise, 1982
Tattooed Heart of the Drunken Sailor, 1983
Baudelaire’s Brain, 1988
Looking for Mary Lou , 1989
“That” Goddes, 1992
Hapax Legomenon, 1993
Madonna Septet, 2000
Inferno, 2005.
Looking for Mary received the 1989 William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America.

Richard M. Berlin, M.D. is the author of HOW JFK KILLED MY FATHER, winner of the 2002 Pearl Poetry Prize and published by Pearl Editions. Dr. Berlin was born in 1950, grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey and received his undergraduate and medical education at Northwestern University. His poetry appears monthly in “Poetry of the Times,” a featured column in Psychiatric Times, the most widely read and influential psychiatric publication in America. He is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and practices psychiatry in a small town in the Berkshire hills of western Massachusetts.

Mark Terrill’s grandmother babysat the young Ernest Hemingway in Oak Park, Illinois, and gladly used to explain that the reason he wrote “all that crazy stuff” was because she once dropped him on his head as an infant. Mark’s recent publications include a collection of translations, Whispering Villages: Seven German Poets, from Longhouse Poetry, and Postcard from Mount Sumeru, a Chapbook of the Quarter Club selection from Bottle of Smoke Press. http://home.arcor.de/markterrill

S. D. Lishan is an Associate Professor of English at The Ohio State University, where he teaches courses in creative writing, poetry, critical writing, and the literature of the fantastic. His poems, fiction, and creative nonfiction have appeared in the Bellingham Review, Xconnect, Barrow Street, Creative Nonfiction, Brevity, Bellingham Review, ForPoetry.com, Kenyon Review, The National Poetry Review, The American Poetry Journal, In Possse Review, Mudlark, Arts & Letters, New England Review, Verse Daily and others. He also writes lyrics for songwriter, Andrea Perry. Her third CD, River of Stars, containing a number of their collaborations, will appear in the autumn, 2006. He has just completed a new volume of poems, and, as of this writing, he is currently in the final revision stages of a novel entitled Lightseed.

Elena Fattakova is a poet/artist, residing in NYC. She writes both in Russian and English. Her poetry has been published in Poets West Literary Journal, In Our Own Words: A Generation Defining Itself, Liberty Magazine, California Quarterly: PL&LR, russian journal the Coast, and others. A long poem ‘Resurrection’ has been translated to Russian and staged in NYC. Parts of her most recent poem ‘Alcatraz’ has been published in Poetry Letter & Literary Review: California State Poetry Society, Red Wheelbarrow Literary Magazine in 2006-07. ‘Alcatraz’ is being produced on stage as a full-length multimedia play. Will premier in NYC theatre in April 2007. She also works in Collage: a multi-dimensional medium. http://strabismus.synnegoria.com

Elaine Starkman lives in the east bay of No. CA. She has always written both prose & poetry. Her work appears in eclectic publications and on line. She currently teaches experimental writing, memoir writing, and Judaica all in the east bay. For info, write he at Elaine.Starkman@gmail.com.

Marianne Taylor is a Professor of English at Kirkwood Community College where she teaches literature and creative writing. She has been the recipient of the Allen Ginsberg Award and the Helen A. Quade Memorial Writer’s Award; and her manuscript, Salt Water, Iowa, has been a finalist for the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry, the Richard Snyder Memorial Poetry Prize, and the Winnow Press Open Book Award. Her work has been published widely in national journals such as Nimrod International Journal, North America Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Connecticut Review and Rosebud. She lives in the small town of Mount Vernon, IA, with her husband and four sons.

Barry Ballard’s poetry has most recently appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Connecticut Review, Margie, and Puerto del Sol. His most recent collection is A Body Speaks Through Fence Lines (Pudding House, 2006) He writes from Burleson, Texas. (abballard@hotmail.com)

Michael Onofrey grew up in Los Angeles, but now lives in Japan, where he teaches English as a Second Language. His fiction has appeared in Alimentum, Cold-Drill, Oyez Review, and The William and Mary Review, as well as in other literary journals and magazines in the United States and Japan.

Joanne Lowery was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and educated at the University of Michigan and University of Wisconsin. Her poems have appeared in many literary magazines, including Birmingham Poetry Review, 5 AM, Passages North, Atlanta Review,Poetry East, Poet Lore, Parting Gifts, Spoon River Poetry Review, and River Styx. Her most recent collections are Seven Misters from Pygmy Forest Press and two chapbooks (Poems that Work and Sweat) from Snark Publishing. She lives in Michigan.

Mireya Robles Born in Guantánamo, Cuba. Published novels: Hagiografía de Narcisa la bella, Ediciones del Norte, Hanover, N.H., 1985 y Editorial Letras Cubanas, La Habana, Cuba, 2002; Hagiography of Narcisa the Beautiful, Readers International, London, 1996, translated by Anna Diegel; La muerte definitiva de Pedro el Largo, Lectorum, S.A. de C.V, Mexico, D.F., 1998; Una mujer y otras cuatro, Editorial Plaza Mayor, Inc., San Juan, Puerto Rico, 2004. Books of poems: Tiempo artesano, Editorial Campos, Barcelona, 1973; Time, the Artisan, bilingual edition, Dissemination Center for Bilingual, Bicultural Education, Austin, Texas, 1975; En esta aurora, Universidad Veracruzana, Mexico, 1976. Has published short stories, poems and articles in literary journals in several countries. Book of Paintings: The Paintings of Mireya Robles/Las pinturas de Mireya Robles, edited by Anna and Olaf Diegel, K&L Publishing, New Zealand, 2006. Has taught in several colleges in the U.S. and was a Senior Lecturer at the University of Natal, Durban, South Africa, for ten years. Presently, she is a Senior Research Associate at that University

Erin McKnight Born in Scotland and raised in South Africa, Erin McKnight now lives in Virginia. She is an assistant editor for The Rose & Thorn Literary E-Zine, and her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Double Dare Press and Siren: A Literary & Art Journal. Erin holds a degree in English, and is now working on her MFA in fiction.

B R Strahan Books: Crocodile Man (The Smith, 1990) Anthologies: Blood to Remember, American Poets on the Holocaust (Texas Tech University Press, 2006), Who Is Who, Poet’s Collection (Struga Poetry Evenings, 2003) Journals: America, Christian Century, Confrontation, CrossCurrents, First Things, Hollins Critic, Margie, Onthebus, Rattapallax, Seattle Review, Soundings East, Southern California Anthology, Sun Dog

Edward Butscher Born and raised in Flushing, Queens, taught for many years, wrote the first bios of Sylvia Plath (1976),reissued with new afterword by Schaffner Press in 2003, and Conrad Aiken, winner of the PSA’s Melville Cane Award in 1988, plus short critical books on Adelaide Crapsey (1979) and Peter Wild (1992). Poetry collections include Amagansett Cycle (1980) and Child in the House (1994). Also contributed to a number of reference works, among them, MaGill’s Survey of Contemporary Poetry and Oxford’s Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Good obit fodder.

Dean Kostos is the author of Last Supper of the Senses (Spuyten Duyvil, 2005), which was submitted for a Pulitzer Prize; The Sentence That Ends with a Comma (Painted Leaf, 1999), which was required reading for a course on alternative poetics at Duke University; and the chapbook Celestial Rust (Red Dust, 1994). He co-edited the anthology Mama’s Boy: Gay Men Write About Their Mothers (Painted Leaf, 2000), a Lambda Book Award finalist. His poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Boulevard, Chelsea, Cimarron Review, Confrontation, The Dirty Goat, Rattapallax, Southwest Review, Western Humanities Review, onOprah Winfrey’s Web site Oxygen.com, and in many other leading journals. He was commissioned to write the text Dialogue: Angel of Peace, Angel of War, set to music by James Bassi, and performed by Voices of Ascension. Box-Triptych, his choreo-poem, was staged at La Mama. He has taught poetry writing at the Gallatin School of NYU, The Columbia Scholastic Press Association, Gotham Writers’ Workshop, The Great Lakes Colleges Association, Pratt University, and Teachers & Writers Collaborative. Recipient of a Yaddo fellowship, he has served as literary judge for Columbia University’s Gold Crown and Gold Circle Awards. He holds a double M.A. in creative writing from Antioch University. His undergraduate studies were in art history and painting. His artwork has been shown in galleries and at the Brooklyn Museum. He is currently completing a memoir, a third collection of poems, and has recently edited the anthology Pomegranate Seeds: An Anthology of Greek-American Poetry, forthcoming in 2007 (Somerset Hall Press).

Prasenjit Maiti (b. 1971) print credits include 2River View, Blue Collar Review, Brittle Star, Brobdingnagian Times, Carillon, Circle, Concrete Wolf, Diner, Famous Reporter, Green Queen, GW Review, Harlequin, Hermes, Homestead Review, Konfluence, Micropress Oz, Monkey Kettle, Nightingale, Nomad, Paper Wasp, Parting Gifts, Peeks & Valleys, Phoenix, Poetic Licence, Poetry Church, Poetry Depth Quarterly, Poetry Greece, Poetry Scotland, Promise, Pulsar, Quercus Review, Rattle, Red Lamp, Reflections, Skald, Skyline, South, Spinnings, The Journal, WinterSPIN and Xtant. His CD-ROM credits include GDS, Heist and Shaken-n-Stirred: Poetry from the Far Corners.

Stephen Dau (b. 1971)is an American writer, journalist and photographer. Originally from Western Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh) he lives in Brussels, Belgium. His work has appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The North Atlantic Review, ELLE Magazine and on MSNBC.com.

June Sylvester Saraceno is English Program Chair at Sierra Nevada College, Lake Tahoe and founding editor of the Sierra Nevada College Review. Her work has appeared in various journals including The California Quarterly, Maverick Press, The Pedestal, Poetry Motel, The Rebel, Smartish Pace, Sunspinner, Tar River Poetry and The Village Rambler. Her chapbook Mean Girl Trips was published fall 2006 by Pudding House Publications. Her book Altars of Ordinary Light is forthcoming from Plain View Press in summer 2007.

Carine Topal participated in the grassroots organization California Poets in the Schools. Since 1982, she has anthologized the poetry of special needs children. Her work has appeared in Water-Stone, Caliban, The Best of the Prose Poem, Pacific Review, The Louisville Review, and many other journals. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2004, and awarded a residency at Hedgebrook, as well as a fellowship to study in St. Petersburg, Russia, 2005. She is the recipient of several poetry awards including the Robert G. Cohen Prose Poetry Contest, 2007, and the Jane Kenyon Poetry Prize. Her chapbook, “Bed of Want,” is forthcoming from Pessoa Press. Carine conducts on-line mentoring workshops, private workshops, and teaches at the Torrance Cultural Center as well as the VA Hospital in Los Angeles.

Carmen M. Pursifull was born and raised in New York City in 1930. Her mother was born in Barcelona, Spain, and her father was born in Utuardo, Puerto Rico. He was a mess sergeant in the First World War, and eventually moved to New York with his new bride. Carmen is the youngest of their children and the only sibling alive, except for her sister, who resides in California with her husband and family. She is the Matriarch of the group, as many poets have passed away or disappeared since then. Carmen has had over 650 poems published internationally, and has to her credit the following published books: 1) Carmen by moonlight, 1982; 2) The Twenty-Four Hour Wake, 1989; 3) Manhattan Memories, 1989; 4) Elsewhere in a Parallel Universe”, 1992; 5) The Many Faces of Passion, 1996; 6) Brimmed Hat With Flowers, (Multi-tasking.com), 2000; 7) World of Wet, 2002, which was written with her poetry partner of five years, Dr. Edward L. Smith, a retired ocean physicist who she mentored in poetry. Last year Carmen had the pleasure of visiting Iowa and being the guest of William and Christina Rogers for five days, where she held workshops and gave readings. Carmen has also given readings at the WorldWind Project in Verde Gallery in Champaign, Illinois, and at the Douglas Branch library in Urbana, Illinois, where she will again read in April of 2005. Recently Carmen read at Wiley School, where her pen-pal, Morgan, goes to school. In October of 2005, Carmen will do her yearly reading at the Channing-Murray Foundation, on the University of Illinois campus, where the Red Herring Poets Society meets every Monday evening at 7:00 p.m. Carmen still does local readings, and if all expenses are paid, she will travel out of town to do readings and workshops. For further information, contact Carmen at Llaque3605@aol.com, or the webmaster at tyr_wanjo@hotmail.com.

Fredrick Zydek is the author of eight collections of poetry. T’Kopechuck: the Buckley Poems is forthcoming from Winthrop Press later this year. Formerly a member of the faculty in creative writing at UNO and later Lecturer in Theology at the College of Saint Mary, he is now a gentleman farmer when he isn’t writing. He is the editor for Lone Willow Press.

Tim Bellows is a poet, writer, and teacher ? devoted to wildland and the simplicity of inner travel and Mozart?s notion about ?Love, love, love? as ?the soul of genius.” Tim has taught college writing for over sixteen years. He graduated from the Iowa Writers? Workshop and has seen publication of poems in many journals ? and in A Racing Up the Sky (Eclectic Press), Wild Stars (Starry Puddle Press), and Desert Wood (University of Nevada Press).

Yala Korwin is the author of To Tell the Story – Poems of the Holocaust. Many of her poems found their way into scholastic handbooks and anthologies. She had poems published in magazines such as Midstream, Blue Unicorn, NEOVICTORIAN/Cochlea, The Hypertexts, Móbius, and others. She is also a visual artist who works hard to reconcile two competing needs: to express herself with words and with images.

Lisa Sornberger Anthologies: Take Two – They’re Small (Outrider Press, 2002) Journals: Common Ground Review, Embers, Fairfield Review, Ginosko Literary Journal, New Virginia Review, New York Quarterly.

Joel Lipman is a native of Kenosha and graduate of UW-Madison. He is professor of Art and English at the University of Toledo. Among his beautifully obscure books of poetry are Provocateur [Bloody Twin Press, 1988], Machete Chemistry/Panades Physics, with Yasser Musa [Cubola New Art Foundation, 1994], The Real Ideal [Luna Bisante Prods, 1996], and Subversao Deliberada [International Writers & Artists Association, 2000]. Represented in the anthology Writing To Be Seen [Core, Light & Dust, 2001], his visual poems were exhibited in 2002 and 2003 at the New York Center for the Book and the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. Long active as a mail artist and a five-time recipient of Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowships in Poetry, an on-line portfolio of his work can be found at Light and Dust Poets.

Rupert Haigh was born in England in 1970. He read English at university, before training, and then working, as a lawyer. He escaped to Helsinki in 2000, where he now lives permanently. He is the author of two slightly dry but informative books on legal English, and started writing fiction in 2004. His short stories and articles have appeared in The SiNK, Gold Dust, Outercast and the Jimston Journal. He is currently working on a novel, Throwing It All Away. When not writing, he scrapes a tenuous living as a legal English trainer, proofreader, and editor.

Andrew Demcak’s new book of poetry, Catching Tigers in Red Weather , won the Three Candle Press 2007 Open Book Prize. Its publication is forthcoming from Three Candles Press, and it will be available at Barnes and Noble, Amazon.com and other fine retailers. He is currently working on his second Master’s Degree, an MLIS, at U. C. Berkeley. When he is not hard at work driving the Bookmobile for Oakland Public Library, he can be found attending “GuyWriters” poetry readings at Anthony’s house in San Francisco , or eating Tibetan momos with his partner, Peter. Viva Wallace Stevens!

Rosemeny Wahtola Trommer Poet, writer and organic fruit grower Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer uses poetry to help people re-engage with the world beyond pagers and to-do lists. She was recently appointed Poet Laureate of San Miguel County.
She has authored and edited nine books, including If You Listen winner of the Colorado Independent Press Association poetry award, and her poetry is widely anthologized, including The Geography of Hope: Poets of Colorado’s Western Slope, What Wildness This Is: Women Write About the Southwest, and Improv: An Anthology of Colorado Poets. Rosemerry teaches public speaking for Mesa State College, directs the Telluride Writers Guild, teaches poetry in schools, teaches with Young Audiences, writes an award-winning linguistics column for the Telluride Daily Planet, writes for magazines including Natural Home and Backpacker, sings with a 7-woman a cappella group, and is mother and step-mother to two-year-old Finn and 24-year-old Shawnee. Whew. In 2007, she and her husband, Eric, bought a 70-acre orchard and now grow organic peaches, pears, cherries, nectarines, apples and apricots. Her master’s degree in English Language & Linguistics is from University of Wisconsin —Madison.

Eric Bonholtzer is an award-winning author whose work has appeared in numerous publications, and his short story collection, The Skeleton’s Closet, is now available at Amazon.com and Bn.com (Barnes and Noble). A recent recipient of first place prizes in both the short story and poetry categories of the College Language Association (CLA) Creative Writing Contest/Margaret Walker Prizes for Creative Writing, Eric is also the 2006 Ted Pugh Poetry Award winner. He resides in the Los Angeles area. For more information visit www.ericbonholtzer.com

Bobbi Dykema Katsanis was born in North Dakota by a pair of artists and farmers: her mother a textile artist and her father a storyteller. Her poetry has appeared in numerous publications, including Rock & Sling, Ruah, Grandmother Earth, and The Chaffin Journal. Her first chapbook, The Magdalene’s Notebook, was released in September 2006 from Finishing Line Press. She is currently at work on a doctorate in Art and Religion at the Graduate Theological Union, and lives in Berkeley husband, Jason.

Linda Benninghoff is published in over 50 magazines and anthologies. She translated The Seafarer from Anglo-Saxon; the translation appears at http://www.electrato.com/. She has published two chapbooks of poetry, The Street Where I Was a Child and Departures. She won last year’s Poetry Super Highway contest and was a finalist this year.
Linda Benninghioff has a MA in English with an emphasis on creative writing from SUNY at Stony Brook.

Srinjay Chakravarti is a 34-year-old journalist, economist and poet based in Salt Lake City, Calcutta, India. His poetry and prose have appeared in numerous publications in over 25 countries. In North America, his poetry has appeared in Euphony, The Melic Review, Eclectica Magazine, The Pedestal Magazine, Tiferet: A Journal of Spiritual Literature, The Bathyspheric Review, The Avatar Review, Ygdrasil, Science Creative Quarterly and elsewhere. His first book of poems Occam’s Razor (Writers Workshop, Calcutta) received the SALT literary award from John Kinsella and an Australian literary trust in 1995.

Doug Ramspeck directs the Writing Center and teaches creative writing and composition at The Ohio State University at Lima. More than 200 of his poems have been accepted for publication at journals that include West Branch, Confrontation Magazine, Connecticut Review, Rosebud, Roanoke Review, Seneca Review, Rattle, Hunger Mountain, Rhino, and Nimrod. He lives in Lima with his wife, Beth, and their sixteen-year-old daughter, Lee.

Susan Terris
Books: Poetic License (Adastra Press, 2004), Natural Defenses (Marsh Hawk Press, 2004), Fire Is Favorable to the Dreamer (Arctos Press, 2003), Angels of Bataan (Pudding House Publications, 1999), Eye of the Holocaust (Arctos Press, 1999), Curved Space (La Jolla Poets Press, 1998), Nell’s Quilt (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1996), Killing in the Comfort Zone (Pudding House Publications, 1995), Author! Author! (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1990).
Anthologies: In A Fine Frenzy (University of Iowa Press, 2005), Dorothy Parker’s Elbow (Warner Books, 2002), Heart to Heart (Abrams, 2001) Journals: Missouri Review, Ploughshares, Poetry East, Runes: A Review of Poetry, Shenandoah

Patricia Connolly was born in London, she has lived in New York City for many years. Her poems have been published in such magazines as First Intensity, Babel (Germany), American Writing 22, Salthill, Raintown Review, Denver Quarterly, International Poetry Review, 13th Moon, Poetry Now, Archipelago.org e-mail: jocpatcon@hotmail.com

Jennifer Pruden Colligan
Anthologies: Totally Herotica (Plume, 1995), Herotica (Down There Press, 1989) Journals: Arsenic Lobster, Blue Collar Review, Chronogram, English Journal, Ginosko Literary Journal, Innisfree, Lily Lit Review, Monkey’s Fist, Mount Zion Speculative Fiction Review, Pemmican Press, Red Owl, Spoon River Poetry Review.

Jayne Lyn Stahl is a widely published poet whose work has appeared in such notable little magazines, and anthologies as Exquisite Corpse, The New York Quarterly, Pulpsmith, The Jacaranda Review, Poetry Magazine, Beatitude: 33, City Lights Review, among other. Her essays appear regularly online at The Huffington Post, Op-Ed News, and The Atlantic Free Press. Her plays have had staged readings in New York and Los Angeles. Ms. Stahl is a full member of PEN USA, and a proud member of PEN American Center in New York.”

Sara Toruno received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California, Riverside in 2006. She is now teaching English at San Jose City College, and resides in San Francisco. Her poems have appeared in Temenos, Perigee, and Monday Night Magazine.

Jefferson Navicky lives in Portland, Maine where he runs the Vermillion Reading & Performance Series. His chapbook, Map of the Second Person, is available from Black Lodge Press. His work can be found in panamowa, Pindeldeboz, Chain, POM2 and others. He is currently drinkiing Hsui Shien Oolong, but doesn’t know how to pronounce it.

Elena Minor’s poetry and fiction have been published or are forthcoming in City Works, Diner, Writers At Work, Passager, Poetry Midwest, 26, Vox, Segue, Prism Review, BorderSenses, The Big Ugly Review, Quercus Review, edifice WRECKED, Banyan Review and Facets. She is the founding editor of Palabra A Magazine of Chicano & Latino Literary Art anda past first prize recipient of the Chicano/Latino Literary Prize (drama).

Martin Steele was born and raised in Johannesburg, Republic of South Africa. He was educated at King Edward V11 School where as he says, I first found my love of words. He settled in Delray Beach, Florida in the United States in 1999. His first real success was in 1951 when his poem The Fall, appeared in a new English literary magazine, Nimbus. In South Africa he won the Sunday Star’s Contest in 1992—Language of the Heart. Martin Steele received a prestigious Award from the South African Writer’s Circle for thirty six poems entitled Night Shade/Day Shade. The volume was the runner up in the award made to the Professional Writer of the year, 1999 by the SAWC. The poem, I’m Still Waiting concerning 9/11 was published in the Great Books Florida News Letter of Friday, February 2002 and another poem, Picture a World Gone By (…11 September 2001) was included in the 28 Septemer 2001 edition. I was a finalist in the 2003 War Poetry Contest, Winning Writers, for my epic poem Sarel and Samson. My poem Service and Set won a High Distinction award in the 2006 Tom Howard/John H. Reid Poetry Contest sponsored by Tom Howard Books. Copyright is reserved to the author.

Marge Piercy is the author of 17 novels, most recently SEX WARS; 17 volumes of poetry, most recently THE CROOKED INHERITANCE; a memoir SLEEPING WITH CATS, and in February PESACH FOR THE REST OF US: How to make the Passover seder your own.

L.B. Sedlacek’s poems have appeared in Andwerve, Poet’s Canvas, ART:MAG, Spiky Palm, Wild Goose Poetry Review, HazMat Review, Inkburns, Would That It Were, sidereality, The Hurricane Review, and Heritage Writer. Chapbooks include Average Bears and Alexandra’s Wreck. lbsedlacek.com

Bob Marcacci
Native Californian presently living and writing in Putignano, Italy. Recent work has appeared in Mad Hatters’ Review, Minimalist Concrete Poetry, Otoliths, Venereal Kittens and zafusy among others. PJ for The Countdown at http://www.miporadio.net/BOB_MARCACCI/.

Elyze Ennis is a psychologist and a writer, originally from Europe but living part time in the United States. She just started working on her doctoral thesis and on a memoir, but poetry and short fiction still take up a lot of her time. She has been recently published in Missisippi Crow (scheduled for issue 7), in Conceit Magazine, in Poesia and in Mad Swirl Poetry Forum.

Gina Ferrara lives in New Orleans. Her poems have been published in numerous journals and anthologies including Poetry Ireland, Callaloo, and The Coe Review. In 2006, her chapbook, The Size of Sparrows, was published by Finishing Line Press, Her most recent collection of poems, Ethereal Avalanche, was published by Trembling Pillow Press in October 2009. She has work forthcoming in Big Bridge.

Priscilla Frake My poems have appeared or are forthcoming in many literary publications, including Nimrod, Atlanta Review, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, The Carolina Quarterly, The Midwest Quarterly, and The Spoon River Poetry Review. My work has also appeared in journals in Great Britain including The New Welsh Review. I was a finalist in the Mississippi Valley 2008 Poetry Chapbook Competition. A former geologist, I am now a studio jeweler in the Houston area.

Edward Mullany lives in New York with his wife, Anjali. He is an editor at matchbook, an online journal, and Anderbo, also an online journal. His writing has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, New Ohio Review, Short FICTION, Tampa Review, Invisible Ear, and other journals. He teaches Literature at College of Staten Island.

Penelope Scambly Schott’s most recent book is A is for Anne: Mistress Hutchinson Disturbs the Commonwealth, a verse biography which won the Oregon Book Award for Poetry in 2008. She lives in Oregon but often flies to the East Coast.

A. Davlin, a proud New Orleanian, somehow landed up in New Jersey after receiving her MFA in Creative Writing from New York University. After stints of teaching at NYU and Lafayette College, she can finally afford to feed herself by teaching English and Creative Writing at an independent school. This will be her first publication.

Jennifer Andrews is both an MFA candidate in Creative Nonfiction at the University of Memphis and an Assistant Professor of Writing at Berklee College of Music.  She is currently working on a cross-genre book about her sister entitled Parts.  She was the editor of Salt Magazine, the founder of the award-winning CNF journal, COLLISION, and most recently, a Creative Nonfiction editor for The Pinch Journal.  She has written for a number of local and national magazines, journals and newspapers.  Her awards include the Columbia Scholarship Award, the NMW Award XII, and the Society of Professional Journalists Award.

Rosemarie Dombrowski received her Ph.D. in American Literature and is currently a Lecturer at Arizona State University. She is the founder and editor of the poetry journal Merge (www.mergepoetry.com). She co-hosts the Phoenix Poetry Series and lives in Scottsdale with her partner and her autistic son.

Larry Egan My poems have appeared in The Atlanta Review, The Emily Dickinson Awards Anthology, The Ledge Magazine, Sea Stories, Icarus International, The Centrifugal Eye, Willows Wept Review, and Main Channel Voices. A full-length poetry collection, Snow, Shadows, a Stranger, has just been issued by FootHills Publishing in February 2009. Last year, a long poem, “The Sea,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. My web site: www.lauryaegan.com

Phoebe Wilcox lives in eastern Pennsylvania. Some of her favorite things are John Banville novels, sushi, salamanders (they have cute hands) and picking blueberries. Her novel, Angels Carry the Sun is pending publication with Lilly Press, and an excerpt from a second novel-in-progress has been published in Wild Violet. Recent and forthcoming experiments may be found in The Chaffey Review, The Big Table, Shoots and Vines, The Battered Suitcase, The Linnet’s Wings, Calliope Nerve, Bartleby-Snopes, The Black Boot” and others. Her story, “Carp with Water in Their Ears,” published in River Poets Journal was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Ananya Dash is a writer and lawyer living in Northern New Jersey.  She earned her B.A. in English and Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania and J.D. from Georgetown University.  She practiced intellectual property law in New York City for eight years until the birth of her son and is now working on a collection of short stories.  She was honored with a writing residency at Yaddo where she completed her first novel.

Kelsey Noble grew up in Missouri.  She is currently working on a novel but has several short stories under her belt.  She is twenty years old and hopes to soon go back to school for her degree in Creative Writing.  She lives in Florida with her fiancé, black cat, and shih tzu.  See more of her work at kelseynoble.com.

Michael Mirolla is a Montreal-Toronto corridor novelist, short story writer, poet and playwright. Publications include two novels—the recently-released Berlin (a finalist for the 2009 Indie Book Award) and The Boarder—and two short story collections—The Formal Logic of Emotion and Hothouse Loves & Other Tales. A collection of poetry, Light And Time, was recently published with an English-Italian bilingual collection of poetry Interstellar Distances/Distanze Interstellari due out later in 2009. An Italian translation of The Formal Logic of Emotion has been accepted for publication. His short story, “A Theory of Discontinuous Existence,” was selected for The Journey Prize Anthology, while another short story, “The Sand Flea,” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. A poem, “Blind Alley,” was shortlisted for the Winston Collins/Descant Prize for the Best Canadian Poem in 2007, while another poem, “Moths and Trees,” took second price in the 2006 Association of Italian Canadian Writers Literary Contest. His short fiction and poetry has been published in numerous journals in Canada, the U.S. and Britain, including several anthologies such as Event’s Peace & War Anthology, Telling Differences: New English Fiction from Quebec, Tesseracts 2: Canadian Science Fiction, the Collection of Italian-Canadian Fiction, and New Wave of Speculative Fiction Book 1.

Marcia Arrieta’s work appears in Otoliths, Melusine, Karamu, Blueprint Review, Eratio, Alba, and others. She edits and publishes Indefinite Space, a poetry journal– www.indefinitespace.net

J. Gabriel Gates grew up in Michigan and graduated from Florida State University in 2001. He currenly lives in Los Angeles, where he works as a professional actor and screenwriter.

Kit Kennedy has published in Blood Orange Review, California Quarterly, Cezanne’s Carrot, Elegant Thorn Review, Karamu, Mannequin Envy, Pearl, Rainbow Curve, Runes, Saranac Review and forthcoming from 5_Trope and Uphook Press. She hosts the monthly Gallery Café reading series in San Francisco.

Luivette Resto was born in Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico but proudly raised in the Bronx. She received her BA in English Literature with a concentration in US Latino Studies from Cornell University in 1999. In 2003, she completed her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst. Her work can be read in Harpur Palate, Albion Review, Falling Star Magazine, The Furnace Review, Latino Today, and Kennesaw Review. Her first collection of poetry, Unfinished Portrait, was recently published in 2008 by Tia Chucha Press. Currently, she lives in the Los Angeles area with her husband, Jose and their three children, Antonio, Sofia, and Joaquin. Resto is a professor at Citrus College where she teaches English Literature and composition writing.

Graham Nunn is a Brisbane based writer, co-founder of Small Change Press and a founding member of Brisbane’s longest running poetry event, SpeedPoets. Nunn’s writing has been described as assured, achieved and ambitious. He has published four collections of poetry, his most recent, Ruined Man (2007) and has a fifth title, Ocean Hearted, due for release mid-2009.

Natasha Cabot is a Vancouver, BC-based Canadian writer who is currently working on a collection of short stories. She has a BA in English literature and enjoys discovering the works of new authors and rediscovering the classics. Her literary inspirations include Charles Bukowski, Kurt Vonnegut, Ernest Hemingway, and Margaret Atwood.

Tria Andrews has published fiction, poetry, and photography in red., Eyeshot, The Strip, See You Next Tuesday, Pequin, LitnImage, Lumina, Unsaid, Cellar Roots and Fiction International. She is a yoga teacher and a student in the MFA program at San Diego State.

Katrin Talbot’s collection St. Cecilia’s Daze is forthcoming from Parallel Press. Her poetry has appeared in The New Plains Review, Fresh Ink, Free Verse, Ragged Sky Press’s Clothing Anthology: Eating her Wedding Dress, and Not A Muse Anthology (Haven Bks) and will appear in the Zoland Poetry Journal, If Poetry Journal, Inertia Magazine and in theupcoming anthologies, Empty Shoes (Popcorn Pr.), And Again Last Night (Indigo Dreams Press-UK) Collecting Life: Poets on Objects Known and Imagined, Vicious Verses and Reanimated Rhyme (Coscom Entertainment), and The Poetry of Travel (Canadian Federation of Poets). She was a finalist in 2009 for theYellowwood Poetry Prize, Artsmith Literary Contest and Phoebe’s Greg Grummer Prize.

Jason L. Huskey holds a B.A. in English Literature.  His work has appeared in over two dozen journals, including Keyhole Magazine, Thieves Jargon, Word Riot, and Zygote In My Coffee, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  Links to his work can be found at http://jasonhuskey.blogspot.com.  He lives in Virginia.

Andrea DeAngelis’ writing has recently appeared in Zygote in My Coffee, Dogmatika, Terracotta Typewriter, Salome Magazine, Flutter Poetry Journal, Mad Swirl and Gloom Cupboard. Andrea also sings and plays guitar in an indie rock band called MAKAR (www.makarmusic.com). MAKAR is currently recording their second album, Funeral Genius.

Kristin Roedell is a retired attorney living in Lakewood Washington. She is a wife and mother of two girls, aged 13 and 21. She was raised in Seattle, and attended the University of Washington Law School; she practiced family law in Port Orchard Washington. She lives on a lake, with proximity to many types of Northwest wildlife, and has two much loved ferrets, “Cromwell” and “Cookie”. She enjoys swimming, reading, and old films. She collects Victorian era art and furniture, and can usually be found on the weekends wearing vintage clothes and standing in line at an Estate Sale.

Darrell Dela Cruz is currently a student in San Jose State’s MFA program with his primary focus on Poetry. The main influences in his poetry are Kobayashi Issa, Bill Knott, and Harold Norse.

Barry W North is a sixty-four year old recently retired refrigeration mechanic. He worked in that capacity for the local school system for twenty-eight years. Now that the need to make a living is out of the way, he plans to concentrate of his real passion, which is writing. Since his retirement in 2007, his poetry has appeared in, or is scheduled to appear in, numerous journals including Art Times, The Iconoclast, Chiron Review, Louisiana Review, Edgz, Willard & Maple, and many others.

Chris Castle is English but currently teaches in Greece. He has sent his work out over the summer and has so far been accepted 40 odd times in a number of journals. He can be reached at chriscastle76@hotmail.com

James Snyder was born in Memphis, Tennessee, grew up in Napa Valley and Germany, and currently lives in Dallas, Texas, where he is an executive for an unnamed corporation, and has recently completed a generational novel partially set in that varied countryside. He has previously been published in one of the Houghton Mifflin New Black Mask story collections. Gen H Psych is his second published work of fiction.

Suvi Mahonen is studying for her Masters in Writing and Literature at Deakin University in Australia. A number of her short stories have appeared in literary magazines in Australia, the UK (including on East of the Web’ online) and the United States, and she has worked as a journalist both in Australia and Canada. Last year a story she wrote won the Tertiary Student Category of the Bauhinia Literary Awards, and this year another of her stories won the Open Section of the Laura Literary Awards. She lives in the Dandenong Ranges east of Melbourne with her husband/best friend/ writing buddy Luke Waldrip, and a family of magpies who sing for their bread. Some of her other work can be found at http://www.redbubble.com/people/suvimahonen Suvi means “summer” in Finnish.

Tobi Cogswell is a co-recipient of the first annual Lois and Marine Robert Warden Poetry Award from Bellowing Ark (2008). Her work can be read in SPOT Lit(erary) Mag(azine), Penumbra, Newport Review, Forge Journal and Spoon River Poetry Review among others, and is coming in KNOCK Journal, Transcurrent, Sugar House Review and Illya’s Honey. She has three chapbooks and her book Poste Restante is forthcoming from Bellowing Ark Press. She is the co-editor of San Pedro River Review (www.sprreview.com).

Caitlin McGuire is a student attending UC Berkeley. She writes short stories because they fit her five-foot frame. A Managing Editor at the Berkeley Fiction Review, she has been published in Foliate Oak, the Cal Literary Arts Magazine and Halfway Down the Stairs.

Jesse Goolsby’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Epoch, Harpur Palate, OurStories, Storyglossia, Breakwater Review, Paradigm, Vestal Review,Stirring, War,Literature & the Arts, Oak Bend Review, and various anthologies. His short fiction piece “Touch” received the 2010 Richard Bausch Short Fiction Prize, and his story
“Derrin of the North” won the 2009 John Gardner Memorial Award in Fiction. He serves as the Fiction Editor for War, Literature & the Arts: An International Journal of the Humanities. His various projects can be viewed at jessegoolsby.blogspot.com.

satnrose is a well-known antiquarian bookseller, and formerly a not-so-secret messenger in the innermost depths of Capitol Hill and K Street. He has been published in a number of literary magazines, but since his reincarnation as ‘satnrose’ last year, he has been published in EVERGREEN REVIEW, ICONOCLAST, DANSE MACABRE, COUNTEREXAMPLE POETICS, OYSTERS & CHOCOLATE, APPARATUS, GLOOM CUPBOARD, ESCAPE INTO LIFE, BRING THE INK, SHOOTS AND VINES, ESKIMO PIE, BARE BACK, LITERARY TONIC, CLEAN SHEETS, MAD SWIRL, LIT SNACK,
METAZEN, etc. and has poems in forthcoming issues of THE ANN ARBOR REVIEW, THE TOWER JOURNAL, FULL OF CROW, etc.”

Martin Steele I was born in 1928 and raised in Johannesburg, Republic of South Africa. I was educated at King Edward VII School where I first found my love for words. I settled in Delray Beach, Florida in 1999 My poem “I’m Still Waiting”, concerning 9/11, was published in the Great Books Florida News Letter (February 1, 2002) and another poem, “Picture a World Gone By (…11 September 2001)”, was included in the September 28, 2001 edition. I was a finalist in the 2003 Winning Writers War Poetry Contest for my epic poem “Sarel and Samson”. In the Tom Howard/John H Reid Poetry Contest 2009 I received a Highly Commended award for prose-poem Single Malt. In the same competition 2009 I also had a Very Highly Commended entry, Early, Every Morning. Included in Three Highly Commended entries I had After All, Making Tea and My Brother is a Scarecrow. I also received a High award in 2008 for my poem Omaha Day One. In 2008, June 9-15 I was Poet of the Week on the Poetry Super Highway.In 2006 I won first prize on Poetry Place for Lost tears. My epic poem The Eyes in the Photo was published in PSH, for Holocaust Remembrance day Issue May 2008. In the Dancing Poetry Festival Competition edition September 2007 I won second prize in San Francisco, for my poem “Urgineaa Maritama“. My poem “Big Tent Game” was published in anthology Traveling, Tom Howard Books. Sailing In the Mist of Time a collection of award winning poems — Margaret Reid Prize for traditional verse embraced my poem Service and Set with a High Distinction remark and prize. Coyote Wild Magazine in November 2006 published My Brother is a Scarecrow. In 2007 I was a finalist in the War Poetry Competition sponsored by Winning Writers, with my poem “Can We Believe Them?”. My poem Encased rated a mention in 2008 in the Margaret Reid Traditional Verse competition. In 2007 my piece “The man in the Window” was published by Ginosko. My poem Lost Tears: Copyright 2005. This poem won the summer 2005 competition from Write On Copy.

Kathleen Hellen’s work has appeared in Barrow Street; The Cortland Review; the Hollins Critic; Nimrod; Prairie Schooner; Southern Poetry Review; and Subtropics, among other journals. Awards include the Washington Square Review, James Still and Thomas Merton poetry prizes, and individual artist grants from the state of Maryland and the city of Baltimore. Other awards include: finalist in the Autumn House Competition; the Kore Press First Book Competition, the Many Mountains Moving FLASH FICTION CONTEST; the Marlboro Prize for Poetry; the Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize, Nimrod/Hardman Awards; and the Slapering Hol Chapbook Contest. She is contributing editor for the Baltimore Review.

Cade Collum I was born and raised in Slapout, Alabama. I received my B.A. in Psychology as well as my M.F.A. in Creative Writing (Poetry) from the University of Alabama, where I also worked for several years as a Research Assistant in the Psychology Department and in local nursing homes. I currently live in Tuscaloosa, where I am a full-time Instructor in the English Department at UA. My poems have appeared in The Dogs of Havana (chapbook, Red Hydra Press 2008), 42opus, and Vulcan. I am currently working on another chapbook project with Red Hydra Press titled Lion-froth Crown to be published in summer 2010.

Gabor G Gyukics (b. 1958 Budapest, Hungary) is a Hungarian-American poet, literary translator is the author of 5 books of original poetry, 4 in Hungarian, 1 in English-Hungarian (Last Smile), and 9 books of translations including A Transparent Lion, selected poetry of Attila József. He writes his poems in English (which is his second language) and Hungarian. He had lived in Holland for two years before moving to the US where he’d lived between 1988-2002, at present he resides in Budapest.

His poetic works and translations have been published in over 200 magazines and anthologies in English, Hungarian and other languages world wide. He is a recipient of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre (BILTC) residency in Canada in 2011.

Gabor G. Gyukics established the only existing Open Mike reading series in Hungary in 1999. Organized and hosted over 100 Open Poetry readings with established, prize winner and also with young and upcoming poets.

He is a member of the Belletrist Association of Hungary and the Hungarian Translators Association.

At present he is working on translating the poetic works of North American Indigenous poets for an anthology to be published in Hungarian.

He is the recipient of the Salvatore Quasimodo Special Prize for Poetry, Balatonfüred, Hungary 2012.

Allanah Hunt is eighteen years of age and has been writing for nearly three years. She has nearly finished an Advanced Editing and Writing course through college and is looking at doing a Bachelor in Creative Writing. Allanah has written many short stories as well as some poetry and is currently working on a novel which she hopes to publish one day in the near future.

Jasmon Drain The United States’ involvement in “conflicts” with the supposed purpose of “liberating oppressed people” has consumed the majority of pages in history books taught throughout U.S. high schools. But, through those efforts of liberation, United States soldiers’ lives are being sacrificed all the while. There is little mention of those soldiers amongst these books. Jasmon Drain would like to dedicate Grey Apples, Sugar Milk, Waiting to any person who may have lost someone to military conflict.

Stacey Bryan I currently reside in Burbank, California with my husband whom I met in New York. I have lived on both coasts working as a caption editor for the hearing impaired and am currently at work on a short story collection concerned with life in Los Angeles. I received my BA in English Lit. from UCLA and was also published in their Journal of the Arts, Westwind. While living in New York, I was published in the Brownstone Review.

Rebecca Mertz will receive an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh in April. Her poems are forthcoming in H_NGM_N, Praxilla, Otoliths, sawbuck, and an upcoming anthology entitled How Dirty Girls Get Clean. She is a graduate of Franciscan University of Steubenville, and recently wrote the preface for the latest edition of John
J. McNeill’s Freedom, Glorious Freedom: The Spiritual Journey for Gays, Lebsians and Everybody Else. She’s a founding editor of the new poetry journal, A Joint Called Pauline http://ajointcalledpauline.wordpress.com.

Allan Kaplan Besides cooking for wife, actively writing poetry and passively watching taped movies in NYC and in the Catskill mountains: Books: Paper Airplane (Harper & Row) Like One of Us (Untitled). Appeared in many journals over the years, including Poetry, Oyez, Locus Solus, Apalachee Quarterly, Paris Review, Chelsea Review,
Slant, Hubbub, Iowa Review, Washington Square, Heaven Bone, Sal Mimeo, Oyez, Fine Madness, Wind, Free Lunch, Gulf Stream, Widener Review.

Sarah Rehfeldt lives in western Washington with her family. She is a writer, artist, and photographer. Her most recent publication credits include: Modern Haiga; Presence: An International Journal of Spiritual Direction; The Golden Lantern; Ascent AspirationsMagazine, and DailyHaiga. Her photography web pages can be viewed here:
www.pbase.com/candanceski “Snowfall” Previously published in The Golden Lantern“On Love” Previously published in Ascent Aspirations, www.ascentaspirations.ca

Tree Riesener has published poetry and short fiction in numerous literary magazines, including Flashquake, Flash Fiction Online, Litsnack, The Evergreen Review, Loch Raven Review, Pindeldyboz, Identity Theory, The Belletrist Review, and The Source. Her achievements include three first prizes for the Short-Short Story and the Literary
Short Story at the Philadelphia Writers Conference, Finalist for Black Lawrence Press’s Hudson Prize, Finalist in PANK magazine’s Fiction Chapbook Contest, Best of Wigleaf 2009 (Honorable Mention), Semi-Finalist in the Pablo Neruda Competition, three short stories staged in the Writing Aloud productions of InterAct Theatre, Philadelphia, a
Hawthornden International Writing Fellowship, two Pushcart nominations, and the William Van Wert Fiction Award. She is the author of three poetry collections, Inscapes, Angel Poison and Liminalog. Her website is http://www.treeriesener.com and she blogs at http://www.treeriesener.blogspot.com.

Yelena Dubrovin I am the author of two books of poetry “Preludes to the Rain” and “Beyond the Line of No Return”. I co-authored with Hilary Koprowski a novel In Search of Van Dyck. In addition to this, my short stories, poetry and literary essays appeared in different periodical, such as The World Audience, Gold Dust, 63 Channels, Ben Pint Quarterly, Cantaraville, Ginosko Literary Journal, Bewildering Stories, Pens on Fire,Ekhashara, Ophelia Street and etc. I was born in St. Petersburg, Russia and since 1979 live in Philadelphia, PA. I am a bilingual writer, published in two languages, Russian and English.

John Sandoval has earned his daily bread as fire fighter, gold miner, painter of houses. From these occupations, and from idling about on street corners and in saloons, he has drawn his inspiration. He is presently residing in Cleveland, Ohio, where he is employed as late night desk clerk at the historical Alcazar Hotel.

Edward Butscher author of first bios of Sylvia Plath and Conrad Aiken, as well as several volumes of verse. The most recent of the latter is Eros Descending, due out this month from the Amagansett Press.

Phoebe Wilcox lives in eastern Pennsylvania. Her novel, Angels Carry the Sun is pending publication with Lilly Press, and an excerpt from a second novel, Flower Symbolism for Dummies, has been published in Wild Violet. Recent and forthcoming work may be found in Sixers Review, Illumen, A cappella Zoo, Folly Magazine, The
Chaffey Review, Calliope Nerve, The Battered Suitcase, Frostwriting, Gloom Cupboard and many others. Her stories have twice been nominated for the Pushcart prize. www.phoebewilcox.com.

Michael Estabrook is a baby boomer who began getting his poetry published in the late 1980s. Over the years he has published 15 poetry chapbooks, his most recent entitled “They Didn’t Leave Notes.” Other interests include art, music, theatre, opera, and his wife who just happens to be the most beautiful woman he has ever known.
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Allegra Jostad Silberstein was born on a farm in Wisconsin. Her love of poetry began as a child when her mom would recite nursery rhymes while she was working. She also loves dance and performs with several groups. More than 100 poems have been published in journals such as BLUE UNICORN, RATTLESNAKE PRESS, POETRY NOW, IODINE, GINOSKO and others. She has two chapbooks: ACCEPTANCE (1999) and IN THE FOLDS (2005). In February of 2010 she was named Poet Laureate of the city of Davis in California.

Kristin Roedell graduated from Whitman College in 1984 (B.A. English) and the University of Washington Law School (J.D. 1987). She practiced law in Kitsap County Washington, and is now retired. Her poetry has appeared in Switched on Gutenberg, Ginosko, Flutter, Damselflypress, Chantarelle’s Notebook, Eclectica, Quill and Parchment (featured poet January 2010) Open Minds Quarterly, Breath and Shadow, and Four and Twenty. Other poems will appear in Chest, Ekphrasis, and Pilgrimage. Her chapbook Seeing in the Dark was published in 2009 by Tomato Can Press. She is a member of Poets and Writers Association, and the co-editor of an Anthology of Poems on Motherhood, scheduled to be published through Quill and Parchment Press in summer 2010.

Rachel Day: I sketch and study languages as hobbies. I write because life doesn’t feel right without it.

Allan Johnston’s poems have been published in Poetry, Poetry East, Rhino, and over sixty other journals. He is the author of Tasks of Survival (Mellen, 1996) and the chapbook Northport (Finishing Line Press, 2010), and is a recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize nomination (2009), and first prize in the Outrider
Press Literary Anthology Poetry Awards (2010). Originally from California, he earned his M.A. in Creative Writing and his Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Davis, and now teaches writing and literature at Columbia College and DePaul University in Chicago. He currently serves as a reader for the Illinois Emerging Poets competition and is president of the Society for the Philosophical Study of Education. In the past he has worked as a sheepherder, shakesplitter, roofer, forest fire fighter, Indian cook, and photographer, among other occupations.

L.B. Sedlacek’s poems have appeared in such publications as “Audience Magazine,” “I-70 Review,” “Bear Creek Haiku,” “Tales of the Talisman,” “Illumen,” “Heritage Writer,” “Tertulia Magazine,” “Inspirit,” “Assisi Journal,” “MamaZine,” and “Poesia.” L.B.’s latest chapbook is “Red Headed Eskimos.” L.B. also hosts the small press podcast “Coffee House to Go.” lbsedlacek@gmail.com

Gila Lyons has written for Tablet, the Forward, the New York Press, and the BerkshireReview, among others. She is a staff writer at Go Ask Alice and a voyeurism correspondent for The Faster Times. Gila has taught creative writing in schools and for adults, has lead residential writing retreats, and has created and facilitated writing
workshops aimed at using writing as a therapeutic tool. She lives in New York City, where she is an MFA candidate in literary nonfiction at Columbia University.

Joseph Farley edited Axe Factory for 24 years. His books and chapbooks include For The Birds, Suckers, The True Color of You and Longing For The Mother Tongue. Recent stories and poems have appeared in Nefarious Ballerina, Gutter Eloquence,Snakeskin, BlazeVOX, Medulla Review and other places.

Maria Terrone is the author of two poetry collections: A Secret Room in Fall, cowinner of the McGovern Prize (Ashland Poetry Press, 2006) and The Bodies We Were Loaned (The Word Works, 2002) as well as a chapbook, American Gothic, Take 2 (Finishing Line Press, 2009). Her Pushcart Prize-nominated work has appeared in
magazines including Poetry, Atlanta Review, Hudson Review and Poetry International, and in more than a dozen anthologies. She is Assistant Vice President for Communications at Queens College, City University of New York. Visit her at mariaterrone.com

Judith Cody’s poetry has won national awards from Atlantic Monthly and Amelia; honorable mentions from the Emily Dickinson Poetry Award, a poem (in English and Spanish) with its complete archives is in the Smithsonian Institution’s permanent collection, three poems were quarter-finalists in The Pablo Neruda Prize in Poetry, and
poems took honorable mention from the National League of American Pen Women. A poem was awarded the “Conference Find,” top distinction, at the Southern California Writers Conference. Poems appear in journals such as: Nimrod, New York Quarterly, South Carolina Poetry Review, Caduceus, Poet Lore, Xavier Review, Texas Review,Primavera, Phoebe, Fugue, Louisville Review, Madison Review, Eureka Literary Magazine, Westview, Rio Grande Review, Binnacle, Carquinez Review, Fox Cry Review, Rattlesnake Review, Poem, Arabesque, RiverSedge, Distillery, Phantasmagoria, Limestone, and many others. Poems are anthologized in: Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry 2007, Oakland Out Loud 2007, Words Upon the Waters 2006, and Anthology of Monterey Bay Poets 2007. Books are: Vivian Fine: A Bio-Bibliography, Greenwood Press, 2002; Eight Frames Eight, poems; Roses in Portraiture, photography, Kikimora Publishing Co., 2008 . She is a UC Master Gardener, and she composes guitar music. www.judithcody.com

Cheryl Clarke is a black lesbian poet whose writing has appeared in numerous publications since 1980. Recent books are AFTER MECCA: WOMEN POETS AND THE BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT in 2005 and THE DAYS OF GOOD LOOKS: PROSE AND POETRY 1980-2005, in 2006.

D Krizman is an inmate at San Quentin State Prison, California.

Catherine McGuire is a writer and artist with a deep interest in philosophy, the “Why are we here?” question that lurks under so much of our lives.  Using nature as a mirror, she explores the way humans perceive themselves and their world.  She will have a chapbook released by Uttered Chaos in September.  It is tentatively titled Reflections, Echoes and Palimpsests.  She is webmaster for the Oregon Poetry Society and claims her entire garden as her ‘poetry office’.

Phebe Davidson is a recovering academic, the author of twenty-some published collections of poems, a contributing editor at Tar River Poetry and a staff writer for The Asheville Poetry Review. Her newest book is Waking to Light (Main Street Rag Publishing Co., 2012)

Monica Mody is the author of two chapbooks, and her work can also be found in journals such as the Boston Review, Wasafiri, Upstairs at Duroc, pyrta, Lantern Review, and Nether, among others. Her first book, KALA PANI, is forthcoming from 1913 Press later this year.  Monica has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame and is currently a doctoral candidate in East-West Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies.

Gary Lundy  i’ve recently moved from southwest montana to providence to live with my partner and concentrate on my writing and life. the move has as i would suppose anyone could guess shaken up at least two lives. in a good way. of course. it’s nice. also. to locate in a community where there is so much art being produced. everywhere. my poems have appeared in a variety of magazines including: why vandalism? (online); snow monkey; karamu; spout; heeltap; rfd; the tule review; black book press, the poetry zine; timber creek review; elimae (online); aura literary arts review; harpur palate; poetry flash (online); the main street rag; the rockford review; and ditch (online). i have poems forthcoming in pudding magazine; clara venus; celebration; elements; voices israel; and, the bicycle review (online). i can provide you with a publications list should you wish.

Jennifer A. McGowan   Author of the chapbook Life in Captivity (Finishing Line Press, 2011), has published in many journals on both sides of the Atlantic, including, most recently, Agenda, Acumen, and the American Journal of Nursing – the latter being the latest in her line of poetry about being disabled.  She holds a PhD in English, and has taught and had her poems used as text at various universities.  Her website, with more poetry and examples of her mediaeval calligraphy, can be found at http://www.jenniferamcgowan.com.  She lives near Oxford in the UK.

Vineetha Mokkil is a writer and reviewer based in New Delhi, India. Her short stories have been published in The Santa Fe Writers Project Journal; Cha: An Asian Literary Journal; the Asia Writes Project; Why We Don’t Talk an anthology of contemporary Indian short fiction (Rupa and Co, August 2010, New Delhi). Poems translated by her have been published in Indian Love Poems (Knopf/Everyman’s Library, 2005). Her first novel is inching towards completion.

Jeanette Geraci lives and works as a yoga teacher on Long Island.  Her poetry has appeared in Re:Union Magazine, Lily Literary Review, Xenith Magazine, North Chicago Review, The Interrobang, and Yes, Poetry Magazine.

Pamela Clarke Vandall resides on Gabriola Island with her two children and husband. She attended the creative writing program at Malaspina University College, and spends her free time writing poetry and fiction.  Her work has been published in various literary journals including Bare Hands, Poetry Bus, and Unfold.

Andrea Witzke Slot is author of To find a new beauty (Gold Wake Press, 2012). Her work has appeared in such journals as Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Translation Review, Written River: A Journal of Eco-Poetics, The Pacific Review, Southern Women’s Review, and Chiron Review. She teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago and is an associate editor at Rhino Poetry as well as the book review editor at Fifth Wednesday Journal. She lives just outside of Chicago with her husband, the youngest of her five children/stepchildren, and her crazy West Highland Terrier, Macbeth.Her website is: www.andreawitzkeslot.com.

Dane Karnick grew up by the Colorado “Rockies” and lives in Seattle.  His poetry has recently appeared in Drash, Cirque, RED OCHRE LiT, Montucky Review and Curbside Quotidian.  Visit him at www.danekarnick.com.

stuart radowitz  Hi, I studied with W.D. Snodgrass, Philip Booth, and Donald Justice at Syracuse University and I have a Masters in Creative Writing from Colorado State University. I am an Adjunct instructor in Creative Writing at Molloy College in Rockville Centre, Long Island, N.Y. The world tried to break me. But I found a road to take me. Peace, Stuart

Ryo Baum was born in Japan but was raised in California. He enjoys writing poems and playing music. He currently is attempting to write a song every week and his songs can be heard on http://sheselectric.bandcamp.com. He also started an online lit mag with his friends called receptacle http://www.receptaclemag.com. He is currently contemplating on moving out of state to mend a broken heart.

Nickie Albert is a poet and playwright.  She has had poems published in Wild Goose Review, The Legendary and Burning Word.  She supplements her literary career doing Software Development in New York City.  She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Joan Maki  I received my MFA from the University of Montana and have recently completed a novel that is in search of a publisher.  Meanwhile, I’ve been working on a smattering of short stories.  I live in a small town in the mountains of western Montana with my husband and one vivacious, yellow dog.

Ruth Goring’s poetry collection Yellow Doors was published by WordFarm (2003); her poems have recently appeared in CALYX, Pilgrimage, Comstock Review, RHINO, New Madrid, Off the Coast, Raving Dove, Alligator Juniper, Verse Wisconsin, Chicago Quarterly Review, the Goodreads newsletter, and elsewhere. She is currently finishing a collection of poems set in Colombia, where she grew up. Ruth is a senior manuscript editor in the Books Division of the University of Chicago Press and teaches advanced editing in the University of Chicago’s Graham School.

ire’ne lara silva lives in Austin, TX . Her work has appeared in various journals and anthologies, most recently in Acentos Review, Palabra, and Yellow Medicine Review. She is the 2008 recipient of the Gloria Anzaldua Milagro Award, an inaugural CantoMundo Fellow, and the author of two chapbooks: ani’mal and  INDíGENA.  Her first collection of poetry, furia, (Mouthfeel Press, 2010) received an Honorable Mention for the 2011 International Latino Book Award in Poetry. Currently, she is Co-Coordinator for the Flor De Nopal Literary Festival:  http://flordenopalliteraryfestival.wordpress.com/ and is leading the Voz te Viento discussion series on diabetes, illness, healing, and creativity:  http://vozteviento.wordpress.com/
Poet/writer website: http://www.irenelarasilva.webs.com 

Jeff Streeby grew up in Sioux City, Iowa, where he attended Morningside College. He holds an MFA in Poetry from Gerald Stern’s program at New England College in Henniker, New Hampshire.  He is a horseman, cowboy poet and performer whose recent work has appeared in Verdad, Southwest American Literature, Los Angeles Review and others.

patrick fealey is 43 years old and lives in northern california. his literary work and journalism has appeared in one hundred magazines and newspapers worldwide, including the new york times, associated press, and the wormwood review, newport review, artfuck, the booksletters to los angeles (pale house books) and up in smoke (scars publications), as well as an educational book published by simon and shuster. he is the author of 10 unpublished novels, one memoir, and a collection of poems. influential writers have been henry miller, baudelaire, celine, bukowski, hemingway, and rimbaud. his 100-pound german shepherd, sascha, has promised to tear apart all the literary agents who have rejected him (200+) for being “avant garde.” “i am not beat,” the author says. “i am wasted.”

Matthew Vasiliauskas is a graduate of Columbia College Chicago, where he received a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Film and Video Production. In 2009, he was awarded the Silver Dome Prize by the Illinois Broadcast Association for best public affairs program as producer of the Dean Richards Show at WGN Radio. His work has appeared in such publications as The Pennsylvania Review, Stumble Magazine and The Adirondack Review. Matthew currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

John Sullivan is a lawyer and lifelong Baltimorean.  He has written op-eds for newspapers like the Wall Street Journal (which came out of his appearance on C-Span), the Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald and the Christian Science Monitor.  His short stories have appeared in about a dozen literary journals, most recently The Alembic and Pinyon.   jcharlessullivan@yahoo.com

Sheri L. Wright is the author of five books of poetry, including the most recent, The Slow Talk Of Stones. Her works of poetry also appear in Out of Line, Chiron Review, Clark Street Review, Darkling and Earth’s Daughters, and many others. Ms. Wright also works as a free-lance editor for a variety of books ranging from poetry to fiction. She has been a volunteer editor for This I Believe. Ms. Wright has taught poetry workshops for Women in Transition, the Kentucky Young Writer’s Connection and The Kentucky State Poetry Society, judged the poetry division in The Golden Nibs for the Virginia Writers Club, for Women Who Write and for Green River Writers writing contest. She is a regional chair for the Kentucky State Poetry society and is co-chair for their adult poetry contest for 2011. Ms. Wright currently is the host of From The Inkwell, a one hour radio show dedicated to all things literary on CHRadio 1650am, live-streaming at www.CrescentHillRadio.com. Please visit her website at www.scribblingsandsuch.com.
be seen in Blood Orange Review, The SinSheri L. Wright’s visual work can gle Hound and is forthcoming in THIS Literary Magazine, Prick of the Spindle, Blood Lotus Journal and Subliminal Interiors. More examples of her work can be seen at http://www.flickr.com/photos/sherilwright/. With Ms. Wright’s consent, all work is available for publication, unless otherwise noted.

Brenda Rose is a visual artist, painting in oils, and a freelance writer who lives with her husband and two children in southern Georgia.

Devin Wayne Davis, once called “ink (or inc.)” in an seaside vision, has written well-over 2, 000 poems; he likes concise verse. his work is printed in the sacramento anthology: 100 poems; sanskrit; dwan; poetry depth quarterly; dandelion; coe review; rattlesnake; taproot; and 38 chapbooks. selections can be found on-line, at these fine sites: howling dog press; del sol review; wordslingers; perihelion; pierian springs; locust magazine; ginosko; kota press; octavo; lifix; jones av.; pig iron malt; great works; la petite ‘zine; stirring; offcourse; rio arts; wandering dog; poems niederngasse; whimperbang; kookamonga square; wheelhouse; chiron review; eratio; split shot; poetry magazine; poetry monthly; fullosia; new verse news; penhimalaya; wordslaw; aurora review, muscadine lines; toe tree journal; pcm; down in the dirt; soma; tmp; haiku scotland; medusa’s kitchen; spam; and zambomba. thank you all. Davis has read as a feature poet at major book retailers; he has addressed citizens and lawmakers on the northern steps of the california state capitol, and has read for annual poetry events at the crocker art museum. davis reviewed movies for a best-selling paperback guide; he has written for sacramento, ca. arts & entertainment weeklies, and worked for ups and the state. Davis served in the u.s. army. he visited spain, germany, switzerland, france, and was last assigned to ft. bragg, n.c. as a photojournalist. Davis earned a bachelors degree in journalism and history. davis has hiked mt. whitney 3x. davis has three daughters, and has had testicular cancer. he’s a leo. townee_towne@hotmail.com.

Roger Real Drouin is an MFA student in creative writing/fiction at Florida Atlantic University. His short stories have been published, or are forthcoming, in the print journals The Litchfield Review and Leaf Garden and online at The Smoking Poet, Canopic Jar, Offcourse Literary Journal, Madswirl, and Green Silk. He was a journalist for seven years before coming to FAU in Fall 2009. His Web site is www.rogerdrouin.com. Roger also writes an outdoor blog at www.rogersoutdoorblog.com.

Haim Isaacs was born in New York, grew up in Jerusalem and lives in Paris where he writes, sings and clowns about as much as possible.  His stories have recently appeared in The Massachusetts Review and The Mochila Review.   www.haimisaacs.com.

Donnelle McGee is a Jimi Hendrix freak and wishes he could dunk a basketball.  He earned his MFA from Goddard College.  He is a faculty member at Mission College in Santa Clara, California.  His work has appeared  in Controlled Burn, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Home Planet News, Iodine Poetry Journal, Permafrost, River Oak Review, The Spoon River Review, and Willard & Maple, among others.  His work has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.  You can read more about Donnelle at www.Donnellemcgee.com

Mike Maggio has published fiction, poetry, travel and reviews in Potomac Review, the Montserrat Review, Pleiades, Apalachee Quarterly, The Northern Virginia Review, The L.A. Weekly, The Washington CityPaper, Beltway Quarterly, Pig Iron, DC Poets Against the War and others. His books include Your Secret is Safe With Me (Black Bear Publications, 1988), Oranges From Palestine (Mardi Gras Press, 1996), Sifting Through the Madness (Xlibris, 2001) and deMOCKcracy (Plain View Press, 2007). Forthcoming work includes a poetry chapbook, Haunted Garden (Pudding House Publications) and a short story collection, The Keepers, (March Street Press).  He is an assistant adjunct professor at Northern Virginia Community College and a graduate of George Mason University’s MFA program in Creative Writing. He lives in Herndon, Virginia with his wife and children. His web site is www.mikemaggio.net

John Grochalski is the author of The Noose Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch Out and Glass City. He currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Erren Geraud Kelly’s work is currently featured in Deep South Magazine, Write from Wrong, Ascent Aspirations, The Carter Review, The Minetta Review, and other publications.  Mr. Kelly received his BA in English Creative Writing from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.  He lives in New York City…

Mark Saba’s fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared widely in literary magazines and anthologies, most recently New Haven Review, Poetic Voices Without Borders 2, The Folio Club, and Steam Ticket. He is the author of The Landscapes of Pater (The Vineyard Press, New York, 2004) and Thaddeus Olsen (in Desperate Remedies, Apis Books, London, 2008). Mark is also a painter. Please see www.marksabawriter.com.

Jenean McBrearty   A graduate of San Diego State University, is a retired community college instructor who taught Political Science and Sociology at military installations and Des Moines Area Community College. She resides in Kentucky and is an MFA creative writing candidate.
Credits: Reviewer —social science/history books for Choice Magazine (2006-2008); paid columnist for the Lexington Herald-Leader (2006); published in Teaching for Success, Static Movement. Her short story, “The Prisoners of Gravely Rock”, was published in Main Street Rag 2011 Anthology; “Altered States”, and “Hearts and Trains” was published by Wherever It Pleases (1/2012). “Mexicali Mamas”, EKU English Department’s Award for Graduate Non-fiction (2011) was accepted for publication by bioStories (1/2012).

Kenneth Kesner, a native of the US, has been working under the auspices of the State Administration of Foreign Experts in the PRC for several years now.  Some of his recent work is found in The Arabesques Review (ALG), Counterexample Poetics (USA), Essence (SCO), L.E.S. Review (USA), Retort Magazine (AUS) and The Tower Journal (USA).

Christine Klocek-Lim received the 2009 Ellen La Forge Memorial Prize in poetry. She has four chapbooks: Ballroom – a love story (Flutter Press), Cloud Studies (Whale Sound Audio Chapbooks), How to photograph the heart (The Lives You Touch Publications), and The book of small treasures (Seven Kitchens Press). Her poems have appeared in Nimrod, OCHO, Diode, Riffing on Strings: Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net anthologies and was a finalist for 3 Quarks Daily’s Prize in Arts & Literature. She is editor of Autumn Sky Poetry and her website is www.novembersky.com.

Peter Barlow’s work has appeared most recently in Black Market Review and Spindrift, as well as the Coming Unglued anthology from The McCroskey Memorial Internet Playhouse.  He received his MFA Creative Writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and serves as a reader for that school’s journal, The Literary Review.

William Kelley Woolfitt studies American literature at Pennsylvania State University, where he is in the third year of the PhD program.  He has worked as a summer camp counselor, bookseller, ballpark peanuts vendor, and teacher of computer literacy to senior citizens.  He is the author of The Salvager’s Arts, co-winner of the 2011 Keystone Chapbook Prize, which will be published in June of 2012.  His poems and short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Cincinnati Review, Ninth Letter, Shenandoah, Los Angeles Review, Sycamore Review, Southern Humanities Review, and Hayden’s Ferry Review.  

Marina Rubin’s first chapbook Ode to Hotels came out in 2002, followed by Once in  2004 and Logic in 2007. Her work had appeared in hundreds of magazines including 13th Warrior Review,  Asheville Poetry Review, Dos Passos Review,  5AM, Nano Fiction, Coal  City, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Jewish Currents, Lillith, Pearl, Poet flash fiction stories. Her website is Lore, Skidrow Penthouse, The Portland Review, The Worcester Review and many more. She  is an associate editor of Mudfish. She has been nominated for the Pushcart. She lives in New York where she  works as a headhunter on Wall Street while writing her fourth book, a  collection of www.marinarubin.com

Lyn Lifshin’s Another Woman Who Looks Like Me was published by Black Sparrow at David Godine October, 2006. (Also out in 2006, her prize winning book about the famous, short-lived beautiful race horse, Ruffian:  The Licorice Daughter: My Year With Ruffian from Texas Review Press.  Lifshin’s other books include Before It’s Light published winter 1999-2000 by Black Sparrow press, following their publication of Cold Comfort in 1997 and 92.  Rapple from Coatism:  Lost in the Fog and Barbaro:  Beyond Brokenness and Light at the End, The Jesus Poems, Katrina, Ballet Madonnas, Tsunami as History, Lost Hors, Drifting, Mirrors.

Forthcoming:

Secretariat:  The Red Freak, the Miracle, Malala, The Tangled Alphabet:  Istanbul Poems and Luminous Women:  Eneduanna; Sheherazade and Neferiti and an eBook of Marinlyn Monroe from Rubber Boots Press and DVD:  Lyn Lifshin:  Not Made of Glass.

Her web site is www.lynlifshin.com

Donna Walker-Nixon currently serves as a lecturer in the Department of English at Baylor University.  Before coming to Baylor, she was a full-professor at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, where she founded Windhover: A Journal of Christian Literature in 1996.  She edited the journal until 2002 when she left teaching to pursue writing and editing full-time.  During the time she was gainfully employed, she also co-edited the New Texas series with James Ward Lee.  And during the time she was not gainfully employed, she co-founded Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, a yearly publication that spotlights artists, writers, musicians, and current happenings in the arts in Texas.  She has published short stories in the journals descant, Concho River Review, and Echoes.  Her work has also appeared in Red Boots and Attitude, Texas Short Stories I and II, and Writing on the Wind.  Her husband Timothy Hobbs writes terrific vampire and literary fiction and has published in several venues.

Chris Ridge  “I am a nineteen-year-old New Yorker with a habit of peering down alleys and up flues and peeling loose skin. Bodies and picture-books move me to rapture and I spend a great deal of time up late, moving big and talking loudly to people I have just met. I live in Brooklyn with my fiance and her cat.”

Lolette Kuby   I am an American expatriate living in Canada since 2000.
My poems and stories have appeared in Prairie Schooner, American Scholar, The New Laurel Review, Midwest Quarterly, Poet Lore, Antigonish Review, Grain, Canadian Literature, the Apalachee Quarterly and in many similar journals. A chapbook, In Enormous Water, was published by the Cleveland State University Press. My full-length collection, Set Down Here came out in 2002 (Brandylane Publishers) and another collection, Inwit, came out in 2003 (Pearl’s Book’em Publishers). My short story collection Out of Cleveland, was published in 2007 by Vehicule Press. My first novel, Writing Personals will be released in October.
“Pas de Deux” was published as “Duo for Voice and Movement”, in Salome: A Literary Dance Magazine, 31/32 1983. It was choreographed and performed in “Word Moves,” a program of poetry set to dance, at the John Carroll University, and adopted into the repertoire of the Cleveland Dance Repertory Company.  “Regarding a Deaf Child” was published in my book, Set Down Here in 2002.

Alexandra Simpson received her MFA in Poetry at the University of Michigan. She is currently working on her poetry manuscript, The Art of Feminine Dissolve and a memoir. She is the recipient of the Meader Family Award through the Hopwood Award Program at UM. Her writing credits include poetry in the Pebble Lake Review and The Huron River Review.

EM Schorb’s work has appeared in The Southern Review, The Sewanee Review, Southwest Review, The Yale Review, The Chicago Review, Carolina Quarterly, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Texas Review, The American Scholar, Stand (England), Agenda (England), Poetry Salzburg Review (Austria), The Sewanee Review, The Notre Dame Review, 5 AM, Rattle, Shenandoah, The New York Quarterly, and many others, here and abroad.  His collection, Murderer’s Day (Purdue University Press), was awarded the Verna Emery Poetry Award.  His most recent novel is Fortune Island.  Carbons: a Career in Letters, and Reflections in a Doubtful I, a collection of verse, are just out.

Cody Kitsap was born on the Yakima Reservation in 1929.  As a young man, along with other members of his tribe, he worked as a metal fabricator on the Hanford Reservation, helping to construct the buildings that housed the first atomic reactor.  Storytelling was a nightly event, and Cody is a natural storyteller.  The first chapter of Shadow Chasers is his first published work.
Cody retired and lives with his wife Mollie in Woodacre, California.  He has four sons.

Marie Olofsdotter is a Swedish-born artist living in Minneapolis. Her books for children have been honored by a Midwest Book Achievement Award, a Benjamin Franklin Award, and a Minnesota Book Award. She is the recipient of a Loft Mentor Series Award in Poetry, and her grants include a 2013 MSAB Artist Initiative Grant. Her poems have appeared in several online journals and she has published an artist’s book titled White Leaves, a book of tiny poems. Marie’s work as a teaching artist has inspired young and old alike for the last 20 years. For more information please visit: www.marieolofsdotter.com

Stephen Poleskie is an artist, writer, and photographer. His artwork is in the collections of numerous museums including the Metropolitan Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York: and the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Tate Gallery in London. His writing, fiction and art criticism, has appeared in many journals both here and abroad. Among these are American Writing, Essays & Fictions, Leonardo, Lightworks, ManyMountains Moving, Pangolin Papers, Satire, SN Review, and Sulphur River Literary Review in the USA; D’Ars, and Spazio Umano, in Italy, Himmelschrieber in Germany, and Imago in Australia. He also has short stories in two anthologies, Being Human, and The Book of Love from W. W. Norton, and been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  A handmade book of his poetry was published by Loughborough College of Art in England. He has published six novels: The Balloonist, The Third Candidate, Grater Life, Vigilia’s Tempest, Acorn’s Card and Sconto Walaa.  Poleskie has taught, or been a visiting professor at twenty-seven colleges and art schools throughout the world, including: MIT, Rhode Island School of Design, the School of Visual Art in New York and the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently a professor emeritus at Cornell University. He lives in Ithaca, NY with his wife, the novelist, Jeanne Mackin.  www.StephenPoleskie.com/

Vanessa Young is the executive director of an arts organization in New Jersey. Her work has appeared in Metazen, decomP magazinE, 20×20 magazine, The Monarch Review, Phantom Kangaroo, and Short, Fast, and Deadly.

Ian Sherman is a junior at Trevor Day School, where he is co-editor-in-chief of the literary magazine, founder of the Psychology Club, and column editor of the newspaper. His passion for writing, however, extends outside the classroom as well. He has been recognized on national and regional levels by Scholastic Art & Writing Awards for over 5 years now for all sorts of genres from humor and dramatic scripts to short stories and memoirs. In 2012, Ian had his one-act play “Standing Voiceless in the Choir” produced Off-Broadway at 59E59 Theaters in New York City as a part of Writopia Lab’s Playwright Festival. His play was also put on as a dramatic reading by the TACT (The Actors Company Theatre) in New York. Most recently, his poems “Love” and “Melodies” have been accepted by Teen Art Gallery and are being featured in their 2013 July exhibition at Chashama (461 West 126th St). Overall, Ian is an enthusiastic and accomplished writer, who hopes to impact others with insightful and heart-warming works.

Diane Webster’s goal is to remain open to poetry ideas in everyday life or nature or an overheard phrase and to write from her perspective at the moment. Many nights she falls asleep juggling images to fit into a poem. Her work has appeared in Philadelphia Poets, Illya’s Honey, River Poets Journal and other literary magazines.

Joe Sullivan published a novel, Three Thirds, in 2002, and his work has appeared in recent years in Monkeybicycle, Poets/Artists, OVERFLOW and On Earth As It Is. He works as a dance magazine editor and is an accomplished sax player. He lives in Brooklyn, NY, with his family. joesullivanwrites.wordpress.com

David Wagoner has published 20 books of poems, most recently After the Point of No Return,(Copper Canyon Press, 2112).  He has also published ten novels, one of which, The Escape Artist, was made into a movie by Francis Ford Coppola. He won the Lilly Prize in 1991, six yearly prizes from Poetry, two yearly prizes from Prairie Schooner, and the Arthur Rense Prize for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2011. In 2007, his play First Class was given 43 performances at A Contemporary Theatre in Seattle. He was a chancellor of  the Academy of American Poets for 23 years.  He edited Poetry Northwest from 1966 to 2002, and he is professor emeritus of English at the U. of Washington.  He teaches at the low-residency MFA program of the Whidbey Island Writers Workshop.

Edward Butscher  author of first biographies of Sylvia Plath and Conrad Aiken, and several volumes of my own verse, most recently, Child in the House from Canio’s editions.

Margaret Elysia Garcia lives and writes high in the Sierra Mountains in Plumas National . Her recent work can be seen in ForestBrain, Child Magazine, Catamaran Review, Huizache Journal as well as other places online. She teaches composition and journalism at Feather River College.

Ed Thompson  I was born in 1937 in California. I taught high school English and history for forty-one years and am currently retired. I reside in Northern California.

Gale Acuff has had poems published in many literary journals and is the author of three books of poetry. He has taught university English in the US, China, and Palestine. Gale currently teaches literature at Sichuan University for Nationalities, in China.

Kirby Wright was a Visiting Fellow at the 2009 International Writers Conference in Hong Kong, where he represented the Pacific Rim region of Hawaii.  He was also a Visiting Writer at the 2010 Martha’s Vineyard Residency in Edgartown, Mass., and the 2011 Artist in Residence at Milkwood International, Czech Republic.  He is the author of the companion novels PUNAHOU BLUES and MOLOKA’I NUI AHINA, both set in the islands.

J.R. Solonche   Four-time Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, publishing in magazines, journals, and anthologies since the early 70s. He is coauthor of PEACH GIRL: POEMS FOR A CHINESE DAUGHTER (Grayson Books) and author of BEAUTIFUL DAY forthcoming from Deerbrook Editions.

Thomas Sanfilip’s poetry and fiction have appeared in such publications as the Shore Poetry Anthology, Thalassa, Ivory Tower, Nit & Wit and Tomorrow. Five previous collections of poetry have been published — By the Hours and the Years (Branden Press, 1972), Myth/A Poem (Iliad Press, 2002), The Art of Anguish (2004), Last Poems (2007), Figures of the Muse (2012), in addition to a collection of short fiction, The Killing Sun (2006), all previous four published by Ara Pacis. A collection of published and unpublished literary essays will appear in 2013 under the title Poetry in the Age of Impurity. Presently he lives in the Chicago area and has written for a variety of publications, including Book Page, Rain Taxi, Letter Ex, Filmfax, Film Quarterly, Film Score Monthly, The Journal of Popular Film and Television, and the Walt Whitman Encyclopedia.

Madeleine Beckman is a poet, fiction, and nonfiction writer. She is Nonfiction Editor for IthacaLit, a literary journal, and Contributing Reviewer for Bellevue Literary Review. Her work has been published in books, journals, anthologies, and online. She is the recipient of awards and grants, from among other places, the Poetry Society of America, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Irish Arts Council of Ireland. Dead Boyfriends, her poetry book, was recently reissued by Limoges Press. Madeleine teaches at NYU Langone Medical School in the Medicine & Humanism Program and privately. She can be reached at www.writedowntown.com

Sam Frankl is a 23 year old writer from London, England. He has work appearing in Neon Magazine, Eunoia Review and Silent Things so far this year. He is also a regular contributor to the cultural blog Le Cool.

Kory Ferbet received his B.A. in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing from the University of Missouri. He currently resides in Seattle, WA where he spends his free time writing and gallivanting around the wilderness with his wonderful wife and their two dogs.

Christopher Mulrooney has written poems in Or, Pacific Review, Tulane Review, Weyfarers, and Orbis.

T.J. McAvoy (1979— ) has worked as a journalist, an editor, a printer, and a janitor. He lives with his wife in Denver. He is currently at work on his second novel.

John Menaghan  A prize-winning poet and playwright, has published three books with Salmon Poetry (Ireland): All the Money in the World (1999), She Alone (2006), and What Vanishes (2009).  His fourth book, Here and Gone, is forthcoming from Salmon in 2013.  Four of his short plays have received productions in Los Angeles, and one in Omaha.  One of those plays, A Rumor of Rain, was published in The Hollow & Other Plays (2008).   Menaghan teaches literature and creative writing at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, where he also serves as Director of both the Irish Studies and Summer in Ireland programs. http://redroom.com/author/john-menaghan

Andrei Guruianu lives in New York City where he teaches in the Expository Writing Program at New York University. He is the author of a memoir, Metal and Plum (Mayapple Press, 2010) and four collections of poetry, most recently Postmodern Dogma (Sunbury Press, 2011). More at www.andreiguruianu.com

Conor Robin Madigan is a poet and novelist. His first published novel was Cut Up (News From The Republic of Letters, 2011).

Biff Mitchell lives at the edge of the world. He has no life. He has no friends. Neighborhood children throw stones at his hovel. At night, Biff throws stones at his hovel. Someday Biff plans to write a book about a man who lives in a hovel that is stoned daily by neighborhood children who—through some magical twist of events—turn into snowmen. When Spring arrives, the man’s house melts.

Gianmarc Manzione is a Puschart Prize-nominated poet and nonfiction writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Paris Review, The Southern Review, Raritan and elsewhere. He earned an MFA in creative writing from The New School in 2004, and he currently teaches English and creative writing at the College of Central Florida.
In 2006, Parsifal Press published his debut collection of poems, This Brevity. He currently is at work on two new books, including a second volume of poems as well as a creative nonfiction project tentatively titled PIN ACTION: Hustlers, Con Artists, and the Outrageous Men of Action Bowling.

Erik Berg is an author of fiction and poetry. His works can be seen in Southpaw Literary Journal, Badlands, Black Magnolias, Blue Lotus Review, Quail Bell Magazine, Southern Pacific Review, West Wind, The Stray Branch, and The Kite Journal. His novel The Growth of Something is currently serialized in the Southern Pacific Review.

Heather Bell Adams lives in Raleigh, NC and has published flash and short fiction, essays, and poetry. She can be reached at www.heatherbelladams.com.

Sofia M. Starnes was appointed Virginia’s Poet Laureate in 2012. She is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Fully Into Ashes (Wings Press) and Love and the Afterlife (by invitation, Franciscan University). She is also the editor of Four Virginia Poets Laureate (2004-2012): An Anthology and Reader’s Guide and of The Nearest Poem Anthology, which is forthcoming. Sofia is the recipient of a fellowship from the Virginia Commission for the Arts and winner of several national poetry awards, including the Rainer Maria Rilke Prize, the Transcontinental Poetry Prize (Editor’s Choice), the Christianity and Literature Poetry Prize, and Editor’s selection in the Marlboro Poetry Prize. She currently serves as Poetry Editor and Poetry Book Review Editor for the Anglican Theological Review. For more information, please visit www.sofiamstarnes.com.

Christie Stratos graduated from Lebanon Valley College with a degree in English Literature and Business. She writes short stories, novels, poetry, essays, and has developed a new genre called Symbolic Experimentalism. Awards include the Steven Lee Barza Collegiate Prize from the Poetry Society of Virginia, and the Social Sciences Campus-Wide Writing Award from Lebanon Valley College. To read more of Christie’s works and find out more about Symbolic Experimentalism, visit her website: www.christiestratos.com.

Thor Benson is a traveling writer currently based in Portland, Oregon. He writes fiction for magazines, and articles for new websites. Benson’s fiction work can be found in: Empirical Magazine, Black Heart Magazine, The Conium Review, and more. His articles can be found on: Examiner.com, DailyKos.com, and others. He can be found at a run-down whiskey bar in Portland.

Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé has edited more than ten books and co-produced three audio books, several edited pro bono for non-profit organizations. Desmond is also an interdisciplinary artist, working in clay. His commemorative pieces are housed in museums and private collections in India, the Netherlands, the UK and the US.

Carolyn Smart’s fifth collection of poems, Hooked – Seven Poems was published in 2009 by Brick Books. An excerpt from her memoir At the End of the Day won first prize in the 1993 CBC Literary Contest. She is the founder of the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging writers, and since 1989 has taught Creative Writing at Queen’s University

Megan Stolz is a California transplant who came to the east coast first for her B.A. at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia and then for her M.F.A. at the University of Baltimore. She is currently working on her thesis project, a short story collection entitled Everything Has Already Changed, which will be published later this year. In her free time, she travels, knits, and blogs about literary things at www.meganstolz.com.

Rod Siino grew up in a small Rhode Island town, and now lives in Massachusetts surrounded by horse farms and trees. When he’s not writing or earning a living to support the writing addiction, he’s being held hostage by his 3-year old twins, Bennett and Maya, who are convinced the world and everyone in it are here to serve their every desire without delay. He is contemplating a research project to determine the validity of this notion. Mean­while, he is working to complete his first short story collection. His work has appeared in Fried Chicken and Coffee, Inkwell, The Prov­i­dence Jour­nal, and Zoetrope All-Story Extra, among others. His website is www.rodsiinowrites.com.

Joe Baumann is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where he serves as the editor-in-chief of the Southwestern Review and the nonfiction editor of Rougarou: an Online Literary Journal.  His work has appeared in SNReview, Hawai’i Review, flashquake, and several others, and is forthcoming in Sleet Magazine and Vine Leaves Literary Journal.  His chapbook of flashfiction, Ivory Children, will be released by Red Bird Chapbooks later this year.

John Estes  I am director of the creative writing program at Malone University in Canton, Ohio. Recent poems and prose have appeared in Tin House, New Orleans Review, Southern Review, Iron Horse, AGNI, and other places. I am author of Kingdom Come (C&R Press, 2011) and two chapbooks: Breakfast with Blake at the Laocoön (Finishing Line Press, 2007) and Swerve, which won a 2008 National Chapbook Fellowship from the Poetry Society of America.

Holly Hendin is a psychiatrist working in Phoenix.  In her poetry she tries to catch and elaborate on those moments that otherwise would slip by quietly.  She hopes she is able to expand upon the spaces between the stitches of existence.  Her poetry can be found in The Front Range Review, Summerset Review, The George Washington Review, Crack the Spine, and Schuylkill Valley Journal.

Terry Savoie  Nearly three hundred of his poems have been published in literary journals, anthologies and small press publications over the past twenty-five years.  These include Poetry, American Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, Ploughshares and Prairie Schooner as well as recent or forthcoming issues of GreatRiver Review, Cutthroat, Cider Press Review, Spillway, and North American Review

Ruth Jacobs writes a series of novels entitled Soul Destruction, which dispel the ‘happy hooker’ myth and expose the dark world and the harsh reality of life as a call girl. Her debut novel, Soul Destruction: Unforgivable, will be published in 2013 by Caffeine Nights. Ruth studied prostitution in the late 1990s, which sparked her interest in the subject. She draws on her research and the women she interviewed for inspiration. She also has firsthand experience of many of the topics she writes about such as posttraumatic stress disorder, and drug and alcohol addiction. In addition to her fiction writing, Ruth is also involved in non-fiction in her charity and activism work in the areas of anti-sexual exploitation and anti-human trafficking.

Bobbi Lurie’s fourth poetry collection, “the morphine poems,” was recently published by Otoliths (Australia). Her work can be found in Fence, New American Writing and APR, among others. – At Amazon.com

Reagan K Reynolds is currently studying for her M.A. in English Literature through Northern Arizona University’s online program. She is the editor and owner of the Glory Tree Herald (glorytreeherald.wordpress.com) and has published nonfiction articles and reviews for the online publication Women Writers, Women Books.

Daniel Connelly  Though English by birth, I have spent much of my adult life being educated in Italy, India, Bangladesh, The USA and Scotland.  Formerly a British diplomat, I have been an academic since 1999. I have a BA from Columbia University, where I was my class Salutatorian, and a MLitt and PhD from the University of St Andrews, which I attended with Prince William.  I have directed theatre on three continents and was until 2010 the Artistic Director of Zuloo Theatre in Shanghai, where my production of David Henry Hwang’s M Butterfly was forced to close by the Chinese secret police.  I currently live in Rome, Italy, where I am an assistant professor in the English departments at John Cabot University and The American University of Rome.  I have had poetry published in The Red Wheelbarrow, The Open Mouse, Inky Needles, and Yorkmix.

Mai Van Phan Vietnamese Poet Mai Van Phan was Born 1955 in Ninh Binh, Red River Delta in North Vietnam. He joined the army infantry in 1974. Mai Van Phan left the army in 1981 and entered Hanoi College of Foreign Languages, Department of Linguistics and Russian culture. Continued learning in 1983 at Gorki Pedagogics School, Minsk, (Capital of Bielorussian Republic, the former Soviet Union). Winner of numerous awards for poetry in Viet Nam: “Poetry contest” of Weekly Nguoi Ha Noi in 1994. “Poetry contest” of Weekly Van Nghe 1995. “Literature” of celebrity culture Nguyen Binh Khiem (Hai Phong) in 1991, 1993, 1994, 1995. Recipient of the prestigious “Vietnam Writers’ Association” Award in 2010. Author of 12 published books of poetry: Giot nang (poetry, 1992); Goi xanh (poetry, 1995); Cau nguyen ban mai (poetry, 1997); Nghi le nhan ten (poetry, 1999); Nguoi cung thoi (epic, 1999); Vach nuoc (poetry, 2003); Hom sau (poetry, 2009); va dot nhien gio thoi (poetry, 2009); Bau troi khong mai che (poetry, 2010); Tho tuyen Mai Van Phan, Poetry Collected Mai Van Phan (poetry and essays and the interviews, 2011); hoa giau mat (poetry, 2012); Bau troi khong mai che/ Firmament without roof cover (poetry, 2012 – The second edition includes an English version). His poems have also appeared in more than 50 anthologies, including Poetry NZ 36 (New Zealand) Poetry Kit Magazine 5 & 6 (British); POESY Magazine 33, FULCRUM 3, The Writers Post volume 6, 7 & 8, Wordbridge (US); Poem and Comment Magazine (S. Korean); Softblow Poetry Journal (Singapore), Literature Newspaper (Indonesia); Tranan (Sweden).

Liz Axelrod is Web Editor and Poetry Reader for LIT, the literary journal of The New School’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program where she completed her Masters Of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (May 2013). She received her bachelor’s degree from the Riggio Writing and Democracy Honors Program and was Managing Editor of two award-winning editions of 12th Street, The New School’s undergraduate literary journal, and Editor-in-Chief of  12thstreetonline.com. Liz has been making the rounds of the NYC Poetry Circuit for close to a decade and has been both reader and judge at the Bowery College Poetry Slam, a featured poet at the Yippie Museum’s Monday Night Poet’s Café, The Phoenix Reading Series, The Cornelia Street Graduate Series, The Southern Writer’s Series, Smalls Jazz Poetry Series, The Lolita Bar, The Renegade Reading Series, Couplet, and The Living Room’s Stories & Songs Residency. Liz is also a reviewer for Publisher’s Weekly. Her work has been published in the Cat Oars Fiction Collective, Lyre Lyre, 12th Street, The Rumpus, The Brooklyn Rail, and Electric Literature. She is currently working on her first collection of poems.

Willy Nywening is a retired English and special education teacher who began her career at nineteen. Because she felt socially isolated as a teenager, she began writing. Some of her earliest poems have been rewritten and are included as prose in her new novel, The Journey Home. In 1997, she published a daily inspirational anthology called Sister Stories. Her poetry and articles have appeared in a variety of publications. She also writes educational curricula and is involved in teacher training. Her faith, her family and the grandeur of nature are her inspiration for writing. She is currently working on the sequel to The Journey Home.

Willy and her husband, Dick, live in Strathroy, Ontario, Canada.
You are invited to visit her website at willynywening.com or her author face book page at http://www.facebook.com/WillyNyweningAuthor

Peycho Kanev is the author of 4 poetry collections and two chapbooks. He has won several European awards for his poetry and he’s nominated for the Pushcart Award and Best of the Net. Translations of his books will be published soon in Italy, Poland and Russia. His poems have appeared in more than 900 literary magazines, such as: Poetry Quarterly, Evergreen Review, Columbia College Literary Review, Hawaii Review, Cordite Poetry Review, Sheepshead Review, Off the Coast, The Coachella Review, Two Thirds North, Sierra Nevada Review, The Cleveland Review and many others.

Alain Gonzalez, originally from Cuba, poet, translator, writes and works from Miami, FL. Published Eidos (poetry, Voces de Hoy). Currently working on a second collection of poems, Essays on Paradigm Smashing. Poems have appeared in Nagari Magazine, a few anthologies, and in blogs and other corners of the Internet.

Stefanie Levine Cohen studies and writes about birth, death, afterlife and the human condition.  Currently, she is working on a collection of short stories exploring these topics.  Stefanie also works as a volunteer visitor for Samaritan Hospice in Marlton, NJ. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English from the University of Pennsylvania and her JD from the New York University School of Law. Stefanie is a long-time member of the Rittenhouse Writers Group in Philadelphia, Pa. Her work has been published in The Montreal Review. Stefanie lives in Cherry Hill, NJ with her husband and their three teenaged daughters. She can be reached at stefanielevinecohen@gmail.com.

Berwyn Moore has published two poetry collections, O Body Swayed and Dissolution of Ghosts, and edited the anthology Dwelling in Possibility: Voices of Erie County. She was the inaugural Poet Laureate of Erie County, Pennsylvania, from 2009 to 2010.  Her poems have won awards from the Bellevue Literary Review, The Pinch Literary Journal, Margie: The American Journal of Poetry, and Negative Capability Press and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She has poetry and prose published in The Southern Review, Shenandoah, Poetry Northwest, Nimrod, Journal of the American Medical Association, Kansas Quarterly, Cimarron Review and Public Health Reports. She teaches English at Gannon University in Erie, Pennsylvania.

“Flashback” appeared in Schuylkill Valley Journal of the Arts.
“Glass” appeared in River Walk Journal: A Journal of Arts and Letters and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
“The Decisive Moment” appeared in Cimarron Review.

Jane Otto’s poems and short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Nimrod International Journal, Existere – Journal of Arts and Literature, Eclipse, Talking River, The Journal, and New Southerner.  She was a finalist for Nimrod’s Pablo Neruda Prize in Poetry for 2013, and received an Honorary Mention in the New Southerner’s 2012 Literary Edition.  Jane was raised in Colorado and grew up in New York City, where she lived for nearly 25 years.  Currently, she lives in Los Angeles, where she is working on a chapbook entitled, At the Home for Wayward Girls.

Kelly DuMar is a playwright, poet, fiction writer and writing workshop facilitator. Her plays have been produced around the U.S. and Canada. Kelly’s recent publications include short stories in Sliver of Stone, Open Road Review, Literary Mama, Red Earth Review; poems in Lingerpost, Blast Furnace, *82 Review, Emerge, Apeiron, and Sugared Water; and short plays in Art Age and Foxing Quarterly. Kelly founded and produces the Our Voices Festival of Women Playwrights at Wellesley College, now in its eighth year. Her recent and upcoming writing workshops include: the International Women’s Writing Guild, August 2013 and The Boston Book Festival, October 2013. www.kellydumar.com. Follow Kelly@myenvia.

Susan Hodara is a memoirist, journalist and teacher. Her articles have appeared in publications including The New York Times and Communication Arts. Her short memoirs are published in a variety of anthologies and literary journals. She is a co-author of Still Here Thinking of You: A Second Chance With Our Mothers (Big Table Publishing, 2013). www.susanhodara.com.

Stella Vinitchi Radulescu writes poetry in English, French, and Romanian and is the author of numerous collections of poetry published in the United States, France and Romania, including Last Call(2005), Diving With the Whales(2008), Insomnia in Flowers(2008), All Seeds & Blues(2011). Two-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize, she is also the winner of several international poetry prizes awarded for her books published in France.   s-radulescu@northwestern.edu

M. P. Jones IV is a fifth-generation native of Auburn, Alabama, M.P Jones IV is a Graduate Teaching Assistant, studying American Literature at Auburn University where he runs errands for Southern Humanities Review. He is also founder and editor-in-chief of Kudzu Review, a journal of southern literature & environment. Recent poetry appears in Tampa Review, Canary Magazine, Town Creek Poetry, Grey Sparow Poetry Journal, and in divers others, and is forthcoming in Cumberland River Review; memoirs have appeared in Sleet Magazine and decomP magazinE; an article on W.S. Merwin’s recent poetry collection, “The Shadow of Sirius“, appears in the current issue of Merwin Studies; and he has penned book reviews for Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment, Southern Humanities Review, and A Few Lines Magazine. His first collection of poetry, Live at Lethe (Sweatshoppe Publications), was released this fall (2013). He is interested in pursuing a PhD in American Literature with a focus on literature & environment in fall 2015.

SK Woodiwiss, lives, works and writes in Northern Indiana.  Her work has been seen in Greatest Lakes Review, The Battered Suitcase, Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette, Scissors and Spackle, Lady Ink Magazine, Eunoia Review, Milk Sugar, and Hidden Animal Literary Journal.

Laura Eppinger graduated from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA in 2008 with a degree in Journalism, and she’s been writing creatively ever since. Her laptop screen got cracked during a year in Cape Town, South Africa,  but it never stopped her from writing. Her full publications list can be seen here: lolionthekaap.blogspot.com/p/creative-writing.html

Davide Trame is an Italian teacher of English living in Venice-Italy and writing poetry exclusively in English, his second language, since 1993. His work started appearing in magazines in 1999. His poetry collection Make It Last was published by Lapwing Publications, Belfast, early this year.

Anders Benson  Having always enjoyed the outdoors, I am a state-certified wilderness survival instructor. My love of travel led me to spend time in North America, Europe, and North Africa. I have held a variety of occupations including welding and steel fabrication, pet care service, and railroad car mechanics. I spend my free time hiking, skiing, whitewater canoeing, and hunting. I have a wide array of interests and enjoy practicing long-range marksmanship and reading about history and theoretical physics.

I incorporate varied aspects of my personality in my writing, from my wry sense of humor to my interest in psychology. My work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bacopa Literary Review, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Existere, Gemini Magazine, Helix Literary Magazine, Picayune Magazine, Soundings East, and Spork.

Geoffrey Miller’s most recent fiction publications are ‘Mr. Kim’ Bare Back Lit, May 2013, ‘Masks’ Metazen, Nov. 2012, ‘Strand’ & ‘It wasn’t broken’ Crack the Spine Issue 39, ‘Ascension’ Stepping Stone Magazine May 2012, and ‘Manila’ Anok Sastra Vol. 6. His visual art can be found in the recent editions of Sliver of Stone, Superstition Review, Corvus, Cha, The Loose Tea and is on permanent display in the Prick of the Spindle online gallery.

Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue is a just-retired high school ESL teacher, living in beautiful Fort Worth, Texas with his lovely wife, Marianne, and Cairn Terrier mix, Annie.

He has had poems published in a number of journals, including California Quarterly, The Texas Observer, Blue Lake Review, Borderlands, and Front Porch Review. He can be contacted at kwheatcroftpardue@yahoo.com.

Bill Vernon served in the United States Marine Corps, studied English literature, then taught it. Writing is his therapy, along with exercising outdoors and doing international folkdances. His poems, stories and nonfiction have appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies, and Five Star Mysteries published his novel OLD TOWN in 2005.

Michael Collins is a graduate of Kalamazoo College, the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers, and Drew University, where he completed an MA in British and American Literatures. He teaches creative and expository writing in the Paul McGhee Division of the School for Continuing and Professional Studies, a liberal arts college within New York University.  His work has appeared previously in Sunstone, Exquisite Corpse, The Inkwell, The Underwood Review, Medicinal Purposes, Many Mountains Moving, New York Arts, Glasschord Art and Culture Magazine, Danse Macabre, BlazeVOX, and Eunoia Review.  It will also be included in upcoming issues of Brevity Poetry Review, Inclement Poetry Magazine, and Constellations: A Journal of Poetry and Fiction.  He lives in Mamaroneck, New York, with his wife, Carol.

Gay Baines  I live in East Aurora, New York and am a member of the Roycroft Wordsmiths. I have a B.A. in English from Russell Sage College, and have done graduate work at Syracuse University and SUNY – Buffalo. I won the National Writers Union Poetry Prize in 1991, Honorable Mention in the Ruth Cable Memorial Poetry Contest in 1996, and the 2008 Mary Roelofs Stott Award for poetry as well as other prizes. My poems, essays, and short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in 13th Moon, Amarillo Bay, Anemone Sidecar, Atlanta Review, The Baltimore Review, Bayou, The Buffalo News, Cadillac Cicatrix, The Cape Rock, Carquinez Poetry Review, Caveat Lector, The Chaffin Journal, Cimarron Review, Confluence, Confrontation, Controlled Burn, CQ (California Quarterly), Crack The Spine,Crate Literary Magazine, The Croton Review, Crucible, Dislocate, Drumvoices Revue, ELF: Eclectica, Eclipse, Edison Literary Review, Eureka Literary Magazine, The Evansville Review, Forge, The Great American Poetry Show, Grey Sparrow, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Hiram Poetry Review, Iodine Poetry Journal, Jabberwock Review, Kiosk, Limestone, Louisiana Literature, Lullwater Review, Lumina, Luna Negra, Meridian Anthology Of Contemporary Poetry, Nimrod International Journal, Oregon East, Paper Street, Pearl, Pennsylvania English, Phoebe, The Pinch, Poem, poemmemoirstory, Poet Lore, Quiddity Literary Journal, Rattapallax, RE:AL, Rio Grande Review, River Oak Review, RiverSedge, Rosebud, The Roycroft Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal of the Arts, Ship of Fools, SLAB, Slant, Slipstream, Sojourner, South Carolina Review, Spillway, Talking River, The Texas Review, Thin Air, Verdad, Wellspring, Westview, Whiskey Island, Willow Review, Wisconsin Review, Xanadu, and Zone 3.

Barbara McGaw  I live in Freeland, at the southern edge of Michigan’s northern forest.  As a graduate of Saginaw Valley State University with an education major, creative writing was not an essential part of my program.  I discovered poetry (or perhaps it’s the other way around) as an avocation; often as an expression of my joys and my sorrows.  Frequently, the two have been one in the same.  My poems had been sitting in drawers around my house.  About three years ago, I started looking at them, changing them, and then changing them again, before submitting them for publication.  As with most writers, my work has been frequently rejected.  Sometimes they have been accepted, and I have had poems published in several journals of poetry, both online and in print.  In 2011, my poem, “A Stone Heart,” was the recipient of the Abbie Copps Award for Poetry, sponsored by Olivet College.

Vivian Lawry   My work has appeared or is forthcoming in more than thirty literary journals, including The Alembic, Apalachee Review, Art Times, The Binnacle, Chelsea, The Chrysalis Reader, Clackamas Literary Review, Compass Rose, Connecticut Review, Descant, The Distillery, The Dos Passos Review, Drumvoices Revue, Griffin, Happy, The Hurricane Review, The Licking River Review, Lullwater Review, North Atlantic Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Oregon East, Phoebe, Post Road, RE:AL, Reflections Literary Journal, RiverSedge, Seems, Studio One, Talking River Review, TalonMag, Westview, Willard & Maple, and Xavier Review. My story “Death Comes To Hollywood Cemetery” is forthcoming in Virginia is for Mysteries, an anthology of short fiction written by members of the Central Virginia and VA Beach chapters of Sisters in Crime. Each story features a landmark of Virginia. I have also authored two books: Dark Harbor and Tiger Heart-installments in the Chesapeake Bay Mystery Series.

I am Appalachian by birth, a social psychologist by training. I hold B.A., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from Ohio University. My career includes college professor, association executive, and vice president for academic affairs. I have ties to Ohio and Kentucky, to the North Country of upstate New York, to Washington, DC, Maryland, and the Chesapeake Bay. I now live and write near Richmond, Virginia.

Benjamin Grose lives in London. He has worked as a dishwasher, waiter, bartender, labourer, bookseller, inventory clerk, nightclub manager and world traveler. His worst habit is adding a comma in the morning and removing it in the afternoon. He never uses semicolons.

He writes short stories and novels and always will do.

Seth Augenstein is a writer who lives in New Jersey, and who was in the last class Saul Bellow ever taught, and was a tour guide at the James Joyce Centre in Dublin in his youth. His fiction has appeared in Writer’s Digest and Tropus, and a story was an honorable mention in Glimmer Train. He’s won awards for his day-job newspaper gig. He is married with two cats, and is an avid reader of Romantic poetry.

Shaguna Kaushik  I am a twenty three year old student intensely involved with poetry and philosophical/non-fiction writing since my school days. I studied visual art and history during my initial years in the university and am currently a student of psychology. My other passions include philosophy, photography and painting.

Christopher Bowen is a published fiction author with work previously accepted at Everyday Genius, Hobart, and Flash Fiction, among others. A Cleveland native, he has read in several states, held a residency in Quebec and blogs at burningriver.info. His first chapbook is forthcoming from sunnyoutside press.

Neila Mezynski is author of Glimpses and A Story (2013) from Scrambler Books; pamphlets from Greying Ghost Press; echapbooks from Radioactive Moat Press and Patasola Press; chapbooks from Folded Word Press, Men Who Understand Girls, (2012), Nap Chapbook, Floaters , (2012); Deadly Chaps Press, Dancers On Rock, (2011), Warriors , 2013), Mondo Bummer, Meticulous Man (2012), Mud Luscious Press, At The Beach (2011).

C O N T R I B U T O R S  to Ginosko #15

Jason Price Everett was born in Orlando, Florida in 1972. He was educated at Lafayette College, Cornell University and the University of Paris. He has held thirty different positions of employment to date, one of the more recent being that of English professor at a university in Xi’an, China. His first book, Unfictions, a collection of short prose pieces, was released by 8th House Publishing in 2009. His collection Hypodrome: Selected Poems 1990-2010 was released by 8th House in the spring of 2012. Xian Dyad, a poetic travelogue, was published by Spuyten Duyvil in the summer of 2012. His work has appeared in numerous online and print literary publications, including The Mad Hatters Review, Writers Notes Magazine, The Quarterly Review, The Prague Literary Review, Underground Voices, BLATT, Brand, The Alchemy Review, Carcinogenic Poetry, KGB Bar Lit Magazine, Ronin, Revue Mètropolitaine, CV2, The neo:anthology Project, and Apiary. He currently lives in Philadelphia.

James Mullard is a twenty year old student and young writer living in Manchester. He has recently been published in Black & Blue Magazine, Fade Poetry Journal and Sonder Magazine.

Eileen Hennessy  I began my professional writing career as a translator of books, chiefly in art history, and now specialize in translating legal and commercial documentation into English from several West European languages. I am an adjunct associate professor in the Translation Studies program at NYU. In terms of creative writing, apart from a few incursions into writing non-fiction articles and fiction, I am a poet first and foremost. My work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous literary magazines, including The Paris Review, Western Humanities Review, Prairie Schooner, Whiskey Island Magazine, Columbia, Confrontation, The Alembic, The Seventh Quarry, The Dirty Goat, The Citron Review, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Folio, Inkwell Magazine, The Licking River Review, Rhino, Forge, Crack the Spine, Stickman Review, Smartish Pace, Southern Poetry Review, The New York Quarterly, and Sonora Review, and in several anthologies. My poetry collection titled, This Country of Gale-force Winds, was published by New York Quarterly Books in November 2011.

Lee Varon is a writer and clinical social worker. Her poetry and short stories have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and published in A & U AIDS Magazine, Artful Dodge, Black River Review, Blue Mesa Review, Common Journeys, Euphony, Fox Cry Review, Hawaii Review, High Plains Literary Review, Lumina, The Maverick Press Journal, Milkweed Chronicle, The New Renaissance, Owen Wister Review, Oyez Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Permafrost, Pleiades, The Puckerbush Review, RE:AL, Red Ochre Lit, River City, The Rockford Review, Sibyl-Child, Sliver of Stone, Sojourner, So To Speak, Soundings East, Southern Poetry Review, Willow Review, Words & Images, and Writers Forum.

Natalie Safir  Since the late 70’s, I have been teaching poetry writing workshops: an ongoing private workshop for published poets now in its twenty-first year; a bi-weekly workshop at the Dobbs Ferry Library, workshops and lectures on contemporary poetry at the Scarsdale Library, and twice-yearly workshops at the Lenoir Nature Preserve. I have appeared on Westchester Cable; was founder/director of a reading series, The Pomegranate Series in Hastings for nine years and a reading series at the Hastings Library, poetry editor of Inprint Magazine, and a founding editor of Gravida in the 70’s. In Tarrytown, NY, I taught private groups and at The Hudson Valley Writers’ Center, in Sleepy Hollow. Since 2001, I have been teaching Personal Memoir Writing at The Neighborhood House, a local senior center, funded by Poets & Writers, and at the Warner Library in Tarrytown. My program, Writing as Healing was presented in Fall 2007 at the Hudson Valley Writers Center and again in Summer, 2009. I have also worked for the WorldPulse organization as a Mentor in their pilot Correspondents program.

Roberta Allen is the author of eight books, including The Dreaming Girl, a novel republished in 2011 by Ellipsis Press and published in 2013 as an e-book by Dzanc Books and Ellipsis. Her stories have most recently appeared in The Collagist. A visual artist as well, she has exhibited worldwide, with work in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She teaches private writing workshops in Manhattan.
http://www.robertaallen.com

Rae Uddin, MS, is a writer, editor, and business professional based in San Francisco

Lisa Olsson  Writer, musician, visual artist, Lisa Olsson was born in Huntington, N.Y. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Wesleyan University and studied Graphic Design at San Jose State University. She was an Art Director for advertising agencies in California, and a Design Director for Pearson Education in New York. She lives near New York City with her family. Her poetry and painting have been published by Les Femmes Folles.

William L. Alton was born November 5, 1969 and started writing in the Eighties while incarcerated in a psychiatric prison. Since then his work has appeared in Main Channel Voices, World Audience and Breadcrumb Scabs among others. In 2010, he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He has published one book titled Heroes of Silence. He earned both his BA and MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon where he continues to live. You can find him at williamlalton.com.

Chris Barker has worked as a teacher in high schools and universities for over twenty-five years and currently teaches Cultural Studies at the University of Wollongong, Australia. He has published widely in the domain of media and cultural theory but in recent times has been writing fiction, including an as yet unpublished novel. He has practiced meditation and mindfulness, mainly but not exclusively in the Zen Buddhist tradition of Thich Nhah Hahn, for fifteen years.”

Naomi Ruth Lowinsky  My poem “Madelyn Dunham, Passing On” won first prize in the Obama Millennium Contest. My work has been widely published and has appeared or is forthcoming in Argestes, Backwards City Review, Barely South Review, Blue Lake Review, Bogg, Cadillac Cicatrix, California Quarterly, The Cape Rock, The Chaffin Journal, Compass Rose, Comstock Review, Darkling, decomP, Dogwood Review, Earth’s Daughters, Eclipse, ellipsis…literature and art, Emprise Review, Euphony, Fourth River, Freshwater, G.W. Review, Ibbetson Street Press, Into the Teeth of the Wind, Jewish Women’s Literary Annual, Left Curve, Lindenwood Review, Meridian Anthology Of Contemporary Poetry, Minetta Review, Monkeybicycle, Nassau Review, The Pinch, Poem, Prick of the Spindle, Quiddity, Rattle, Reed Magazine, Runes, Sanskrit, Schuylkill Valley Journal Of The Arts, Ship of Fools, Sierra Nevada Review, Soundings East, South Dakota Review, Southern Humanities Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Stand, Stickman Review, The Texas Review, Tightrope, Verdad, Visions International, Weber Studies, Westview, Whistling Shade, Wild Violet, Willow Review, and in the anthologies Child Of My Child, When the Muse Calls, and The Book of Now. My fourth poetry collection is called The Faust Woman Poems.

I am a Jungian analyst in private practice in Berkeley, CA and the poetry and fiction editor of Psychological Perspectives, which is published by the Los Angeles Jung Institute.

Rose Mary Boehm  A German-born UK national, lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels and a poetry collection (TANGENTS), her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in US poetry reviews: Toe Good Poetry, Poetry Breakfast, Burning Word, Muddy River Review, Pale Horse Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Other Rooms, Requiem Magazine, Full of Crow, Poetry Quarterly, Punchnel’s,  Avatar, Verse Wisconsin, Naugatuck River Review, Boston Literary, Red River Review, Ann Arbor, Main Street Rag, Misfit Magazine and others.

Erren Geraud Kelly is a poet based in Burlington, Vermont, by way of Chicago, by way of Louisiana, by way of Maine, by way of California, by way of New York City and so on. He has been writing for 25 years and has over 100 publications in print and online in such publications as Hiram Poetry Review, Mudfish, Poetry Magazine (online), Ceremony, Cactus Heart, SimilarPeaks, Gloom Cupboard, Poetry Salzburg and other publications. His most recent publication was in In Our Own Words, a Generation X poetry anthology; he was also published in Fertile Ground, Beyond The Frontier and other anthologies. His work can also been seen on YouTube under the “Gallery Cabaret” links. He is also the author of the chapbook Disturbing The Peace on Night Ballet Press. He received his B.A. in English–Creative Writing from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. He also loves to read and to travel, having visited 45 states and Canada and Europe. The themes in his writings vary, but he has always had a soft spot for subjects and people who are not in the mainstream. But he never limits himself to anything, he always tries to keep an open mind. Email: merrenkelly76@yahoo.com

Tammye Huf  I earned my BA in English from Wellesley College with an honors in creative writing. I am a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, have attended Robert McKee’s Story and Genre seminars, and will be attending the Winchester Writer’s Festival this June. My work has appeared in Necessary Fiction. In the past I have worked as an English and ESL teacher, and as a homeschooler. Originally from the United States, I am settled in England with my husband and three children.

Silva Zanoyan Merjanian is a widely published poet residing in Southern California. She released the first volume of her poems Uncoil a Night in 2013. Some of the publications featuring her poems are;  Streetcake Magazine, Miracle-ezine , The Literary Groong, Mad Swirl, The Galway Review, and The Artistic Muse   (December 2013 issue.) Poet’s Basement at Counterpunch.org, The Oddity, Red Fez, Young Men’s Perspective volume 3, Munyori Literary Journal, Ygdrasil, a journal of the Poetic Arts, The Original Van Goghs Ear Anthology.

Her work has been published in anthologies, The Art of Being Human-An Anthology of International Poetry, The Inspired Heart, The Blue Max Review and Songs for Julia.  She was invited to read and introduce her book at the Fermoy International Poetry Festival in August 2013 and 2014.

Maureen Eppstein has two poetry collection: Rogue Wave at Glass Beach (2009) and Quickening (2007), both from March Street Press. A new chapbook, Earthward, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Her poetry has appeared in numerous anthologies and journals, including Poecology, Calyx, Basalt, WrittenRiver, Sand Hill Review, and Aesthetica 2014, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Originally from Aotearoa/New Zealand,  she now lives and writes close to the earth on the Mendocino Coast of California. Her website is http://www.maureen-eppstein.com.

Catherine Evleshin’s fiction also appears in Agave Magazine, Canary Journal of Environmental Crisis, Fiction Vortex, Gemini Literary Magazine, Mused – BellaOnline Literary Review, and forthcoming in Middle Gray Magazine and Riding Light Review.

Sidney Thompson lives in Fort Worth, Texas, and is the author of the short story collection Sideshow. His fiction, twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, has appeared in Atticus Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Clapboard House, Cleaver Magazine, The Cortland Review, Danse Macabre, Grey Sparrow Journal, Ostrich Review, Prick of the Spindle, The Southern Review, storySouth, and elsewhere. He expects to complete his first novel, Bass Reeves: A History, A Novel, A Crusade, this year. “The Coldirons” is a chapter from this novel.

Mark Belair’s poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Alabama Literary Review, Atlanta Review, Harvard Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poetry East and The South Carolina Review. His books include the collection While We’re Waiting (Aldrich Press, 2013) and two chapbook collections: Night Watch (Finishing Line Press, 2013), and Walk With Me (Parallel Press of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, 2012). For more information, please visit http://www.markbelair.com.

Sandra Kohler  My third collection of poems, Improbable Music, appeared in May, 2011 from Word Press. My second collection, The Ceremonies of Longing, winner of the 2002 AWP Award Series in Poetry, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in November, 2003. An earlier volume, The Country of Women, was published in 1995 by Calyx Books. My poems have appeared over the past thirty-five years in journals including Prairie Schooner, The NewRepublic, Beloit Poetry Journal, APR, NaturalBridge, The Missouri Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, and The Colorado Review.

Ariel Dawn lives in Victoria, British Columbia, with her children, Merlin and Angel. Recent writing appears in Black & Blue, Vine Leaves, The Bohemyth, and Ambit. She is working on her first novel.

David Glen Smith  My writing influences range from early European folk-stories, the Magic Realist movement, and  the current Meta-Modernist movement. The verses in the full collection contain changing rhythms and sporadic syllable counts. The full manuscript displays the experience of a persona translating his personal experiences into surreal, dream-logic. On occasion, the writing does resort to fragmented thoughts and blurring of personality patterns.
My work has appeared in various magazines including most recently: Assaracus, The Centrifugal Eye, ffrrfr, The Fertile Source, Houston Literary Review, Lady Jane Miscellany, Louisville Review, Mid-America Review, Melancholy Hyperbole, Saltwater Quarterly, Slant, The Steel-Toe Review, and The Write Room . In addition, a recent print anthology titled Ganymede – Unfinished accepted two of my poems.

On a more personal note: I am currently residing in Cypress, Texas with my partner of fourteen years. I teach English Literature at both Wharton County Junior College and Lone Star College – CyFair. As of 2010 my partner and I adopted a baby boy, Brendan, who turned three December 2013– source of new material for poems! I likewise serve as Editorial Assistant for the magazine The Centrifugal Eye. In the nineties I received my MFA at Vermont College, and my MA at the University of MO at St. Louis. For more information visit: http://davidglensmith.blogspot.com/ .

Kathie Giorgio’s fourth book, a novel titled Rise From The River, will be released by the Main Street Rag Publishing Company in early 2015.  Her first three books, two novels, The Home For Wayward Clocks and Learning To Tell (A Life)Time,  and a short story collection, Enlarged Hearts, were also released by MSR.   “Clocks” received the Outstanding Achievement award by the Wisconsin Library Association Literary Awards Committee and was nominated for the Paterson Fiction Award. “Lifetime”, the sequel to “Clocks”, debuted to a standing-room only audience of over 200 people at the SouthEast Wisconsin Festival of Books, where Kathie was the welcoming Keynote.

Giorgio’s short stories and poems have appeared in over 100 literary magazines and in many anthologies. She’s been nominated twice for the Million Writer Award and twice for the Best of the Net anthology.  She is the director and founder of AllWriters’ Workplace & Workshop, an international studio offering online and on-site classes in all genres and abilities of creative writing.  She also teaches for Writers’ Digest and serves on their advisory board.

Adam Tedesco’s work has appeared in Burningword Literary Journal, Up The River, Turk’s Head Review, The Merrimack Review, RiverLit, Fuck Art Let’s Dance and Creative Nonfiction Monthly. He has shared the stage with poets such as Leah Noble Davidson, Eirean Bradley, Sparrow and Jared Paul. Most recently, his unique poetic voice has been utilized by conceptual artist Isabelle Pauwels as part of her upcoming 27 Across 25 Down project.

Maurice Emerson Decaul, a former Marine, is a poet, essayist, and playwright, whose work has been featured in the New York Times, The Daily Beast, Sierra Magazine, Barely South Review, Epiphany, and forthcoming in Callaloo. His poems have also been translated into French and Arabic and his plays have been produced and performed in New York City, Washington DC and Paris. He is a graduate of Columbia University and is currently working towards his MFA at New York University.

m.j. cleghorn was born in anchorage Alaska, Her Athabaskan and Eyak heritage gave her a love of poetry.  m.j. now lives and writes near the banks of the Matanuska river in the Palmer Butte, Alaska, where the moose, wild dog~ roses and salmonberries provide unending joy and inspiration.

Jenny Aileen: I am an anxious twenty-one year old from Texas who has been writing creatively since I first learned how to. I like to talk about the meanings of things but I’ll talk about the things part, too.  I am zealous for abundant life and become depressed at the sound of radio static. I am pursued by and in love with a beautiful God. My passion is for the mountains, mornings and a meaningful life. Writing is everything that happens in between.

Jonathan Doughty is a graduate of UNC-Charlotte and a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at the University of Toronto.  His work in historical studies and literary criticism has appeared in Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism and Asian American Literature:  Discourses and Pedagogies.  His poetry has appeared in Contraposition and Haiku Journal.

Nate Duke studies English literature at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.  You can find his work in Black Heart Magazine, The Blue Hour Press, The Idle Class, and elsewhere.

Sam Kolinski began writing in Glasgow, Scotland. He is massively indebted to Sam Willetts’ debut collection New Light for the Old Dark and the fourth letter of the alphabet. With poems recently appearing in a miscellany of journals, Sam is currently developing the material for his first chapbook.

Kim Farleigh has worked for aid agencies in three conflicts: Kosovo, Iraq and Palestine. He likes cinema, painting, and bullfighting, which might explain why this Australian lives in Madrid. 114 of his stories have been accepted by 75 different magazines.

Catherine Gonick’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Boston Review, Pivot, City, Zone, and Crack the Spine. She attended the University of California, Berkeley, as an undergraduate, where she was awarded the Ina Coolbrith Memorial Prize for Poetry, and completed an MA in creative writing at the City University of New York. She is the author of produced plays and was a finalist in the National Ten-Minute Play Contest with the Actors Theatre of Louisville. As part of a start-up company that turns organic waste into energy through green technology, she divides her time between New York and California, with occasional trips to Europe and the Middle East, her bulging disc at L4-L5 permitting.

Timothy Caldwell had a career as a singer and teacher in higher education that would last almost forty years. His articles have been published by major professional journals and magazines, and his non-fiction book, Expressive Singing, was published by Prentice Hall (1994). In 2009, his novel, The Chaplain’s Assistant: God, Country, and Vietnam, was published by Glenn Street Press. His creative writing has been published in AmarilloBay, BlueLake Review, Crab Creek Review, and The Storyteller. He is a Vietnam veteran, and has appeared on many radio programs as a national advocate for better mental health treatment for veterans and their families, and is currently at work on his second novel and a collection of short stories. He lives in Michigan with his life partner Barbara.

Claire Booker lives in London where she works as a medical herbalist. Her stage plays have been produced in America, Australia, Europe and the UK and she has had radio plays broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and LBC. She is a member of the ‘Original Poets’ and regularly performs poetry at spoken word events. Her work has appeared in Magma, the Morning Star, New Welsh Review, Prole and The Rialto among others. More info at http://www.bookerplays.wordpress.com

Jed Myers is a Philadelphian living in Seattle. Two of his poetry collections, The Nameless (Finishing Line Press) and Watching the Perseids (winner of the 2013 Sacramento Poetry Center Book Award), are to be released in 2014. He won the 2012 Mary C. Mohr Editors’ Award offered by Southern Indiana Review, and received the 2013 Literal Latte Poetry Award. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Nimrod International Journal, Crab Orchard Review, Barely South Review, Atlanta Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, and elsewhere.

John Grey is an Australian born poet. Recently published in Slant, Southern California Review and Skidrow Penthouse with work upcoming in Bryant Literary Magazine, Natural Bridge and Soundings East.  

Harry F. Rey is a poet and playwright originally from the UK now living in Israel. He is mainly influenced by the Romantics, contemporary LGBTQ experiences and Jewish mysticism. His first chapbook The Road Home: A Poet’s Journey through AIDS is available on Kindle.

Joanna Chen is a poet and literary translator. Her poetry, translations and essays have been published most recently in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Cactus Heart, Poet Lore and The Bakery. More is forthcoming in Word Riot and The Quarterly Conversation. Read more about her at http://www.joannachen.com .

Marilyn Ringer  Born in Oklahoma, I now reside in northern California. I received a BA in Social Sciences and an MA in Experimental Psychology, both from Southern Methodist University. I have been a chef and restauranteur, a poet-teacher with California’s Poets In The Schools, and a teacher of adult creative writing workshops. During the summer, I spend extended time on Monhegan Island in Maine where I write with a group of women who are artists, teachers, Gestalt therapists, and gardeners as well as writers.
My work has appeared or is forthcoming in Natural Bridge; Nimrod; Drumvoices Revue; Eclipse; Left Curve; Red Wheelbarrow Literary Magazine; Hawai’i Pacific Review; Sanskrit; Porcupine; Wisconsin Review; The Evansville Review; Cairn; Bayou; decomP; The Cape Rock; ellipsis; The Hurricane Review; Limestone; The MacGuffin; Mochila Review; Oregon East; Phantasmagoria; Poet Lore; Assissi; Reed Magazine; poemmemoirstory (PMS); River Oak Review; Westview; Willard & Maple; Folio; The Griffin; RiverSedge; Qwerty, Willow Review; The Binnacle; Diverse Voices Quarterly; Chico News & Review; Slant; Studio One; Eclectica; Stickman Review; Quiddity Literary Journal; Clackamas Literary Review; Xavier Review; Watershed; Iodine Poetry Journal; ByLine; California Quarterly; Milk Money; Pisgah Review; Schuylkill Valley Journal; Sierra Nevada College Review; Squaw Valley Review; Pearl; Taproot Literary Review; Tar Wolf Review; Wild Violet; Crack the Spine; Poet’s Cove, An Anthology: Monhegan in Poetry, 2000-2002 (New Monhegan Press, 2003); The Art of Monhegan Island (Down East Press, 2004); Chico Poets, A Calendar for 2005 (Bear Star Press, 2004); and my chapbook Island Aubade (Finishing Line Press, 2012).

Marina Manoukian, a recent Sarah Lawrence College graduate,  My writing orbits prose poetry, but what I aim to do is to shoot the arrow into the interdisciplinary waters between literature/poetry and philosophy. I believe that a text doesn’t fully exist without a reader’s participation, and so I try to create poetry that not only insists on the reader’s participation, but also insists upon the reader’s awareness of said fact.

Meryl McQueen  I am an American writer living in Sydney. Born in South Africa, I grew up in Europe and the U.S. Before turning to writing full-time, I was a social worker, counselor, college professor, researcher, and grant writer. I earned my doctorate in linguistics from the University of Technology, Sydney, my master’s in public administration from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and my bachelor of science in education and social policy from Northwestern. I speak several languages and have lived in seven countries. I love to play piano, sing, hike in the woods, and cook.
My poetry has been published in BlueLake Review, Clearfield Review, Crack the Spine, The CriticalPass Review, Dunes Review, OzonePark Journal, Phoebe, RiverSedge, the Set Free Anthology, Tower Journal, Town Creek Review, Vanguard in the Belly of the Beast, and Yellow Moon. My linguistics research has been published in international journals, and my novella about Asperger’s, A Close Approximation of an Ordinary Life, is currently being used in a college curriculum for special education teachers in Pennsylvania. In 2007, I was a semifinalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novelist Award contest.

Terry Ann Thaxton  I’ve published two full-length collections of poetry, both from Salt Publishing:  Getaway Girl (2011) and The Terrible Wife (2013), as well as a textbook, Creative Writing in the Community: A Guide (Bloomsbury, 2014). My essay “Delusions of Grandeur” won The Missouri Review 2012 Jeffrey E. Smith Editor’s prize. I’ve also published essays and poetry in Connecticut Review, Defunct, GulfCoast, Cimarron Review, flyway, Sou’wester, Lullwater, Teaching Artist Journal, and other journals. I hold an MFA from Vermont College. I teach creative writing at the University of Central Florida, where I also direct the MFA program.

Anya Silver  My second book of poetry, I Watched You Disappear, was just published by the Louisiana State University Press, which also published my first book, The Ninety-Third Name of God (2010).  My work has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s “The Writer’s Almanac,” in Ted Kooser’s column, “American Life in Poetry,” and on the websites of the Academy of American Poets and on Poetry Daily.  I have published in many literary magazines, including Image, The Christian Century, The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, Five Points, and others.

Anne Graue writes poetry and teaches writing and literature online from her home in New York’s Hudson Valley. She holds a BA in Creative Writing from Kansas State University and an MA in Teaching English from Columbia Teachers College. Her poems have appeared in Paradigm, Compass Rose, Sixfold Journal, VerseWrights, New Verse News, and The 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly; she was a finalist in the Patricia Dobler Poetry Award competition for 2013 and has written reviews of literary magazines for NewPages.com.

C G Fewston  I hold the post of Visiting Fellow in the English Department at City University of Hong Kong. I have an MFA from Southern New Hampshire University, where I worked with best-selling novelists Matt Bondurant and Wiley Cash. I also have an MA in Literature and an MED in Higher Education Leadership and Administration. I have had stories, essays and photographs have appeared in Bohemia, Tendril Literary Magazine, Driftwood Press, The Writer’s Drawer, Moonlit Road, Nature Writing, and Travelmag: The Independent Spirit. You can read more about me and my writing at http://www.cgfewston.me

Diana Manister writes literary criticism for The Modern Review; Forum, The College English Association Journal; BigCityLit and Contemporarylit.About.com. She is a member of the International Critics Association and the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics and Writers. Her poetry has been published in Four and Twenty, Maintenant, a Dada Journal Vols. 5-8; BigBridge, The OzonePark Journal, The Sheepshead Review; The New Post-Literate; Ygdrasil and anthologies. Her poem “Hubble” was set to music by composer John Raeger and premiered in Oakland and San Francisco in 2013, performed by the Piedmont Choirs and conducted by Robert Geary.

E.M. Schorb’s work has appeared in The Southern Review, The Sewanee Review, The Yale Review, The Chicago Review, Carolina Quarterly, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The American Scholar, Stand (UK), Agenda (UK), Oxford Poetry (UK), Poetry Salzburg Review (Austria), The Sewanee Review, The Notre Dame Review, Shenandoah, The Hudson Review, and many others, here and abroad. His collection, Murderer’s Day, was awarded the Verna Emery Poetry Award and published by Purdue University Press. His most recent books are Stories, Etc. and Resurgius, A Sixties Sex Comedy.

Susan Terris’ most recent book is GHOST OF YESTERDAY: NEW & SELECTED POEMS (Marsh Hawk Press, 2013). She is the author of 6 books of poetry, 15 chapbooks, and 3 artist’s books.  Journal publications include The Southern Review, Denver Quarterly, The Journal, Ginosko, North American Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Ploughshares. A poem of hers from FIELD appeared in Pushcart Prize XXXI.  She’s editor of Spillway Magazine. Her book MEMOS will be published by Omnidawn in 2015. http://www.susanterris.com

Jay Merill has fiction coming out shortly in 3 AM Magazine, Per Contra, Prairie Schooner, and tNY Press. She is a 2017 Pushcart Prize nominee. Her stories have been published recently by Anomalous, Citron Review, Corium, Epiphany, Foliate Oak, Literary Orphans, Matter Press, Minor Literature[s], SmokeLong Quarterly, Spork, Wigleaf and other great publications. She has 2 short story collections published by Salt (Astral Bodies and God of the Pigeons) and is the winner of the Salt Short Story Prize. Jay lives in London UK and is currently Writer in Residence at Women in Publishing.

Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had many poems and flash fictions published in literary magazines throughout the world. He is a former mill worker and psychologist. He has been married to Concetta di Gesu for forty years, and they welcomed their first granddaughter ten months ago. He lives in Denver.

Sreedhevi Iyer is a double-hyphen fiction writer. Her work features in Drunken Boat (US), Two Thirds North (Stockholm), Hotel Amerika (US), Free Word Centre (London), Cha: An Asian Literary Journal (Hong Kong) and Asian American Literary Review, among others. Her work has received a Pushcart Prize nomination. She guest edited the ‘Hong Kong Special Folio’ of Drunken Boat covering The Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong. She is finishing a novel she calls ‘brown female bildungsroman’.

Andrew Lee-Hart was born in Yorkshire, England many years ago but now lives near Liverpool where he writes short stories and earns his living as a support worker. His stories have been published on various websites and in print magazines.

Grant Tarbard is the editor of The Screech Owl and co-founder of Resurgant Press. His first pamphlet Yellow Wolf is out now from WK Press.

Jack C. Buck, originally from Michigan, lives in Denver, Colorado, where he is a teacher and active member of the city’s writing community. He is the fiction editor for The Harpoon Review. He thanks you for reading his work. He can be found on twitter @Jack_C_Buck

Erica Verrillo is the author of three Middle Grade fantasies, Elissa’s Quest, Elissa’s Odyssey, and World’s End (Random House). Her short stories have appeared in Nine, 580 Split, Million Stories, Front Porch Review, THEMA, Crab Creek Review, and LONTAR. She is also the author of the definitive medical reference guide for treating myalgic encephalomyelitis, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: A Treatment Guide, now in its second edition (first edition, St. Martin’s). She is currently employed as an editor for ProHealth. Erica blogs regularly about the publishing world on Publishing … and Other Forms of Insanity and on her website ericaverrillo.com. You can find her on Twitter @EricaVerrillo.

John Greiner  My poetry and fiction has been published in Street Value, BlazeVOX, H_NGM_N, Sein und Werden, and numerous other magazines. My chapbooks, pamphlets and collections of short stories include Bodega Roses (Good Cop/Bad Cop Press, 2014), Modulation Age (Wandering Head Press, 2012) Shooting Side Glances (ISMs Press, 2011) and Relics From a Hell’s Kitchen Pawn Shop (Ronin Press, 2010). In 2016 my chapbook, Turnstile Burlesque will be published by Crisis Chronicles.

Jono Naito  Somewhere in the snow of Syracuse, Jono is digging up an MFA and a pile of board games as quickly as he can. His work has appeared in Paper Darts, Eunoia Review, Molotov Cocktail, and more, and online at jononaito.com

Melissa Brooks is a Staff Editor for Switchback and an MFA student in fiction at the University of San Francisco. Her fiction and essays have appeared in Vannevar, The Thought Erotic, The Molotov Cocktail, and Gravel.

Rudy Ravindra attended a summer writing workshop at Iowa and trained under ZZ Packer.
His prose has appeared in Saturday Evening Post online, Waccamaw, The Prague Revue, Bewildering Stories, and others. He lives in Wilmington, NC
More at: http://rudyravindra.wix.com/rudy

Samuel Vargo has written poetry and short stories for print and online literary magazines, university journals and a few commercial magazines. Mr. Vargo worked most of his adult life as a newspaper reporter. He has a BA in Political Science and an MA in English (both degrees were awarded by Youngstown State University in Youngstown, Ohio, USA). Most recently, Vargo was a curator and editor for a string of eight commercial online magazines for almost a year. He was fiction editor of Pig Iron Press, Youngstown, Ohio, for 12 years. A book-length collection of Vargo’s short stories, titled Electric Onion Head and the Rotating Cyclops of the Month, was published by Literary Road and had a web presence for five years. His poetry and fiction appear in the following: Antithesis Common, Ascent Aspirations, Blue Fifth, Boston Poetry Magazine, Censored Poets, Centrifugal Eye, The Circle, Clark Street Review, Connecticut Review, Daily Kos, Dandelion, double dare press, Drunk Monkeys, Edifice Wrecked, Electric Acorn, Elegant Thorn, Eye On Life Magazine, Glass – A Journal of Poetry, Guideposts, Gypsy Blood Review, Higginsville Reader, [in parentheses], Late Knocking, Licking River Review, Literary Hatchet, Lynx Eye, Mastodon Dentist, National Lampoon Humor Network (College Stories, Daily Comedy, Dead Frog, The Frown, The Phat Phree, Points in Case), Meat for Tea, Medusa’s Laugh, nthposition, Ohio Teachers Write, OpEdNews.com, Poetry Motel, Projected Letters, Red Dancefloor, Reed, Scholars & Rogues, Small Press Review, Stymie, The Cynic Online Magazine, Fat City Review, The Literati Quarterly, The Nocturnal Lyric, The Spoof, Two Words For, Verve, undergroundwindow.com, Why Vandalism?, Window Lit-Mag, Word Riot, Yasse, Z-Composition, and other presses and literary journals.

Michael Campagnoli  My awards have included the New Letters Poetry Award, the All Nations Press Chapbook Award, and The Chiron Review Novella Prize. My fiction and poetry have appeared in New Letters, Nimrod, Southern Humanities Review, Rosebud, Rattle, Descant, Natural Bridge, Emerson Review, Blue Earth Review, Crab Creek, and elsewhere. I’ve published three chapbooks and my poems and stories have anthologized in Best New Writing of 2010, ISFN’s Anthology1, and Edwin Smith’s, The Bethany Reader. Forthcoming are eight pieces of flash fiction in the anthology, Nothing to Declare, by White Pines Press and Marie Alexander. Three of my poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

C. R. Resetarits’s work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. New poetry out soon in Worchester Review and Manifest West. Her poetry collection, Brood, will be published Summer 2015 by Mongrel Empire Press. She lives in Faulkner-riddled Oxford, Mississippi.

Jacqueline Doyle lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her very short prose has appeared in Café Irreal, PANK, Monkeybicycle, Sweet, Vestal Review, The Rumpus, Literary Orphans, Corium, and elsewhere. Her creative nonfiction has earned two Pushcart nominations and Notable Essay citations in Best American Essays 2013 and Best American Essays 2015.

Alaina Symanovich graduated from Penn State University in 2015 with her BA and MA in English. She’s currently in the MFA program at Florida State University, where she specializes in creative nonfiction. Her work has appeared in Fourth River, The Offbeat, Word Riot, Switchback, and other journals.

Jeff Streeby, a Pushcart Prize nominee and a nominee for Sundress Press’ Best of the Web Anthology, earned his MFA in Poetry from New England College. His haibun “El Paso: July” was selected by Robert Olen Butler for inclusion in The Best Short Fictions of 2015 (release date of October 2015) by Queen’s Ferry Press. He is a Senior Lecturer in English at Assumption University of Thailand in Bangkok.

Jocelyn Deane was born in London, 1993 and moved to Australia in 2001. He was shortlisted for the inaugural 457 prize for poetry in 2013, and has been published by farrago, the NSW board of studies and Farrago magazine. He currently studies formal logic and linguistics at the university of Melbourne.

Mark J. Mitchell studied writing at UC Santa Cruz under Raymond Carver, George Hitchcock and Barbara Hull. His work has appeared in various periodicals over the last thirty five years, as well as the anthologist has also been nominated for both Pushcart Prizes and The Best of the Net. Good Poems, American Places, Hunger Enough, Retail Woes and Line Drives. A length collection, Lent 1999, was ,just released by Leaf Garden Press. His chapbook, Three Visitors has recently been published by Negative Capability Press. Artifacts and Relics, another chapbook, was just released from Folded Word and his novel, Knight Prisoner, was recently published by Vagabondage Press and a another novel, A Book of Lost Songs is coming soon from Wild Child Publishing. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, the documentarian and filmmaker Joan Juster.

Ron Gibson, Jr. has previously appeared in Pidgeonholes, Cease Cows, Maudlin House, Sick Lit Magazine, Word Riot, Exquisite Corpse, Spelk Fiction, Soundzine, etc…, forthcoming at The Vignette Review, Alien Mouth, & Story and Picture, been included in various anthologies, and been nominated for two Pushcarts. @sirabsurd

Amanda Nicole Corbin is a writer in Salt Lake City, Utah. She has had her short fiction published in NANO Fiction, Columbia College Literary Review, Thrice Fiction, Superstition Review, Thin Air, The Vehicle, decomP, & others. She spends a lot of time thinking about space, especially the moon. Where did it come from and what does it want?

Andrew Jarvis is the author of Sound Points (Red Bird Press), Ascent (Finishing Line Press), and The Strait (Homebound Publications). His poems have appeared in Appalachian Heritage, Evansville Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Tulane Review, and many other magazines. He was a Finalist for the 2014 Homebound Publications Poetry Prize. He also judges poetry contests and edits anthologies for Red Dashboard LLC. Andrew holds an M.A. in Writing (Poetry) from Johns Hopkins University.

Jeremiah Castelo
http://www.psalmsandpsychoses.com/poems-writings/

John Haggerty’s short stories have appeared in more than forty literary magazines, including Confrontation, Santa Monica Review, and War, Literature & the Arts. He is the winner of the Pinch Literary Award for Fiction and received an honorable mention for the Katharine Anne Porter Prize. His nonfiction has appeared in Salon.

Kirie C Pedersen  Other writing appears in Quiddity International Literary Journal and Public Radio program, Bluestem Magazine, Eleven Eleven, Chaffey Review, Caper Literary Journal, Avatar Review, Utne Reader, Seven Days, Wisconsin Review, Eclipse, riverSedge, Great American Literary Review, Alcoholism the National Magazine, Hackwriters, Regeneration (Rodale Press), Glossolalia, American Motorcyclist, Folly Magazine, The View from Here, Northwest People, Teachers and Writers, A Gourmet Notebook, r.kv.r.y Quarterly Literary Review, Laurel Review (Greentower Press), Burrow Press Review, South Jersey Underground, Pithead Chapel, Theater Latte Da, Apocrypha and Abstractions, Juked, Foliate Oak, Superstition Review, Agave Magazine and elsewhere. I hold a M.A. in fiction writing and literature

BILL TREMBLAY is a poet and novelist. His work has appeared in eight full-length volumes including Crying in the Cheap Seats [UMass Press], The Anarchist Heart [New Rivers Press: 1975]. Home Front [Lynx House Press: 1978]. Second Sun: New & Selected Poems [L’Eperiver Press: 1983]. Duhamel: Ideas of Order in Little Canada [BOA Editions Ltd.,1986], Rainstorm Over the Alphabet [Lynx House Press, 1998], Shooting Script: Door of Fire [Eastern Washington University Press, 2003] which won the Colorado Book Award.
His most recent book is: Magician’s Hat: Poems on the Life and Art of David Alfaro Siqueiros [Lynx House Press: 2013]. He has received fellowships and awards from the NEA,  the NEH, the Fulbright Commission, and the Corporation at Yaddo as well as many anthologies including Pushcart Prize, Best American Poetry. He directed the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Colorado State University, founded  the Colorado Review and served as its chief editor for 15 years. He received the John F. Stern Distinguished Professor Award in 2004. He is the author of a novel, The June Rise [Utah State University Press [1994]/Fulcrum Publishing [2002] which received a star review on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” His latest book, Walks Along the Ditch, is forthcoming from Lynx House Press [2016].

Adam “Bucho” Rodenberger  He has been published in Alors, Et Tois?, Agua Magazine, Offbeatpulp, Up The Staircase, The Gloom Cupboard, BrainBox Magazine, Cause & Effect Magazine, the Santa Clara Review, Crack the Spine, Penduline Press, Lunch Box, Eunoia Review, Serving House Journal, Aphelion, Glint Literary Journal, Fox Spirit’s Girl at the End of the World: Book 1 anthology, Slice Magazine, Sheepshead Review, Meat For Tea: The Valley Review, Bluestem Magazine, L’allures des Mots, Phoebe, and has been shortlisted for the Almond Press “Broken Worlds” fiction contest.
He blogs at http://triphoprisy.blogspot.com

Daniel Abbott is a product of the MFA program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.  His short fiction has been nominated for an AWP Intro Award and has appeared in the Owen Wister Review and the Noctua Review.  Daniel lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he is putting the last few kisses on his first novel, The Concrete.
www.facebook.com/DanielAbbottFiction and @AbbottFiction

Kim Farleigh has worked for aid agencies in three conflicts: Kosovo, Iraq and Palestine. He takes risks to get the experience required for writing. He likes fine wine, art, photography and bullfighting, which probably explains why this Australian lives in Madrid; although he wouldn’t say no to living in a French château. 127 of his stories have been accepted by 79 different magazines.

J. Todd Hawkins  My poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in AGNI, Chiron Review, American Literary Review, Sugared Water, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Concho River Review, Wisconsin Review, bottle rockets, 50 Haikus, and elsewhere. I have presented and discussed poetry on panels at the University of Mississippi’s Southern Writers/Southern Writing Conference, Tarleton State University’s Langdon Review Arts Festival, and Oklahoma State University’s Graduate Humanities Conference.
I grew up in Fort Worth, exploring Cowtown’s seemingly bipolar culture: its punk rock clubs and art museums, its honky tonks and coffee houses. I believe this environment helped me develop an appreciation for the juxtaposition of seemingly disparate images, forms, and themes. I grew to seek the mash-up, the limerick inside the sonnet, the Dadaist at the cowboy poetry festival. Naturally, I fell in love with haibun: the melding of prose and verse, the narrative and the lyrical, the modern and the timeless.

Steve Passey is from Southern Alberta. Previous Fiction has appeared in Existere Journal, Big Pulp, The Molotov Cocktail, and Minor Literature[s].

Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania, raised in Alabama, and reared by the love-ghost of Tom Waits and Hannah Arendt. Her homeland is a speculative fiction. Currently, she lives in Tuscaloosa with her partner and and three children. She was a finalist in the Black Warrior Review Poetry Prize this past year. Her syllables are forthcoming in Tower Journal, Cider Press Review, Lockjaw, PoemMemoirStory, and Kindred, among others. More online at http://alina_stefanescu.typepad.com/writing/.

Anne Whitehouse  Poet, fiction writer, journalist, and critic Anne Whitehouse’s books include poetry collections The Surveyor’s Hand (Compton Press), Blessings and Curses (Poetic Matrix Press), One Sunday Morning (Finishing Line Press), The Refrain (Dos Madres Press), Bear in Mind (Finishing Line Press), and Fall Love (novel). Recent poetry and fiction publications include The View from Here, Art from Art (anthology), Istanbul Poetry Review, Pain and Memory and Being Human: Call of the Wild (anthologies), riverbabble, Yale Journal of Humanities in Medicine, and others. She lives in New York City. www.annewhitehouse.com

Cathy Rosoff is the author of two novels, Feral Little Gods and Ravensbone. This is the second time Ginosko has excerpted the latter novel, which has also been excerpted in The Missing Slate. The Blue Lake Review and Unlikely 2.0 published stories that eventually led to the writing of the novel. The Stone Hobo and The Write Room published sections of Feral Little Gods, the former nominating her for The Pushcart Prize.  Feral Little Gods also passed through the first round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award and is now available on Amazon, as well as the Barnes and Noble and Smashwords websites. Ravensbone is still in its final polish stage.  Her website is www.cathyrosoff.com.

Blake Kilgore   Part Texan, part Okie – Blake Kilgore fell for a Jersey girl. A history teacher by day, he also coaches basketball and performs original folk music. He is grateful for his wife and four sons. Blake’s writing has recently appeared or is forthcoming in The Alembic, Forge, The Bookends Review, and Torrid Literature Journal’s Christian Anthology: The Effects of Grace.

Carroll Ann Susco has an MFA in Fiction from the University of Pittsburgh and numerous publications, including The Sun Magazine.  She has a chapbook on Smashwords.com titled True Fiction: A Pseudo Autobiographical Chapbook in Three Parts.

Robert Earle  With more than ninety stories in print and online literary journals, Robert Earle is one of the more widely published contemporary short fiction writers in America. His new novel is Suffer the Children. He lives in North Carolina after a diplomatic career that took him to Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East.

James Claffey hails from County Westmeath, Ireland, and lives on an avocado ranch in Carpinteria, CA. He is fiction editor at Literary Orphans, and the author of the short fiction collection, Blood a Cold Blue. His work appears in the W.W. Norton Anthology, Flash Fiction International, and is forthcoming in Queensferry Press’s anthology, Best Small Fictions of 2015.
New writing and reviews at Fiction Southeast, Litro, UK Flash Fiction International Anthology MadHat Lit, The Eunoia Review, The Miscreant Flash, Fiction Chronicles, Prime Number Magazine Entropy, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Blood a Cold Blue Website at: www.jamesclaffey.com

Elizabeth Light is a doctoral candidate in medieval literature at Fordham University. Her poetry has appeared in Columbia College Literary Review, Driftwood, Release, What You Do/Eat a Peach, The Stratford Star, and is forthcoming in Literary Orphans. She lives in Connecticut with a black cat named Ringo Starr.

Julia Vose’s book is Moved Out On The Inside (The Figures Press). Academy of American Poet’s Prize, SFSU. Her poems have appeared in Deep Down (Farrar Strauss and Giroux); This Is Women’s Work (Panjandrum), Changing Harm To Harmony, ed. Joe Zacardi; Digging Our Poetic Roots, ed. Katherine Hastings; Marin Poetry Center Anthologies; American Poetry Review, However, etc. Has taught/consulted poetry writing at SFSU, UC Extension; as Writer-In-Residence at Mt. Zion Hospital (NEA grant); and as CPITS Master Poet/Teacher.

Susan Phillips  A native of Chicago, Susan Phillips is a Boston area writer, photographer and teacher, whose work has been published in many newspapers and magazines. Her short stories have been printed in over twelve magazines, including Lacuna, Poetica Magazine, Literary Brushstrokes, Rose Red Review, Lissette’s Tales of the Imagination and in the anthology All the Women Followed Her. She is currently working on an historical novel about King Agrippa I and three collections of short stories: one about women in the Hebrew Bible, another about Talmudic figures and a collection of fairy tales.

Gary Charles Wilkens is a poet, science fiction writer, and creative writing teacher residing in Norfolk, Virginia, where he is an Assistant Professor of English at Norfolk State University. He received his PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from The University of Southern Mississippi in 2010. His poems have appeared in many literary journals, including Adirondack Review, The Cortland Review, Dicey Brown, James Dickey Review, Moon City Review, Passages North, Poetry Southeast, The Prague Review, Texas Review, and Yellow Medicine Review. He was the winner of the Texas Review Breakthrough Poetry Prize in 2006 for his book The Red Light Was My Mind, and his poetry manuscript Fayetteville was a Finalist in the 2014 Moon City Poetry Prize contest. His science fiction has appeared in Foliate Oak Literary Magazine.

Janelle Elyse Kihlstrom’s poems have appeared in various literary journals, and her chapbook, Blue Trajectory, was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2011. She edits the online journal Melusine and holds an M.A. in Writing from Johns Hopkins University. She lives with her small but recently expanded family in the Washington, D.C. area.

J Tarwood  This is my track record: poems in Free Lunch, American Poetry Review, American Poetry Monthly, BAD, Big Muddy, Buckle &, Bryant Literary Review, Pike’s Creek, Blue Mesa, Eratica, Calliope, Coe Review, Rockhurst Review, Natural Bridge, Willow Review, Yet Another Small Magazine, Rio, Rhino, Paris/Atlantic, Phantasmagoria, California Quarterly, Liberty Hill Poetry Review, Lilies & Cannonballs, Colere, Poetry Ireland, Wind, Grassroots, Poetry Motel, Midwest Quarterly, Main Street Rag, White Pelican Review, Quantum Tao, Red River Review, Rapid River, Runes, Terra Incognita, Visions, and Plainsong. In 1997, I won a Plainsong poetry award, and I was a featured poet in Visions in 2001. One of my poems was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2003 I also have three books published: And For The Mouth A Flower, Grand Detour, and The Cats in Zanzibar.

P C Vandall is the author of three collections of poetry: Something from Nothing, (Writing Knights Press) Woodwinds (Lipstick Press) and Matrimonial Cake (Red Dashboard).  When Pamela is not writing, she’s sleeping.  She believes sleep is death without the commitment.

Rick Richardson is a professional archaeologist living on the coast of North Carolina, USA.
His first published poetry appeared in the University of San Francisco’s
Ignatian Literary Magazine, Issue 27, April 2015.

T. E. Cowell lives in Washington state. For more of his fiction contact him at tecowell4@gmail.com

Therése Halscheid’s latest poetry collection Frozen Latitudes (Press 53), received the Eric Hoffer Book Award, HM for poetry. Previous collections include Uncommon Geography, Without Home and a Greatest Hits chapbook award by Pudding House. Magazine publications include The Gettysburg Review, Tampa Review, South Loop, Sou’wester, among others. She has taught in varied settings including an Inupiaq Eskimo tribe in the far north of Alaska, and in the Ural Mountains of Russia. For several years she had been writing on the road by way of house-sitting. Website: ThereseHalscheid.com

Chelsea Eckert will be attending UNC Greensboro for her MFA in creative writing in the fall of 2015. Her fiction and poetry, both literary and genre, have appeared or will appear in over twenty print and online venues. Stalk her like a hungry catamount at http://chelseaeckert.me.

Jeremi Handrinos  Books:Juno’s Peacock (Sun Rising Poetry Press, 2004) Anthologies: Omega 6 HereAfter the COUP (Howling Dog Press, 2006), Cosmic Brownies (Sun Rising Poetry Press, 2005), Mind Mutations (Sun Rising Poetry Press, 2005)
Journals: Ginosko Literary Journal
Performances: Short on Cash, Not Hair (2006), Shen~Ring CD (2004), Junk Jazz CD (2003), Gangbox CD (2001), Emotionally Unavailable (1999), (spit it how its spun) internet youtube

Scott Sherman is a graduate of Ursinus College, where he earned his BA in the field of English. He has been writing poetry for six years, and his work often focuses on abstract depictions of his youth, dreams, and relationships. He breathes nostalgia, and tries to include his past into the majority of his writing. He has recently, or will be published in Clover, a Literary Rag – Issue 10, Lost Coast Review – Winter 2016 Issue, Floor Plan – Issue D, The Opiate – Issue 4, and Rivet Journal – Issue 6.”

Edissa Nicolas holds a BA in Education from Brown University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College.  She teaches English, Writing, Literature, and life skills as a professor in a San Francisco Bay Area community college. Edissa is also an active life-style blogger, writing about wellness, gardening, culture and community as a regular contributor to her church newsletter and several blogs. Currently, she is working on a historical-fiction novel based on the life of Matthew Henson, posthumously recognized co-discoverer of the North Pole. An immigrant from Dominican Republic, Edissa grew up in New York City, and gardens, writes and loves life in San Francisco.

Steven Thomas Howell is a fiction writer living in Tampa, Florida. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Tampa and is working on his first novel. Read more about him at steventhomashowell.com.

Gina M. Fields received her B.A. from UC Berkeley, and is currently taking novel writing courses at UCLA and regularly attending Writer’s Digest Conferences. With her writing, she seeks to shine light into the darker corners of the human experience, so that we can better understand this wild and beautiful thing called life. She is seeking representation for her literary fiction manuscripts, “Fireflies in Winter” and “The Blue Hour.” Feel free to send thoughts or comments to: GFields347@aol.com.

Dirk James lives in San Leandro, California and appeared recently in Stray Light, Dark Matter, Commuter Lit, and Riding Light

Edd B. Jennings runs beef cattle in the mountains of Virginia. His work has appeared in numerous literary magazines this summer. He’s at work on a series of books on canoeing in the Arctic and a novel. He can be contacted through the Leslie Owen Literary Agency.

Nicholas Rys writes and makes music in the idyllic village of Yellow Springs, Ohio. His work has previously appeared in such publications as Shotgun Honey, Thought Catalog, Fanzine and Entropy.

C. Kubasta’s is the author of two chapbooks, A Lovely Box and &s (both from
Finishing Line), and a full-length poetry collection, All Beautiful & Useless
(BlazeVOX). Her next book, Of Covenants, is forthcoming from Whitepoint Press in
2017. Her poetry, fragments, and prose experiment with hybrid forms, pronoun
slippage and intentional awkwardness. Find her at ckubasta.com.

William C. Blome writes poetry and short fiction. He lives wedged between Baltimore and Washington, DC, and he is a master’s degree graduate of the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. His work has previously seen the light of day in such fine little mags as AmarilloBay, PRISM International, Fiction Southeast, Roanoke Review, Salted Feathers and The California Quarterly.

Michael Davis  My short fiction has appeared in Descant, The San Joaquin Review, The Jabberwock Review, The Black Mountain Review, Eclipse, Cottonwood, The Mid-American Review, Full Circle, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Georgia Review, Storyglossia, The Chicago Quarterly Review, Willow Springs, The Normal School, Arcana, The Superstition Review, The New Ohio Review, The Painted Bride Quarterly, The Atticus Review, Isthmus, the Earlyworks Press Short Story Anthology, Redline “Best of the Year” issue for 2014, Small Print Magazine, and Forge. I was a William Saroyan Fellow and fiction editor of the journal CutBank.
I’ve been nominated for the Pushcart Prize on four separate occasions by The Mid-American Review, Hayden’s Ferry, Storyglossia, and Isthmus. My story “Gravity” won the 2008 George Garrett fiction award given out by Eastern Washington University. “The Man in Africa” was voted one of the “Million Writers Award Notable Stories of 2007? and was subsequently reviewed by Xujun Eberlein for Five Star Literary Stories. In 2013, I was selected as a winner in the Earlyworks Press short story competition. And in 2014, I was a winner in the Redline Urban Fiction contest.
My collection of stories, Gravity, was published by Carnegie Mellon UP in 2009.
I have an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Montana and a PhD in English from Western Michigan University.

Charles Kell is a PhD student at The University of Rhode Island and editor of The Ocean State Review. His poetry and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in The New Orleans Review, The Saint Ann’s Review, floor_plan_journal, The Manhattanville Review, and elsewhere. He teaches in Rhode Island and Connecticut

Donald Levering  My 7th full-length poetry book, Coltrane’s God, published by Red Mountain Press, won the New Mexico Press Women Poetry Book Contest in 2016. My previous book, The Water Leveling With Us, placed 2nd in the 2015 National Federation of Press Women Creative Verse Book Competition. I am a past NEA Fellow in Poetry and winner of the 2015 Literal Latté Award and was Runner-Up for the 2016 Ruth Stone Poetry Prize.  I have been a Duende Series Reader and was a Guest Poet in the Academy of American Poets online Forum. More information is available at donaldlevering.com.

Mark Vogel has published short stories in Cities and Roads, Knight Literary Journal, Whimperbang, SN Review, and Our Stories.  Poetry has appeared in English Journal, CapeRock, Dark Sky, ColdMountain Review, BrokenBridge Review and many other journals. He is currently Professor of English at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, and directs the Appalachian Writing Project.

John McKernan – who grew up in Omaha Nebraska – is now a retired comma herder / Phonics Coach after teaching 41 years at Marshall University. He lives in West Virginia and Florida. His most recent book is a selected poems Resurrection of the Dust. He has published poems in The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, The New Yorker, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Journal, Antioch Review, Guernica, Field and many other magazines

Kristian Ashley Macaron writes obsessively about pirates, whales, wolves, folktales, deserts, volcanoes, hurricanes, planets, and her life, of course. Originally from Albuquerque, NM where she attended the University of New Mexico, Kristian received her MFA from Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts and thus melded her love for the Southwest with the stunning New England coast. Kristian’s first poetry chapbook, Storm, was released in July 2015 from Swimming With Elephants Publications in Albuquerque, NM. Her other publications of fiction and poetry are published in The Winter Tangerine Review, Philadelphia Stories, Duke City Fix: The Sunday Poem, and Lightning Cake Journal and The Bellows American Review (The [BAR]). Kristian’s work has also appeared on stage in 2008 at the University of New Mexico in “Full Frontal Poetry”. She has taught scriptwriting at the Emerson College Pre-College Creative Writers’ Workshop and currently teaches English at the University of New Mexico-Valencia campus.

E.M. Schorb is a prize-winning poet and novelist. His Murderer’s Day was awarded the Verna Emery Poetry Prize and published by Purdue University Press; his col­lection, Time and Fevers, was the recipient of the Writer’s Digest Inter­national Self-Published Award for Poetry and also an Eric Hoffer Award. Most recently, Words in Passing, was published by The New Formalist Press. His novel, Paradise Square, was awarded the International eBook Award Foundation’s Prize for fiction at the Frankfurt Book Fair. But Schorb maintains that he is first and foremost a poet, and his poetry has appeared in numerous publications, here and abroad.

Nikki Boss lives in New England with her husband, children, and too many animals. She teaches middle school ELA and is a MFA candidate at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Nikki’s work can be found in Paddleshots Anthology, Heater, Beechwood Review, and various other places online.

Sean Hooks was born and raised in New Jersey. He has a BA-Liberal Arts from Drew University, an MFA-Fiction from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and an MA-English from Loyola Marymount University. He currently lives, writes and works as an English professor in Los Angeles. Recent publications include Pif Magazine, Superstition Review, SubStance, FORTH Magazine, Intellectual Refuge, The Journal, Heavy Feather Review, and Los Angeles Review of Books. Earlier articles, essays and print journalism were published in Las Vegas Weekly and The Record. Work is forthcoming from The International Journal of Literary Humanities and Akashic Books. He has written a novel and is actively seeking representation/publication while also working on both a new book and a film project.

Terry Sanville lives in San Luis Obispo, California with his artist-poet wife (his in-house editor) and one skittery cat (his in-house critic). He writes full time, producing short stories, essays, poems, and novels. Since 2005, his short stories have been accepted by more than 230 literary and commercial journals, magazines, and anthologies including The Potomac Review, The Bitter Oleander, Shenandoah, and Conclave: A Journal of Character. He was nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize for his stories “The Sweeper,” and “The Garage.” Terry is a retired urban planner and an accomplished jazz and blues guitarist – who once played with a symphony orchestra backing up jazz legend George

Jennifer Woodworth studied for the MFA in Creative Writing at Old Dominion and almost finished. She is the recipient of the 2009 AROHO Orlando Prize in Flash Fiction and the 2012 Nassau Review Writers Award in Poetry. Her chapbook, How I Kiss Her Turning Head, was published in 2014 by Monkey Puzzle Press, and her stories and poems have appeared at Opium, and flashquake, in The Nassau Review and in Bellow Literary Journal. She knows how lucky she is that she gets to write all the time.

Olivia Kate Cerrone’s Pushcart Prize-nominated fiction recently won the Crab Orchard Review’s 2016 Jack Dyer Fiction Prize. Her short stories have appeared in various literary journals, including New South, the Berkeley Fiction Review, The MacGuffin, War, Literature and the Arts, JMWW, Word Riot, Quiddity and Paterson Literary Review. She is at work on a novel.
She is a regular contributor to The Rumpus. She serves as an associate editor for CONSEQUENCE Magazine, and as a writing mentor for the Afghan Women’s Writing Project. She is a member of the PEN American Center.
Cerrone earned an MFA in fiction from New York University and a BFA from the Writing, Literature and Publishing program at Emerson College.

Monica Noelle Simon is a poet, writer and marketing professional from Scranton, Pa. She is the creator of Poets of NEPA. Her writing has been published on Elite Daily, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Burningwood Literary Journal, Poets of NEPA, and HelloGiggles.

John Tavares  My previous publications include short stories published in a number of literary journals: one short fiction published in Blood & Aphorisms; 1 in chapbook by Plowman Press; 1 in Green’s Magazine; 1 in Filling Station; 2 in Whetstone; 2 in Broken Pencil; 1 in Tessera; 1 in Windsor Review; 3 in Paperplates; 1 in The Write Place at the Write Time; 3 in The Maple Tree Literary Supplement; 2 in The Writing Disorder; 1 in Gertrude; 1 in Turk’s Head Review; 1 in Outside In Literary & Travel Magazine; 1 in Bareback Magazine; 1 in Rampike; 2 in Crab Fat Literary Magazine; 3 in The Round Up Writer’s Zine; 1 in The Acentos Review; 1 in Gravel; 1 in the Brasilia Review; 1 in Sediments Literary Arts-Journals; 2 in The Gambler; 1 in Red Cedar Review; 3 in Writing Raw. Also, over a dozen of my short stories and some creative nonfiction was published in The Siren, then Centennial College’s student newspaper. Following journalism studies, I had articles and features published in East York Observer, East York Times, BeachesTown Crier, East Toronto Advocate, Our Toronto – plus community and trade newspapers such as York University’s Excalibur and Hospital News, where I interned as an editorial assistant. I broadcast a set of my short stories as a community broadcaster for Sioux Lookout’s CBLS/CBQW radio one summer. I recently wrote a novel and am an avid photographer.
Born and raised in Sioux Lookout, Ontario, I’m the son of Portuguese immigrants from the Azores. My formal education includes graduation from the 2-year GAS program at Humber College in Etobicoke with concentration in psychology (1993); the 3-year journalism program at Centennial College in East York (1996); the Specialized Honors BA in English from York University in North York (2012). I’ve worked as a research assistant for the Sioux Lookout Public Library and as a research assistant conducting a waste management survey of all Sioux Lookout households for the public works department and regional recycle association. I also worked with the disabled for the Sioux Lookout Association for Community Living. I’ve recently completed the Canadian Securities Course, a certification required by the Canadian investment industry.

Michael Larrain was born in Los Angeles in 1947. He is the author of four collections of poems: The Promises Kept in Sleep(Redwood Press, 1978), Just One Drink for the Diamond Cutter(Animist Press, 1980) and For One Moment There Was No Queen, (Wufahtibootda Press, 1982) and How It All Came True: Poems for My Daughter (Crumpled Press, New York, 2014). Rainy Day Women Press of Willits, CA, has released a CD of his reading of his selected love poems called Lipstick: A Catalogue for Continuous Undressing. His novels are South of The North Star, Movies on the Sails, and As the Case May Be. His children’s storybooks are The Girl With the Loom In Her Room, Heaven & Earth, Homer the Hobo & Ulysses the Goat and Wilder & Wilder Still.
He lives in Sonoma County (California) where, for forty-two years, he has been the owner-operator of the roadside flower stand, Flowers Not To Reason Why, and has long been a senior partner in the Way-Up, Firm And High-Tail It Bright Out of Town Detective Agency, a loosely aligned confederacy of shady characters devoted
to the complete discrediting of reality in our time. He operates a non-denominational wedding ministry called A More Perfect Union and is the father of Wilder Kathleen the Rage of Paris Larrain, age 9.

Ace Boggess is the author of two books of poetry: The Prisoners (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2014) and The Beautiful Girl Whose Wish Was Not Fulfilled (Highwire Press, 2003). His novel, A Song Without a Melody, is forthcoming from Hyperborea Publishing. His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, RATTLE, River Styx, North Dakota Quarterly and many other journals. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia.

Janet Hope Damaske is a stay-at-home mother with interests in writing, reading, editing and psychology. After earning her BA in psychology with a minor in creative writing at Hamilton College, she worked for several years at a rehabilitation center for people with mental illness, providing job training and running a writer’s group for creative therapy. She later moved onto a career in medical publishing, where she continues to work part-time. Janet currently volunteers with several non-profit organizations in her hometown of Winchester MA, where she lives with her husband and two children. She writes a blog, which can be found at http://jhdamaske.blogspot.com. She has previously published in The Writing Disorder.

Olivia Mertz is a poet and visual artist. She’s also the poetry editor for APRICITY Press, an annual online publication of poetry, prose, short fiction, visual art and dance works. Story-telling across multiple mediums, Olivia’s work employs portraiture to explore personalities and relationships. Olivia was a recipient of the Ina Coolbrith Memorial Poetry Prize, her work appeared in The Walrus, and she was a contributor at the 2015 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Jon Etter is a Milwaukee-based writer and English teacher. His fiction has been/will be featured in in The London Journal of Fiction, The Singularity, Odd Tree Quarterly, Midnight Circus, Tulip Tree Review, and the anthology The Great Tome of Forgotten Relics and Artifacts. Visit him on the web at JonEtter.com and Facebook.com/JonEtterWriter.

Allan Johnston  Originally from southern California, Allan Johnston earned his M.A. in Creative Writing and his Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Davis. His poems have appeared in over sixty journals, including Poetry, Poetry East, Rattle, and Rhino. He has published one full-length poetry collection (Tasks of Survival, 1996) and three chapbooks (Northport, 2010; Departures, 2013; Contingencies, 2015), and received an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize nomination (2009), and First Prize in Poetry in the Outrider Press Literary Anthology competition (2010). He now teaches writing and literature at Columbia College and DePaul University in Chicago. He reads or has read for WordRiver, r.kv.r.y, and the Illinois Emerging Poets competition, and is co-editor of JPSE: Journal for the Philosophical Study of Education. His scholarly articles have appeared in Twentieth Century Literature, College Literature, and several other journals.
email: ajohnston@com.edu; ajohnst2@depaul.edu

T. E. Cowell’s fiction’s been published in SmokeLong, Across the Margin, Eunoia Review, and elsewhere. He lives on an island in Washington state.

Roger Real Drouin is a writer. His stories have appeared in the Potomac Review, The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, Ginosko (issue #12), Grey Sparrow Journal, Pif Magazine, Pindelyboz, and elsewhere. He is also the founder of Little Curlew Press, an independent literary press that publishes works with a strong ecological undercurrent.

Kenneth Pobo had a new book out in November 2015 from Urban Farmhouse Press called Booking Rooms in the Kuiper Belt. His work has appeared in Mudfish, Hawaii Review, The Fiddlehead, Indiana Review, and elsewhere.

Gerard Sarnat is the author of four critically-acclaimed collections: HOMELESS CHRONICLES from Abraham to Burning Man (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014) and Melting The Ice King (2016).Work from Ice King was accepted by over seventy magazines, including Gargoyle and Lowestoft Chronicle, and featured in Songs of Eretz Poetry Review, Avocet: A Journal of Nature Poems, LEVELER, tNY, StepAway, Bywords and Floor Plan. For Huffington Post and other reviews, reading dates, publications, interviews and more, visit Gerard Sarnat.com. Go to Amazon to find Gerry’s books plus Editorial and Customer Reviews. Harvard and Stanford educated, Gerry’s worked in jails as a physician, built and staffed clinics for the marginalized, been a CEO of healthcare organizations and Stanford Medical School professor. Married since 1969, he and his wife have three children and three grandkids.

Alexandria Peary  My four books include Control Bird Alt Delete (Iowa Poetry Prize) and Creative Writing Pedagogies for the Twenty-First Century (with Tom C. Hunley). Other writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Canary, Volt, North American Review, Hotel Amerika, LIT, Diode, New Delta Review, Poetry Daily, New England Review, Denver Quarterly, Verse Daily, New American Writing, Sixth Finch, The Chariton Review, Map Literary, and New Madrid, and has been awarded the Joseph Langland Award from the Academy of American Poets and the Slope Editions Book Prize. My creative nonfiction piece, “Holes and Walls,” was included in the “Notable Essays and Literary Nonfiction of 2014” by the Best American series. More information is available at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/alexandria-peary.

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C O N T R I B U T O R S for Issue #19

Jason Del Guidice was a musician before he became a writer.  In creating music he found that he was always drawn to the wrong notes. All those unintentional noises, odd time signatures and angular structures were what came naturally to him, though. They were the components that amounted to his voice. Eventually he learned to accept this, to allow himself to be surprised with what that voice had to say to him, to let it flow. He follows those same instincts as a fiction writer. His stories, the Shotgun and Canned Ham and Werewolves, both were quarterfinalists in the 2015 & 2016 ScreenCraft Short Story contest, which seeks short fiction with strong potential for adaptation to film.  Jason lives in northern New Jersey with his wife and three children.  Prayer for Smoke is his first story published.

M.M. Collins  From everywhere and nowhere, now resides in the Pacific Northwest where she spends a vast majority of her time behind a screen, merging reality with imagination to weave tales of a life lived within the dream and everywhere in between.

Katherine Forbes Riley is a computational linguist and writer in Vermont. She is currently a visiting writer at The American Academy in Rome. A Dartmouth graduate with a PhD from UPennsylvania, her creative writing appears in Gone Lawn, Paper Nautilus, Blue Monday Review, decomP, Fiction Southeast, Noö, Spartan, Jellyfish Review, Conium, James Franco Review, Mulberry Fork, Halfway Down The Stairs, Crack the Spine, Storyscape, Whiskey Island, Lunch Ticket, Eunoia, Literary Orphans, Eclectica, BlazeVOX, McNeese Review, Akashic Books, and Buffalo Almanack, from whom she received the Inkslinger’s Award.

Austin Alexis is the author of the full-length poetry collection Privacy Issues (2014) and two previously published chapbooks. His poetry has been published in Barrow Street and Ginosko and more recently in Chiron Review, Home Planet News (fiction and poetry), J Journal and the anthology Rabbit Ears: TV Poems.  austinalexis@hotmail.com

Larry D. Thacker’s poetry can be found or is forthcoming in more than ninety publications including The Still Journal, Poetry South, Tower Poetry Society, Mad River Review, Spillway, The Southern Poetry Anthology, Mojave River Review, Mannequin Haus, Ghost City Press, Jazz Cigarette, and Appalachian Heritage. His books include Mountain Mysteries: The Mystic Traditions of Appalachia and the poetry books, Voice Hunting and Memory Train, as well as the forthcoming, Drifting in Awe. He’s presently working on his MFA in both poetry and fiction. Visit his website at: www.larrydthacker.com

William C. Blome writes short fiction and poetry. He lives wedged between Baltimore and Washington, DC, and he is a master’s degree graduate of the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. His work has previously seen the light of day in such fine little mags as Ginosko Literary Journal, PRISM International, Fiction Southeast, and Roanoke Review. yandropov@hotmail.com

Mitchell Waldman  My fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in numerous other publications, including The Waterhouse Review, Crack the Spine, The Houston Literary Review, Fiction Collective, The Faircloth Review, Epiphany, Wilderness House Literary Magazine, The Battered Suitcase, and many other magazines and anthologies. I am also the author of the novel, A Face in the Moon, and the story collection, Petty Offenses and Crimes of the Heart (Wind Publications), and have served as Fiction Editor for Blue Lake Review. (For more info, see my website at http://mitchwaldman.homestead.com).

Courtney McMahon has been writing “for real” for nearly two years. They discovered they had a body at age three as they leapt from the cormorant poo-stained jetty into the muddy dam at their house in the country and their head went underwater and their toes scrunched up at the thought of the muddy bottom with yabbies waiting half-hidden in the murk. Seventeen years later in a university classroom in the midst of a Melbourne winter they found that writing was, indeed, a part of that body. Courtney is currently wading through the mire of an Honours year in philosophy and creative writing at Melbourne University, with a philosophy thesis on the limits of phenomenology. They are currently working on a novella, and enjoy experimental writing in fictocriticism. Their short story will be published in the upcoming edition of Farrago magazine. Ginosko will be the first literary journal to publish their work.

Olivia Kate Cerrone’s Pushcart Prize-nominated fiction won the Crab Orchard Review’s 2016 Jack Dyer Fiction Prize. Her work has appeared in various publications including The Rumpus, The Paterson Literary Review, and New South. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Ragdale Foundation, the VCCA, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences, where she was awarded a “Distinguished Fellowship” from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Hunger Saint, a historical novella about the child miners of rural Sicily, was published by Bordighera Press in 2017.

Wendy Hoffman’s first memoir, The Enslaved Queen, was published by Karnac Books in 2014, and a second volume, White Witch in a Black Robe, followed in 2015. Her book of poetry, Forceps, was published in 2016, also by Karnac Books. Her poems and prose pieces have been published in various journals. She lives on the Olympic Peninsula.

Douglas G. Campbell lives in Portland, Oregon. He is Professor Emeritus of art at George Fox University where he taught painting, printmaking, drawing and art history courses. He is also the author of Turning Radius (Oblique Voices Press 2017), Seeing: When Art and Faith Intersect, (University Press of America, 2002), Parktails, (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2012), and Facing the Light: The Art of Douglas Campbell, (Oblique Voices Press, 2012). His poetry and artworks have been published in a number of periodicals and his artwork is represented in collections such as The Portland Art Museum, Oregon State University, Ashforth Pacific, Inc. and George Fox University.

Rachel Veroff’s work has appeared in the Pennsylvania Literary Journal, The Tulane Review, Pure Honey Magazine, Red Fez, The New Engagement, The Daily Texan and Opium Magazine. She is a former editor of Fields magazine. She holds a BA in English from the University of Texas at Austin and an MA from the American University of Paris.

Jana Harris teaches creative writing at the University of Washington and at the Writer’s Workshop in Seattle. She is editor and founder of Switched-on Gutenberg. Her most recent publications are You Haven’t Asked About My Wedding or What I Wore: Poems of Courtship on the American Frontier (University of Alaska Press) and the memoir, Horses Never Lie About Love (Simon & Schuster).  Other poetry books include Oh How Can I Keep on Singing, Voices of Pioneer Women (Ontario); The Dust of Everyday Life, An Epic Poem of the Northwest (Sasquatch); and We Never Speak of It, Idaho-Wyoming Poems 1889-90 (Ontario ) all  are available online from Open Road Press as are her two novels, Alaska (Harper & Row) and The Pearl of Ruby City (St. Martin’s). She lives with her husband on a farm in the Cascades.

Janice Hastert has been published in Byline, Chicago Sun Times Sunday Magazine, Senior Connection, Rivulets, Ink. Spots and The Maine Review. She served as editor of the Naperville Writers’ Group’s annual anthology, Rivulets, for four years.

Ken Wetherington is an avid reader with wide tastes from the literary classics to pulp fiction. He has worked for many years in libraries at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University. He is an obsessive film buff and teaches film appreciation courses for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Duke University.
This is his first publication.

Larry Narron’s poems have appeared in Phoebe, Eleven Eleven, Permafrost, Whiskey Island, Berkeley Poetry Review, The Boiler, and other journals; they’ve been nominated for Best of the Net and Best New Poets. Originally from
southern California, he currently lives in northern Michigan, where he
reads poetry for Dunes Review and is at work on a detective novel.

Bill Yarrow, Professor of English at Joliet Junior College and an editor at the online journal Blue Fifth Review, is the author of The Vig of Love, Blasphemer, Pointed Sentences, and five chapbooks. His work also appears in the anthologies Aeolian Harp, Volume One; This is Poetry: Volume Two: The Midwest Poets; and Beginnings: How 14 Poets Got Their Start. He has been nominated eight times for a Pushcart Prize. More information about Bill can be found on his website: https://billyarrow.wordpress.com/:

Michael Chin was born and raised in Utica, New York and is an alum of Oregon State’s MFA Program. He won Bayou Magazine’s Jim Knudsen Editor’s Prize for fiction and has work published or forthcoming in journals including The Normal School, Passages North, and Hobart. He works as a contributing editor for Moss. Find him online at miketchin.com or follow him on Twitter @miketchin.

Bridget Clawson I received my degree from Western Washington University in Labor Relations and practiced until 2016. Since retiring, I write, live with dogs, collect and polish agates and jaspers, volunteer locally in Edmonds, Washington and camp intermittently in a teardrop camper.

Joseph Krauter was born and raised in Bakersneld, California USA, in 1982 to his parents Martin and Carmela. He started college at Bakersfield College as a Technical Theatre major with a minor in English, studying until age 23 when he was arrested. He began writing after being sentenced to prison at age 26. At age 32 Joseph was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) on the High functioning end of the spectrum, formerly called Asperger’s Syndrome, at San Quentin State Prison. Joseph’s autism is integral to his writing due to the fact that the way that he experiences the world around him in detailed vividness makes for interesting persectives as a horror-fiction writer; he writes his nightmares for lack of a better explanation. Joseph has written several short pieces of fiction and has been published in the Literary journals 580 Split, Apothecary, and the podcast “Life of the Law’s San Quentin coverage of his Brothers in Pen’s creative writing class’ public reading production in November of 2016. Joseph has work forthcoming in the next annual Brothers in Pen anthology due to come out this year.

Labecca Jones currently teaches composition, creative writing, and literature, and technical writing at Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction, CO. Her work has appeared in The Cimarron Review, The South Dakota Review, The New Writer, Mad Poets Review, Haight Ashburry Literary Journal, Switchgrass Review, and Spirit Wind Poetry Gallery

Bill Cook is a writer, commercial building inspector, and sometimes-avid home brewer. He resides in a small community within the Sierra Pelona Mountain Range. He has had work published in Juked, elimae, Tin Postcard Review, Right Hand Pointing, The Summerset Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, and in Dzanc’s anthology Best of the Web 2009, The New Flash Fiction Review, The Monarch Review, Great Jones Street, among others.

Diane Glancy is professor emerita at Macalester College. Her latest books are FORT MARION PRISONERS AND THE TRAUMA OF NATIVE EDUCATION (creative nonfiction), University of Nebraska Press, 2014, and REPORT TO THE DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR (poetry), University of New Mexico Press. 2015. in 2016-17 Wipf & Stock has published several books including MARY QUEEN OF BEES (novella), THE SERVITUDE OF LOVE (short stories) and THE COLLECTOR OF BODIES, Concern for Syria and the Middle East (poems).

Adrian Slonaker lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, working as a copywriter and copy editor, with interests that include vegetarian cooking, Slavic languages, Victorian horror fiction, wrestling, and 1960s pop music. Adrian has been published in Better Than Starbucks, and publication in Dodging the Rain and CC&D is forthcoming.

Rachel Holbrook writes from her home in Knoxville, TN. She is the author of the syndicated serial, Little River. Her poetry and short fiction have been published in a variety of literary journals, including *82 Review, Burningword Literary Journal, Akitsu Quarterly, Ink in Thirds, and others. You can find her online at www.RachelHolbrook.net.

Angela Doll Carlson is a poet, fiction writer, and essayist whose work has been published or is forthcoming in publications both online and offline, such as Thin Air Magazine, Eastern Iowa Review, Apeiron Review, Relief Journal Magazine, St. Katherine Review, Rock & Sling, Bird’s Thumb Magazine, Ruminate Magazine, and Art House America.
Her memoir, Nearly Orthodox: On Being a Modern Woman in an Ancient Tradition (Ancient Faith Publishers) was released July 2014. Her latest book is Garden in the East: The Spiritual Life of the Body (Ancient Faith Publishers 2016)
Angela currently lives in Chicago, IL with her husband, David and her four outrageously spirited yet remarkably likable children.

Kelly McNerney After studying Creative Writing at UC Santa Cruz, I went on to complete an MFA in Poetry at San Francisco State University in 2013. In my time in at San Francisco State, I worked as the Poetry Editor and Editor-in-Chief of Fourteen Hills Literary Review. I currently reside in Beijing, China, where I continue to work as a Poetry Editor for Spittoon Literary Magazine.
My poetry has appeared most recently in Gesture Magazine, The Loreli Review, Verse Wisconsin, and I also work as a featured contributor for The Tusk.

DC Diamondopolous is an award-winning short story and flash fiction writer published worldwide. DC’s short stories have appeared in online literary magazines: Antioch University’s Lunch Ticket, Ball State University, The University of Toronto, Fiction on the Web, Eskimo Pie, Five on the Fifth, The Scarlet Leaf Review, Five 2 One and many more. DC’s stories are also in print anthologies: Crab Fat Lit, Blue Crow, Scarborough Fair and Being Real (cc&d). DC won first place for Billy Luck, at Defenestrationism, second place for, Taps, at the University of Toronto, and honorable mentions for The Bell Tower and Taps, from the Soul-Making Keats literary contest for 2014. The international literary site, The Missing Slate, honored DC as author of the month in August 2016, for the short story, “Boots”.

James Croal Jackson’s poetry has appeared in The Bitter Oleander, Rust + Moth, Isthmus, and elsewhere. His first chapbook is forthcoming from Writing Knights Press. He is the 2016 William Redding Memorial Poetry Contest winner in his current city of Columbus, Ohio. Visit him at jimjakk.com.

Russell Hemmell is a statistician and social scientist from the U.K, passionate about astrophysics and speculative fiction. Recent stories in Gone Lawn, Not One of Us, and SQ Mag, and others.”
“1348” originally appeared in Strangelet, 1.4, November 2015, and End of the Year Anthology 2015.
Twitter: @SPBianchini Website: earthianhivemind.net

Andrea Moorhead was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1947. Editor of Osiris and translator of contemporary Francophone poetry, Moorhead publishes in French and in English. Poems and translations have appeared in journals such as Abraxas, Great River Review, The Bitter Oleander, Estuaire, Poetry Salzburg Review, and Ginosko. Poetry collections include From a Grove of Aspen (University of Salzburg Press), and Géocide (Le Noroît). Forthcoming in 2017, The Carver’s Dream (Red Dragonfly Press), and À l’ombre de ta voix (Le Noroît). Translations include The Edges of Light (Hélène Dorion, Guernica Editions), Night Watch (Abderrahmane Djelfaoui, Red Dragonfly Press), and Dark Menagerie(Élise Turcotte, Guernica Editions, 2014).

Kirby Wright was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. He is a graduate of Punahou School in Honolulu and the University of California at San Diego. Wright received his MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. His first play was produced at the Secret Theatre’s 2016 One Act Festival in New York.

Allan Douglass Coleman writes poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction, makes music, photographs, and produces various other forms of visual art. His poetry and fiction have appeared in The Cape Rock, Creative Nonfiction, International Poetry Review, Lalitamba, Nimrod, The Pacific Review, Poetry Harbor, the e-zine Urban Desires, and elsewhere. Coleman’s second book of poetry, Like Father Like Son, was published in 2007. In 2008 he received a nomination for a Pushcart Prize in poetry. Under the pen name A. D. Coleman, he publishes critical writings on photography, art, and mass media. His creative work can be found online at villaflorentine.us.

Ian C. Williams is pursuing an MFA at Oklahoma State University. He has received the Florence Kahn Memorial Award from the National Federation of State Poetry Societies for his chapbook, House of Bones, and his poems have appeared in Blue Earth Review, The Altar Collective, Appalachian Heritage, and Arsenic Lobster, among others. He lives in Stillwater, Oklahoma, with his wife, Bailey, along with their two dogs and two cats.

Loretta Diane Walker is an award winning poet and five-time Pushcart Prize Nominee. She won the 2016 Phyllis Wheatley Book Award for poetry, for her collection, In This House. Her book Word Ghetto won the 2011 Bluelight Press Book Award. Her book, Desert Lights is forthcoming, July 2017 from Lamar University Press. Loretta teaches elementary music in Odessa, Texas.

Laura Dzubay  I am currently studying English at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. My work has previously appeared in Xylem Magazine, Fortnight Literary Press, The Oleander Review, and the 19th and 20th Annual Cafe Shapiro Anthologies, and within the last year has been awarded first prize in the Caldwell Poetry Competition and a Hopwood Underclassmen Fiction Award.

Forest Arthur Ormes  My stories have appeared in past issues of the late Amazing Stories Magazine, Blue Lake Review, Long Story and North Dakota Quarterly. The on-line journal, Red Savina, recently published my story, “Vanderdecken,” in their Fall issue.
I worked for two decades as a bi-lingual therapist and addictions counselor, serving the horsemen and women of the Chicago-area racetracks.
My wife and I divide our time between our residence on the southwest edge of Chicago and our small homestead in central Kansas.

James Claffey hails from County Westmeath, Ireland, and lives on an avocado ranch in Carpinteria, CA. His work appears in the W.W. Norton Anthology, Flash Fiction International, and in Queen’s Ferry Press’s anthology, Best Small Fictions of 2015. He was also a finalist in the Best Small Fictions of 2016.

E Laura Golberg spent her preteen years in Manchester, England, moved to London at 13 and studied English with Miss Cavanaugh at the Nonsuch School for Girls in Cheam, Surrey. She returned to the North of England to study psychology at Sheffield University.

After spending the summers of 1967 and 1968 in America with her family, she emigrated to America at age 21.The first year of her American experience was spent as a VISTA volunteer in Augusta, Ga. From there, she went to NYU to study Public Administration. Because classes were at night, she wrote poetry in the mornings and took her first poetry class with William Packard at the Cooper Union.
Laura went on to have a career in the local government of Fairfax County, VA, writing only occasionally. She was lucky enough to retire in her 50s and, after some casting about, returned to writing poetry. She has since studied at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, MD and Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop. She was a co-host at the Word Works Cafe Muse Reading Series for five years.
Her poetry has appeared in Birmingham Poetry Review, RHINO, Gargoyle, Pebble Lake Review and the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics among other places. She won first place in the DC Commission on the Arts Larry Neal Poetry Competition. She is preparing her first collection of poetry with the working title of Tell.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Schuylkill Valley Journal, Cape Rock and Columbia Review with work upcoming in Louisiana Review, Poem and Spoon River Poetry Review.

Robert Ciesla is a freelance writer from Helsinki, Finland. He has a BA in Journalism and a knack for writing urban fiction and directing short films. His personal website is at robertciesla.com

Euan Tait (b. Berlin 1968) is Welsh-Scottish. He’s widely published in the UK, Ireland and the US. As librettist, he’s produced texts for Unfinished Remembering (Paul Spicer, Birmingham, 2014), The Wound in the Water (Kim Andre Arnesen, Trondheim, 2016), and The Christmas Alleluias (Stillwater, Minn., 2015); shorter texts include Arnesen’s Flight Song, a US best seller. He leads music retreats and is a college lecturer.

Justin Fenech is a 28-year-old author from the island of Malta. He has had short stories published in several online reviews like The Missing Slate, Brasilia Review and Rambutan Literary. He is also a travel blogger and finalist of the 2010 IEMed Sea of Words Competition. His writing deals with hedonism, finding purpose in life, and the pleasures of people living under oppression of any kind.

Neil Citrin My poetry has been published in such magazines as Lynx Eye and the online journals Folly and Danse Macabre. I am the co-founder of The Greater Los Angeles Writer’s Society (www.glaws.org), one of the largest writers groups in California. My web site is www.nkcitrin.com.

Soar is an international artist living in Berlin, author of three released books on the themes of love, human values, life and positive thinking. Currently a trilogy and a vinyl are in development, under the project “Poetry-in-Motion”, by © Soar.
The author is a member of the Society of Authors (UK) and collaborates with international magazines in Germany, Italy, UK, Romania and the US (Decanto The Poetry Magazine, Enigma, Lastbench, Flash Literary Journal, Women Move the Soul, Indie Spirit Magazine, Märkische Allgemeine, BW Polyglott – BDÜ Magazine, Schwäbische Zeitung, Woman@Work Magazine, The Munich Eye, The Berlin Eye, Terpress Urbana, Confluente literare). Soar graduated from the universities in Romania, France and Germany and she currently finished her master studies in International Relations in The United Kingdom.
Soar lectures and performs to various artistic events in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Further enquiries and booking for interviews, readings, artistic events:
www.soaring-words.com
info@soaring-words.com

Richard K. Weems (www.WeemsNet.net) most recently released From Now On, You’re Back. Previous collections are Stark Raving Blue and Anything He Wants, which was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize. His flash publications include Pif Magazine, Potomac Review and Flash Fiction Magazine. He lives and teaches in New Jersey.

Karen K. Ford’s short stories have been honored by the Bellingham Review, bosque (the magazine) and Narrative, and published in Ginosko Anthology 2 and elsewhere. A former ad copywriter, she is now full-time fiction writer and freelance editor, currently hard at work on her second novel. She and husband S.L. Stebel co-teach a fiction workshop at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference every June. They live in Los Angeles with their rescue mutt, Dude.

Thomas Elson lives in Northern California. He writes of lives that fall with neither safe person nor safe net to catch them.
His short stories have appeared in the Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Red City Literary Review, The 3288 Review,
Lunaris Journal, Perceptions Magazine, The New Ulster, The Bombay Review, Blood & Bourbon, and Adelaide Literary Magazine.

Alan Catlin writes in a wide variety of styles. As in he is currently at work on a mystery with no plot. He has two forthcoming chapbooks: Blue Velvet, winner of The Slipstream Chapbook Competition and Hollyweird from Night Ballet Press. His most recent full length book is American Odyssey from Future Cycle Press.

devin wayne davis has lived 54 years, and he still writes poems.

Andrew Hogan received his doctorate in development studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Before retirement, he was a faculty member at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, the University of Michigan and Michigan State University, where he taught medical ethics, health policy and the social organization of medicine in the College of Human Medicine.
Dr. Hogan published more than five-dozen professional articles on health services research and health policy. He has published seventy works of fiction in the Sandscript, OASIS Journal (1st Prize, Fiction 2014), The Legendary, Widespread Fear of Monkeys, Hobo Pancakes, Twisted Dreams, Long Story Short, The Lorelei Signal, Silver Blade, Thick Jam, Copperfield Review, Fabula Argentea, The Blue Guitar Magazine, Shalla Magazine, Defenestration, Mobius, Grim Corps, Coming Around Again Anthology, Former People, Thrice, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Black Market Lit, Paragraph Line, Subtopian Magazine, Pine+Basil, Festival Writer: Unpublishable, Fiction on the Web, Children, Churches and Daddies, Midnight Circus, Stockholm Review of Literature, Lowestoft Chronicle, Apocrypha and Abstractions, Spank the Carp, Beechwood Review, Pear Drop, Marathon Review, Cyclamens and Swords, Short Break Fiction, Flash: International Short-Short Story Magazine, Slippery Elm Online, Story of the Month Club, Birds Piled Loosely, Zero Flash, Canyon Voices, Alebrijes, Rose Red Review, Yellow Chair Review, Serving House Journal, Funny in Five Hundred, Penny Shorts, The Thoughtful Dog, Front Porch Review, Minetta Review, Silver Pen Anthology, Zany Zygote.

E.M. Schorb’s Dates and Dreams, Short Fictions, Prose Poems, Cartoons won the latest Writer’s Digest Self-Published Award for Poetry and Honorable Mention at the 2017 New York Book Festival. His Murderer’s Day won the Verna Emery Poetry Prize and was published by Purdue University Press over a decade ago; another collection, Time and Fevers was a recipient of the Writer’s Digest Self-Published Award for Poetry and also an Eric Hoffer Award. His novel, Paradise Square, was awarded the grand prize for fiction by the International eBook Award Foundation at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Penn Stewart lives and writes in Wichita Falls, Texas, where he teaches creative writing at Midwestern State University. He is the author of the novel Fertile Ground, and his most recent short fiction appears or is forthcoming in Pacifica Literary Review, Word Riot, Night Train, and elsewhere. You can learn more about Penn by visiting his website: www.pennstewart.com

Robert Wexelblatt is professor of humanities at Boston University’s College of General Studies. He has published the story collections, Life in the Temperate Zone; The Decline of Our Neighborhood; The Artist Wears Rough Clothing, and Heiberg’s Twitch; a book of essays; Professors at Play; two short novels, Losses and The Derangement of Jules Torquemal, and essays, stories, and poems in a variety of scholarly and literary journals. His novel Zublinka Among Women won the Indie Book Awards first-place prize for fiction. A collection of essays, The Posthumous Papers of Sidney Fein, is forthcoming.

Keijo Kangur is an aspiring writer from Estonia. He has only been published once before in the Medium publication Fiction Euphoria and is extremely glad to have had his story accepted to Ginosko. You can find some of his other writings on his Medium profile: https://medium.com/@blackastheace

Anjana Basu has to date published 7 novels and 2 books of poetry. The BBC has broadcast one of her short stories. Her byline has appeared in Vogue India, Conde Nast Traveller, Outlook and Hindu Blink.

Tobi Alfier is a multiple Pushcart nominee and a Best of the Net nominee. Current chapbooks are The Coincidence of Castles from Glass Lyre Press, Romance and Rust from Blue Horse Press, and Down Anstruther Way (Scotland poems) from FutureCycle Press. She is co-editor of San Pedro River Review www.bluehorsepress.com.

Douglas Nordfors  I have a BA from Columbia University (1986) and an MFA in poetry from The University of Virginia (1991). Since 1987, I have published poems in major poetry journals such as The Iowa Review, Quarterly West, Poet Lore, and several others, and many other smaller journals, as well as, more recently, new and upcoming online journals. I have published, with Plain View Press in Austin, Texas, two books of poetry, Auras (2008), and The Fate Motif (2013), and have taught writing and literature at Milton Academy, The University of Virginia, James Madison University, and Germanna Community College.

Natalie Crick, from Newcastle in the UK, has found delight in writing all of her life and first began writing when she was a very young girl. She graduated from Newcastle University with a degree in English Literature and plans to pursue an MA at Newcastle this year. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in a range of journals and magazines including Rust and Moth, The Chiron Review, Ink in Thirds, Interpreters House and The Penwood Review. Her work also features or is forthcoming in a number of anthologies, including Lehigh Valley Vanguard Collections 13. This year her poem, “Sunday School” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize

Diane Webster’s goal is to remain open to poetry ideas in everyday life or nature or an overheard phrase and to write from her perspective at the moment. Many nights she falls asleep juggling images to fit into a poem. Her work has appeared in Philadelphia Poets, Illya’s Honey, River Poets Journal and other literary magazines.

Gene Twaronite is a Tucson poet and the author of six books, including two juvenile fantasy novels and two collections of short stories. His first book of poems “Trash Picker on Mars” was published in 2016 by Aldrich Press.
Read more of his work at www.thetwaronitezone.com.

Lisa Harris writes poetry, fiction, and essays.  She has a Master of Fine Arts from Milton Avery Graduate School and holds other degrees in educational leadership, literature and literacy.  Born of German and English descent in the Allegheny Moutntains of Pennsylvania, she has lived in Savannah, Georgia and Trumansburg, New York.  Her fictions have been published by Bright Hill Press, Westview/Harpercollins, ginosko, The Distillery, MacGuffin, RiversEdge, Nimrod International, Stillwater, The American Aesthetic, Argestes, The Habersham Review, Phoebe, Zone 3, The Coe Review, cantaraville, and the Anemone Sidecar.  Her poetry has been published in The Second Word Thursday Anthology, Puerto del Sol, The Cathartic, Karamu, Stillwater, Fennel Stalk, and exhibited in collaborative word and image installations with Susan Weisend, Nancy Valle and Carol Spence.

Jennie Robertson is a New England native who currently writes from her Maine home or wherever her submarine-fixing husband’s job takes them. She has two small children who are slowly but steadily making progress in their goal of teaching her to write in three-minute increments. She has been published in Mary Jane’s Farm, Literary Mama, and Mothers Always Write, and in the anthologies So Glad They Told Me and Here in the Middle. She is a regular contributor to the TOTS Network blogs.

Z.M. Wise is a proud Chicago native, poet, co-editor and poetry activist, writing since his first steps as a child. He has been a written-word poet for almost two decades and a spoken-word poet for four years. He was selected to be a performer in the Word Around Town Tour in 2013, a Houston citywide tour. He is co-owner and co-editor of Transcendent Zero Press, an independent publishing house for poetry that produces an international quarterly journal known as Harbinger Asylum, with his dear friend and founder Dustin Pickering. The journal was nominated Best Poetry Journal in 2013 at the National Poetry Awards. He is also an Assistant Editor at Weasel Press with another dear friend, Weasel. He has published four full length books of poetry, including: Take Me Back, Kingswood Clock! (MavLit Press), The Wandering Poet (Transcendent Zero Press), Wolf: An Epic & Other Poems (Weasel Press), and Cuentos de Amor (Red Ferret Press). Other than these four books, his poems have been published in various journals, magazines, and anthologies. The motto that keeps him going: POETRY LIVES! Mr. Wise will make sure to spread that message and the love of poetry, making sure it remains vibrant for the rest of his days and beyond.
Besides poetry and other forms of writing, his other passions/interests include professional voice acting, singing/lyricism/songwriting, playing a few instruments, fitness, and reading.

J. TARWOOD has been a dishwasher, a community organizer, a medical archivist, a documentary film producer, an oral historian, and a teacher. Much of his life has been spent in East Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. His previous books are And For The Mouth A Flower, Grand DetourandThe Cats In Zanzibar. His latest, What The Waking See: New and Selected Poems will be published in 2017. He has always been an unlikely man in unlikely places.

Margarita Serafimova has published two collections of poetry in the Bulgarian, “Animals and Other Gods” (2016) and “Demons and World” (2017). In English, her work is forthcoming in Agenda, Trafika Europe, Minor Literatures, The Journal, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Futures Trading, Poetic Diversity, The Punch Magazine, SurVision, and appears in London Grip New Poetry, A-Minor Magazine, Noble/ Gas Quarterly, The Birds We Piled Loosely, Obra/ Artifact, Dark Matter Journal, Window Quarterly/ Patient Sounds, Peacock Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, In Between Hangovers, MockingHeart Review, Renegade Rant and Rave, Tales From The Forest, Misty Mountain Review, Outsider Poetry, Heavy Athletics, The Voices Project, Cent. Margarita is a human rights lawyer. Some of her work: https://www.facebook.com/MargaritaISerafimova/?ref=aymt_homepage_panel.

John Timothy Robinson is a traditional citizen and graduate of the Marshall University Creative Writing program in Huntington, West Virginia with a Regent’s Degree. He has an interest in Critical Theory of poetry and American Formalism. John is also a thirteen-year educator for Mason County Schools in Mason County, WV. He strives for a poetics similar to Donald Hall, Maxine Kumin, James Wright, Louis Simpson, Gallway Kinnell and Robert Bly though enjoys learning from intrinsic poets and their theories in the critical writings of Denise Levertov, Robert Creeley, Louis Zukofsky, William Carlos Williams and Richard Kostelanetz. John is currently working on a creative dissertation in contemporary poetry, though outside the university environment.
Recent and forthcoming work:
Blue Collar Review, Kestrel, California Quarterly, Ship of Fools, Floyd County Moonshine, Wild Violet Magazine, POEM, Ibbetson Street Press, The Iconoclast, Pulsar Poetry Magazine, The Society of Classical Poets.org, The South Carolina Review, A Time of Singing, ThePoetryShed.com, The Avocet: A Journal of Nature Poetry, Pennsylvania English, Pinyon Poetry Review, Ancient Paths, The Trumpeter Journal of Ecosophy, Westward Quarterly, Green Hills Literary Lantern, naturewriting.com, Straylight Literary Magazine, Wild Goose Poetry Review, South Poetry Magazine, Glassworks Magazine, The Lyric, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Red River Review, Nebo, The Olivetree Review, Miller’s Pond Poetry Magazine, Connections Magazine, Fine Lines Creative Writing Journal, Pollen, Visions International and the Anthology of Contemporary Appalachian Nature Writing.
Critical/Craft Essays; “The Origin of “Wind on the Water.”
Fine Lines Creative Writing Journal.

Ed Higgins’ poems and short fiction have appeared in various print and online journals including: Monkeybicycle, Danse Macabre, Word Riot, Triggerfish Critical Review, and Blue Print Review, among others. Ed and his wife live on a small farm in Yamhill, OR, raising a menagerie of animals including a whippet, a manx barn cat (who doesn’t care for the whippet), two Bourbon Red turkeys (King Strut and Nefra-Turkey), and an alpaca named Machu-Picchu. Ed is Asst. Fiction Editor for Brilliant Flash Fiction, an Ireland-based flash journal.

Lepota L. Cosmo (Belgrade), poet and theorist, founder of Anamodenism and Tensurrealism, writer of ANAMOD Manifesto, editor of Journal of Advanced Rhetoric (JAR). Published in Souffles Montpellier, Rowayat Cairo, Azahar Cadiz, Zunai Sao Paolo, Ama-Hashi Kyoto, Revue OC Bias (Lot-et-Garonne).

Carol Smallwood  A Michigan writer in Wikipedia, Carol Smallwood’s recent books include In Hubble’s Shadow (Shanti Arts); Interweavings: Creative Nonfiction(Shanti Arts) 2017; Library Outreach to Writers and Poets: Interviews and Case Studies of Cooperation (McFarland, 2017).

Theodore Sabo is a resident of Washington State and an extraordinary lecturer at North-West University of South Africa. He has published in Acta Classica and the Journal for Late Antique Religion and Culture.

Richard Meade is a retired publisher and professor of English. He founded Story Press in the 70s and for ten years published award-winning short story collections. His book of poems is entitled Swimming the Channel. He complete an MFA in Poetry at San Francisco State University in 2013. In my time in at San Francisco State, I worked as the Poetry Editor and Editor-in-Chief of Fourteen Hills Literary Review. I currently reside in Beijing, China, where I continue to work as a Poetry Editor for Spittoon Literary Magazine.

My poetry has appeared most recently in Gesture Magazine, The Loreli Review, Verse Wisconsin, and I also work as a featured contributor for The Tusk.

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CONTRIBUTORS FOR ISSUE #20

Kevin Richard White is the author of the novels The Face Of A Monster and Patch Of  Sunlight. His work has been previously published by Akashic Books, Sundog Lit, Tahoe Writers Works, Crack The Spine, Dime Show Review, Lunch Ticket, Aji Magazine, Ghost Parachute and Cactus Heart Press among others. He lives in Pennsylvania.

Risa Pappas, award-winning short filmmaker, published poet and freelance writer/editor. Punky by nature. Fan of professional wrestling, quality film & TV, feminism, and cartoon cheeseburgers.
I live in New Jersey with my dead dog and four live plants

Michael Catherwood second book of poems, If You Turned Around Quickly, was published by Main Street Rag in the summer of 2016. His collection Projector will be published by SFA Press in the fall of 2017. He has published poems, reviews, and essays in various magazines, including Agni, Aethlon, Black Warrior Review, Blue Violin, Borderlands, Briar Cliff Review, Burning Bush 2, Ecletica. Georgetown Review, Graffiti Rag, Hawai’i Review, Kansas Quarterly, Kimera, Laurel Review, Louisiana Literature, Main Street Rag, Mangrove, Mankato Poetry Review, Midwest Poetry Review, Midwest Quarterly, New Plains Review, Pennsylvania English, Pittsburgh Quarterly, Red River Review, South Dakota Review, Sycamore Review, Westview, and others. He writes essays for Plainsongs and has recently published poems in The Common, Poetry South, Solstice, Louisiana Literature, New Plains Review, Bluestem, Burning Bush 2, and the Red River Review. He teaches at Creighton University.

In 2006 The Backwaters Press published his first book of poems titled, Dare. He has worked as a truck driver, weed whacker, garbage man, teacher, tutor, substitute teacher, and administrator. He has taught creative writing at the University of Arkansas, University of Nebraska at Omaha, and at Creighton University.
His awards include an Intro Journals Award for Poetry from AWP, two Lily Peter Fellowships, the Holt Prize for Poetry, and National Finalist for the Ruth Lily Prize. In 2003, he received an encouragement award from the Nebraska Arts Council. He was nominated for a Pushcart prize in 2014.

R. B. Ejue has had stories published in Red Fez Publications, Work Literary Magazine, Indiana Voice Journal, Ragazine, The Creativity Webzine, Green Blotter, aaduna, Mad Swirl Literary Journal, and Entropy Magazine.

Magdalena Randal is a European correspondent for the Saltwire news service in Nova Scotia, Canada. She also writes a bimonthly column from Paris, France for the New Glasgow Evening News.

Amber Wilson I am an Australian journalist, writer, filmmaker and poet. By day I’m a news reporter, covering courts and crime in Melbourne’s CBD. My work has appeared in most major Australian newspapers and online news sources. I’m also a feminist, bookworm, Latin dancer and lover of animals doing my best not to eat said animals.

Laurence Sullivan Runner-up in both the Wicked Young Writer Awards: Gregory Maguire Award 2016 and Penguin Random House’s ‘Borders’ competition, Laurence Sullivan’s fiction has been published by such places as: Londonist, The List, Amelia’s Magazine, Crack the Spine and Drunk Monkeys. He became inspired to start writing during his studies at the universities of Kent, Utrecht and Birmingham – after being saturated in alacross the globe and enjoying every moment of it. His website can be found at: www.laurencesullivan.co.uk

Katherine Fishburn is author of The Dead Are So Disappointing, a collection of poems. Her poetry has appeared in several literary journals, such as  Enizagam, Snowy Egret, Quarter After Eight, and the di-verse-city Anthology 2017. Most recently a poem of hers was published in the online zine Horn and Ivory. She is a past winner of the Editor’s Prize in Poetry awarded by The Florida Review. A funky visual artist who has had several solo shows, she is the companion animal to a toy fox terrier.

Z.Z. Boone’s fiction has appeared in New Ohio Review, Eleven Eleven, Potomac Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, 2 Bridges, The MacGuffin, as a “Notable Story” in The Best American Non-Required Reading (2014,) and elsewhere. boonezz@aol.com

Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over twelve-hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad, including GINOSKO. He has been nominated for numerous prizes. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for Kindle and Nook, or as a print edition. To see more of his work, google Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois. He lives in Denver.

E.G. Cunningham  My prose and poetry have appeared in The Nation, Puerto del Sol, Barrow Street, Fjords Review, Poetry London, 3:AM Magazine, The Poetry Review, and other journals. I hold an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a PhD in English from the University of Georgia.

Rod Zink is an Assistant Professor of English and Humanities at Penn State Harrisburg. In addition to Creative Writing, he teaches courses and conducts scholarship in the fields of Composition Studies, Technical Writing, New Literacies, and Genre Theories.

Besides writing, teaching, and his research, Rod enjoys collecting typewriters and the convergence of art, earth, the human animal, and all things mechanical, which is often expressed through the creation of his metal sculptures, which adorn the walls, tables floors, and ceilings of his apartment.

Sean Jackson’s debut novel, Haw, was published in June 2015 by Harvard Square Editions. He lives in North Carolina and his latest stories have been published in Main Street Rag, The Potomac Review, Niche, and Cleaver, among other literary magazines. He was a 2011 Million Writers Award nominee.

John Zedolik  For thirteen years John taught English and Latin in a private school. Eventually, he wrote a dissertation that focused on the pragmatic comedy of the Canterbury Tales, thereby completing his Ph.D. in English. He has had many jobs in his life including archaeological field assistant, obituary writer, and television-screen- factory worker, which—he hopes—have contributed in positive and intriguing ways to his writing. He has had poems published in such journals as The Alembic, Ascent Aspirations (CAN), The Chaffin Journal, Common Ground Review, The Journal (UK), Pulsar Poetry Webzine (UK), Third Wednesday, Transom, and in the Pittsburgh Post- Gazette. He also has numerous poems forthcoming this year and next in a variety of publications. His iPhone is now his primary poetry notebook, and he hopes his use of technology in regard to this ancient art form continues to be fruitful.

Mileva Anastasiadou is a neurologist, living and working in Athens, Greece. Her work can be found in many journals and anthologies, such as the Molotov Cocktail, Maudlin house, Menacing Hedge, Jellyfish Review, Asymmetry Fiction and others. She has published two books in Greek and a collection of short stories in English (Once Upon a Dystopia by Cosmic Teapot Publication). https://www.facebook.com/milevaanastasiadou/

Samuel Trotman is an actor and theatre maker based on the South Coast of NSW, Australia – where he lives with his partner Jes. His poems and plays have been in The Nest Space and ACA in Sydney, The NSW State Library, and New College, UNSW. He is currently completing a collection of short stories.

Liz Dolan’s poetry manuscript, A Secret of Long Life, nominated for a Pushcart, has been published by Cave Moon Press. Her first poetry collection, They Abide, nominated for The McGovern Prize, Ashland University, was published by March Street. An eight-time Pushcart nominee and winner of  Best of the Web, she was a finalist for Best of the Net 2014. She won The Nassau Prize for Nonfiction, 2011 and the same prize for fiction, 2015. She has received fellowships from the Delaware Division of the Arts, The Atlantic Center for the Arts and Martha’s Vineyard.

Emily Strauss has an M.A. in English, but is self-taught in poetry, which she has written since college Over 400 of her poems appear in a wide variety of online venues and in anthologies, in the U.S. and abroad. She is a Best of the Net and two-time Pushcart nominee. The natural world of the American West is generally her framework; she also considers the narratives of people and places around her. She is a retired teacher living in Oregon.

Rose Mary Boehm  A German-born UK national, she lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of TANGENTS, a poetry collection published in the UK in 2010/2011, her work has been widely published in US poetry journals (online and print). She was twice winner of the Goodreads monthly competition, a new poetry collection (From the Ruhr  to Somewhere Near Dresden 1939-1949 : A Child’s Journey) has been published by Aldrich Press in May 2016, and another new collection (Peru Blues) is about to be published by Kelsay Books.

Garth Gilchrist  Hailing from the woods of the Pacific Northwest and the mountains of California’s Sierra, Garth Gilchrist toured the US and abroad as a performing storyteller, poet, conference presenter and nature educator for decades sharing nature’s power to heal and awaken us to more vital experience of life, and as a window on the sacred. He is well known for his keen portrayals of John Muir, the Scottish American naturalist. Garth has produced 5 CDs of environmental stories. His first book of poetry, The Mountains Within, was released by Regent Press in February, 2017.

Brian Kirven graduated with a film writing degree from San Francisco State University, and long, open-ended motorcycle travels across the Americas, inspired by the Beats, dominated his twenties. A California Poet in the Schools, teaching from West Marin elementary schools to Marin Juvenile Hall, Brian has also been a radio programmer in the music and spoken word program “Learning Curve” on KWMR in Point Reyes Station. He is the author of the poetry collection Shorelines: A Traveler Comes Home  to the Tide Zone, and has been published in California Quarterly, The Kerf, and Inverness Almanac.

James William Gardner  A native of Southwest Virginia, James William Gardner writes extensively about the contemporary American south. The writer explores aspects of southern culture often overlooked: the downtrodden, the impoverished and those marginalized by society. His work has been nominated for the 2016 Pushcart Prize.

Benjamin Schmitt is the Best Book Award and Pushcart nominated author of two books, Dinner Table Refuge (PunksWritePoemsPress, 2015) and The global conspiracy to get you in bed (Kelsay Books, 2013). His new poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Antioch Review, The Columbia Review, The Summerset Review, and elsewhere. You can read his scary stories for kids in the Amazon Rapids app. He lives with his wife and daughter in Seattle where he also reviews books, curates a reading series, and teaches workshops to people of all ages.

Ronnie Farrell  I am female, 49, and a mature student studying English, History and Sociology at Maynooth University in County Kildare, (Rep of Ireland).

My short story is hopefully going to be part of a larger collection of poignant anecdotes told from the perspective of a child experiencing an unusual and turbulent childhood. hope you like it, thanks.

Katelyn Thomas is a poet and photographer who works in the children’s department of her local library. She spends her free time hiking, reading and watching her rambunctious hens cavorting in the sunlight. She has most recently been published in Social Justice Poetry and Haiku Journal.

Jeffrey Welker  I have published a novel, The New Man (Epidemic Books, Seattle 2016) but this is my first attempt at submitting poetry.

JW Burns lives in Florida. Recent stories and poems have appeared in Rivet, Cardinal Sins and Olentangy Review.

Chad W. Lutz was born in Akron, Ohio, in 1986 and raised in the neighboring suburb of Stow. A 2008 graduate of Kent State University’s English program, Chad attends Mills College in pursuit of an MFA in Creative Writing. Their writing has been featured in Diverse Voices Quarterly, Kind of a Hurricane Press, Haunted Waters Press, and was awarded the top prize in literary fiction by Bacopa Review for their 2017 contest.

Ea Burke Born in Philadelphia, Ea Burke now lives in southern Vermont where he practices law. Writing is a dear passion. His poetry has been published in Hearsay, Chrysalis, and PoemCity on several occasions.

Jamey Genna teaches writing classes in the East Bay area of San Francisco and received her Masters in Writing from the University of San Francisco. Her short fiction has been published in many fine literary magazines such as Crab Orchard Review, Eleven Eleven, The Iowa Review, Georgetown Review, and 580 Split, among others. Along with reading for many Bay area venues, she also hosts a seasonal reading series at the Bazaar Cafe in San Francisco called Summer Sparks: an eclectic mix of flash prose and poetry.

David Appelbaum treads a thin line between poetry and philosophy. A professor of philosophy at SUNY New Paltz, his work, in a series of books, focuses on the transcendent nature of ordinary things, including Everyday Spirits [SUNY Press, 1995]. In addition, his thought shows a special interest in the performance of the speaking voice. For ten years, he was editor-in-chief of Parabola Magazine, with its concern for wisdom traditions and the search for meaning. Publisher of Codhill Press, an independent literary small press which he founded fifteen years ago, he has produced a booklist of nearly one hundred titles, including authors of international reputation. A number of collections of his own poems have been published, including most recently Jiggerweed [Finishing Line Press, 2011] and Letters and Found Poems of Edisa and Chloe [Codhill Press, 2013].

John Tavares My previous publications include stories in various literary journals, online and in print:  Blood & Aphorisms; Green’s Magazine, Filling Station, Whetstone, Broken Pencil, Tessera, Windsor Review, Paperplates, The Write Place at the Write Time, The Maple Tree Literary Supplement, The Writing Disorder, Gertrude, Turk’s Head Review, Outside In Literary & Travel Magazine, Bareback Magazine, Rampike, Crab Fat Literary Magazine, The Round Up Writer’s Zine, The Acentos Review, Gravel, Brasilia Review, Sediments Literary Arts-Journals, The Gambler, Red Cedar Review, Writing Raw, Treehouse Arts, The Remembered Arts Journal, Scarlet Leaf Review, Ginosko Literary Journal, Mgversion2>datura, Quail Bell, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Grey Border’s Magazine, Free Lit Magazine. Also, over a dozen of my short stories and some creative nonfiction was published in The Siren, then Centennial College’s student newspaper. Following journalism studies, I had articles and features published in various local news outlets in Toronto and East York, including community and trade newspapers such as York University’s Excalibur and Hospital News, where I interned as an editorial assistant. One summer I broadcast a set of my short stories as a community broadcaster for Sioux Lookout’s CBLS/CBQW radio, and I recently wrote a novel, unpublished.

Born and raised in Sioux Lookout, Ontario, I’m the son of Portuguese immigrants from the Azores. My education includes graduation from 2-year GAS at Humber College in Etobicoke with concentration in psychology, 3-year journalism at Centennial College in East York, and the Specialized Honors BA in English from York University in North York. I’ve worked as a research assistant for the Sioux Lookout Public Library and as a research assistant in waste management for the SLKT public works department and regional recycle association. I also worked with the disabled for the Sioux Lookout Association for Community Living. Following a long time fascination with psychology, economics, and investments, I recently completed the Canadian Securities Course.

B. R. Dionysius was founding Director of the Queensland Poetry Festival. His poetry has been widely published in literary journals, anthologies, newspapers and online. He is the author of one artist’s book, The Barflies’ Chorus (1995, Lyrebird Press), four poetry collections, Fatherlands (2000, Five Islands Press), Bacchanalia (2002, Interactive Press), Bowra (2013, Whitmore Press), Weranga (2013, Walleah Press), a verse novel, Universal Andalusia (2006, SOI 3) and two chapbooks, The Negativity Bin (2010, PressPress) and The Curious Noise of History (2011, Picaro Press). He won the 2009 Max Harris Poetry Award and was joint winner of the 2011 Whitmore Press Manuscript Prize. He teaches English at Ipswich Grammar School and lives in Riverhills, Brisbane, Australia.

Patrick Theron Erickson, a resident of Garland, Texas, a Tree City, just south of Duck Creek, is a retired parish pastor put out to pasture himself. His work has appeared in Grey Sparrow Journal, Cobalt Review, and Burningword Literary Journalamong other publications, and more recently in The Main Street Rag, Wilderness House Literary Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, Right Hand Pointing, and Danse Macabre.

Keertika Lotni I am a 20 something university scholar situated in Delhi. I love reading and totally adore the many routes of escapism that my love for literature provides. I am from the town of lakes and hills, a feature that is adamant on defining me.

Douglas Cole has published four collections of poetry and a novella. His work appears in anthologies such as Best New Writing, Bully Anthology, and Coming Off The Line as well as journals such as The Chicago Quarterly Review, Chiron, The Galway Review, Red Rock Review, Midwest Quarterly, and Slipstream. He has been nominated twice for a Pushcart and Best of the Net, and has received the Leslie Hunt Memorial Prize in Poetry, judged by T.R. Hummer; the Best of Poetry Award from Clapboard House; First Prize in the “Picture Worth 500 Words” from Tattoo Highway. His website is douglastcole.com.

Dan Belanger has had stories published in small press literary magazines. The “Sunflower Experiment” was punblished in Tigershark, “Life in Times” was published in Dark Matter Journal of Speculative Fiction, “Creativity” was published in The Milo Review, “On Solid Ground” was published in Art Times.  “Returning to Earth” was published online in Mobius. “Killing Frost” was published in Home Planet News.  He has had two stories, “Learning to Speak” and “Between Times” published in Bellowing Ark.  He had another story, “How Mister Alberto Is Like Subatomic Particles, Dark Matter and the Universe Drifting Apart“, published in Lynx Eye.  I’ve had another, “Space Relations“, published in RE;AL, The Journal of Liberal Arts.  He also had a story, “Gardening in New York“, published in City Primeval.

Dan has a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English Literature from Clark University and a Masters in Social Work from Hunter College.  He has directed programs in the field of HIV care and prevention services in the South and Central Bronx. He currently direct a New York statewide HIV Quality of Care Program.”

Jennie Cesario I live and write in Long Island, New York, where I share a home with my husband and college-age twins. I hold a degree in Journalism from American University, and I’m passionate about making connections between life and literature and illumining both in the searchlight of faith. A version of this piece was first published on my personal blog where it resonated among my very limited following. For more samples of my work, please feel free to visit my blog at dappledthoughts.com.

Martha Batiz I am a Mexican-Canadian writer living in Toronto since 2003. I have always written in Spanish, my native language, but the need to cross the language border in order to build a career as a writer in Canada has inspired me to write in English, and my first short-story collection in this, my adoptive language, has just been published. Plaza Requiem (Exile Editions, Canada, Nov. 2017) is a collection that features some of my best stories self-translated from their Spanish versions, alongside new stories written especially for this project. For Ginosko, I chose an excerpt of a story which was a finalist in the CVC Short Story Contest, organized by Gloria Vanderbilt with Exile Editions. “The Last Confession” is the story that closes Plaza Requiem. I don’t know if it’s the right length as my computer couldn’t open your guidelines for the submission of excerpts, but should you be interested in my work, I can always adjust this to fit your needs, or follow up in any way that you see fit.

Excerpt of “The Last Confession,” a story in Plaza Requiem, Stories at the Edge of Ordinary Lives.

Mark Vogel has published short stories in Cities and Roads, Knight Literary Journal, Whimperbang, SN Review, and Our Stories. Poetry has appeared in Poetry Midwest, English Journal, Cape Rock, Dark Sky, Cold Mountain Review, Broken Bridge Review and other journals. He is currently Professor of English at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, and directs the Appalachian Writing Project.

Catherine Arra is a native of the Hudson Valley in upstate New York where she lives with wildlife and changing seasons until winter when she migrates to Florida’s Space Coast to commune with alligators, palms trees, and the occasional rocket. She is the author of three chapbooks, most recently, Tales of Intrigue & Plumage (FutureCycle Press, 2017). A former English and writing teacher, Arra now teaches part time and facilitates a local writers’ group. Find her at www.catherinearra.com

Forest A. Ormes  My stories have appeared in past issues of the late Amazing Stories Magazine, Blue Lake Review, Long Story and North Dakota Quarterly. The on-line journal, Red Savina, published my story, “Vanderdecken,” in their Fall, 2016, issue. I worked for two decades as a bi-lingual therapist and addictions counselor, serving the horsemen and women of the Chicago-area racetracks.

My wife and I divide our time between our residence on the southwest edge of Chicago and our small homestead in central Kansas.

Ken Massicotte is from Canada but now lives in Canterbury, UK. He has published in several journals, including: River Poets Journal; Turk’s Head Review; Glass: A Journal of Poetry; Wilderness House Literary Review; Gray Sparrow; Every Day Poems; and Poetry Quarterly.

Rob Stadick teaches high school English at Front Range Christian School in Littleton, Colorado, where he lives with his wife. He has never previously been published.

Matthew James Friday has had over 60 poems published in many UK and worldwide magazines and journals, including, recently: The Brasilia Review (Brazil), Drawntreader (UK), New Contrast (South Africa), Sheila Na-Gig (USA) and Poetry Salzburg (Austria).

Howard Winn’s work has been published in Dalhousie Review, The Long Story, Galway Review, Antigonish Review, Chaffin Review, Evansville Review, 3288 Review, Straylight Literary Magazine, and Blueline. He has a novel coming out soon from Propertius Press. His B. A. is from Vassar College. his M. A. from the Stanford University Creative Writing Program. His doctoral work was done at N. Y. U. He is Professor of English at SUNY.

Donna Walker-Nixon was a full professor at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, where she received the distinction of receiving the Mary Stevens Piper award for excellence in teaching. She currently serves as an adjunct lecturer at Baylor. She lists her five primary professional achievements as 1) founding Windhover: A Journal of Christian Literature in 1997, 2) co-editing the Her Texas series with her friend and mentor James Ward Lee, 3) co-founding The Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas 4) publishing her novel Canaan’s Oothoon, and 5) serving as lead editor Her Texas, which has boosted Donna’s faith that the voices of women writers and artists truly mean something to both men and women.

Sergio A. Ortiz is a two-time Pushcart nominee, a four-time Best of the Web nominee, and 2016 Best of the Net nominee. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in FRIGG, Tipton Poetry Journal, Drunk Monkeys, Bitterzeot Magazine, and ONE, Jacar Press.  He is currently working on his first full-length collection of poems, Elephant  Graveyard.

Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb  My work has appeared in Clockhouse, Depth Insights Journal, Watershed Review, Foliate Oak, Terrain.org, SLAB: A Literary Magazine, Kudzu House Quarterly, Caesura, the anthology Talking Back and Looking Forward: An Educational Revolution in Poetry and Prose (Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group), and many others, with work forthcoming in Weber—The Contemporary West, The American Journal of Nursing, Switchback, and others. In addition to past Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations, my work received more recent Honorable Mentions in 2016 from both Port Yonder Press and Erbacce Press. I have been an educator, a researcher, and an editor, and am co-founder of Native West Press.

C O N T R I B U T O R S     Issue #21

Chris Connolly’s fiction has appeared in the Irish Times, the Irish Independent, the Boston Review and the Hennessy Book of Irish Fiction, among others. His work has won numerous awards, including Best Emerging Fiction at the Hennessy Literary Awards, the RTÉ Francis McManus competition, and the Over the Edge: New Writer of the Year award. He was also highly commended in the Manchester Fiction Prize. His website is chrisconnollywriter.com.

Donna D. Vitucci is Development Director of Covington Ladies Home, the only free-standing personal care home exclusively for older women in Northern Kentucky. Her stories have been appeared in print and online since 1990. SALT OF PATRIOTS, her novel concerning families & uranium processing in 1950s Fernald, OH, was published Spring 2017. Her first novel, AT BOBBY TRIVETTE’S GRAVE, takes place in Paris, KY, ninety miles south of Donna’s home in Covington.

Norbert Kovacs lives and writes in Hartford, Connecticut. His stories have appeared or soon will appear in Thrice Fiction, Westview, Squawk Back, Wilderness House Literary Review, and No Extra Words.

Jessica Simpkiss lives and works in Virginia Beach, Virginia with her husband and daughter. She studied Art History at George Mason University. She is currently an associate editor with the literary magazine 1932 Quarterly. Her work has most recently been published or is forthcoming in the Hartskill Review, Zimbell House Publishing Anthologies, The Write Launch, The West Trade Review and the Virginia Literary Journal, amongst others.

Victoria Endres is an undergraduate studying Literary Studies, Creative Writing and Spanish at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia. After graduation, she hopes to teach English around the world. She has a passion for people, languages, and storytelling. In addition to teaching, Endres would like to continue writing about her travels and experiences.
“Tattoo” was accepted for publication at Underscore Review in December of 2017.

Luanne Castle’s Kin Types (Finishing Line Press), a chapbook of poetry and flash nonfiction, was a finalist for the 2018 Eric Hoffer Award.  Her first collection of poetry, Doll God, winner of the 2015 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award, was published by Aldrich Press. Luanne has been a Fellow at the Center for Ideas and Society at the University of California, Riverside.  She studied English and Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside (PhD); Western Michigan University (MFA); and Stanford University.  Her poetry and prose have appeared in Copper Nickel, Verse Daily, Lunch Ticket, Grist, River Teeth, The Review Review, and other journals. An avid blogger, she can be found at luannecastle.com.  She divides her time between California and Arizona, where she shares land with a herd of javelina.

Elizabeth Buechner Morris  I am a New Yorker by birth and temperament, although I live by the sea in Marblehead, Massachusetts and have for most of adult life.
When I retired from Bank of Boston my husband and I moved aboard our 39 foot sailboat and cruised the waters of the American and Canadian east coast, Caribbean, and South and Central America for five years, braving all the usual demons from horrific storms to marauding jelly fish to once having a boa constrictor aboard.  Now we live ashore most of each year, only living aboard full time in the sub-tropics during the winter.
I attended Sweet Briar College and have degrees from Goddard College in Vermont (BA) and Simmons College in Boston (MBA); those gold stars led to my career in banking.
I write for the sailing press: SAIL Magazine, Points East, Southwinds, Power Cruising, and others.  And I’ve had success with short fiction, being published in Euphony Journal (Univ. of Chicago), The Caribbean Writer, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Binnacle, The Evening Street Review, Janus, Slow Trains, WordRiot, PersimmonTree, Conclave, Main Street, weber studies, The Hurricane Review, Atherton Review, and others.  I’ve been asked to run writing workshops in Salem and Marblehead, MA and have done readings in MA and FL.  I’ve won literary prizes in Natick (The Center for Arts in Natick and Morse Institute Library) and Marblehead (Marblehead Festival of the Arts).
I’ve published three book-length works:  Bitter Passage (historic novel), Without You (short story collection), and Flotsam & Jetsam (memoir).

Mark Vogel has published short stories in Cities and Roads, Knight Literary Journal, Whimperbang, SN Review, and Our Stories. Poetry has appeared in Poetry Midwest, English Journal, Cape Rock, Dark Sky, Cold Mountain Review, Broken Bridge Review and other journals. He is currently Professor of English at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, and directs the Appalachian Writing Project.

Myles Zavelo attends Bennington College, in Vermont, where he studies literature and psychology. His first published piece “As My Attacker Drifts On Through; or, Other Men,” will be featured in Broad Street.

Tom Larsen  I have been a fiction writer for twenty years and my work has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories, Newsday, New Millennium Writings, and Puerto del Sol. My novels FLAWED and INTO THE FIRE are available through Amazon.

Doug Mathewson lives halfway between the kingdoms of Boston and New York City. He writes short, and even shorter fiction. Most recently his work has appeared in Bartleby Snopes, Chicago Literati, Ginosko Literary Journal, The Odd Magazine, and Star 82 Review. More of his work can be found at www.little2say.org “True stories from imaginary lives.

Paul Luikart is the author of the short story collection Animal Heart (Hyperborea Publishing, 2016) and the flash fiction chapbook Brief Instructions (Ghostbird Press, 2017.) His MFA is from Seattle Pacific University. He and his family live in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Peter Barlow  In addition to being a previous contributor to Ginosko Literary Journal, Peter Barlow is the author of Little Black Dots (Chatter House Press, 2017). His work has also appeared in Rosebud, The MacGuffin, The Homestead Review, Red Rock Review, Underground Voices, and Per Contra. He is an adjunct professor of English at University of Detroit-Mercy.

James Grabill’s recent work appears in Caliban, Harvard Review, Terrain, Mobius, Shenandoah, Seattle Review, Stand, and many others. Books – Poem Rising Out of the Earth (1994), An Indigo Scent after the Rain (2003), Lynx House Press. Environmental prose poems, Sea-Level Nerve: Books One (2014), Two (2015), Wordcraft of Oregon. For many years, he taught all kinds of writing as well as “systems thinking” and global issues relative to sustainability.

Richard Risemberg  I have published now and then over the years, in journals including Snowy Egret, Juxta, Eclectica, Terrain, Empty Mirror, and Switchblade. The story I am submitting to you grew out of the years I spent photographing and interviewing railroad tramps, and is a fictional distillation of what I learned there.

Jonathan Jones is a freelance writer and academic currently living and working in Rome. He qualified in 1999 with his M.A. in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University College and in 2004 with an MRes in Humanities from Keele University. He now teaches writing composition at John Cabot University in Rome and is studying for his PhD in literature at Sapienza University.
He has had several pieces of work published in The New Writer, Poetry Monthly, Iota, East Jasmine Review, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, FLARE: The Flagler Review, The Dr T.J. Eckleburg Review, Washington Square Review, The Gambler Mag, Negative Capability Press, The Manifest Station, The Ear and Dream Catcher.

Susan Terris’ recent books: Take Two: Film Studies (Omnidawn); Memos (Omnidawn); And Ghost of Yesterday (Marsh Hawk Press). She’s published 6 books of poetry, 16 chapbooks, 3 artist’s books, and one play. Journals include The Southern Review, Georgia Review, and Ploughshares. Online journals include Blackbird, Ginosko, and PoetryBay. A poem of hers appeared in Pushcart Prize XXXI. A poem from Memos was in Best American Poetry 2015. Ms Terris is editor emerita of Spillway Magazine. www. SusanTerris.com

Alan Catlin has two recent related by theme chapbooks, Blue Velvet winner of 2017 Slipstream Chapbook Award and Hollyweird from Night Ballet Press. Another chapbook from Presa Press, Three Farmers on the Way to a Dance will be published in 2018.

Fred Dale  I am a husband to my wife, Valerie and a father to my occasionally good dog, Earl. I received my master’s in English from the University of North Florida, where I serve as a Senior Instructor in the Department of English. I am also pursuing an MFA at the University of Tampa, but mostly, I just grade papers. My work has appeared or is forthcoming in Sugar House Review, The Summerset Review, Chiron Review, Crack the Spine, The Evansville Review, and others.

Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas lives in the Sierra Foothills. She studied at Santa Clara University where she was an English major. She is an eight-time Pushcart nominee, a five-time Best of the Net nominee and the author of the following collections of poetry,: “Epistemology of an Odd Girl”, March Street Press, “Hasty Notes in No Particular Order”, “Letters Under the Banyan Tree” and “The Wanderer’s Dominion”, Aldrich Press, “Breakfast in Winter”, Flutter Press, along with several chapbooks, “Litany of Finger Prayers”, Pudding House Press, “Object of Desire”, Finishing Line Press, “A Thousand Tiny Sorrows”, March Street Press, “The Butterfly Room”, Big Table Books, “The Nightly Suicides”, Kattywompus Press, “Things I Can’t Remember to Forget”, Prolific Press, and the winning chapbook in The Red Ochre Chapbook Contest, “Before I Go to Sleep”, along with her latest collections slated for publication this year with Main Street Rag, “An Ode to Hope in the Midst of Pandemonium” and ” In the Making of Goodbyes”, Clare Songbird Press. Her work has appeared in a wide variety of online, print magazines and anthologies, including: The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine, Poets and Artists, War, Literature and the Arts. She is the Assistant Editor for The Orchards Poetry Journal and a member of the Sacramento group of poets called Writers on Air. According to family lore she is a direct descendant of Robert Louis Stevenson. www.clgrellaspoetry.com

Dean Liscum lives in Houston, Texas and writes fiction in an effort to comprehend the non-fiction world in which we live

Thomas Piekarski is a former editor of the California State Poetry Quarterly. His poetry and interviews have appeared in literary journals internationally, including Nimrod, Florida English Journal, Cream City Review, Mandala Journal, Poetry Salzburg, Poetry Quarterly, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, and Boston Poetry Magazine. He has published a travel book, Best Choices In Northern California, and Time Lines, a book of poems.

Prisha Mehta is a student at Millburn High School in New Jersey, and she is very passionate about her writing. She aspires to be a successful author one day, and she has won many writing awards, including a Scholastic National Gold Medal. Her work has been published in “Spaceports and Spidersilk” and is forthcoming in “Riggwelter” and “Body Without Organs”. When she isn’t writing, she can often be found scrolling through psychology articles, sketching in her notebook, or, of course, reading. You can find out more about her at prishamehta.com

Katherine L. Holmes   Her poetry, short stories, and one-act plays have appeared in more than seventy journals, most recently ArLiJo, Manhattanville Review, Review Americana, Agave Magazine, Thin Air Magazine, Cider Press Review, Mused Literary Review, Red Booth Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, Blood Lotus, and The Adirondack Review. In 2012, her short story collection, Curiosity Killed the Sphinx and Other Stories, was published by Press Americana. More information is at her website: https://sites.google.com/site/katherinelholmesauthorprofile/

Jeremy Jacob Peretz is a Doctoral Candidate in Culture and Performance in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at UCLA.

Laura Valeri is the author of three story collections. Her books won the Iowa John Simmons Award, the SFA Press literary prize and the Binghamton University John Gardner Award. Her short stories appear and are forthcoming in numerous journals, most recently in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, The Forge, and McSweeney’s. Her new story collection, The Dead Still Here, is forthcoming from SFA Press in fall of 2018.

Gerard Sarnat is the author of four critically acclaimed collections. HOMELESS CHRONICLES from Abraham to Burning Man (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014) and Melting The Ice King (2016) are available at select bookstores and on Amazon. In 2015 work from Ice King was accepted by over seventy magazines, including Gargoyle and Lowestoft Chronicle and The American Journal of Poetry, and featured in Songs of Eretz Poetry Review, Avocet: A Journal of Nature Poems, LEVELER, NY, StepAway, Bywords and Floor Plan. Since then new sets of work have been featured in a range of periodicals including Dark Run, Scarlet Leaf, Good Men Project and Anti-Heroin Chic. Mount Analogue selected Sarnat’s sequence, KADDISH FOR THE COUNTRY, for distribution as a pamphlet in Seattle on Inauguration Day 2017 as well as the next morning as part of the Washington DC and nationwide Women’s Marches. Gerry has read at universities including Stanford. For Huffington Post reviews, reading dates, publications, interviews and more, click other tabs on Gerard Sarnat.com. Sarnat is currently working on a possible new sequence tentatively titled, Prisoner Poetry. Gerard has been nominated for a 2016 Pushcart Prize.
A virginal poet at the tender age of sixty-four, Sarnat first wrote about caring for the homeless and happenings in the lands of Abraham and Burning Man from the Judean Desert of his heritage to the Black Rock Desert’s annual pagan arts festival. Gerry has built and staffed clinics for the marginalized and been a CEO of healthcare organizations and a Stanford Medical School professor. Married since 1969, he and his wife have three kids and four grandsons, the last born shortly after they returned home from Desert Trip.

Natalie Safir  Author of 5 published books of poetry, the latest being Eyewitness in 6/16 by DosMadres Press. Poems in magazines and ezines such as Rhino, Mid-America Review, Slant, Same, Connecticut River Review, Natural Bridge, Ginosko Literary Journal, Centrifugal Eye and more. Anthologies include Art & Artists, Penguin; A Slant of Light, Codhill Press; My Line, Token. Short fiction in Persimmon Tree, Child of My Child, The Fairy Godmentor’s Advice, and Jungian Fairytale: The Woman with Midnight Hair. She has been a lecturer on contrmporary poetry, editor and workshop leader in local institutions.

Elijah Armstrong studies philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis, though he was born and bred in Fairfax, California. (Barring the first four years of his life, which were spent in San Francisco.) His mother, Mia Laurence, contributed to the first issue of ginosko.

Kim Cope Tait’s work has appeared in literary journals and magazines in the U.S. and abroad. Her chapbook of poems called Element was published in 2005 with Leaping Dog Press. Her full-length book, Shadow Tongue, is forthcoming with Finishing Line Press.

Allan Lake  Originally from Saskatchewan, Lake has lived in Vancouver, Cape Breton Island, Ibiza, Tasmania, Melbourne & often retreated to Sicily.
He has published two collections; Tasmanian Tiger Breaks Silence(1988) ;  Sand in the Sole(2014).  Lake won Elwood Poetry Prize 2015 & 2016, Lost Tower Publications(UK) Poetry Comp 2017.
He has been widely published in Australia.

Brandy McKenzie holds an MFA in writing, has published poems in more than three dozen literary magazines, won various awards, been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and worked on the editorial boards of three different nationally distributed literary magazines. These days, though, she mostly works as a paralegal, teaches critical thinking and writing to community college students, and tries to provoke conversation about strangeness of our shared waking dream.

Eric Dreyer Smith lives in San Antonio, Texas. Currently doing studies for a PhD in research psychology. He works as a counselor at a hospital and in private setting. There are over twenty publications of short stories to his credit.

Robert Hoffman  I live in southern California with my wife of 40 years. I graduated from the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts with a dual MFA. I am the creator of the 15 Poem series and have four volumes in print. More than anything I respect what poetry has to offer to the mind and how it allows me to see the both sides of everything.

James B. Nicola’s poems have appeared in the Antioch, Southwest and Atlanta Reviews, Rattle, Tar River, and Poetry East. His nonfiction book Playing the Audience won a Choice award. His first full-length poetry collection is Manhattan Plaza (2014); his second, Stage to Page: Poems from the Theater (2016); his third, Wind in the Cave (2017). A Yale graduate, James has been giving both theater and poetry workshops at libraries, literary festivals, schools, and community centers all over the country.

L. Ward Abel, poet, composer and performer of music, teacher, retired lawyer, lives in rural Georgia, has been published hundreds of times in print and online, including The Reader, Istanbul Review, Versal, Yale Angler’s Journal, Pudding, Indian Review and others, and is the author of one full collection and ten chapbooks of poetry, including Jonesing For Byzantium (UK Authors Press, 2006), The Heat of Blooming (Pudding House Press, 2008), American Bruise (Parallel Press, 2012), Little Town gods (Folded Word Press, 2016), A Jerusalem of Ponds (erbacce-Press, 2016), Digby Roundabout (Kelsay Books, 2017), and the forthcoming The Rainflock Sings (Again) (Unsolicited Press, 2019).

Neila Mezynski currently writes one act plays and is a found object/ installation sculptor as well.

Lois Greene Stone, writer and poet, has been syndicated worldwide. Poetry and personal essays have been included in hard & softcover book anthologies.  Collections of her personal items/ photos/ memorabilia are in major museums including twelve different divisions of The Smithsonian. The Smithsonian selected her photo to represent all teens from a specific decade.

Dr. Dave Robinson, MDiv, DMin – Executive Director https://creativeinterfaces.org–Creative Interfaces Inc. is a non-profit organization in San Rafael California. We facilitate personal, spiritual, and creative development through arts-related forums, presentations, workshops, retreats, and conferences.
Dave is also a visual artist, speed-painter, sculptor, and writer.

Kevin Richard White is the author of the novels The Face Of A Monster and Patch Of Sunlight Through No Frills Buffalo. His work has been previously published by Akashic Books, Sundog Lit, Grub Street, HCE Review, Hypertext, The Hunger, Crack The Spine, Dime Show Review, Lunch Ticket, Digging Through The Fat and Ghost Parachute among others. He lives in Pennsylvania.

Sheree  La Puma is an award-winning Author, Producer, and Social Media Strategist. She holds an MFA in Critical Studies & Writing from California Institute of the Arts and has published articles/fiction/books on a myriad of topics. Her flash fiction piece, ‘Assumptions,’ is featured in the July 5th, 2018 issue of Burningword Literary Journal.
In 2012, Sheree traveled to Ghana, Africa to meet with a child trafficking survivor. Changed by the experience, she spent the next two years writing about his journey. Passionate about women and the rights of the child, Sheree wants to reach out and inspire the voiceless.

Rebecca Oet is a high school student from Ohio. She is the national Scholastic Writing Awards silver medalist in Poetry, and the winner of 2017 River Of Words Youth Poetry Grand Prize, VOYA Magazine’s Teen Poetry Contest 2017 and the Short Poems challenge on Young Poets Network. She has published her poetry in Teen Ink Magazine, VOYA Magazine, Columbia College Literary Review, Tears in the Fence,*82 Review, and many others.

Mary Shanley is a poet/writer who lives in NYC. Four of her books have been published: Hobo Code Poems by Vox Pop Press and Mott Street Stories and Las Vegas Stories, Things They Left Behind and Poems for Faces by Sidestreet Press. I publish online at: Mr. Bellers’s Neighborhood, Blue Lake Review, Logos Journal, Hobo Camp Review, StepAway Magazine, Anak Sastra Journal, Shangra-la Magazine, Underground Voices, Edge, Poydras Review, Flagler Review, Garbanzo, Tell Us A Story.

Nicholas Arnold is a writer, entertainer and speaker from Toronto. His articles have been published in Elephant Journal, The Mindful Word and Intermission Magazine. He has directed two feature films and currently tours in the hit bio-concert: “Dean and Jerry: What Might Have Been”, paying tribute to comedian Jerry Lewis. He is a successful speaker, delivering talks on leadership and making your ‘impossible’ goals a reality.

Vivien Jones  Her first poetry collection – About Time,Too – (Indigo Dreams Publishing) in September 2010. In that year she also won the Poetry London Prize. She has completed a second short fiction collection on a theme of women amongst warriors – White Poppies (2012) – with the aid of a Creative Scotland Writer’s Bursary, Her second poetry collection –Short of Breath – was published in November 2014 (Cultured Llama Press) She is one of three editors of Southlight, a literary journal in south-west Scotland, and one of three Literature Ambassadors in Dumfries and Galloway. In 2017/18 she has been writing award-winning short plays.
www.vivienjones.info

Chris Cleary is a native of southeastern Pennsylvania, in which many of his stories are set. He is the author of four novels: The Vagaries of Butterflies, The Ring of Middletown, At the Brown Brink Eastward, and The Vitality of Illusion. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Gargoyle Magazine, Belle Ombre, Easy Street, The Brasilia Review, Menacing Hedge, Wilderness House Literary Review, and other publications. His short fiction has been anthologized in the award-winning Everywhere Stories.

Francine Witte is the author of four poetry chapbooks and two flash fiction chapbooks. Her full-length poetry collection, Café Crazy, has recently been published by Kelsay Books. She is reviewer, blogger, and photographer. She is a former English teacher. She lives in NYC.

john sweet, b 1968. A believer in writing as catharsis. His latest collections include the limited edition chapbooks HEATHEN TONGUE (2018 Kendra Steiner Editions) A BASTARD CHILD IN THE KINGDOM OF NIL (2018 Analog Submission Press). All pertinent facts about his life are buried somewhere in his writing.

G.D. Brown worked as a literary editor and award-winning newswriter at Oral Roberts University before graduating in 2015. His work has appeared in Westview, Promethia Literary Magazine, The Oracle Review, Peeking Cat Poetry, and elsewhere. He is currently an MFA candidate at Goddard College and lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

Jonathan Ferrini is a published author who resides in San Diego. He received his MFA degree in Motion Picture and Television Production from UCLA.

Christopher Stolle’s writing has appeared most recently in Tipton Poetry Journal, Flying Island, Edify Fiction, Contour, The New Southern Fugitives, The Gambler, Gravel, The Light Ekphrastic, Sheepshead Review, and Plath Poetry Project. He works as an acquisitions and development editor for Penguin Random House, and he lives in Richmond, Indiana.

Sofia Lago  I am a New Yorker living in the U.K., pursuing a PhD in history and folklore at the University of Bristol. My works have previously appeared in Junto Magazine, Birds Piled Loosely, Folio, A Lonely Riot, and Twisted Vine Literary Arts Journal.

Marjorie Becker  I am the author of Setting the Virgin on Fire: Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan Peasants and the Redemption of the Mexican Revolution (UC Press, 1996), and the poetry collections Body Bach (2005) and Glass Piano/Piano Glass (2010) both from Tebot Bach.
I hold a doctorate from Yale in Latin American history and am associate professor of History and English at USC. A fifth-generation Macon, Georgia native, I learned Spanish in childhood, served in the Peace Corps in rural Paraguay, and worked as a print journalist covering race relations in the south. I have received an array of awards, including a Faculty Fulbright Research Fellowship for Mexico, a USC Mellon Mentoring Award, awards from the AAUW and the NEH. I was honored as a runner-up in the Second Beyond Baroque Poetry Contest. My poems have been published in journals and anthologies including Runes, Spillway, Askew, The Peacock Journal, Angle of Reflection, Chaparral, Beyond the Lyric Moment, Desde Hong Kong: Poets in Conversation with Octavio Paz, and The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume V: Georgia. I am currently working on a new poetry manuscript and the historical monograph: Dancing on the Sun Stone: Mexican Women and the Gendered Politics of Octavio Paz.

Eric Dreyer Smith lives in San Antonio, Texas. Currently doing studies for a PhD in research psychology. He works as a counselor at a hospital and in private setting. There are over twenty publications of short stories to his credit.

Frankie McMillan  I am a NZ short story writer and poet and the author of four books. Recently I co-edited an anthology of short short forms including flash, prose poetry and haibun. (Canterbury University Press.)

Elisavietta Ritchie
Prizes: Winner: Great Lake Colleges award for Best First Book of Poetry;
Four awards National Endowment awards for stories; The Ledge: several firsts and seconds Other prizes& nominations including for Pushcart Prizes and individual stories & poems 3 Full fiction collections,: Flying Time: Stories & Half-Stories; In Haste I Write You This Note: Stories & Half-Stories (in print and e-book).
The Scotch Runner: Stories  (in press)

20 Full Collections Poetry: Harbingers; Reflections: Poems on Paintings, A Poet’s Gallery; Babushka’s Beads: A Geography of Genes; Guy Wires; Tiger Upstairs on Connecticut Avenue; Feathers, Or, Love on the Wing; Cormorant Beyond the Compost, Awaiting Permission to Land; Elegy for the Other Woman; Arc of the Storm,
Raking the Snow Tightening the Circle over Eel Country plus chapbooks including
Lunatic Moons: Insomnia Cantatas [in press] Timbot, novella-in-verse; A Sheath of Dreams and Other Games Articles, fiction, poetry, photography New York Times, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, Toronto Star, Washington Examiner, The Bay Weekly, Journal of the American Medical Association, Poetry, American Scholar, Southern Review, Ann Arbor Review, many literary publications.
Translations: Russian and French: poetry, prose, non-fiction for Voice of America, FBIS (Foreign Broadcasting Information Service), numerous newspapers, journals, anthologies Visiting Poet in universities, schools and libraries in US, Canada, and under USIA auspices, in the Far East, Balkans, Brazil, Soviet Union. Former President poetry division, then for prose: Washington Writers’ Publishing House.
Domicile (not just tourist): San Francisco, Paris, Washington DC, Southern Maryland, Canada, Australia. Half years spent in Cyprus, Lebanon.
Current domicile: #320, 11450 Asbury Circle, Solomon’s Island, MD 20688.
Elisavietta.Ritchie@gmail.com
www.elisaviettaritchie.com

Graeme K. Talboys was born in London and now lives in Scotland. He has had eight works of non-fiction, six novels, a collection of short stories, poetry, and various articles published to date. His non-fiction (published by the likes of Routledge and Grey House in the Woods) has addressed museum education, drama, and matters spiritual. His fiction (published by the likes of HarperVoyager and Monkey Business) inhabits the spaces in between; tales of the displaced who live and work in those places we pretend do not exist but are always there at the end of a dark alley or seen from the corner of the eye. ‘Four Rings of Light’ first appeared in his collection Stormwrack. His agent is Leslie Gardner of Artellus.

Darren C Demaree  My poems have appeared, or are scheduled to appear in numerous magazines/journals, including Hotel Amerika, Diode, Meridian, New Letters, Diagram, and the Colorado Review.
I am the author of eight poetry collections, most recently Two Towns Over (March 2018), which was selected as the winner of the Louise Bogan Award by Trio House Press. I am the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology and Ovenbird Poetry.
I am currently living and writing in Columbus, Ohio with my wife and children.

John Tavares was born and raised in Sioux Lookout, in northwestern Ontario, but his parents immigrated from Sao Miguel, Azores. He graduated from Humber College (General Arts and Science), Centennial College (journalism), and York University (Specialized Honors BA). His journalism was printed in various local news outlets in Toronto, mainly trade and community newspapers. His short fiction has been published in a wide variety of little magazines and literary journals, online and in print, in Canada and the United States.

Frederick Pollack  Author of two book-length narrative poems, The Adventure (Story Line Press, 1986) and Happiness (Story Line Press, 1998), and two collections, A Poverty of Words (Prolific Press, 2015) and Landscape with Mutant (Smokestack Books, 2018). In print, Pollack’s work has appeared in Hudson Review, Southern Review, Salmagundi, Poetry Salzburg Review, Manhattan Review, Skidrow Penthouse, Main Street Rag, Miramar, Chicago Quarterly Review, The Fish Anthology (Ireland), Poetry Quarterly Review, Magma (UK), Neon (UK), Orbis (UK), and elsewhere. Online, his poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Diagram, BlazeVox, Mudlark, Occupoetry, Faircloth Review, Triggerfish, and elsewhere. Adjunct professor of creative writing at George Washington University.

Robert Wexelblatt is professor of humanities at Boston University’s College of General Studies. He has published five fiction collections, Life in the Temperate Zone, The Decline of Our Neighborhood, The Artist Wears Rough Clothing, Heiberg’s Twitch, and Petites Suites; two books of essays, Professors at Play and The Posthumous Papers of Sidney Fein (out in October 2018); two short novels, Losses and The Derangement of Jules Torquemal; essays, stories, and poems in a variety of scholarly and literary journals, and the novel Zublinka Among Women, awarded the Indie Book prize for fiction 2008. A book of Chinese stories, Hsi-wei Tales, is forthcoming in 2019.

Sandra Kohler  My third collection of poems, Improbable Music, appeared in May, 2011 from Word Press. My second collection, The Ceremonies of Longing, winner of the 2002 AWP Award Series in Poetry, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in November, 2003. An earlier volume, The Country of Women, was published in 1995 by Calyx Books. My poems have appeared over the past forty years in journals including Prairie Schooner, The New Republic, Beloit Poetry Journal, APR, Slant, The Missouri Review, The Gettysburg Review, and Tar River Poetry.

Jon Kemsley Clark has recently been published in Blood & Bourbon, Breakroom Stories, New World Writing, the Fiction Pool and Neon. He lives and works on the south coast of England and occasionally remembers to call his brother.

Rusty Barnes grew up in rural northern Appalachia and now lives in Massachusetts. He received his B.A. from Mansfield University of Pennsylvania and his M.F.A. from Emerson College. His fiction, poetry and non-fiction have appeared in many journals and anthologies, and his latest book is the poetry collection Jesus in the Ghost Room. He maintains space at www.friedchickenandcoffee.com and on Twitter @rwilliambarnes.

Andrena Zawinski’s third and recently released full poetry collection is Landings. Her poems have received accolades for free verse, form, lyricism, spirituality, and social concern. She is Features Editor at PoetryMagazine.com and founded and runs the San Francisco Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon. She is also an avid shutterbug and dabbles in flash fiction.

Virginia Watts is the author of poetry and stories found or forthcoming in The Burningwood Literary Review, Temenos, Halcyone Magazine, Green Briar Review, the same, The Moon City Review, The Florida Review and others. Her essay “Marti’s Father” was nominated for a 2018 Pushcart Prize by the Ponder Review. She received honorable mention in Passager’s 2018 Poetry Contest. Virginia currently resides near Philadelphia, PA.

Edward Lee’s poetry, short stories, non-fiction and photography have been published in magazines in Ireland, England and America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen and Smiths Knoll. His debut poetry collection Playing Poohsticks On Ha’Penny Bridge was published in 2010. He is currently working towards a second collection.
He also makes musical noise under the names Ayahuasca Collective, Lewis Milne, Orson Carroll, Blinded Architect, Lego Figures Fighting, and Pale Blond Boy.
His Facebook page can be found at www.facebook.com/edwardleewriter

Donna Walker-Nixon was a full professor at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, where she received the distinction of receiving the Mary Stevens Piper award for excellence in teaching. She currently serves as an adjunct lecturer at Baylor. She lists her five primary professional achievements as 1) founding Windhover: A Journal of Christian Literature in 1997, 2) co-editing the Her Texas series with her friend and mentor James Ward Lee, 3) co-founding The Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas 4) publishing her novel Canaan’s Oothoon, and 5) serving as lead editor Her Texas, which has boosted Donna’s faith that the voices of women writers and artists truly mean something to both men and women.

Stephen Mead  A resident of NY, Stephen Mead is an Outsider multi-media artist and writer. Since the 1990s he’s been grateful to many editors for publishing his work in print zines and eventually online. He is also grateful to have managed to keep various day jobs for the Health Insurance. In 2014 he began a webpage to gather links of his poetry being published in such zines as Great Works, Unlikely Stories, Quill & Parchment, etc., in one place: Poetry on the Line, Stephen Mead For links to his other media (and even merchandise if you are interested) please feel free to Google Stephen Mead Art.

Jake Shore My short stories have been published by Litro, Halfway Down the Stairs, The Pitkin Review, JCS Press, Soft Cartel, Eunoia Review, Calico Tiger and others. In August of 2016, The Flea Theater presented my play entitled Holy Moly and its tandem novel, A Country for Fibbing. Broadwayworld states “it marks the first time a play with a correlating novel have been simultaneously released in the United States.” My play The Devil is on the Loose with an Axe in Marshalltown was listed in Playbill’s ’13 Shows Not to Miss Off-Broadway August 1-16.’ In October 2017, I read at the College of Southern Maryland’s Connections Literary Series with Tim Seibles, the current Poet Laureate of Virginia.

I’m currently an adjunct professor and the Director of the Academic Advisement Center at St. Joseph’s College in Brooklyn, and earned my MFA in Creative Writing at Goddard College, where I studied with Ryan Boudinot and John McManus.

C O N T R I B U T O R S for Issue 23

Kathleen Lynch has published poetry in many literary magazines, and has had work included in textbooks and multiple anthologies. Most recently, she won a 2018 Pushcart Prize. In addition to her 4 chapbooks and full book, HINGE (winner of Black Zinnias national poetry book prize), her next manuscript, LUCKY WITNESS is forthcoming next month from Blue Light Press.

Robert Julius is a writer and poet from Pittsburgh, PA. Currently, he lives in Columbus, OH where he studies at The Ohio State University and serves as the poetry editor for The Journal. His work has been featured in The Indiana Review: Online, Brine Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. Most recently, he won the Haidee Forsyth Burkhardt Award in Creative Nonfiction at OSU.

Terese Robison has lived, in almost equal thirds of her life, in Mexico, California, and New York. She’s been an editor, interpreter, and tutor/mentor for youth on probation and now teaches writing at community colleges. Her work has appeared in Hiram Poetry Review, West Texas Literary Review, Tahoma Literary Review, *82 Review, Monkeybicycle, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, and several anthologies; other appearances are forthcoming. A collection of her stories was developed in postgraduate study with Janet Burroway and Marisa Silver.

Michael Hettich has published over a dozen books and chapbooks of poetry, most recently “Bluer and More Vast” (Hysterical Books, 2018), “The Frozen Harbor” (Red Dragonfly Press, 2017) and “Systems of Vanishing” (University of Tampa, 2014). A new book, “To Start and Orchard,” is forthcoming from Press 53. A long-time resident of Miami, he recently moved with his wife to Black Mountain, NC. His website is michaelhettich.com

Robert D. Kirvel, a Ph.D. in neuropsychology, is a Pushcart Prize (twice) and Best of the Net nominee for fiction. Awards include the Chautauqua 2017 Editor’s Prize, the 2016 Fulton Prize for the Short Story, and a 2015 ArtPrize for creative nonfiction. He has published in England, Ireland, New Zealand, and Germany; in translation and anthologies; and in several dozen U.S. literary journals, such as Arts & Letters. His novel, Shooting the Wire, is forthcoming from Eyewear Publishing, London.

Patrick Duggan is originally from the Merrimack Valley in New Hampshire, and studied writing and literature at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts, and California College of the Arts in San Francisco. He’s the author of the chapbook The City Is Burning (2018 Monday Night Press), has been lucky enough to be a National Poetry Series finalist, and his poems have appeared in Beeswax Magazine, 26 Magazine, Noö Magazine, Monday Night, Shampoo, Parthenon West Review, Oranges and Sardines, Gangsters in Concrete, Mirage: A Periodical, Bay Area Correspondence School, and The Inman Review.

Susan L. Leary’s poetry has been published or is forthcoming in such places as Into the Void, Posit Journal, Arcturus (Chicago Review of Books), Heavy Feather Review, and Gone Lawn. She has been nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and her chapbook, This Girl, Your Disciple is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in August 2019. She teaches English Composition at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, FL. Find her at www.susanlleary.com.

Elizabeth Laborde She left the white-gray skies of Portland, Oregon for the open road, traveling up and down the West Coast from Los Angeles to Crooked Creek, Alaska. Along the way, she collected stories she writes about from her home in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Her work has appeared in Conte and Salt River View. Currently, she seeks a literary agent to represent her debut psychological suspense novel, Vernonia.

Gregory Davis is sixty-five years old. He is retired from a major aluminum company in Spokane Valley Wa, where he spent forty-three years as a grunt on the factory floor. He has been writing for three years.

William Snyder I have published poems in Poet Lore, Folio, Cottonwood, and Southern Humanities Review, among others, Poetry Prize, winner of the 2002 Kinloch Rivers Chapbook competition; I was the co-winner of the 2001 Grolier Poetry Prize; The CONSEQUENCE Prize in Poetry, 2013; the 2015 Claire Keyes Poetry Prize. I teach writing and literature at Concordia College, Moorhead, MN.

Corina K Skentzou I am a new unpublished writer. My short fiction is based on my 12 years of experience as a psychotherapist in NYC.

Paul Tarrago is an experimental filmmaker and writer living in London, England. Recent writings have appeared in The Wrong Quarterly, 2HB, decomP magazinE, Leopardskin and Limes, Ink, sweat and tears and Burningword Literary Journal.

He currently works as a lecturer at the University of the Arts London.

His most recent short story collection is The Water Rabbits (2018). Before that came The Mascot Moth and several other pieces (2013). Both are available from both good and bad booksellers. www.paultarrago.net

Jim Meirose’s short work has appeared in numerous venues, and his published novels include “Understanding Franklin Thompson” (JEF pubs), “Sunday Dinner with Father Dwyer” (Optional books) and “The Box” (Scarlet Leaf Press). Info at www.jimmeirose.com @weirdoes

Nicholas Alti, an MFA candidate at The University of Alabama originally from rural Southwest Michigan. I’ve been a fiction and poetry reader for Third Coast, an assistant poetry editor at New Issues Press, and am currently an assistant editor for poetry and fiction at The Black Warrior Review. My work has appeared or is forthcoming in DIALOGIST, Newfound, Pretty Owl Poetry, Barely South Review, and Yes, Poetry, among elsewhere.

Elizabeth Laborde She left the white-gray skies of Portland, Oregon for the open road, traveling up and down the West Coast from Los Angeles to Crooked Creek, Alaska. Along the way, she collected stories she writes about from her home in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Her work has appeared in Conte and Salt River View. Currently, she seeks a literary agent to represent her debut psychological suspense novel, Vernonia.

Mark Walters’ work has appeared in Word & Image, National Lampoon, Christianity & Literature, Carve Magazine, and The Atlantic Monthly, among other magazines and journals. He teaches creative writing and American literature at William Jewell College.

Elana Wolff is a Toronto-based writer of poetry and creative nonfiction, editor, and designer and instructor of social art courses. Her work has appeared in Canadian and international publications and has garnered awards. Recently her poems have appeared (or will appear) in Grain, The Maynard, The League of Canadian Poets Tree Anthology, Tamaracks: Canadian Poetry for the 21st Century (US), Minerva Rising (US), Another Dysfunctional Cancer Poem Anthology, Typishly, Vallum, White Wall Review, Acta Victoriana, and Room. Elana’s fifth collection, Everything Reminds You of Something Else, was released with Guernica Editions in 2017.

Deidre Jaye Byrne- Retired from teaching, lawyering and Long Island, Deidre lives happily in the Mid Hudson Valley of New York, where she spends her time reading all the books she bought when she was working. She is a student at the Writers Studio Hudson Valley. Her work has appeared in The Avalon Literary Review, Forth Magazine, Down in the Dirt, and Literally Stories (UK).

John Ellis has lived in Africa, Europe, and throughout the United States, serving as a teacher, missionary, and U.S. Soldier. His essays, articles, and book reviews have been featured in Relief, Able Muse, Embodied Effigies, Jonah Magazine, and others. Ellis earned an M.F.A. at Saint Mary’s College of California, where he was a graduate fellow. He serves as a contributing editor for the Journal of Veterans Studies.

Richard Risemberg was born into a Jewish-Italian household in Argentina, and brought to Los Angeles to escape the fascist regime of his homeland, and has lived there since, except for a digression to Paris in the turbulent Eighties. He attended Pepperdine University on a scholarship won in a writing competition, but left in his last year to work. He has worked jobs from gritty to glitzy, starting in a motorcycle shop and progressing through offices, retail, an independent design and manufacturing business, and most recently a stint managing an adult literacy program at a library branch in one of the poorest neighborhoods of the city. All has become source material for his writing.

He has pursued journalism, photography, and editorial writing, which, combined with his years in motorcycle culture, introduced him to the darker side of the dream. His fiction concentrates on working-class life, homelessness, and cultures of violence, and the indifference of the Dominant Culture to it all.

Mr. Risemberg has published stories, poems, essays, editorials, and articles in edited publications including the Los Angeles Downtown News, the Los Angeles Business Journal, Momentum, and, on the literary side, Snowy Egret, Juxta, Terrain, Empty Mirror, Switchblade, Mystery Tribune, Ginosko Literary Journal, Scarlet Leaf Review, Front Porch Review, Ornery Quarterly, Fiction on the Web UK, American Writers Review, and Short Edition, with pieces currently slated to appear in 2019 in Edify, Fear of Monkeys, and Bangalore Review.

Karen Barr has had short stories published in literary magazines in the U.S. and UK. She is a four-time winner of the Write Invite online competition, based in the UK.

Karen is the Staff, and Student Adviser at Writer’s Village University where she has, both designed and facilitated courses for their MFA Certificate Program. She currently working toward her three-year MFA.

Gill James I am published by, amongst others, Tabby Cat Press, The Red Telephone, Butterfly, The Professional and Higher Partnership and Continuum. I am a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Salford University. I have an MA in Writing for Children and PhD in Creative and Critical Writing

Jean Ryan, a native Vermonter, lives in Lillian AL. Her stories and essays have appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies. Nominated several times for a Pushcart Prize, she has also published a novel, Lost Sister. Her debut collection of short stories, Survival Skills, was published by Ashland Creek Press and short-listed for a Lambda Literary Award. Lovers and Loners, her second story collection, was published in 2017. Her collection of nature essays, Strange Company, is available in digital form, paperback and audio.

Matthew James Friday has had over 60 poems published in numerous international magazines and journals, including, recently: All the Sins (UK), The Ear (USA), Brushfire Literature & Arts Journal (USA) , and the Waterford Teachers Centre (Ireland). The mini-chapbooks All the Ways to Love, Waters of Oregon and The Words Unsaid were published by the Origami Poems Project (USA).

E. Martin Pedersen, originally from San Francisco, has lived for over 35 years in eastern Sicily where he teaches English at the local university. His poetry has appeared in The James Dickey Review, Ink Sweat and Tears, Mused, Oddville, Former People, The Bitchin’ Kitsch and others. Martin is an alum of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. He blogs at: emartinpedersenwriter.blogspot.it

Mauricio Palazzo is a journalist based in Santiago de Chile. He is the author of Origami (2016). His work has appeared in Eunoia Review and Verity La.

Toshiya Kamei holds an MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Arkansas. His translations of Latin American literature include My Father Thinks I’m a Fakir by Claudia Apablaza, South Exit by Carlos Bortoni, and Silent Herons by Selfa Chew.

Brian Kirven graduated with a film writing degree from San Francisco State University, minoring in creative writing, and later obtained an M.A. in Spanish after long, open-ended motorcycle travels across the length and width of the Americas. A California Poet in the Schools, teaching from West Marin elementary schools to Marin Juvenile Hall, Brian is the author of the poetry collection Shorelines: A Traveler Comes Home to the Tide Zone. He now looks to treat his settled life in West Marin like travel, discovering things fresh and anew at home.

John L. Stanizzi is author of Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, Hallelujah Time!, High Tide – Ebb Tide, Four Bits – Fifty 50-Word Pieces, and Chants. His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, American Life in Poetry, The New York Quarterly, Blue Mountain Review, Paterson Literary Review, The Cortland Review, Rattle, Tar River Poetry, and many others. Stanizzi has been translated into Italian and his work has appeared in many journals in Italy. He has read at venues all over New England, and his newest collection, Sundowning, will be out later this year with Main Street Mag. Stanizzi teaches literature at Manchester Community College in Manchester, CT and he lives with his wife, Carol, in Coventry.

Clara Luna is the pseudonym for a former university professor of Women’s Studies who dwells in the forests of Northern California. Her work has been published in various journals and she has received grants and fellowships for her writing. She also has a few history books to her name as well as a much lauded poetry book.

Jim Ross After retiring from a career in public health research in 2015, Jim Ross resumed creative pursuits in hopes of resuscitating his long-neglected left brain. He’s since published 75 pieces of nonfiction, several poems, and 200 photos in 80 journals in North America, Europe, and Asia. His publications include 1966, Bombay Gin, Columbia Journal, Entropy, Friends Journal, Gravel, Ilanot Review, Lunch Ticket, Kestrel, MAKE, Pif, The Atlantic, and Thin Air. He and his wife–parents of two health professionals and grandparents of four wee ones–split their time between Maryland and West Virginia.

Michel Steven Krug I’m a Minneapolis poet, fiction writer, former journalist, Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars graduate, Loft Literary Center member and practicing lawyer.

My poems have appeared in Poets Reading the News, Door Is A Jar, Raven’s Perch, Tuck Magazine, Poetry24, 2 Elizabeths, Main Street Rag, the Brooklyn Review and other literary magazines.

A.M. Gwynn writes short story, poetry, and flash fiction. Her work has appeared in Prachya Review, War, Literature & the Arts, Grey Sparrow Journal, Consequence Magazine, Wilderness House Literary Review, and other literary venues.

Joseph Murphy has been published in a wide range of print and online journals. He is the author of three poetry collections, Shoreline of the Heart, Having Lived and Crafting Wings. His new collection, The Shaman Speaks, is forthcoming from Middle Creek Publishing. Murphy is also a member of the Colorado Authors’ League and for eight years (2010–18) was poetry editor for an online literary publication, Halfway Down the Stairs.

Kilmeny MacMichael lives in western Canada’s Okanagan Valley, where she writes flash and short fiction. She has been published in Anti-Lang and online with The Ilanot Review, Watershed Review, Sleet Magazine, and other publications.

Gregorio Tafoya is an aspiring novelist with an advanced degree in comparative literature from Project Gutenberg. He will forever be jealous of the creator of storiesaboutprince.blogspot.com and wishes to have been the first writer to lament, in an author bio, about not writing the play Arcadia. His fiction has appeared in fleasonthedog.com and in modernliterature.org.

Lenny DellaRocca is founder and co-publisher of South Florida Poetry Journal-SoFloPoJo. His collection, Things I See in the Fire won the Yellow Jacket Press Chapbook Contest for 2017. He has 4 collections of poetry. The latest is Festival of Dangerous Ideas (Unsolicited press, 2019). Over the decades his work has appeared in Nimrod, Seattle Review, Poet Lore, Wisconsin Review, POEM, Laurel Review, Sunstone and other journals. He lives in Delray Beach, FL.

John Menaghan, a prize-winning poet and playwright, has published four books with Salmon Poetry (Ireland): All the Money in the World (1999), She Alone (2006), What Vanishes (2009) and Here and Gone (2014). A fifth book, composed entirely of jazz-related poems, is forthcoming from Salmon. His short plays have to date received a total of 6 productions, and one–“A Rumor of Rain”–was published in The Hollow & Other Plays (2008). His poems have appeared in a wide variety of journals, including The Hopkins Review, Ambit, Brilliant Corners, Poetry Ireland, Atlanta Review, Ginosko, and American Arts Quarterly. Menaghan has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in four of the last six years.

Anthony Watts has been writing ‘seriously’ for about 40 years.  He has won 26 First Prizes in poetry competitions and was longlisted for the National Poetry Competition 2014. His poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies, including Poetry Salzburg Review, The Rialto and Riggwelter. His fifth collection, Stiles, is due to be published by Paekakariki Press. His home is in rural Somerset and his main interests are poetry, music, walking and binge thinking – activities which he finds can be happily combined.

Mubanga Kalimamukwento I am an emerging writer whose first full manuscript, “The Mourning Bird,” is shortlisted for the Dinaane Debut Fiction Award, formerly the European Union Award. I am a Hubert Humphrey (Fulbright) Fellow at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs whose work has been published or is forthcoming in The Advocates of Human Rights, Two Sisters Writing and Publishing and the Dreamers Creative Writing Magazine

Ally Schwam is a poet, artist, and professional UX Designer. Her poetry is forthcoming in Levee Magazine and SurVision Magazine and has previously appeared in Dream Noir, Tupelo Press’ 30/30 Project, and others. She lives in Cambridge, MA.

Uzomah Ugwu My work has been featured in Prelude Magazine, Tuck Magazine, Wild Word, Light Journal, Voice of Eve, Angel City Review, Scarlet Leaf Review. I am the Contributing/Poetry Editor for A Tired Heroine magazine. I am also the Contributing Interviewer for Interlocutor.

Erren Geraud Kelly I am a Two-Time Pushcart nominated poet from Boston. I have been writing for 28 years and have over 300 publications in print and online in such publications as Hiram Poetry Review, Mudfish, Poetry Magazine(online), Ceremony, Cacti Fur, Bitterzoet, Cactus Heart, Similar Peaks, Gloom Cupboard, Poetry Salzburg and other publications. My most recent publication was in Black Heart Literary Journal; I have also been published in anthologies such as Fertile Ground, and Beyond The Frontier. My work can also been seen on Youtube under the “Gallery Cabaret,” links.

I am also the author of the book, Disturbing The Peace, on Night Ballet Press

I received my B.A. in English-Creative Writing from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. I also love to read and I love to travel, having visited 45 states and Canada and Europe. The themes in my writings vary, but I have always had a soft spot for subjects and people who are not in the mainstream. But I never limit myself to anything, I always try to keep an open mind.

Thom Young is a writer from Texas. A 2016 Pushcart Prize nominee. His work has been in Poetry Quarterly, 3am magazine, Thieves Jargon, Word Riot, The Legendary, 48th Street Press, The Zombie Logic Review, Commonline Journal, and many other places. Featured poet and critic of social media poetry on PBS Newshour.

Cambra Koczkur is a teacher, visual artist, and mother of two. Her poetry has most recently been seen in Rattle’s Poets Respond and is forthcoming in Mothers Always Write.

Andrew Jason Jacono is a writer, musician, and mountaineer who recently graduated Wesleyan University with a degree in English and French Studies. A proud Manhattan native, he has been telling stories ever since he could talk. His work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Cleaver Magazine, Green Briar Review, The Write Launch, and Litbreak Magazine, among others. If you’d like to learn more about him, or keep up with what he’s doing, you can visit his website: www.andrewjacono.com

ROBIN GREGORY is an American screenwriter and international, award-winning novelist who describes her work as magical realism. She studied French, Literature, and Creative Writing, and is a lifelong student of mysticism. Her début novel, Book One of an upcoming trilogy, The Improbable Wonders of Moojie Littleman, won Best Books of the Year from Kirkus Reviews, IPPY, Foreword Reviews’ Indiefab, and more. She lives in California with her husband and son.

Lisa Alletson’s creative non-fiction and poetry has been published in the Globe and Mail, The Write Launch, and will be featured in Blank Spaces in 2020. Her writing can be found on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/lisaalletson/ She has lived in South Africa and England, and now resides in Toronto,

Sheila E. Murphy is an American poet who has been writing and publishing actively since 1978. Her book titled Reporting Live from You Know Where won the Hay(na)Ku Poetry Book Prize Competition from Meritage Press (U.S.A.) and xPress(ed) (Finland). Also in 2018, Broken Sleep Books brought out the book As If To Tempt the Diatonic Marvel from the Ivory. Luna Bisonte Prods released Underscore in that same year, featuring a collaborative visual book by K.S. Ernst and Sheila E. Murphy. Murphy is the recipient of the Gertrude Stein Award for her book Letters to Unfinished J. (Green Integer Press, 2003). Murphy is known for working in forms including such as the ghazal, haibun, and pantoum in her individual writing. As an active collaborator, she has worked with Douglas Barbour on an extended poem called “Continuations.” Murphy’s visual work, both individual and collaborative, is shown in galleries and in private collections. Initially educated in instrumental and vocal music, Murphy is associated with music in poetry. She earns her living as a professor, organizational consultant, speaker, and researcher and holds the PhD degree. She has lived in Phoenix, Arizona throughout her adult life.

Christopher Heffernan  My poetry and fiction have been placed in magazines and journals around the country such as The Believer, The Writer’s Journal, Pacific Coast Journal, Cottonwood, Talking River, Toasted Cheese, The Broadkill Review, Midway Journal, The South Dakota Review, Louisiana Literature, the Sierra Nevada Review, thhologies and journals including Spillway, Los Angeles Review, and Lavender Review. Her flash novella, Adele and Tom: The Portrait of a Marriage, (Breaking Rules Publishing) was published in February. Originally from the Appalachian South, Courington lives in California

Thom Young is a writer from Texas. A 2016 Pushcart Prize nominee. His work has been in Poetry Quarterly, 3am magazine, Thieves Jargon, Word Riot, The Legendary, 48th Street Press, The Zombie Logic Review, Commonline Journal, and many other places. Featured poet and critic of social media poetry on PBS Newshour.

Jose Oseguera is an LA-based writer of poetry, short fiction and literary nonfiction. His writing has been featured in Emrys Journal, The Hiram Poetry Review, Inlandia and The Literarian. He was named one of the Sixty Four Best Poets of 2019 by the Black Mountain Press. His work has also been nominated for the Best of the Net award (2018, twice in 2019) as well as the Pushcart (2018 and 2019) and Forward (2020) Prizes. He is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection The Milk of Your Blood.e Tampa Review, Whiskey Island, and Big Muddy. I have had a book of poetry and flash fiction titled Rag Water published by Fly By Night Press.

Chella Courington is a writer and teacher whose poetry and fiction appear in numerous anthologies.

Thomas Badyna  Formerly publisher of alternative weeklies; later, various roles with various construction enterprises; presently, beverage importer, Toledo, Ohio.
I am not young, have come to a proper literary avocation too late, I think, to have as my gods what others have or have had for theirs. Maybe there’s a god for old men starting out, but if there is, he or she is a distant god, an attenuated thing like having no god at all. I don’t mind.
Credits:
2016, screenplay, Shitstream Sayonara, probably to be retitled, written on contract.
2010, thereabouts, published in a variety of literary magazines a couple of essays, four or five short stories, one of which, the “Toledo Penis Reader”, was anthologized, Test of Underground Voices.
2000, give or take, an Honorable Mention in a 24-hour fiction contest
In the late eighties, published, edited alternative weeklies; also was a staff writer for The Coloradan in Fort Collins and Metropolitan Magazine in Toledo, Ohio.
Nineteen, twenty years old, published a number of poems in literary magazines.

Raymond Luczak is the author and editor of 25 titles, including Flannelwood (Red Hen Press) and once upon a twin (Gallaudet University Press, forthcoming in February 2021). His latest book is Compassion, Michigan: The Ironwood Stories (Modern History Press). His work has appeared in Poetry, South Carolina Review, Passages North, and elsewhere. A ten-time Pushcart Prize nominee, he lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Melanie White  I’m an Anglo-American writer currently living in the UK, where I have published fiction and non-fiction in the Literary Review, Times Literary Supplement, Cent Magazine, Liars’ League, Litro, and newspapers including the Observer and Independent on Sunday. I currently edit Shooter Literary Magazine.

R. Nikolas Macioci earned a PhD from The Ohio State University.  OCTELA, the Ohio Council of Teachers of English, named Nik Macioci the best secondary English teacher in the state of Ohio. Nik is the author of two chapbooks as well as six books: More than two hundred of his poems have been published here and abroad, including The SOCIETY OF CLASSICAL POETS Journal, Chiron, The Comstock Review, Concho River Review, and Blue Unicorn.  Forthcomiing books are Rough and Rustle Rustle Thump Thump.

Lorren Tipping is a poet, writer, and student. She is currently studying to get her bachelors in Psychology with a minor in Creative Writing.

BeeLyn Naihiwet is a Seattle-based Ethiopian-American poet who immigrated to the United States when she was ten. A mental health therapist by day, aspiring poet by night, she discovered poetry was her second language while reading Rumi in a Medieval Literature class. Most recently she has studied poetry at the Hugo House in Seattle, as well as worked closely with Joy Roulier Sawyer at Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver.

Sochukwu Ivye is a linguistic stylistician, a rhythmist and a distinctive metrist. A final-year student of English Language and Literature, he is particularly interested in English Language (as opposed to English Literature) topics. His most enjoyable pastime is learning about newer linguistic trends. Sochukwu hails from Isseke, an ancient Igbo town in Eastern Nigeria.

Pavle Radonic  Australian by birth and Montenegrin origin, Pavle Radonic’s eight years living and writing in S-E Asia has provided unexpected stimulus. Previous work has appeared in a range of literary journals and magazines, including Ambit, Big Bridge, Southerly, Citron & Antigonish Reviews.

Auden Eagerton is a non-binary poet located in Kennesaw, Georgia. They received a Bachelor of Arts in English at Kennesaw State University, and will pursue their MFA in Creative Writing at Georgia College and State University beginning in August 2020. Their interests lie heavily in studying American literature and poetry. In addition to publishing their own poetry, Eagerton aims to one day become an editor for a literary magazine and be involved in both sides of the publishing process. Their work has been featured in Exhume Literary Journal, Cathexis Northwest Press, LandLocked Magazine, Across the Margin, DASH Literary Journal, The Bookends Review, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Digging Through the Fat/Digging Press, and is upcoming in peculiar, The Meadow, Kudzu, and Swimming with Elephants Press.

Gareth Culshaw lives in Wales. He had his first collection published, The Miner, by FutureCycle in 2018. He is currently doing an MFA in Creative Writing at Manchester Met. He has been nominated for Best of the Net. Gcwculshaw@moonfruit.com

Michael Mark’s work has previously appeared in the Solstice Literary Magazine, New Limestone Review, Delay Fiction and the Tahoma Literary Review. He studied fiction writing as an undergraduate at Auburn University, and presently resides in Maine with his wife.

Phillip Henry Christopher  Poet, novelist and singer/songwriter Phillip Henry Christopher spent his early years in France, Germany and Greece. His nomadic family then took him to Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio and Vermont before settling in the steel mill town of Coatesville, Pennsylvania, where he grew up in the smokestack shadows of blue collar America. Escaping high school, he made Philadelphia his home, alternating between Philly and cities across America, living for a time in Buffalo, New Orleans, Fort Worth, even remote Fairfield, Iowa, before settling in Indianapolis. While wandering America he has placed poems and stories in publications across the country and in Europe and Asia, including such noteworthy journals as The Caribbean Writer, Gargoyle, Lullwater Review, Blue Collar Review, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Blind Man’s Rainbow and New York Quarterly.

Hiram Larew’s poems have appeared widely in print and online journals, and have received four Pushcart nominations. His Poetry X Hunger initiative is bringing poetry and poets to the anti-hunger cause. He lives in Maryland and is on Facebook at Hiram Larew, Poet.

Laura White Gray  Last month, my poetry was accepted by Tulane Review. My fiction appeared in Whiskey Island Magazine and Berkeley Fiction Review this past year. Under my previous name Laura White Schuett, I published in Owen Wister Review, Black Warrior Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, Northwest Review, Pennsylvania English, Women Behaving Badly, Original Sin: The Seven Deadlies Come Home to Roost, Event, Confrontation, Kaleidoscope, Calyx, Xavier Review, Potomac Review, Southern California Review, and elsewhere. I also am a recipient of the Academy of American Poets University Prize, the Kuehn Award, and the Arizona Commission on the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship.

Marc Frazier Thanks for considering. Appreciate it. The first five poems have been published in literary journals. The second five have not. Thanks. Marc. Marc Frazier has widely published poetry in journals including The Spoon River Poetry Review, ACM, Good Men Project, f(r)iction, The Gay and Lesbian Review, Slant, Permafrost, Plainsongs, and Poet Lore. Marc is the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Award for poetry and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a “best of the net.” His book The Way Here, as well as his second full-length collection Each Thing Touches, are available online. Willingly, his third poetry book, was published by Adelaide Books, New York in 2019.

Jane Rosenberg LaForge’s third full-length collection of poetry will be Medusa’s Daughter, from Animal Heart Press in 2021. Her novel, The Hawkman: A Fairy Tale of the Great War (Amberjack Publishing), was a finalist in two categories of the 2019 Eric Hoffer awards. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Cease, Cows; Feral; Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal; and The Comstock Review. She reviews books for The American Book Review and reads poetry for COUNTERCLOCK literary magazine.

Elise Tegegne A high school French teacher and emerging writer, I recently graduated with my MFA in Creative Writing from Seattle Pacific University. My work has been published in Genesis and Indianapolis Monthly.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Sin Fronteras, Dalhousie Review and Qwerty with work upcoming in Plainsongs, Willard and Maple and Connecticut River Review.

Jomar Daniel Isip  I am a mid-career poet, having published my first collection, Pocketing Feathers, a few years ago with Sadie Girl Press in California. However, just like most of the writers I know, I still feel like I am just getting started. My works—including poetry, fiction, and plays— have appeared in many print and online journals. I’m a full-time English professor in Plano, Texas.

Glenn Ingersoll works for the public library in Berkeley, California where he hosts Clearly Meant, a reading & interview series. He has two chapbooks, City Walks (broken boulder) and Fact (Avantacular). Thousand (MCTPub), a multi-volume prose work, is now available from Amazon; ebook from Smashwords. He keeps two blogs,  LoveSettlement and Dare I Read. Other excerpts from Autobiography of a Book have appeared in Hawai’i Pacific Review (as fiction) and Caveat Lector (as essay).

James William Gardner writes extensively about the contemporary American south. The writer explores aspects of southern culture often overlooked: the downtrodden, the impoverished and those marginalized by society. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His work can be found in Fiction Southeast, Deep South Magazine, Silk Road Review, Newfound Journal, Gathering Storm Magazine, Burningword Literary Journal, The Virginia Literary Journal, Streetlight Magazine, Soundings East Literary Journal, The Mulberry Fork Review, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Straylight Literary Magazine, Ginosko Literary Journal, The Fredericksburg Literary Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, Map Literary, Scholars & Rogues Literary Journal, Constellations Journal of Poetry and Fiction Anthology, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Crack the Spine Literary Magazine, Huesoloco Journal, Edify Fiction Magazine, Sincerely Magazine, Torrid Literature Journal, From Sac Literary Magazine, Map Literary Magazine

James Harris is a Black, Mexican, and Irish writer who works as an English teacher at numerous colleges in both Maryland and Kansas. He currently resides in Lawrence where he and his wife fend off two demon cats named Todd and Ladybird.

My first work was published in Dark Fire Fiction, released April 8, 2019. I have works published in Youth Imagination Magazine and Jitter Press. My latest story is featured in Allegory Magazine, released in the November 2019 issue. Soon, a piece will be released sometime in 2020 in the podcast, Tales To Terrify. I have an English M.A from UMBC, and I currently live in Lawrence, Kansas.

Yvonne Nguyen I am a recent graduate of the University of Virginia. There I earned dual degrees in English and Drama as well as a Master’s in Secondary English Education. Now I serve as an English teacher to high school students.

Marjorie Power’s newest poetry collection, SUFFICIENT EMPTINESS, is forthcoming from Deerbrook Editions. ONCOMING HALOS appeared in 2018 from Kelsay Books. A chapbook, REFUSES TO SUFFOCATE, was in Volume 7 of the Delphi Series from Blue Lyra Press in 2019. Journals and magazines which have taken her work recently  include SOUTHERN POETRY REVIEW, MUDFISH, COMMONWEAL and ARTEMIS JOURNAL. She can be found at www.marjoriepowerpoet.com

Donald Levering’s 15th poetry book, Any Song Will Do, was published by Red Mountain Press in 2019. He is a former NEA Fellow and won the 2018 Carve magazine contest, the 2017 Tor House Robinson Jeffers Prize, and the 2014 Literal Latté prize. More information is available at donaldlevering.com.

Luke Maguire Armstrong ( SingTravelWriting.com), is a multilingual writer who has lived in Kenya, Iceland, Guatemala, Thailand, and India. He has worked in various roles in international development, was interviewed by Christiane Amanpour, and featured on ABC News 20/20. Twice he was mauled by a raccoon.
He leads writers retreats at his center Karuna Atitlan in Guatemala, is the author of five books, including most recently, “All the Beloved Known Things” (2019). Luke co-founded The Integral Heart Family Education Center in Guatemala, a haven of hope that teaches former street children creative writing, meditation, yoga, critical thinking, philosophy, art, and psychology.

Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in London, Ontario. Recent work can be found in places
like Muddy River, Unlikely Stories, Literary Orphans, Apricity, Right-Handed Pointing,
and On the Seawall.

Rita Plush is the author of the novels Lily Steps Out and Feminine Products, and the short story collection, Alterations. She is the book reviewer for Fire Island News and teaches memoir at Queensborough Community College, Continuing Ed, Queens, New York and the Fire Island School. Her stories and essays have been published in The Alaska Quarterly Review, MacGuffin, The Iconoclast, Art Times, The Sun, The Jewish Writing Project, Down in the Dirt, Potato Soup Journal, Flash Fiction Magazine, and are forthcoming in Backchannels, LochRaven, and Chicken Soup for the Soul. www.ritaplush.com

Crystal Bevers  I have an MFA in Writing from Pacific University, a BA in English from Washington State University (WSU), a certificate in Social and Environmental Justice from WSU, and a certificate in Mythological Studies from The Hedge School in Ireland. My creative writing has been published in Exponent II, Silk Road Review, GlassFire Magazine, Spark: A Creative Anthology, and Soul Paws. In 2016, I presented at TEDx Yakima on the value of a liberal arts education, and you can find my academic research in peerReview. I was Pacific University’s 2012 nominee for the AWP Intro Journals Award and have been a finalist for the Brass NUCL Award. www.crystalbevers.com

Katharine Gregg  I have an MFA from Vermont College. I have work published in major magazines such as North American Review, Cimarron, and Nimrod. My poetry collection Mere Thread is forthcoming in May 2021.

C O N T R I B U T O R S  to issue 26

Denis Bell is a maker of mathematical formulas and small fictions, which he believes, weirdly, that he draws from a common font. His writing has been published in Grub Street, The Maine Review, Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, Journal of Microliterature, Literary Orphans and many other print and online literary magazines and journals. A collection of his short fiction titled A Box of Dreams was published by Spartan Press in 2020.

Brucie Jacobs has published short stories and essays in numerous literary journals and magazines, as well as a memoir, Secret Girl (St. Martin’s Press 2006) and a collection of short stories, Small Burials. She writes and paints in Santa Fe, New Mexico. www.bruciejacobs.com

Wilson Koewing is a writer from South Carolina. His work has recently appeared in Pembroke Magazine, Ghost Parachute, New World Writing, Maudlin House, Trampset and The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts.

Susannah Sheffer’s chapbook This Kind of Knowing was published by Cooper Dillon Books in 2013, and her full-length collection Break and Enter will be published by Kelsay Books in 2021. Her poems have appeared in The Threepenny Review, Copper Nickel, Poet Lore, and other journals. She is a clinical mental health counselor who works frequently with people who have experienced trauma, and her book Fighting for Their Lives: Inside the Experience of Capital Defense Attorneyswas published by Vanderbilt University Press in 2013. She lives in Western Massachusetts.

Andrew Leggett is an Australian author and editor of poetry, fiction, interdisciplinary academic papers and songs. His two published collections of poetry Old Time Religion and Other Poems (1998) and Dark Husk of Beauty (2006) were put out by Interactive Press. The manuscript of his third collection Losing Touch has been accepted for publication by Ginnenderra Press later in 2021. In addition to medical degrees and postgraduate qualifications in psychiatry and psychotherapy, he holds a research masters degree in creative writing from University of Queensland and a PhD in creative writing from Griffith University. He was the editor of Australasian Journal of Psychotherapy from 2006-2011. He is the current prose editor of StylusLit.

Genevieve Jaser is currently a Senior studying English: Creative Writing and Communications at Southern Connecticut State University. Her poetry has been published in literary magazines such as Fresh Ink, and she plans on publishing a collection of poems after graduating. She is currently the editor-in-chief of Folio Art and Literary Magazine, and believes everyone has within them their own truths, boiling to get out. Through art and poetry, her work often challenges the complexity and bizarre nature of human behavior and emotions. She believes that when we notice our own strangeness, we may embrace it and help others to embrace theirs, too. After all, no one is normal, and that’s kind-of cool.

David Sapp, writer, artist and professor, lives along the southern shore of Lake Erie in North America. A Pushcart nominee, he was awarded an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence grant and an Akron Soul Train fellowship for poetry. His poems appear widely in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. His publications include articles in the Journal of Creative Behavior; chapbooks Close to Homeand Two Buddha; and a novel, Flying Over Erie.

Jamie Brown’s poetry has been published in:  American Literary, Bay to Ocean: The Year’s Best Writing from the Eastern Shore, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Café Review, California Quarterly, Connecticut River Review, Delmarva Quarterly, The Delmarva Review, Delaware Beach Life, Delaware Poetry Review,  Galley Sail Review, Gargoyle, Ginosko, Handbook for Mortals (2nd ed.), Howling Dog, Kipple, Maintenant, Midwest Poetry Review, Minimus, Musings, Nebo, Negative Capability, Parnassus Literary Journal, Phase & Cycle, Poet Lore, Poetry Motel, Potomac Review, Prints (Second Saturday Poets Anthology), Rat’s Ass Review, The San Fernando Poetry Journal, So It Goes: the Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library, Sons & Daughters Literary Journal, The Sulphur River Literary Review, Tekintet (Budapest, Hungary) ,Voices International, Winners, (an anthology of the Wordworks Washington Prize), The Wooster Review, Wordwrights! and many others.

He is the Founder, and was the first Publisher and Editor, of The Broadkill Review, Founder of the Annual John Milton Memorial Celebration of Poets and Poetry (now defunct), and first Director of the Dogfish Head Poetry Prize Prize competition. He has taught at George Washington University, Georgetown University, Wesley College, and University of Delaware, and taught the first Creative Writing Course to be offered at the Smithsonian Institution.  He was Poetry Critic for The Washington Times. He was a member of the Poetry Committee of the Folger Shakespeare Library. He was Fiction Editor of The Washington Review of the Arts, Associate Editor with the Sulphur River Literary Review, and Contributing Editor at Wordwrights Magazine.

Five of his plays have been produced in the DC small-theater scene; one swept the four major awards when reprised in the 2007 One-Act Play Competition in Milton, Delaware.

He holds the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the American University, where he worked on his poetry with Henry Taylor (Pulitzer Prize in Poetry), Myra Sklarew, Linda Pastan, and others, and on his fiction with Frank Conroy, Terry MacMillan, James Alan McPherson (Pulitzer Prize in Fiction), Joyce Kornblatt, and Kermit Moyer.

Kate Brandt  My work has appeared in Tricycle, the Buddhist Review, Talking Writing, and Literary Mama.

Erika Loh is a fiction writer who is currently studying at Yale-NUS College, Singapore. She is a Literature major, with a minor in Global Antiquity. Her work is published on Entropy, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore and elsewhere.

Zach Murphy is a Hawaii-born writer with a background in cinema. His stories appear in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Mystery Tribune, Ghost City Review, Spelk Fiction, Door = Jar, Levitate, Yellow Medicine Review, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Crêpe & Penn, Ellipsis Zine, Wilderness House Literary Review, Drunk Monkeys, and Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine. He lives with his wonderful wife Kelly in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Olivia Hajioff  My first published story, at age nine, was televised as a children’s ballet for the British television show, ‘Freetime’. I was a finalist in the Cadbury’s Short Story Competition at age ten. Since then I have written for the British Fulbright magazine, HIV Now project, and various musical magazines My poetry also appears on author William B.Irvine’s website. I was the Grand Choice Winner in the Laura Riding Jackson poetry competition, 2020. I received a Fulbright Scholarship in 1994 to study for my doctoral degree in violin performance and pedagogy. By profession, I am a concert violinist, teacher and member of the Marcolivia Duo.

Peggy Hammond’s poetry is featured or forthcoming inThe Lyricist, Oberon Poetry, High Shelf Press, San Antonio Review, Inklette, West Trade Review, and Rogue Agent. Her full-length stage play A Little Bit of Destiny was produced by OdysseyStage Theatre in Durham, North Carolina.

Sochukwu Ivye is a linguistic stylistician, a rhythmist and a distinctive metrist. A final-year student of English Language and Literature, he is particularly interested in English Language (as opposed to English Literature) topics. His epic, “The Great Cold”, published in issue 25 of Ginosko Literary Journal, is the longest metrical poem by an African. Sochukwu hails from Isseke, an ancient Igbo town in Eastern Nigeria.

Ashley Pearson  I am a rookie Korean-American fiction writer.

Kevin Brown has had Fiction, Non-fiction and Poetry published in over 100 Literary Journals, Magazines and Anthologies. Brown has won numerous writing competitions and fellowships, and was nominated for multiple prizes and awards, including three Pushcart Prizes. He co-wrote the film “Living Dark: The Story of Ted the Caver” that recently sold to New Films International, and collaborated on a television pilot with Linda Bloodworth (creator of Designing Women).

Grace Parsons is currently a student at California State University, Stanislaus. She expects to receive her Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science in the spring of 2023. She is currently working on a fantasy novella involving the love story of a human, a half-demon, and their fight to reform the underworld. When not writing, she enjoys drawing, playing music, and LGBTQ+ activism.

Christopher Parent is a writer and intellectual property attorney currently living in Zurich, Switzerland with his wife and two daughters.  He moved to Zurich after serving as in-house counsel for Nintendo and in private practice in Denver.  His work has appeared in law reviews as well as in The Good Men Project, Memoirist, Points in Case, Public House Magazine, and The Haven. You can find his work here:  www.chrisparent.net. 

Jeremy Szuder is a chef by night and creator of poetry and illustration work by day. His past track record in the arts includes; 15 years as a musician in various bands (drums, vocals), graphic design work for clothing/skateboard companies, 25 plus years of self published Zines, showings of fine art in the underground art scene, a 10 year plus stint spinning vinyl at various events all across the city, and at present time continues to have both illustrations and poems published by over a dozen fine art and literary publications all across the U.S.A. as well as Canada. Jeremy Szuder continues to call Los Angeles California via Glendale his home at present.

Emily Black Author of The Life Chronicles, a creative writing column for RAZZ Magazine, Emily’s work has appeared in Enigma Journal, The Founder and The Orbital. She assisted in the publication of The Riptide Journal Vol.12. From the South of England, Emily is currently studying an MA in Creative Writing in Bloomsbury, London, whilst redrafting her debut novel. She has a particular interest in the gritty undercurrent of the everyday, the relationships between people, and how our most unfathomable desires manifest in the pauses before we speak.

Declan Geraghty I’m a poet and short story writer from Dublin Ireland, and I’m currently studying creative writing and cultural studies.

M.C. Zendejas is an educator who studies for a fiction MFA at UMass Amherst. He is an inaugural recipient of the Hong Kim Czuprynski Fellowship as well as a fellow in the inaugural cohort of the Emerging Writers Fellowship given by Writers in the Schools (WITS). His work is featured in: Five2One Magazine, Liberation News, Acentos Review and elsewhere. You may find him on Twitter @mikeafff.

Georgette Unis I am the author of Tremors, a chapbook of my poems published by Finishing Line Press in 2018. Several literary journals have also published my poetry, most recently Naugatuck River Review, San Pedro River Review and Southwestern American Literature. In addition to my work as a poet, I also have an MFA in mixed media painting and have exhibited my art in many solo and group exhibitions, some of which presented broadsides of my poems.

David E. Poston is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Slow of Study. He has work forthcoming in The MacGuffin, Amethyst Review, Pembroke Magazine, and North Carolina Literary Review, among others. He is a co-editor of Kakalak.

David K. Slay  After retiring from full-time work, David K. Slay studied and participated for two years in the UCLA Writers’ Program. His short fiction can be found in a group of diverse literary journals, including Gold Man Review, Calliope, Wards, ImageOutWrite, Toho Journal Online, and others. Nonfiction craft articles are in CRAFT Literary and Submittable’s Content for Creatives. He currently is a fiction submissions reader for CRAFT, and has served as a Guest Editor for Vestal Review.

Timothy Robbins has been teaching English as a Second Language for 28 years. He has been a regular contributor to Hanging Loose since 1980 and his poems have
appeared in many other literary journals. He has published five volumes of poetry:
Three New Poets (Hanging Loose Press), Denny’s Arbor Vitae (Adelaide Books), Carrying Bodies (Main Street Rag Press) Mother Wheel (Cholla Needles Press) and This
Night I Sup in Your House (Cyberwit.net). He lives in Wisconsin with his husband of 22 years.

Susan Terris’ recent books are FAMILIAR TENSE (Marsh Hawk) 2019; TAKE TWO: FILM STUDIES (Omnidawn) 2017, MEMOS (Omnidawn) 2015; and GHOST OF YESTERDAY: NEW & SELECTED POEMS (Marsh Hawk) 2012. She’s the author of 7 books of poetry, 3 artist’s books, and one play. Journals include The Southern Review, Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Ginosko, and Ploughshares. A poem of hers appeared in Pushcart Prize XXXI. A poem from MEMOS was in Best American Poetry 2015. Her newest book is DREAM FRAGMENTS, which won the 2019 Swan Scythe Press Award. Ms. Terris is editor emerita of Spillway Magazine and a poetry editor at Pedestal. www.susanterris.com

Ken Wetherington lives in Durham, North Carolina with his wife and two dogs. His stories have appeared in The Fable Online, Borrowed Solace: A Journal of Literary Ramblings, The Remington Review, Waymark Literary Magazine, and others. His story “Black Bear Lake” appeared in the Spring 2017 issue of Ginosko Literary Journal. His first collection, Santa Abella and Other Stories, was awarded the B.R.A.G. Medallion from the Book Readers Appreciation Group in the literary fiction category. When not writing, he is an avid film buff and teaches film courses for the OLLI program at Duke University. He may be reached through his website: kenwetherington.com

Marcia Arrieta lives on the canyon near the sky & mountains in Pasadena, California.
Her recent poetry collections include perimeter homespun (BlazeVOX)
& vestiges ( Dancing Girl). Recent poems can be found in Eratio, Otoliths,
South Dakota Review, Hole in the Head, Claw & Blossom, Bee House, Otis Nebula,
Word For/Word, Cloudbank, & Anastamos.
She edits and publishes Indefinite Space, a poetry/art journal.

Frederick Pollack  Author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS, both published by Story Line Press; the former to be reissued by Red Hen Press. A collection of shorter poems, A POVERTY OF WORDS, 2015 from Prolific Press. Another collection, LANDSCAPE WITH MUTANT, 2018 from Smokestack Books (UK). Has appeared in Hudson Review, Salmagundi, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Fish Anthology (Ireland), Magma (UK), Iota (UK), Orbis (UK), Neon (UK), Bateau, Main Street Rag, Manhattan Review, Prick of the Spindle, etc. Online, poems have appeared in Off Course, Brickplight, Allegro, BlazeVox, Mudlark, Occupoetry, Faircloth Review, Triggerfish, Thunderdome, Neglected Ratio, Big Pond Rumours (Canada), Ginosko (Issue 22), etc.

Kelly Jean White  I have had work widely published in journals including Exquisite Corpse, Poet Lore, Rattle, and have been honored to be included previously in Ginosko Literary Journal (near the time of its founding). I have published a number of chapbooks and full-length collections, most recently ‘Lotus Feet’, (Finishing Line Press), and TWO BIRDS IN FLAME (Beech River Books). I have received a number of honors including a 2008 grant for poetry from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and have been nominated 17 times for a Pushcart Prize. I was privileged to have work included in two anthologies of work by physician writers, BODY LANGUAGE: POEMS OF THE MEDICAL TRAINING EXPERIENCE, from Boa Editions, and PRIMARY CARE, from the University of Iowa Press. I have recently been honored by being designated as Poet in Residence at Drexel Medical School. ‘Pandora,’ a poem related to my medical student experiences, was read on The Writers’ Almanac by Garrison Keillor. I welcome your comments and am grateful for your time and care. Stay safe and well. Sincerely, Kelley White kellywhitemd@yahoo.com. Brief bio note: Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in inner city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her recent books are TOXIC ENVIRONMENT (Boston Poet Press) and TWO BIRDS IN FLAME (Beech River Books.) She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant.

Paul Smith is a civil engineer who has worked in the construction racket for many years. He has traveled all over the place and met lots of people. Some have enriched his life. Others made him wish he or they were all dead. He likes writing poetry and fiction. He also likes Newcastle Brown Ale. If you see him, buy him one. His poetry and fiction have been published in Convergence, Missouri Review, Literary Orphans and other lit mags.

Joel Savishinsky is a retired anthropologist, gerontologist, recovering academic and unrepentant activist. A researcher in the Canadian Arctic, India, the US, England and the Caribbean, his Breaking The Watch: Retirement in America won the Gerontology Society’s annual book prize. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Atlanta Review, The Avocet, Blood and Thunder, Cirque, From Whispers to Roars, The New York Times, The Penwood Review, Poetry Quarterly, Right Hand Pointing, Soul-Lit, Starfish, The Third Eye, and Windfall. He lives in Seattle, helping to raise five grandchildren and the climate of opinion about social justice. savishin@hotmail.com

Elizabeth Morse is a poet who lives in New York’s East Village. Her work has been published in literary magazines such as Blue Mesa Review, Hazmat Review, Mudfish, Lynx Eye, Home Planet News, and Freezer Burn and anthologies such as Crimes of the Beats and The Unbearables Big Book of Sex. Her book of poems, The Future Is Now, was published by Linear Arts Press. She has her MFA from Brooklyn College and supports her poetry with a job in information technology.
John Sweet sends greetings from the rural wastelands of upstate NY. He is a firm believer in writing as catharsis, and in the continuous search for an unattainable and constantly evolving absolute truth. His latest poetry collections include A FLAG ON FIRE IS A SONG OF HOPE (2019 Scars Publications) and A DEAD MAN, EITHER WAY (2020 Kung Fu Treachery Press).

James William Gardner writes extensively about the contemporary American south. The writer explores aspects of southern culture often overlooked: the downtrodden, the impoverished and those marginalized by society. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His work has appeared inThe Bookends Review, Fiction Southeast, Deep South Magazine, Silk Road Review, Newfound Journal, Gathering Storm Magazine, Burningword Literary Journal, The Virginia Literary Journal, Streetlight Magazine, Soundings East Literary Journal, The Mulberry Fork Review, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Straylight Literary Magazine, Ginosko Literary Journal, The Fredericksburg Literary Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, Map Literary, Scholars & Rogues Literary Journal, Constellations Journal of Poetry and Fiction Anthology, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Crack the Spine Literary Magazine, Huesoloco Journal, Edify Fiction Magazine, Sincerely Magazine, Torrid Literature Journal, From Sac Literary Magazine, Map Literary Magazine

Allan Johnston has been publishing poetry for over 30 years, and has had work appear in Poetry, Poetry East, Rattle, Rhino, Weber Studies, and more than forty other journals. Among other awards, he has received an Illinois Arts Council fellowship, Pushcart Prize Nominations, and First Prize in Poetry in the 2010 Outrider Press Literary Anthology contest. He has published two books of poetry, Tasks of Survival (1996) and In a Window (2018). He has also published three chapbooks, Northport (2010), Departures (2013), and Contingencies (2015). Besides writing poetry, he has written on American literature and other topics, is past president of the Society for the Philosophical Study of Education, and teaches writing and literature at Columbia College and at DePaul University, both in Chicago. He co-edits Journal for the Philosophical Study of Education and serves as an outside poetry reader for poetry journals and for the Illinois Emerging Poets Competition. His other occupations have included being a forest fire fighter and an East Indian cook. Regarding his collection Northport, the poet Alan Williamson said “These are beautifully-made poems of the Pacific Northwest, in Gary Snyder’s tradition of close attention to the world, the moment, and the heft of words. It’s a pleasure to see them in print,” while Richard Jones commented, “In Northport, the poet guides the reader through the wonder and waste of the past, and to travel with him is to suffer with him; yet it is also a transcendent chance to recover valuable old territory, to make it new again, and to claim as one’s own ‘all the beauty dancing there’.” Gary Snyder said of Tasks of Survival, “Strong, controlled, finished, some excellent turns.” Regarding Departures, he said “Johnston’s intimate knowledge of Pacific Coast L. A. suburb lifeways comes alive anew in an old language—dry and elegant literary English—even as the ever-present ocean washes over it all. ‘We children’ troop through the bedrooms and classrooms of the past. These poems chart how we left that (personal) past behind. A strange and moving gathering of poems.”

Emalisa Rose is a poet, crafts artist, dollmaker. She is an animal rescue volunteer. Living by a beach town provides much of the inspiration weaving into her art. Her poems have appeared in the Big Wondow Review, Ariel Chart and October Hill.

Gene Twaronite is a Tucson poet, essayist, and children’s fiction writer. His first poetry collection Trash Picker on Mars (Kelsay Books) was the winner of the 2017 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for Arizona poetry. Other poetry collections include The Museum of Unwearable Shoes and What the Gargoyle Sees. Follow more of Gene’s writing at his website: thetwaronitezone.com.

Dan Walker  These poems are all casual chatter. In the past, my writing has appeared in Wilder Voice, THAT Literary Review, and BlendTW. Online work includes the web art collaboration wordways.us and a meme page that never gathered any momentum.

Dan Raphael feels most fortunate to have had two poetry collections published in 2020: Moving with Every came out from Flowstone Press in June, while Starting Small was published by Alien Buddha Press in October. More recent poems appear in eratio, Phantom Drift, Former People, Synchronized Chaos and Otoliths.

Matthew J. Andrews is a private investigator and writer who lives in Modesto, California. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Orange Blossom Review, Funicular Magazine, Red Rock Review, Sojourners, Amethyst Review, Kissing Dynamite, and Deep Wild Journal, among others. He can be contacted at matthewjandrews.com.

Rob DiLillo has an English credential from UC Berkeley and has recently retired after teaching for 32 years. He is a devotee of the Centrum writing community and the author of Just Say Yes, (Be My Heroin?), a novel about addiction and poison and Night People, a noir mystery, both of which are set in Portland, Oregon.

Clive Aaron Gill  Fifty of his stories have appeared in literary journals and in People of Few Words Anthology. He tells his stories at public and private gatherings. Born in Zimbabwe, Clive has lived and worked in Southern Africa, North America and Europe. He received a degree in Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles and lives in San Diego.

John C. Krieg is a retired landscape architect and land planner who formerly practiced in Arizona, California, and Nevada. He is also retired as an International Society of Arboriculture (ISA) certified arborist and currently holds seven active categories of California state contracting licenses, including the highest category of Class A General Engineering. He has written a college textbook entitled Desert Landscape Architecture (1999, CRC Press). John has had pieces published in A Gathering of the Tribes, Alternating Current, Blue Mountain Review, Clark Street Review, Conceit, Homestead Review, Line Rider Press, Lucky Jefferson, Oddball Magazine, Palm Springs Life, Pegasus, Pen and Pendulum, Saint Ann’s Review, The Courtship of Winds, The Mindful Word, The Writing Disorder, and Wilderness House Literary Review. In conjunction with filmmaker/photographer Charles Sappington, Mr. Krieg has completed a two-part documentary film entitled Landscape Architecture: The Next Generation (2010). In some underground circles John is considered a master grower of marijuana and holds as a lifelong goal the desire to see marijuana federally legalized. Nothing else will do. To that end he has two books coming out this year being published by Ribbonwood Press entitled: Marijuana Tales and More Marijuana Tales.

Jeff Crim is a Lutheran (ELCA) pastor living with wife Danielle and son Leo in Chattanooga, TN. He currently serves as pastor of Ascension Lutheran Church and Staff Chaplain at CHI Memorial Hospital. Previously he has served as a Chaplain to the United States Coast Guard, Seamen’s Church Institute of NY & NJ, The Virginia Department of Military Affairs, and the Wayne County, IN jail. Jeff holds degrees from Guilford College, The University of Tennessee, and The School of Religion at Earlham College. He has held faculty positions at Ball State University and Chattanooga State Community College. Jeff is always eager to hear from people who wish to discuss his writing and may be contacted at jpcrim1974@gmail.com

Amaya L. Koss is a speculative fiction and nonfiction writer. Her work revolves around the bizarre nature of human emotion and strives to tell a story that is both absurd and relatable. Amaya is the former editor in chief of Santa Fe University of Art and Design’s literary magazine Glyph and she has been published in Capricious Magazine, Welcome to the Future Anthology, and Concis Magazine. She currently works as a feedback editor for Blood Tree Literature Magazine.

Infinity Gatlin is creative writing graduate of The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Her poetry has previously been published in Shards, an online journal through Glass Mountain. Her current lifetime has been made special by her brother Siddhartha’s music, graveyards under the night sky, and smutty fanfiction. She lives in a dream with her wonderful partner, a noisy old lady in the form of a cat, a demon in the form of a cat, and too many (not enough) books.”

David Appelbaum has worked in the university and in publishing, and is an author who specializes in the work of writing. His most recent books include notes on water: an aqueous phenomenology [Monkfish, 2018] and Portugese Sailor Boy [Black Spring, 2020].

Francine Witte’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Smokelong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Mid-American Review, and Passages North. Her latest books are Dressed All Wrong for This (Blue Light Press,) The Way of the Wind (AdHoc fiction,) and The Theory of Flesh (Kelsay Books.) Her chapbook, The Cake, The Smoke, The Moon (flash fiction) was published by ELJ in Fall 2021. She is flash fiction editor for Flash Boulevard and The South Florida Poetry Journal. She lives in NYC.

Jim Latham’s work has appeared in Rue Scribe, 50-Word Stories, Fleas on the Dog, Dezmin’s Archives, and Opium Magazine. Please visit www.jimlatham.com for more writing.

Nicholas Bridgman holds two bachelor’s degrees from U.C. Berkeley in Rhetoric and Ecology. His fiction has appeared in Please See Me, Pilcrow & Dagger, and Indiana Voice Journal, and he is the author of the novel, A Character in Reality. He currently lives in Southern California.

Susan E. Gunter has published poems in America (Paterson Review, Atlanta Review, Louisville Review, Poet Lore, and dozens of other journals), Bulgaria, England, Montenegro, and Sweden. Her reviews have appeared in American Arts Quarterly, Crab Creek Review, the Harvard Review, Victorian Studies, etc. She has volunteered for Marin Poetry Center and Redwood Writers. She has had three Fulbright fellowships, teaching poetry in the Balkans.
Frederick Livingston lives in the liminal space between sustainable agriculture, experiential education and peacebuilding. His poems have appeared in literary magazines, scientific journals, public parks and bathroom stalls. Compelled by the power of metaphor to shape culture, he strive to plant seeds for a more fruitful world.

Richard Risemberg was born to a mixed and mixed-up family in Argentina, and dragged to LA as a child to escape the fascist regime. He’s spent the next few decades exploring the darker corners of the America Dream and writing stories, poems, and essays based on his experiences. He has published widely in the last few years, mostly short fiction in literary journals; you want to see proof? Go to http://crowtreebooks.com/richard-risemberg-publications/ and click a few links. Some of the stories may disturb your sleep; some will give you sweet dreams.

Claire Scott is an award winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize
nominations. Her work has appeared in the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review, Enizagam and Healing Muse among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and Until I Couldn’t. She is the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A
Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.

Richard Risemberg was born to a mixed and mixed-up family in Argentina, and dragged to LA as a child to escape the fascist regime. He’s spent the next few decades exploring the darker corners of the America Dream and writing stories, poems, and essays based on his experiences. He has published widely in the last few years, mostly short fiction in literary journals; you want to see proof? Go to http://crowtreebooks.com/richard-risemberg-publications/ and click a few links. Some of the stories may disturb your sleep; some will give you sweet dreams.

Claire Scott is an award winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has appeared in the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review, Enizagam and Healing Muse among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and Until I Couldn’t. She is the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.

John Ryland  My previous works have appeared in Bewildering Stories, Otherwise Engaged, The Writer’s Magazine, as well as in a collection of short stories entitled Southern Gothic.

JW Burns  Recent work in I-70 Review and Adelaide Magazine. Sore-armed from repeated jabs but nurturing a good thought for the future.

Bethany Bruno is a born and raised Florida author of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Her work has been previously published in numerous publications, such as The MacGuffin, Ruminate, Lunch Ticket Magazine, Litro Magazine, and DASH. She holds a BA in English from Flagler College and an MA from The University of North Florida.
She’s working on her first novel.

David Shapiro del Sole I live in Tasmania, Australia where I work as a psychotherapist in private practice.

Keith Mark Gaboury earned a M.F.A. in creative writing from Emerson College. His poems have appeared in such literary publications as Poetry Quarterly and New Millennium Writings along with chapbooks from Duck Lake Books and The Pedestrian Press. He has a forthcoming chapbook from Finishing Line Press. Keith lives in Oakland, California. Learn more at www.keithmgaboury.com.

Bett Butler’s poetry and short fiction have appeared in Weave, Feathertale, Voices de la Luna, Amp, and Fabula Argentea. An award-winning songwriter and jazz musician (International Songwriting Competition, Independent Music Awards), she co-owns Mandala Music Production in San Antonio, Texas, where she and her spouse produce music and spoken word licensed for HBO, Discovery Channel, and more.

Nate Maxson is a writer and performance artist. The author of several collections of poetry including the forthcoming Maps To The Vanishing which is coming out in 2022 from Finishing Line Press. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Andrew Rader Hanson  I am a writer and poet living in Miami, FL, and I have been accepted by Clackamas Review, Broadkill Review, Bookend Review, Ekphrastic Review, Birmingham Arts, and more.

Zaqary Fekete has worked as a teacher in Moldova, Romania, China, and Cambodia. They currently live and work in Minnesota. They have previously been published in Shady Grove Literary, SIC Journal, and 101 Words.

Peter Austin  Many of my poems have already appeared in the USA (Atlanta Review, Blue Unicorn, Raintown Review, Fourteen by Fourteen, Barefoot Muse, Iambs & Trochees, Philadelphia Review, Better than Starbucks, The Hypertexts, etc.), Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Israel. Of my second collection, X J Kennedy (winner of the Robert Frost award for lifetime contribution to poetry) said, ‘I Am Janus is a controlled explosion of strong and colorful stuff, and it’s a joy to read a book in which every poem is splendidly well-made and worth reading.’

Lois Marie Harrod’s Spat will be published in June 2021. Her 17th collection Woman won the 2020 Blue Lyra Prize. Nightmares of the Minor Poet appeared in June 2016
(Five Oaks); her chapbook And She Took the Heart, in January 2016; Fragments from
the Biography of Nemeis and How Marlene Mae Longs for Truth (Dancing Girl Press)
appeared in 2013. A Dodge poet, she is published in literary journals and online ezines
from American Poetry Review to Zone 3. Online link: www.loismarieharrod.org

 

Millicent Borges Accardi, a Portuguese-American writer, is the author of three poetry collections, including Only More So (Salmon Poetry, Ireland) and the upcoming Through a Grainy Landscape. Among her awards are fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Fulbright, CantoMundo, Creative Capacity, the California Arts Council, Foundation for Contemporary Arts (Covid grant), Yaddo, Fundação Luso-Americana (Portugal), and the Barbara Deming Foundation, “Money for Women.” Through a Grainy Landscape has been nominated for a 2022 PEN award.

Gregory Davis is sixty-seven years old. He is retired from a major aluminum company in Spokane Valley Wa, where he spent forty-three years as a grunt on the factory floor. He has been writing for five years. His work has been published in the Scarlet Leaf Review and Ginosko Literary Journal.

James Croal Jackson (he/him) is a Filipino-American poet working in film production. He has two chapbooks, Our Past Leaves (Kelsay Books, 2021) and The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights Press, 2017). He edits The Mantle Poetry from Pittsburgh, PA. (jamescroaljackson.com)

Jesse DeLong’s debut manuscript, The Amateur Scientist’s Notebook, was published by Baobab Press. Other work has appeared in Colorado Review, Mid-American Review, American Letters and Commentary, Indiana Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, and Typo, as well as the anthologies Best New Poets 2011 and Feast: Poetry and Recipes for a Full Seating at Dinner. His chapbooks, Tearings, and Other Poems and Earthwards, were released by Curly Head Press. He Tweets @jessemdelong

Sean McCarthy I have published stories in The Hopkins Review, The Sewanee
Review, Glimmer Train, Water~Stone Review, Fifth Wednesday Journal, South Dakota Review, Bayou, and Hayden’s Ferry Review among others. My story “Better Man”–originally published in December Magazine–was cited in The Best American Short Stories 2015, and I am a 2016 recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s Artist Fellowship in Fiction Award.

Joe Smolen  I took a B.A. English at U of W. My post-graduate work is just fiction. Recently, I pubbed short fictions at Fleas on the Dog (#6) and Friday Flash Fiction(as L.W. Smolen).

Sean Howard is the author of five collections of poetry in Canada, most recently Unrecovered: 9/11 Poems (Gaspereau Press, 2021). His poetry has been widely published in Canada, the UK, US, and elsewhere, and featured in The Best of the Best Canadian Poetry in English (Tightrope Books, 2017).

Cordelia Hanemann is currently a practicing writer and artist in Raleigh, NC. A retired professor of English at Campbell University, she has published in numerous journals including Atlanta Review, Connecticut River Review, Dual Coast Magazine, and Laurel Review; anthologies, The Well-Versed Reader, Heron Clan and Kakalak and in her own chapbook, Through a Glass Darkly. Her poem, “photo-op” was a finalist in the Poems of Resistance competition at Sable Press and her poem “Cezanne’s Apples” was nominated for a Pushcart. Recently the featured poet for Negative Capability Press and The Alexandria Quarterly, she is now working on a first novel, about her roots in Cajun Louisiana.

Francis Fernandes grew up in the US and Canada. He studied in Montréal and has a degree in Mathematics. Since spring 2020, his writing has appeared in over twenty literary journals, including Saint-Katherine Review, Modern Poetry Quarterly Review, Defenestration Magazine, Front Porch Journal, Etched Onyx Magazine. He lives in Frankfurt, Germany, where he writes and teaches.

Dana Teen Lomax is a poet, filmmaker, performance artist, activist, educator, and mom. She is the author of several poetry books and an avid creator of film-poems. Her last editorial project, Kindergarde: Avant-garde Poems, Plays, Stories, and Songs for Children (Black Radish Books), was awarded a San Francisco Creative Work Fund Grant and won the 2014 Johns Hopkins University Press Lion and Unicorn Prize for Excellence in North American Poetry. With Jennifer Firestone, she edited Letters to Poets: Conversations About Poetics, Politics, and Community (Saturnalia), which Cornel West called a “courageous and visionary book.” Dana’s work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, named among the Guerilla Girls’ favorite poetry books,
and received grants and awards. She served as the Human Rights and Equity Chair for her teachers’ union and lives in northern California with her family. Dana’s work can be found at danateenlomax.com.

Sean Howard is the author of five collections of poetry in Canada, most recently Unrecovered: 9/11 Poems (Gaspereau Press, 2021). His poetry has been widely published in Canada, the UK, US, and elsewhere, and featured in The Best of the Best Canadian Poetry in English (Tightrope Books, 2017).

Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in Canada. Recent work appears in Jewish Literary
Journal, Chiron Review, Bewildering Stories, New Verse News, Dissident Voice, Anti-Heroin Chic, Boog City, 365 Tomorrows, and The Last Leaves. His short fiction, “Sturgeon Sea”, won a Mariner Award from Bewildering Stories in 2020.

Rich Ives has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Artist Trust, Seattle Arts Commission and the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines for his work in poetry, fiction, editing, publishing, translation and photography. He is the 2009 winner of the Francis Locke Poetry Award from Bitter Oleander and the 2012 winner of
the Thin Air Creative Nonfiction Award. His books include Light from a Small Brown Bird (Bitter Oleander Press–poetry), Sharpen (The Newer York—fiction chapbook), The Balloon Containing the Water Containing the Narrative Begins Leaking (What Books—stories), Old Man Walking Home After Dark (Cyberwit–poetry), Dubious Inquiries into Magnificent Inadequacies (Cyberwit–poetry), A Servant’s Map of the Body (Cyberwit—stories), Incomprehensibly Well-adjusted Missing Persons of Interest (Cyberwit—stories), and Tunneling to the Moon (Silenced Press–stories).

Esta Fischer My short stories have been published in numerous print journals and e-zines including Imitation Fruit, Front Range Review, and Coe Review. My A la Russe murder mystery series and my recently published The Good Fortune Bakers of Bayside Avenue are available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other bookselling venues. I received my MA in Creative Writing from Boston University.

Francis Fernandes grew up in the US and Canada. He studied in Montréal and has a degree in Mathematics. Since spring 2020, his writing has appeared in over twenty literary journals, including Saint-Katherine Review, Modern Poetry Quarterly Review, Defenestration Magazine, Front Porch Journal, Etched Onyx Magazine. He lives in Frankfurt, Germany, where he writes and teaches.

Clara Roberts is a graduate from the MA in Writing Program at Johns Hopkins. A Best of the Net nominee, her nonfiction and poetry have been published in Entropy Magazine, Idle Ink, Heartwood Literary Magazine, Portland Metrozine, Door is A Jar Magazine, Journal of Erato, Trampset, and other venues. She lives in Baltimore where she finds material to write about every day. Twitter: @BurroughsTie

Christian Ward is a UK-based writer who can be recently found inWild Greens, Discretionary Love and Stone Poetry Journal. Future poems will be appearing in Dreich, Uppagus and BlueHouse Journal. He was recently shortlisted for the 2021 Canterbury Poet of the Year Competition and the 2021 Plough Prize.

Mukund Gnanadesikan is a psychiatrist, novelist, and poet who lives in Northern California. His fiction debut, Errors of Omission: A novel, was released in November of 2020. Recent poems have been featured in Riverbed Review, Cordite Poetry Review, Grand Little Things, Sledgehammer Lit, and Bluepepper, among others.

Paul Bernstein began writing poetry regularly when he was in his 50s. Since then his work has appeared frequently in a variety of journals, and his collection What the Owls Know was published by Kelsay Books in 2019. Paul currently lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

VA Smith lives in Fairmount, Philadelphia, her adopted city, where she reads and writes, hikes and bikes, serves as a home chef/caterer and interior design wanna’ be, and loves on her family and friends. VA has published in Review, The Southern
Quarterly, Southern Review, Pure Slush’s Growing Up, Uppagus. Yes, Poetry, Corvus Review and forthcoming in Verdad, Silkworm, Parkinson’s Poetry, Quartet, Evening Street Review, and West Trade Review. Her book, Biking Through The Stone Age, will be published by Kelsay Press in 2022.

Gerard Sarnat won San Francisco Poetry’s 2020 Contest, the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize, and has been nominated for handfuls of 2021 and previous Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards. Gerry is widely published including in Hong Kong Review, Tokyo Poetry Journal, Buddhist Poetry Review, Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, Arkansas Review, Hamilton-Stone Review,Northampton Review, New Haven Poetry Institute, Texas Review, Vonnegut Journal, Brooklyn Review, San Francisco Magazine, Monterey Poetry Review, The Los Angeles Review, and The New York Times as well as by Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, Penn, Chicago and Columbia presses. He’s authored the collections Homeless Chronicles, Disputes, 17s, Melting the Ice King. Gerry is a physician who’s built and staffed clinics for the marginalized as well as a Stanford professor and healthcare CEO. Currently he is devoting energy/ resources to deal with climate justice, and serves on Climate Action Now’s board. Gerry’s been married since 1969 with three kids plus six grandsons, and is looking forward to potential future granddaughters.

D S Maolalai I’m a graduate of English Literature from Trinity College in Dublin and recently returned there after four years abroad in the UK and Canada. I have been writing poetry and short fiction for the past five or six years with some success. My writing has appeared in such publications as 4’33’, Strange Bounce and Bong is Bard, Down in the Dirt Magazine, Out of Ours, The Eunoia Review, Kerouac’s Dog, More Said Than Done, Star Tips, Myths Magazine, Ariadne’s Thread, The Belleville Park Pages, Killing the Angel and Unrorean Broadsheet, by whom I was twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. I have also had my work published in two collections; Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden and Sad Havoc Among the Birds.

Carla M. Cherry is a veteran English teacher. Her poetry has appeared in publications such as Anderbo, Eunoia Review, Random Sample Review, MemoryHouse, Bop Dead City, Anti-Heroin Chic, 433, The Racket and Raising Mothers. Carla is studying for her M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the City College of New York. She has written five books of poetry; her latest is Stardust and Skin (iiPublishing 2020).

Jessica Crowley  I’ve been published a few times in smaller literary journals. Most recently, I won “honorable mention” in the memoir genre of the Writer’s Digest writing competition.

Liana Sakelliou has published 18 books of poetry, criticism and translation in Greece, the USA and France. Her poems have been translated into several languages and have been published in a number of anthologies and international journals. She teaches American literature, specializing in contemporary poetry, and creative writing in the Department of English Language and Literature of the University of Athens. The recipient of grants from the Fulbright Foundation, the Department of Hellenic Studies of Princeton University, the University of Coimbra (Portugal) and the British Council, Ms. Sakelliou is a member of the Greek Writers’ Association Coordinating Committee and a short story judge in the European Union Prize for Literature.

Don Schofield (Liana Sakelliou’s translator) has been living and writing in Greece since 1980. A citizen of both his homeland and his adopted country, he has published several poetry collections, the most recent of which are The Flow of Wonder (2018) and In Lands Imagination Favors (2014), as well as an anthology of American poets in Greece and translations of contemporary Greek poets. He is a recipient of the Allen Ginsberg Award (US), the John D. Criticos Prize (UK) and a Stanley J. Seeger Writer-in-Residence fellowship at Princeton University. His first book, Approximately Paradise, was a finalist for the Walt Whitman Award, and his translations have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the Greek National Translation Award. Currently he lives in both Athens and Thessaloniki.

Brent MacKinnon began his teaching career living alone in a Vietnamese village as liaison while serving as a Marine interpreter. After two tours with the Peace Corps he returned to graduate school to study linguistics. He has published six books, worked in many third world cultures, happily immersed in the natural world. Here in the States he developed programs for immigrant and low-income communities. Recently, Mac taught memoir with incarcerated veterans and facilitated well being workshops for traumatized first responders. Currently, he instructs a poetry group with senior citizens.

C O N T R I B U T O R S  for Ginosko Literary Journal #29

 Nikki Boss is a writer, educator, and mother living in southern New England. She currently serves as an assistant professor of English at Nichols College in Dudley, MA. You can find more of her work at Crack the Spine, the Dewdrop, and elsewhere online and in print. Nikki is the founder and managing prose editor of Skink Beat Review. about.me/nikkiboss

Robert Savino Oventile has published essays and book reviews in Postmodern Culture, Jacket, symplokē, and The Chicago Quarterly Review, among other journals. His poetry has appeared in The New Delta Review, Upstairs at Duroc, and The Denver Quarterly. He is coauthor with Sandy Florian of Sophia Lethe Talks Doxodox Down.

Christine Brooks holds her M.F.A. from Bay Path University in Creative Nonfiction. She has two books of poetry available, The Cigar Box Poems and beyond the paneling. Her next two, inside the pale and the hook-switch goodbye, will be released in 2023. http://www.facebook.com/ChrisBrooksauthor/, Twitter @OMG_its_Cbrooks, www.christinebrookswriter.com

Dr. A Kaiser is a translator, scholar and Pushcart Prize-nominated poet of glint, co-winner of the Milk & Cake Press Book Prize. Poems, translations & photos are found or upcoming in Amsterdam Quarterly, Contramundum, Harvard Review, New Square, Poetry International: finalist, PI Poetry Prize, judge Vievee Francis, and Pen + Brush’s In Print (No 5), guest edited by Novella Ford. Current translations include Unnamable, by Catalan poet, Anna Gual, for which AK~ has been awarded an NEA Fellowship.

Ian Jackson is an aspiring author, born and raised in Tampa, FL. He uses photography for inspiration for his literary pieces. He has been published in Zephyr Magazine and has received Honorable Mention in the Words on Canvas competition.

Mehreen Ahmed is a prize-winning novelist. Her novel The Pacifist was a Drunken Druid Editor’s Choice and an Audible bestseller. Her short-story collection Gatherings is nominated for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

Dian Parker’s essays an short stories have been published in 3:AM Magazine, The Rupture, Anomaly, Epiphany, Tiny Molecules, Burningword Literary, Brevity, Westerly, among others, and nominated for several Pushcart Prizes and Best of the Net. https://www.dianparker.com/

Jeneva Stone (she/her) is a poet, essayist  and advocate. She’s the author of Monster (Phoenicia Publishing, 2016), a mixed-genre meditation on caregiving, disability & medicine. Her work has appeared in New England Review, American Poetry Review, Waxwing, Split This Rock, Scoundrel Time, Pleiades, and many others. She is the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell and Millay Arts. Her opinion writing has been featured in The Washington Post and CNN Digital. She holds an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program. Jeneva volunteers for several health care and disability rights groups. She is the Blog Manager for Little Lobbyists, a family-led organization advocating for health care of children with complex medical needs and disabilities; the Maryland Community Ambassador for the Rare Action Network, and a member of the Montgomery County Maryland Commission on People with Disabilities.

 Linda C. Wisniewski is a former librarian and journalist from Bucks County, PA who writes about life and the connections we make by giving each other the time and space to be heard. Her work has been published in Toasted Cheese, Hippocampus, Foliate Oak, and other literary magazines. She is the author of a memoir, Off Kilter: A Woman’s Journey to Peace With Scoliosis, Her Mother and Her Polish Heritage (Pearlsong Press, 2008) and a time travel novel, Where the Stork Flies (Sand Hill Review Press, 2021) She blogs at www.lindawis.com.

Jeffrey Wald lives with his family in the Twin Cities. His fiction has previously appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as Philosophy Now, The Windhover, Summit Ave Review, Aethlon, and Collidescope.

Philip Kobylarz is an itinerant teacher of the language arts and writer of fiction, poetry, book reviews, and essays. He has worked as a journalist, a film critic, a veterinarian’s assistant, a deliverer of furniture, and an ascetic. He has volunteered at the Union City Historical Museum. His work appears in such publications as Paris Review, Poetry, Massachusetts Review, Lalitamba, and the The Best American Poetry series. He also published a collection poetry entitled rues and a collection of short stories entitled Now Leaving Nowheresville. He spends his time in the East Bay, Huntington Beach, and in the monastery in which he lives with his cat Kat dawg Rocket 99, his dog Chibi, and any woman who is able to temporarily love him.

Jim Daniels’ latest poetry book is Gun/Shy, Wayne State University Press. A native of Detroit, he lives in Pittsburgh and teaches in the Alma College low-residency MFA program.

David Mohan has been published in PANK, Hobart, Necessary Fiction, Atticus Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Penn Review, The Seneca Review and Westerly. He has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize.

Rimma Kranet is a Ukrainian-American writer with a Bachelor’s Degree in English from University of California Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in Brilliant Flash Fiction, Construction Lit, Coal Hill Review, EcoTheo Collective, The Common Breath, Drunk Monkey, Door Is A Jar Magazine and in The Short Vigorous Roots: A Contemporary Flash Fiction Collection of Migrant Voices. She resides between Florence, Italy and Los Angeles, California.

Molly Nichol is a current high school student in southern Illinois. Her future plans include becoming a court reporter, reading as much as she can, and exploring her love of writing under her pen name. She has had two publications in Teach. Write: A Writing Teachers’ Literary Journal.

Mercedes Lawry  I’ve previously published poems in such journals as Poetry, Alaska Quarterly Review, Nimrod, and Prairie Schooner. I’ve published three chapbooks – There are Crows in My Blood, Happy Darkness and In the Early Garden With Reason which was selected by Molly Peacock for the 2018 WaterSedge Poetry Chapbook Contest. My poetry manuscript, Vestiges, will be published early next year. I’ve received honors from the Seattle Arts Commission, Jack Straw Foundation, Artist Trust and Richard Hugo House, been a seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee and held a residency at Hedgebrook. I’ve also published short fiction as well as stories and poems for children.

Jeddie Sophronius is a Chinese-Indonesian writer from Jakarta. He received his MFA from the University of Virginia, where he served as the editor of Meridian. His work has appeared in The Cincinnati Review, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. They divide their time between the U.S. and Indonesia. Read more of their work at nakedcentaur.com.

Matthew Berg He is a renaissance man: follower of Jesus, husband, father and working writer from the Midwest now living in the South.

Paul Chuks is a songwriter, poet and storyteller. He is of Igbo descent and resides in Nigeria. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in Brittlepaper, Epoch press, Streetcake magazine, Loftbooks, Trampset & elsewhere. He’s a reader at Palette Poetry, Mudseasonreview & Forge literary magazine. When he’s not reading or writing, he’s analysing hip-hop verses or moving his body rhythmically to the songs raving on his roof.

Ivey Buffenmyer lives and writes in Ohio with her husband, two kids, and a very temperamental parrot. This is her first published piece, and she welcomes anyone she went to high school with to suck on that, losers.

Roy Bentley is the author of Walking with Eve in the Loved City, chosen by Billy Collins as finalist for the Miller Williams poetry prize; Starlight Taxi, winner of the Blue Lynx Poetry Prize; The Trouble with a Short Horse in Montana, chosen by John Gallaher as winner of the White Pine Poetry Prize; as well as My Mother’s Red Ford: New & Selected Poems 1986 – 2020 published by Lost Horse Press. Poems have appeared in The Louisville Review, december, Crazyhorse, The Southern Review, Rattle, Shenandoah, and Prairie Schooner among others. His latest is Beautiful Plenty (Main Street Rag, 2021).

Lana Hechtman Ayers has shepherded over a hundred poetry volumes into print in her role as managing editor for three small presses. Her work appears in Escape Into Life, Rattle,The London reader, Peregrine,The MacGuffin,Verse Daily, and other journals. Lana’s seventh full-length poetry collection, When All Else Fails, is forthcoming from The Poetry Box in spring of 2023. Visit her at LanaAyers.com.

Jarrett Mazza  I am a graduate of Goddard College’s MFA in Creative Writing Program and The Humber School For Writers. I have been published online in the GNU Journal, Bewildering Stories, Aphelion, Trembling With Fear, The Scarlet Leaf Review, Toronto Prose Mill, The Fictional Café, The Periodical, Forlorn, and with Silver Empire Publishing, Zimbell House Publishing, and horror anthologies published by Mother’s Ghost Grim, NBH Publishing, Hellbound Books, and five more by MuseWrite Press, Dragon Soul Press, Gypsum Sound Tales, Glittery Literary, and Red Cape Publishing. I was an Honorable Mention for the Freda Waldon Award for Fiction at the Short Works Prize, was shortlisted for an Indie Book award, and a featured author for the We Read Canadian event in 2020. I live outside of Toronto, Ontario.

Dmitry Blizniuk is a poet from Ukraine. His most recent poems have appeared in Rattle, The London Magazine, Pleiades, Another Chicago Magazine, Eurolitkrant, Poet Lore, NDQ, The Pinch, New Mexico Review, The Ilanot Review, National Translation Month, East West Literary Forum, and many others.. A Pushcart Prize nominee, he is also the author of The Red Fоrest (Fowlpox Press, 2018). His poems have been awarded RHINO 2022 Translation Prize. He lives in Kharkov, Ukraine.

David M. Rubin has a Ph.D. in molecular biology and has published many scientific articles and lectured on natural language processing, protein folding & degradation, real world evidence, and Buddhism in ancient India. He has had stories, poems, drawings, and essays published in After Dinner Conversations, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Ffraid, Last Stanza, The Nabokovian, Piglet Moss, and The Smart Set.

Jesse Wolfe’s poetry has appeared in publications including Tower Journal, Good Works Review, Mad Swirl, Eunoia Review, and elsewhere. An English professor at California State University, Stanislaus, Wolfe previously served as Faculty Advisor to Penumbra, the campus’s student-run literary and art journal. His scholarly work includes the monograph Bloomsbury, Modernism, and the Reinvention of Intimacy (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and a forthcoming book on intimacy in contemporary British and American fiction. His debut poetry collection, En Route, was published in 2020 by Cathexis Northwest Press.

Laura Holt is the award-winning author of Fathoms Below, Fathoms Above, Fathoms Between, Fathoms Across, the forthcoming final book in the Star-Crossed series, Fathomless, and her debut adult fiction novel, Village of Salt and Sorrow. She is a self-professed word witch with a passion for mythology, history, and caffeine. When she’s not writing, you can find her stretched out on a yoga mat, hiking down wooded trails, or wandering the aisles at a local bookstore searching for her next great read. She lives in small-town Georgia with her daughter, three cats, and a lot of fake plants. Follow her on Instagram at @authorlauraholt to stay up to date on bookish news, events, and book and music recs, or subscribe to her monthly newsletter for even more exclusive content and writer resources at https://holtlara2.wixsite.com/lauraholt. Coyote Woman is an Adult Magical Realism short story. A standalone, it features a woman who has lost touch with her wilder feminine nature and seeks to reclaim it. Its folklore, which contains kindly old witches and shapeshifting magic, is drawn from Southwestern Yaqui Legend, and will appeal to fans of Clarissa Pinkola Estes and Sharon Blackie.

Gabriel Garofano was born and raised in Los Angeles, but he sincerely hopes you will not hold that against him. Apart from full-body wincing while writing about himself in third person, he is looking to create work that gets at what it is to be alive, even if it kills him. Gabriel is an MFA student at UCI and is currently working on a novel. He is a 2021 Best American Nonfiction nominee, and the recipient of the 2019 Yoshiko Uchida Prize in Writing Creative Nonfiction.

Livio Farallo is co-editor of Slipstream and Professor of Biology at Niagara County Community College in Sanborn, New York. His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Beatnik Cowboy, Biscuit Hill, Helix, Rabid Oak, The Blue Collar Review, Rise Up and others.

Florina Enache is the author of An-Tan-Tiri Mogodan: Short Stories, shortlisted for the Glenda Adams Award for New Writing in the 2020 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards in Australia. Her work has previously appeared in Caliban online, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Halfway Down the Stairs and Quail Bell Magazine. Florina was born in communist Romania and she studied English language and literature.

Xueyan lives in China. Her full-length collection of poems, Time Peels All to Original White, is forthcoming from Fernwood Press. Individual poems are forthcoming in The Bangalore Review.

Contributors issue #30

Mark Knego I am a published playwright and short story writer in San Francisco, California. My theatrical trilogy about the Cambodian refugee experience which I wrote and directed for the stage, “Snakes of Kampuchea,” was published in print by Exit Press, while three stories of mine have been published digitally by Anak Sastra and The Defiant Scribe magazines. All my stories are based on real people, events and situations I have encountered across the globe. I am inspired to create fiction with a cryptic, spiritual, folkloric, symbolic tone in my writing.

Ash Falla got her BA in Creative Writing at Hunter College and is currently pursuing her MFA in Poetry at The New School. She’s an NYC native who grew up and currently resides in Queens.

April Yu is a fourteen-year-old writer from New Jersey with an affinity for language, running, and human anatomy. Although she was indeed born in April, her favorite season is winter. Her work is published in or forthcoming from Peach Mag, The Lumiere Review, Milk Candy Review, The Aurora Journal, FEED, and more. She is a graduate of the Alpha Workshop for Young Writers. Visit her on Twitter @aprilgoldflwrs and at aprilyu.carrd.co.

Mea Andrews is a writer from Georgia, who currently resides in China. She has just finished her MFA from Lindenwood University and is only recently back on the publication scene. You can find her in Vermilion, Rappahannock Review, and others. You can also follow her on Instagram at mea_writes or go to her website at meaandrews.com

Douglas Cole published six poetry collections and the novel The White Field, winner of the

American Fiction Award. His work has been anthologized in Best New Writing (Hopewell

Publications), Bully Anthology (Kentucky Stories Press) and Coming Off The Line (Main Street Rag Publishing). He is a regular contributor to Mythaxis, providing essays and interviews with notable writers, artists and musicians such as Daniel Wallace (Big Fish), Darcy Steinke (Suicide Blond, Flash Count Diary) and Tim Reynolds (T3 and The Dave

Matthews Band). He also writes a monthly piece called “Trading Fours” for Jerry Jazz Musician and was recently named the editor for “American Poetry” in Read Carpet, an international, multi-lingual journal from Columbia. In addition to the American Fiction Award, he was awarded the Leslie Hunt Memorial prize in poetry, the Editors’ Choice Award for fiction by River Sedge, and has been nominated three times for a Pushcart and seven times for Best of the Net. He lives and teaches in Seattle, Washington. His website is https://douglastcole.com/.

Sophie Dibben  I rustled up a degree in Classics and specialised in Ancient Greek cynicism. I am currently a prison officer based in the UK. I have a few pieces published in Why Now magazine, the Doe and the Fence.

Anne Whitehouse is the author of poetry collections: The Surveyor’s Hand, Blessings and Curses, The Refrain, Meteor Shower, and Outside from the Inside, as well as the art chapbooks, Surrealist Muse (about Leonora Carrington), Escaping Lee Miller, and Frida. She is the author of a novel, Fall Love. Her poem, “Being Ruth Asawa” won the 2022 White Enso poetry award, and her poem, “Lady Bird,” won the Nathan Perry DAR 2023 “Honoring American History” poetry contest. A new poetry collection, Steady, is forthcoming from Dos Madres Press. An essay, “Poe vs. Himself,” will be published in LitHub in July.

Craig Kirchner  I think of poetry as hobo art. I love story-telling and the aesthetics of the paper and pen, I’ve been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize. After a writing hiatus I was recently published in Decadent Review and have a book of poetry – Roomful of Navels.

Christina Michalski  In my short prose, I write about my childhood home in the suburbs of New Jersey—the very place I had always yearned to escape. Faced with the reality of moving back in with my parents last fall, I was annoyed and frustrated. However, as the days went on, I began to unearth hidden treasures within the seemingly mundane. I discovered the beauty of the silence, the heartfelt conversations with parents, and the overall comfort exuded by residential life. In the unlikeliest of circumstances, I learned to find joy in what I once deemed the worst thing in the world, as it became an opportunity to rediscover the essence of home.

Scott C. Holstad has authored 65+ books & has appeared in the Minnesota Review,

Exquisite Corpse, Caffeine, Pacific Review, Palo Alto Review, Sports Illustrated, the TODAY

Show, Long Shot, Wormwood Review, Chiron Review, Southern Review, Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Asheville Poetry Review & Poetry Ireland Review. He’s moved 35+ times, now lives near Gettysburg. His website is at https://Hankrules2011.com.

Mehreen Ahmed Multiple contests winner for short fiction, Mehreen Ahmed is an award-winning Australian novelist born in Bangladesh. Her historical fiction, The Pacifist is an audible bestseller. Included in The Best Asian Speculative Fiction Anthology, her works have also been acclaimed by Midwest Book Review,and DD Magazine. and nominated for Pushcart, botN and James Tait. Her recent publications are with Litro, Otoliths, Alien Buddha,Coffin Bell Journal and Ginosko.

Chinmay Ratogi did his MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. His work has appeared in Bluestem Magazine, Random Access Memory (Zoetic Press), Every Day Fiction and elsewhere. He likes to add colour to the lives of those around him, and can often be found smiling or grumbling under a motorcycle helmet or behind a harmonica.

Stephen Reilly  My poems appeared in Charon, Albatross, Wraparound South, Main Street Rag, Broad River Review, Cape Rock, Poetry South, and other publications. One of my poems appears in the anthology Florida in Poetry: A History of the Imagination (edited by Jane Anderson Jones and Maurice O’Sullivan, Pineapple Press, Sarasota, Fla. 1995). I work as a staff writer for the Englewood Sun, a daily Florida newspaper with circulation in south Sarasota County, Charlotte and DeSoto counties.

1. Elizabeth Herting is a writer and busy mother of three living in colorful Colorado. She has had over 60 short stories published and also has two collections of short stories published by Adelaide Books, Whistling Past the Veil and Postcards From Waupaca available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Adelaide books as well as in select booksellers and libraries.

Malina Douglas is inspired by the encounters that shape us. She was awarded Editor’s

Choice in the Hammond House International Literary Prize in 2021 and was a finalist in the Four Palaces Fiction Anthology Contest and the Blackwater Press Story Contest. In 2022 she was longlisted for the Reflex Press Prize, the Bath Short Story Award and the Dorothy Dunnett Society Short Story Award. Her suite of four flash fictions was selected as a finalist in the Defenestrationism Flash Suite Contest and published on their website. Publications include The National Flash Day Anthology, Consequence Forum, Wyldblood, Opia, Typehouse, Back Story Journal, Ellipsis Zine, Flash Fiction Magazine, Evergreen from Bridge House and Because That’s Where Your Heart Is from Sans Press. She is an alumna of Smokelong Summer and can be found on twitter @iridescentwords.

John Sweet sends greetings from the rural wastelands of upstate NY. He is a firm believer in writing as catharsis, and in the continuous search for an unattainable and constantly evolving absolute truth. His latest poetry collections include A Flag on Fire is a Song of Hope (2019 Scars Publications) and A Dead Man, Either Way (2020 Kung Fu Treachery Press).

1. Nikolas Macioci earned a PhD from The Ohio State University, OCTELA, the Ohio

Council of Teachers of English, named him the best secondary English teacher in the state of Ohio. He is the author of seventeen books. Cafes of Childhood was submitted for the Pulitzer Prize in 1992. In 2021, he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net award. In 2022, he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He was nominated for a Best of the Net award for 2023. Hundreds of his poems have been published here and abroad in magazines and journals, including Chiron, Concho River Review, The Bombay Review, The Raven’s Perch, The Main Street Rag, and West Trade Review.

 Lila Anafi I work part-time as a freelance copywriter and editor, and my creative nonfiction has won regionally in the Scholastic Writing Awards.

Jacob Friesenhahn teaches Religious Studies and Philosophy at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio.

Livio Farallo is co-editor of Slipstream and Professor of Biology at Niagara County

Community College in Sanborn, New York. His work has appeared or, is forthcoming, in North Dakota Quarterly, Triggerfish, Cordite Review, J Journal, Straylight, Shot Glass Journal, and elsewhere.

Mark Tate is the author of three novels, Beside the River, its sequel River’s End (McCaa Books, 2021), and Butterfly on the Wheel (McCaa Books, 2022). He served for ten years on the Sonoma County Poet Selection Committee for the poets laureate of that county. His book of poems “Walking Scarecrow” has won the Blue Light Press 2023 Poetry Book of the Year, forthcoming late fall, 2023. He is a long-time resident of Sonoma County where he lives with his wife, Lori.

Fred Ferraris’ work has been published widely in periodicals, including Bombay Gin, Cafe Irreal, Cold Mountain Review, Ginosko #5, Orbis, Stand, and The Worcester Review, in the anthologies Prayers For A Thousand Years (Harper San Francisco) and Ginosko Anthology 2 (MadHat Press), the chapbooks Marpa Point (Blackberry) and The Durango Chronicles (Blue Marmot Press), and a full-length book, Older Than Rain (Selva Editions). He has been a finalist in the National Poetry Series, nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and the recipient of the Mark Fischer Prize.

Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with poems published in hundreds of magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. The winner of the 2020 Libretto prize and author of four poetry collections and seven chapbooks, his poems have been performed and broadcast globally.

Megan Wildhood is a writer, editor and writing coach who helps her readers feel seen in her monthly newsletter, poetry chapbook Long Division (Finishing Line Press, 2017), her fulllength poetry collection Bowed As If Laden With Snow (Cornerstone Press, May 2023) as well as Mad in America, The Sun and elsewhere. You can learn more about her writing, working with her and her mental-health and research newsletter at meganwildhood.com.

David Petruzelli  I’ve had work published in Crazyhorse, Gettysburg Review, The New

Yorker, The Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly Review and elsewhere. A poetry collection, Everyone Coming Toward You, won the Tupelo Press Judge’s Prize and was published in 2005. I live in New York City.

Marie C Lecrivain is a poet, publisher, and ordained priestess in the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, the ecclesiastical arm of Ordo Templi Orientis. She currently curates two literary blogs: Dashboard Horus: A Bird’s Eye of the Universe (travel themed poetry and art), and AlKhemia Poetica: Women’s Art and Literary Journal. Her work has been published in

California Quarterly, Chiron Review, Gargoyle, Nonbinary Review, Orbis, Pirene’s Fountain, and many other journals. She’s the author of several books of poetry and fiction, and editor of Ashes to Stardust: A David Bowie Tribute Anthology © 2023 Sybaritic Press, www.sybpress.com).

VA Smith is the author of the poetry collections Biking Through the Stone Age (Kelsay, 2022) and American Daughters (Kelsay, 2023).  Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in dozens of literary journals and anthologies, among them: The Southern Review, Calyx, West Trade Review, and Third Wednesday.  A former teaching professor at Penn State University and the founder of Chancellor Writing Services, VA is currently at work on a third collection of poems titled On Environmental Adaptability (when she is not biking, hiking, loving on her partner, friends and family, or serving as a home chef).

Georgia San Li is currently at work on a novel, poetry and other writings. Her poetry and writing appear or are forthcoming in Atlanta Review, California Quarterly, Confluence (UK), Eclectica, Litro Magazine (UK), and elsewhere. Her debut poetry collection Wandering, was selected as a finalist by Minerva Rising and accepted for publication by an independent press. She has been supported by the Kenyon Review Novel Workshop, Community of Writers Workshop at Olympic Valley, and the Breadloaf Translators’ Conference. She has worked in cities including London, Tunis, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Paris, Wilhelmshaven and Tokyo. She currently lives in New England. Twitter: @GeorgiaSanLi2; Instagram: Georgia2NewEngland

Morgan Bazilian is a poet and professor of quantum physics.

Bryce Shepherd  I am currently a student at the University of North Florida and will be graduating this upcoming December. My bachelor degree will be in history and you can typically find me writing my poetry at a local Chili’s or having my dog listen to me read them aloud.

Kate Krems  “Cavalier” is Inspired by the works of experimental filmmakers like Maya

Deren. This fictional short story follows Noel as she self destructs and dissociates in a world of suburban demons.

Lucia Coppola is an ESL teacher who is originally from New York and has lived in France and California. She has a B.A. in Medieval Studies from Swarthmore College and a professional background in dance and body techniques. Her writing is informed by nature and traditional storytelling. Some of her work has been read on the radio and published online and in print Her poetry collection Talking With Trees was published by Plants & Poetry in 2022. You can follow Lucia on Instagram at luciacoppolapoetry and Facebook at Lucia Coppola Poetry.

Dom Fonce is the former founding Editor-in-Chief of Volney Road Review. He is the author of the two poetry chapbooks Here, We Bury the Hearts (Finishing Line Press, 2019) and Dancing in the Cobwebs (Finishing Line Press, 2022). He is an MFA candidate at the

NEOMFA (Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts). His poetry has been published in Gordon Square Review, Rappahannock Review, Delmarva Review, Jenny Magazine, Sweet Tree Review, and elsewhere. He lives and writes in Youngstown, Ohio.

Meghan Sullivan is a poet, teacher, Long Islander, and lover. Currently living and working in New Orleans, she is the runner up for the 2022 Andrea-Saunders Gereighty Award and an Associate Editor for Bayou Magazine. She is pursuing her MFA in Poetry in the Creative Writing Workshop at the University of New Orleans. You can find her work in Tilted House, Peauxdunque Review, and more.

 C O N T R I B U T O R S to Ginosko Literary Journal #31

 Michael Loyd Gray “Michael Loyd Gray’s prose unspools with the unmistakable cadence of a storyteller.” —Stuart Dybek

My stories have appeared in Alligator Juniper, Arkansas Review, I-70 Review, Litro Magazine, Adelaide Literary Magazine, FictionWeek, New Plains Journal. Westchester Review, Flashpoint!, Black River Syllabary, Verdad, Palooka, Hektoen International, Potomac Review, Home Planet News, SORTES, The Zodiac Review, Literary Heist, Evening Street Press & Review, Two Thirds North, JONAH Magazine, Press Pause, El Portal, Shark Reef, Cholla Needles, The Waiting Room, Burningword Literary Journal, Your Impossible Voice, Litbop, Flare Journal, Wrath Bearing Tree, and Johnny America. I’m the author of six published novels. My novel The Armageddon Two-Step, winner of a Book Excellence Award, was released in December 2019. My novel Well Deserved won the 2008 Sol Books Prose Series Prize and my novel Not Famous Anymore garnered a support grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation in 2009. My novel Exile on Kalamazoo Street was released in 2013 and I have co-authored the stage version. My novel The Canary, which reveals the final days of Amelia Earhart, was released in 2011. King Biscuit, my Young Adult novel, was released in 2012. I am the winner of the 2005 Alligator Juniper Fiction Prize and 2005 The Writers Place Award for Fiction. I earned a MFA in English in 1996 from Western Michigan University, where I was a Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Society scholar (3.93 GPA). I was also a fiction editor for Third Coast, the WMU literary magazine. At WMU, I studied with MacArthur Fellow Stuart Dybek, Writer in Residence at Northwestern University, and John Smolens, former head of the MFA program at Northern Michigan University. I earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois, where I studied with Flannery O’Connor Award winner Daniel Curley. For ten years, I was a staff writer for newspapers in Arizona and Illinois.

Sequoia Cristobal-Mandel  Is a high school student from the Bay Area and Aotearoa New Zealand. She has a passion for everything she happens to find herself doing, namely: writing, music, painting, acting, philosophy, and psychology. Sequoia is infinitely grateful for any chance to experience nature, art, and conversation.

LB Sedlacek has had poems and stories appear in a variety of journals and zines. Her poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net. Her latest poetry book is Unresponsive Sky published by Purple Unicorn Media. Other poetry books include Swim, The Poet Next Door, This Space Available, and Words and Bones. Her latest short stories book is The Renovator & Motor Addiction published by Alien Buddha Press. Other fiction books include The Jackalope Committee and Other Tales, The Mailbox of the Kindred Spirit, and Four Thieves of Vinegar & Other Short Stories. LB also enjoys swimming and reading.

 Jacob Schroeder  My work has been published in Lunch Ticket, Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, and Maudlin House, among other literary publications. My story, In the “Land In Between”, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

 Shannon O’Connor holds an MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington College. She has been published in ODDBALL MAGAZINE, THE WILDERNESS HOUSE LITERARY REVIEW, WORDGATHERING, and others. She lives in the Boston area, and works at a hospital. She can be found on her blog mshenreviewsthings.blogspot.com.

Jacob Friesenhahn teaches Religious Studies and Philosophy at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio.

Cristie Coffing holds an MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University. A self-published novelist and playwright, her work has been published in Flash Fiction Magazine, Does It Have Pockets, and elsewhere. She was a 2013 Santa Fe Writers project Finalist, third prize recipient in Flash Fiction Magazine’s 2021 contest, a 2022 Pushcart Prize nominee, and a 2023 Best Micro-Fiction nominee. She currently writes, teaches dance and waits tables in a small river town.

Craig Dobson  I’ve had fiction published in Active Muse, The Adelaide Literary Magazine, Better Than Starbucks, Black Works, The Delmarva Review, The Eunoia Review, Flash, Flash Fiction Magazine, The Frogmore Papers, Halfway Down the Stairs, The Interpreter’s House, Literally Stories, Rue Scribe, Runcible Spoon and Short Fiction Magazine. I live and work in the UK.

Zach Keali’i Murphy is a Hawaii-born writer with a background in cinema. His stories appear in Reed Magazine, The Coachella Review, Maudlin House, Raritan, Another Chicago Magazine, Still Point Arts Quarterly, and more. He has published the chapbooks Tiny Universes (Selcouth Station Press) and If We Keep Moving (Ghost City Press). He lives with his wonderful wife, Kelly, in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Sharon Lopez Mooney, poet, is a retired Interfaith End of Life Chaplain, living in Sonora Mexico, and part-time in Northern California. Mooney received a California Arts Council Grant for a rural poetry series; was a ’22 “Best of the Net” nominee, a “Peseroff Prize” finalist, and received two other publisher’s honors. Mooney’s poems are published in national & international publications like, Ginosko, California Quarterly, Galway Review, Tipton Poetry, Kennings Literary Journal, Glassworks, Adelaide International, Kennings Review, Breakwater Review. Her upcoming poetry book, Cantata for a Desert Poet will be published in 2024 by “Arteidolia Press”. Mooney’s poems indexed at: http://sharonlopezmooney.com.

Reed Kuehn is a physician and combat veteran who has called Wisconsin, Maryland, Washington DC, North Carolina, and Colorado home. He currently lives and writes in Rhode Island. His work has appeared in The First Line, So It Goes, and Calliope.

 Debbie Gilbert  A dual citizen of Ireland and the United States, D. Walsh Gilbert is the author of five poetry books, the most recent [M]AR[Y] (Kelsay Books, 2023), and forthcoming, Deirdre (Impspired, 2023). A multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, she’s currently preparing two verse stories of historical narrative set in Ireland. Short fiction is her newest venture. She serves on the board of the non-profit, Riverwood Poetry Series, and as co-editor of the Connecticut River Review.

 Lucia Coppola is an ESL teacher who is originally from New York and has lived in France and California. She has a B.A. in Medieval Studies from Swarthmore College, and a professional background in dance and body techniques. Her writing is informed by nature and traditional storytelling. Much of her work has been presented on the radio, online and in print. Her first collection of poems, Talking With Trees was published by Plants and Poetry in 2022.

Sandro Francisco Piedrahita is an American writer of Ecuadorian and Peruvian descent, with a degree in Comparative Literaure from Yale College. His short stories have been accepted for publication by The Acentos Revew, The Ganga Review, Hive Avenue Literary Journal, Limit Experience Journal, Label Me Latina/o, Sundial Magazine, The Write Launch, Synchronized Chaos, Peauxdunque Journal, Carmina Magazine, Faultline Journal and Foreshadow Magazine.

 Claire Scott is an award winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has appeared in the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review and Healing Muse among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and Until I Couldn’t. She is the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.

Josephine Anderson (born Morello-Cassara) is 66 years of age and has written thousands of pages over the last 35 years. She has not previously published. Josephine completed a Masters Degree (English Literature and the Western History of Ideas) in 1989. Her native tongue is not English, but the ancient Norman dialect spoken only in the town of San Fratello in Northern Sicily.

To read more of Josephine’s poetry, contact her at http://josephineandstephenco-creative.ca

Ben Goodman and I am a poet, counselor, and educator. I currently reside in the Hudson Valley. My work currently appears in Strange Matters Magazine.

Kirk Glaser’s poetry has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in The Threepenny Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Nimrod, Split Rock, Chicago Quarterly Review, Catamaran, The Worcester Review, The Cortland Review, and elsewhere. His poetry collection, The House That Fire Built, will be published in 2025 by MadHat Press. Awards for his work include an American Academy of Poets prize, C. H. Jones National Poetry Prize, and University of California Poet Laureate Award. He teaches writing and literature at Santa Clara University, where he serves as Director of the Creative Writing Program and Faculty Advisor to the Santa Clara Review. He is co-editor of the anthology, New California Writing 2013, Heyday.

Maziar Karim , is from Tehran, Iran. He holds an MS degree in Information Technology. He has been doing research in different fields of philosophy, psychology, philology, mythology and literature. His essays and books in these fields are forthcoming publications in both Persian and English. His work in America has appeared in different magazines such as Better Than Starbucks, DREGINALD, The Bookends Review, Gramma Poetry and Smithsonian Magazine  the tiger of riview, fictional cafe, G*mob magazine, alchemy magazine of translation, Quail magazine, Azonal translation, the gravity of things and others. He is also a literature translator and he recently published a quatrain complex in persian language with title of Suffer of Nothing.

Joseph A Farina is a retired lawyer in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada. Drawing from his profession and his sicilian-canadian back round, he is an internationaly award winning and published poet. Several of his poems have been published in Quills Canadian Poetry Magazine, The Wild Word, The Chamber Magazine, Lothlorian Poetry Journal, Ascent , Subterranean Blue, The Tower Poetry Magazine, Inscribed, The Windsor Review, Boxcar Poetry Revue, and appears in many anthologies including: Sweet Lemons: Writings with a Sicilian Accent, Canadian Italians at Table, Witness from Serengeti Press and Tamaracks: Canadian Poetry for the 21st Century. He has had poems published in the U.S. magazines Mobius, Pyramid Arts, Arabesques, Fiele-Festa, and Philedelphia Poets . He has had two books of poetry published— The Cancer Chronicles and The Ghosts of Water Street and an e-book, Sunsets in Black and White.

Isabel Behling is currently studying English with a focus on Rhetoric and Professional writing at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, as well as minoring in German. When she is not studying or working, she is reading and writing. She hopes to one day pursue a career in creative writing or publishing.

Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in Scrivener, The Comstock Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Typishly Literary Magazine, The Antioch Review, The Piedmont Poetry Journal and elsewhere. The author has been a Pushcart nominee and over the years has been published in a few anthologies. The author has been writing poetry since he was sixteen and lives in a small town near Albany, New York. He is retired from doing whatever he was doing before he retired.

Stella Vinitchi Radulescu, Romanian-American poet, Ph.D. in French, is the author of many collections of poetry published in the United States, Romania and France. She writes poetry in English, French and Romanian, Her poems have appeared in a variety of literary magazines in the United States, France, Belgium, and Romania. Her last two collections of poetry I Scrape the Window of Nothingness and Traveling With the Ghosts (reviewed in Publishers Weekly) were published by Orison Books. A translation (Luke Hankins translator) from her French collection Un cri dans la neige (A Cry in the Snow) was published in 2018 by Seagull Books Press.

Mark Groody  Long time Marin/Sonoma resident Thomas ‘Mark’ Groody has lived all up and down the 101 corridor. One day late in life found that he could design houses, create music, and connect words to what he experienced in the past and more recently sees in one of the most interesting places one can live.

Matthew Roy Davey  I was winner of The Observer short story competition 2003 and winner of the Dark Tales competition (August 2013) and have been long-listed for the Bath Flash Fiction award (Spring and Autumn 2017), Reflex Flash Fiction competition (Spring 2017) and Retreat West Quarterly Competition (Summer 2018). My story ‘Waving at Trains’ has been translated into Mandarin and Slovenian and been published in anthologies by Vintage and Cambridge University Press. Recently I have been published by Everyday Fiction, Flash Fiction Magazine, Odd Magazine and Flash: The International Short-Story Magazine. I have recently been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Stacey C. Johnson writes and teaches in San Diego County. She is a graduate of the MFA program at San Diego State University and creator of The Unknowing Project. Her work appears in Oyster River Pages, Pacific Review, and Fiction International, as well as various other publications. Her poetry chapbook Flight Songs is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press (February 2024). You can find her at staceycjohnson.com

Mark Tate  Submission from the confession of a young man due to be hanged for murder–from an anonymous source, Kentucky 1903―the names and places have been changed because the source did not want his family names in print. I have written the document as a true story being told at a family reunion. I have published three novels through McCaa Books available at Amazon. Due out this fall, my book of poems won the Blue Light Press 2023 Poetry Book of the year. A long-time resident of Sonoma County, California. I live with my wife and two cats.

Philip Newton I am a writer, musician and stonemason living in Oregon. Most recently, my work has been published in the Letters Journal (Yale), The Hamilton Stone Review, Roanoke Review, Calliope and other periodicals. A novel, TERRANE, was published by Unsolicited Press in 2018. I am a graduate of the Sonoma State University writing program.

Petra F. Bagnardi is a TV screenwriter, a theater playwright and actress, and a poet. She was short-listed in the Enfield Poets’ Twentieth Anniversary Poetry Competition, and her work was featured in several literary journals including, Masque & Spectacle Literary Journal, Punk Noir Magazine, Poetica Review, Red Door Magazine, Drawn to the Light Press, Rabid Oak.

Flavian Mark Lupinetti, a poet and fiction writer, and cardiac surgeon, received his MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. His work has appeared in About Place, december, Redivider, Sheila-Na-Gig, and ZYZZYVA. Mark lives in New Mexico.

Sincere is a writer from Las Vegas, Nevada. She holds two Bachelor of Arts degrees in English and Communication Studies from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her work has been dedicated to to reimagining the family stories that have been passed down through a diverse and multi-cultural family tree. Miss Sincere is interested in the complexity of relationship and the social environments that shape them. She is currently studying at Columbia University in New York City. Her short story, “Eggface,” is featured in Beyond Thought journal.

 Victoria Wiswell is a writer who lives outside of Seattle, Washington. Victoria’s work has appeared in Writing In A Woman’s Voice, and her first novel is forthcoming in 2023. Victoria lives with her husband, sons, and animal family

 David Shapiro del Sole I live in Tasmania, Australia where I work part-time as a counsellor in private practice. I have previously had stories in Ginosko, Braindrip and an anthology, One Surviving Story.

 Benjamin Schmitt is the Elgin Award-nominated author of four books, most recently The Saints of Capitalism and Soundtrack to a Fleeting Masculinity. His poems have appeared in Sojourners, Antioch Review, The Good Men Project, Hobart, Columbia Review, Spillway, and elsewhere. A co-founder of Pacifica Writers’ Workshop, he has also written articles for The Seattle Times and At The Inkwell. He lives in Seattle with his wife and children.

 E Laura Golberg  A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominated poet, E. Laura Golberg’s work has appeared in Rattle, Poet Lore, Barrow Street, Birmingham Poetry Review, RHINO, and the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, among other venues. She won first place in the Washington, DC Commission on the Arts Larry Neal Poetry Competition.

 Gary Charles Wilkens’ first book, The Red Light Was My Mind, won the 2006 Texas Review Breakthrough Poetry Prize. His manuscript “Fayetteville” was a Finalist in the 2014 Moon City Review Poetry Contest. His poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including The Texas Review, Moon City Review, Passages North, the Adirondack Review, James Dickey Review, Melancholy Hyperbole, and Midwest Quarterly. His fiction has appeared in Drunk Monkeys, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, and Pale Ghosts Magazine. His day job is Associate Professor of English at Norfolk State University in Norfolk, Virginia.

 Matthew James Friday is a British born writer and teacher. He has had many poems in US and international journals. His first chapbook The Residents is due to be published by Finishing Line Press in 2024. He has published numerous micro-chapbooks with the Origami Poems Project. Other poems are forthcoming in The Oregon English Journal and The Amsterdam Quarterly (NL). Matthew is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet.

 Carol Park roams from cities to wilderness. Six years in Japan altered this California girl forever. She enjoys the work of teaching ESL and serving in a jail, and finds refreshment in hiking, gardening, and reading. Her MFA comes from Seattle Pacific University. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Haight Ashbury Journal, Black Fox Literary, MiGoZine, The California Quarterly, Foreshadow, Monterey Poetry Review and a number of anthologies.

 Daniel Belanger  I’ve published fiction in Bewildering Stories Ginosko Literary Journal, Tiger Shark, Mysterical-E, Obra/Artifact, Dark Matter, Home Planet News, Art Times, The Milo Review, Mobius, Bellowing Ark, City Primeval, Lynx Eye, and RE; AL, The Journal of Liberal Arts. I have published poems in The Joycean Lively Arts Guild Review, The Moody Street Irregulars and The Little Apple, which I formerly co-edited. I’ve received a Jacob Goldfein Award for Outstanding Scholarly and Creative Work for a paper entitled Aspects of Spirituality, Religiosity and Existentialism in Seniors Facing Death. I have a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature from Clark University and a Master’s Degrees in Social Work from Hunter College. I currently manage a quality of care program aimed at improving healthcare for people living with HIV in all regions of NYS. I live with my wife, Lori, in Peekskill, NY.

 Michael Hettich has published over a dozen books of poetry, most recently The Halo of Bees: New and Selected Poems, 1990-2022, which was published in May, 2023, by Press 53. His work has appeared widely in journals and in a few anthologies as well. He lives with his family in Black Mountain, North Carolina. michaelhettich.com.

Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas is a recent graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts, MFA in Writing program. Her latest collection, Alice in Ruby Slippers, was short-listed for the 2021 Eric Hoffer Grand Prize and awarded an honorable mention in the Poetry category. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in some of the following journals: The Comstock Review, Redactions, Verse Daily, and many more. She has served as editor-in-chief for both The Orchards Poetry Journal and Tule Review. An eleven-time Pushcart Prize nominee and seven-time Best of the Net nominee, according to family lore, she is a direct descendant of Robert Louis Stevenson.

 Lucia Haase I am a published poet who has been writing formal and free verse poetry for 25 years as the direct result off a spiritual experience. Many of my poems are inspired by nature, human nature and spirituality. I recently had poetry accepted by The California State Poetry Society, The Deronda Review, Time of Singing, Conceit Magazine, Amulet Magazine and The Pen.

 Louis Efron is an award-winning writer and poet who has been featured in Forbes, Huffington Post, Chicago Tribune, North Dakota Quarterly, Flapper Press Poetry Café, PentaCat Press, Words and Whispers, Bourgeon, The Deronda Review, Young Ravens Literary Review, The Ravens Perch, POETiCA REViEW, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Academy of the Heart and Mind, Literary Yard, New Reader Magazine and over 100 other national and global publications. He is also the author of five books, including The Unempty Spaces Between (winner of the 2023 NYC Big Book Award for poetry), How to Find a Job, Career and Life You Love; Purpose Meets Execution; Beyond the Ink; as well as the children’s book What Kind of Bee Can I Be?

 Brenton MacKinnon began his teaching career living alone in a Vietnamese village while serving with the Marines as an interpreter during wartime.  After two tours with the Peace Corps, he returned to graduate school to study sociolinguistics. He has worked abroad in 3rd world countries and with refugees, low income communities and convicts in the U.S. as they seek to recover from trauma. He has half a dozen book on Amazon, Domestically his social work includes; the Navajo Reservation, refugee and immigrant communities, low income neighborhoods plus incarcerated veterans. Mac speaks 5 languages and now leads groups in the healing value of the written word.

 Sandro Francisco Piedrahita is an American writer of Ecuadorian and Peruvian descent, with a degree in Comparative Literaure from Yale College. His short stories have been accepted for publication by The Acentos Revew, The Ganga Review, Hive Avenue Literary Journal, Limit Experience Journal, Label Me Latina/o, Sundial Magazine, The Write Launch, Synchronized Chaos, Peauxdunque Journal, Carmina Magazine, Faultline Journal and Foreshadow Magazine.

 Martin Willitts Jr is an editor of Comstock Review. He won 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest; Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize, 2018; Editor’s Choice, Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, December, 2020; 17th Annual Sejong Writing Competition, 2022. His 21 full-length collections include the Blue Light Award 2019, The Temporary World. His recent books are Ethereal Flowers (Shanti Press, 2023); Rain Followed Me Home (Glass Lyre Press, 2023); and Leaving Nothing Behind (Fernwood Press, 2023).

 Allison de Laveaga is a writer and spiritual director living in Berkeley, California. She blogs at http://allisondelaveaga.com.

C O N T R I B U T O R S to issue #32 of Ginosko Literary Journal

Richard Risemberg was born to a mixed and mixed-up family in Argentina, and dragged to LA as a child to escape the fascist regime. He’s spent the next few decades exploring the darker corners of the America Dream and writing stories, poems, and essays based on his experiences. He has published widely in the last few years, mostly short fiction in literary journals; you want to see proof? Go to http://crowtreebooks.com/richard-risemberg-publications/ and click a few links. Some of the stories may disturb your sleep; some will give you sweet dreams.

 Andrew Miller retired in 2013 from a career that included research in aquatic system s and university teaching. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Front Porch Review, Blue Lake Review, The Meadow, The River, Northern New England Review, Pithead Chapel, The Evergreen Review, Toastmasters Magazine, and Fatherly. He lives in north-central Florida, volunteers in prisons, restores antique stained-glass windows, and writes. He is the Creative Nonfiction Editor of Mud Season Review. His website is http://www.andrewcmiller.com/.

Eva Eliav received her BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Toronto. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in numerous literary journals, both online and in print. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks: Eve (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2019) and One Summer Day (Kelsay Books, 2021). You can find a selection of her prose, poetry, and art at www.evaeliav.com.

Michelle R Brady is a writer and an attorney. She is/has also been a soldier, pilot, and mother. She lives in Washington DC with her family, dogs, cats, turtle, multiple aquariums.

Travis Flatt (he/him) is a teacher and actor living in Cookeville, Tennessee. His stories appear or are forthcoming in Bending Genre, JMWW, Flash Frog, Maudlin House, and other places. He enjoys theater, dogs, and theatrical dogs.

James Hartman’s fiction appears in Blue Fifth Review, Litro, December, Raleigh Review, Gris-Gris, Hamilton Stone Review, New World Writing, and elsewhere. His fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions, and was an Honorable Mention in New Millennium’s 50th Annual Flash Fiction Award. His scholarly work is featured in The Hemingway Review. He holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Eastern Kentucky University, and lives in York, Pennsylvania. You can reach him at Jhartm17@yahoo.com.

 Lucy Kulwiec is a writer, born and living in London. She has worked in eastern Europe as a journalist, now working in education in the UK. She has an MA in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmiths, University of London. She is currently working on her first novella, The Orchids.

 Blake Leland has published poetry in Epoch, The New Yorker, Commonweal, Atlanta Review, Indiana Review, Thomas Hardy Review, Canopic Jar, The Art Section, Poetry International (online), The Ekphrastic Review, Shiela na Gig, etc. A Pushcart Prize nominee, he co-authored a selection of occasional poems: On Occasion: Four Poets, One Year.

Niles Reddick is author of a novel, three collections, and a novella. His work has been featured in over thirty collections and five hundred publications including The Saturday Evening Post, Muleskinner, New Reader, Cheap Pop, Citron Review, Right Hand Pointing, Nunum, and Vestal Review. He is a five time Pushcart, a two time Best Micro nominee, and a two time Best of the Net nominee. His newest flash collection Who’s Going to Pray for Me Now? and his novella Forgiven are forthcoming this spring.

Shizue Seigel is a 3rd  generation Japanese American writer/visual artist/editor based in San Francisco. She grew up as an Army brat in segregated Baltimore, Occupied Japan, skid-row Stockton, and strawberry sharecropping camps. Her American-born parents were deeply traumatized by their WWII incarceration in American concentration camps. Shizue dropped out of school in the early 1960s to learn by doing—from the Haight-Ashbury to Indian ashrams, from the corporate advertising to HIV prevention in public housing.

As founder/director of Write Now! SF Bay (http://www.writenowsf.com) she supports writers of color through workshops, events and anthologies. Her books include five BIPOC anthologies and three books on the Japanese Americans experience. Her work has been supported by the San Francisco Arts Commission, California Arts Council, California Humanities, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, and others. She’s a five-time VONA alum whose poetry and prose have been widely published in journals and anthologies.

Her latest project, Hidden Histories of the Central Coast, connects the Japanese American experience with that of Latinx and Asian agricultural workers.
writenowsf.com
shizueseigel.com

 Jeff Hazlett lives and writes in Omaha, Nebraska. Jeff’s short fiction is upcoming in Lighthouse Digest and other publications. Find him at: jeffhaz.com.

Jean Kane’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous publications, including Ignatian Literary Magazine, Prairie Schooner, The Georgia Review, American Short Fiction online, South Dakota Review, Cimarron Review, Courtship of Winds, Indiana Review, 3:AM, Hotel Amerika, Euphony Journal, Fogged Clarity, The MacGuffin, Nonconformist Magazine, Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, Pine Hills Review, Posit Journal, Rue Scribe, Slab, Voices de la Luna, Word For/Word, and Doubly Mad. Her book of poems, Make Me, was published by Otis Nebula in 2014. She is a recipient of the Otis Nebula First Book Award, and she was nominated for a 2021 Pushcart Prize by Hole in the Head Review.

Nina Schuyler  My stories have been published by Zyzzyva, Fugue, Nashville Review, Santa Clara Review, and elsewhere, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. My award-winning collection, In This Ravishing World, will be published on July 2, 2024.

Rebecca Klassen is a co-editor of The Phare. Her work has featured in Mslexia, Popshot, Shooter, Burningword, Literally Stories, and Ellipsis Zine. She has won the London Independent Story Prize, and was shortlisted for the Oxford Flash and the Laurie Lee Prize. Rebecca’s stories have been performed on BBC Radio.

Perry Genovesi  lives in West Philadelphia, works as a public librarian, and serves his fellow workers in AFSCME District Council 47. He’s a ’24 Best Microfiction nominee, and his published fiction is forthcoming or has been featured in The Santa Monica Review, Bridge Eight, Gone Lawn, and collected on tiny.cc/PerrryGenovesi. He lives with two cats and he still needs to get it through his skull that, when he’s running late, he has no time to lint-roll his black shirts & just needs to settle on another color. Twitter: @unionlibrarian

Mark Wagstaff’s work has appeared in Does It Have Pockets?, The New Guard, Open Doors Review and Abraxas Review. He won the 39th Annual 3-Day Novel Contest with off-kilter romcom Attack of the Lonely Hearts published by Anvil Press. Mark’s latest novel On the Level was published in 2022 through Leaf by Leaf, an imprint of Cinnamon Press. www.markwagstaff.com

Dale Going is a poet and printer living in the canyons of Manhattan and the Adirondack Park of upstate New York after a former lifetime at the foot of Mt. Tamalpais and the Mendocino mountains of Northern California. She has published the poetry collections The View They Arrange ( Kelsey St. Press, nominated for the Poets’ Prize) and As/of the Whole (SFSU Award, selected by Brenda Hillman) as well as numerous chapbooks, broadsides and artists’ books. Her work has received support from Fund for Poetry, California Arts Council, Yaddo and Djerassi Fellowships. Her Em Press letterpress editions of poetry by women are archived internationally in prominent library special collections. She co-founded the quarterly ROOMS, which for a decade published formally innovative work of women writers and artists. New work appears or is forthcoming in VOLT, New American Writing, Blood Orange Review, Banyan Review, Equinox, Griffel, LandLocked, Milk Press, Nelligan Review, Stone Canoe, Wild Roof Journal, and the exhibition catalog of Ars poetica at the BRAHM Museum in Blowing Rock, NC. A chapbook is forthcoming from Albion Books. www.dalegoing.com

Linda Quinlan book Chelsea Creek was published by Brickhouse Press and she was the recipient of The Wicked Women’s Poetry Award. Her poems have been published in many literary journals. She was Poet of the Year in Wisconsin. Presently she lives in Vermont with her partner.
julie ball  jewelsburgeo@gmail.com

Caroline Livermore was born in Walnut Creek, California. She was raised on a working ranch, Called The Bishop Ranch, in San Ramon California.  She has been published in the book Resilience and was a semi-finalist for her poem in Margie The American Journal of Poetry. Her family has a working ranch on Mt. St. Helena, above Calistoga, CA. The author currently lives in St. Helena, California.

Chris Hart is a Baltimore-based writer and editor. A 2021 graduate of the University of Baltimore MFA program in Creative Writing and Publishing Arts, Hart is the author of Useful, a collection of stories, as well as the creator, playwright and lyricist for TRY: The Musical, which was recently presented in salon at Baltimore’s Fells Point Corner Theater. He has been published in two editions of Welter.

Nick Visconti  My poems have been published by Prelude, Painted Bride Quarterly, GASHER, Image, Vallum, Burningword, Gulf Coast Online, and others. I was a finalist for Kallisto Gaia Press’s 2023 and 2024 Saguaro Prize

Mark Tate is the author of three novels, Beside the River, its sequel River’s End (McCaa Books, 2021), and Butterfly on the Wheel (McCaa Books, 2022). He served for ten years on the Sonoma County Poet Selection Committee for the poets laureate of that county. His book of poems Walking Scarecrow won the Blue Light Press Book of the Year, published December 2023. He is a long-time resident of Sonoma County where he lives with his wife, Lori, and two cats.

 Colby Galliher’s short fiction has been published or is forthcoming in Inscape Magazine, Harrisburg Magazine, the Inlandia Literary Journal, and elsewhere. More information about his work is available at colbygalliher.com.

Toni Hornes Sullivan  I am a first year MFA student at the University of Baltimore. My submission contains poems in which I’m processing some part of my life, whether a literal death or generational patterns. These poems best encapsulate my desire to communicate and to explore memory and to uncover or acknowledge self in others, process, art, or geography.

Lance Romanoff is a short story writer and novelist. He is currently working on a novel set in 1970s Russia in addition to several stories. A New England native, he now lives in Los Angeles with a hairless Sphynx cat and a motorcycle. His earlier work has been published in Riddle Fence, The Charleston Anvil, and Door is a Jar.

Stacey C. Johnson writes and teaches in San Diego County. She is a graduate of the MFA program at San Diego State University and creator of The Unknowing Project. Her work appears in Oyster River Pages, Pacific Review, and Fiction International, as well as various other publications. Her poetry chapbook Flight Songs is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press by (February 2024). You can find her at staceycjohnson.com.

Lance Romanoff is a short story writer and novelist. He is currently working on a novel set in 1970s Russia in addition to several stories. A New England native, he now lives in Los Angeles with a hairless Sphynx cat and a motorcycle. His earlier work has been published in Riddle Fence, The Charleston Anvil, and Door is a Jar.

Michael Catherwood’s awards include a Nebraska Arts Council Grant, Pushcart Nomination, The Holt Prize for Poetry, and Finalist for the Ruth Lily Prize. His books are Dare, If you Turned Around Quickly, Projector from Stephen F. Austin Press, and Near Misses from WSC Press. He was former editor at The Backwaters Press and was Associate Editor at Plainsongs since 1995. Recent poems have appeared in The Opiate, As It Ought to Be Magazine, Pennsylvania English, Zoetic Press and Common Ground Review. He’s a cancer survivor, retired, and lives in Omaha with his wife, Cindy.

Richard Eddie I read and write in my spare time, and I have never been published.

John Calvin Hughes has published in numerous magazines and journals, including Dead Mule, Southern Indiana Review, Autumn Sky Poetry, The Timberline Review, The American Journal of Poetry, and Mississippi Review. His publications include a critical study, The Novels and Short Stories of Frederick Barthelme (The Edwin Mellen Press); two poetry chapbooks, The Shape of Our Luck (Sargent Press) and Cul-de-sac Agoniste (Black Bomb Books); a full-length poetry collection, Music from a Farther Room (Aldrich Press); and four novels, Twilight of the Lesser Gods (CreateSpace), Killing Rush (Second Wind Publishing), The Lost Gospel of Darnell Rabren (Bowen Press Books), and The Boys (Regal House). Nominated for a Pushcart in 2015, he is also the winner of the Ilse and Hans Juergensen Poetry Contest and The Thomas Burnett Swann Poetry Prize. He lives and works in Florida.

Carl Meuser has been a farm hand in Oklahoma, a disk jockey in Iceland, and a warship captain who has sailed the globe. His peer-reviewed professional writing has been published in the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings; his travel writing has been featured in the San Diego Union-Tribune; and his fiction has appeared in Orca and is forthcoming in Red Coyote.

Dionissios Kollias’s work has appeared in No Dear Magazine, Pinwheel, Raleigh Review, and elsewhere. He lives in New York

Andrea L Watson  Founding publisher of 3: A Taos Press, Andrea Watson’s poetry has appeared in Nimrod, Rhino, Subtropics, Cream City Review, Ekphrasis, The Feminist Journal of Studies in Religion, and The Dublin Quarterly, among others. She is co-editor of the poetry anthologies, Collecting Life: Poets on Objects Known and Imagined and Malala: Poems for Malala Yousafzai. Andrea has designed and curated eighteen ekphrasis events across the United States, commencing with Braided Lives: A Collaboration Between Artists and Poets, sponsored by the Taos Institute of Arts, and, most recently, Take a Detour from Route 66: Taos to L.A., featured at the Homestead Museum in Los Angeles and the La Hacienda de los Martinez in Taos.

 Ross Anderson  Previously, I have been shortlisted for the Parracombe prize, and last year won the Sussex prize for my short story in the Hastings Book Festival.

Joddy Murray’s chapbook, Anaphora, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2020. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in over 70 journals, including, most recently, Blue Unicorn, Neologism Poetry Journal, Across the Margin, El Portal, Birdy Magazine, The Torrid Literature Journal, Wrath Bearing Tree, The Fourth River, Prism Review, Nude Bruce Review, OxMag, Flights, Perceptions Magazine, Cape Rock, Redactions: Poetry & Poetics, Sou’wester Literary Magazine, and Version 9. He currently lives in Marion, Illinois.

Bridget Hayes lives in Northern California. Her writing is published or is forthcoming in Yellow Arrow, Wild Roof Journal, Ionosphere, Ink In Thirds Magazine, The Sitting Room Women Travel Writers Anthology, The Letters Home Collection, and California Writers Club Ekphrastic Anthology: Vision and Verse. She is a tech librarian who helps people overcome their fear of technology. When she is not reading or writing she is likely outside. She lives with her wife and two orange cats. You can read more about her here: https://bridgethayes.carrd.co/ or follow her on Instagram @beoutside2writes

Steven Ostrowski is a widely-published writer, painter and songwriter. His novel, The Highway of Spirit and Bone, was published in 2023 by Lefora Publications and has been called “…a literary road trip for the ages.” His poetry chapbook, Persons of Interest, won the 2021 Wolfson Chapbook Prize and was published in 2022. Steven and his son Ben coauthored a full-length collaboration called Penultimate Human Constellation, published in 2018 by Tolsun Books. Steven’s newest book of poems, Life Field, will be published in early 2024. He is Professor Emeritus at Central Connecticut State University.

Judith Ford My writing has been published in Apricity Magazine, Better Than Starbucks Poetry & Fiction Journal, Caveat Lector, Clackamas Literary Review, Confluence, Connecticut Review, Evening Street Review, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Hong Kong Review, Ignatian Literary Review, Jumbelbook, The Laurel Review, The Meadow, New English Review, North Dakota Quarterly, The Paragon Journal, The Penmen Review, Pennsylvania English, Pine Hills Review, Quarter After Eight, Rubbertop Review, Southern Humanities Review, Thin Air Magazine, Umbrella Factory Magazine, Voices de la Luna, Waxing & Waning, Willow Review, The Write Launch, Young Ravens Literary Review, and many other journals. I coauthored a poetry collection with Martin Jack Rosenblum, Burning Oak, published by Lionhead Press (1986). My memoir, Fever of Unknown Origin, (published by Resource Publications) is now available on Amazon and will soon appear in bookstores. I’ve received Pushcart Prize nominations for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, won first place in the Willow Review Prose Award (2005), and was awarded “most highly commended” in the Margaret Reid Poetry Contest (2008). I have an MFA in writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, a BS in education and an MSW from the University of Wisconsin. I’m a retired psychotherapist and in the past have led workshops in the use of the arts in psychotherapy. I’ve also taught creative writing to middle, high school, and adult students. When I’m not writing I enjoy reading, hiking, dancing, strength training, yoga, and Words With Friends. I am the mother of three grown children, and grandmother to four wonderful grandchildren.

Richard Oyama’s poems, stories and essays have appeared in Premonitions: The Kaya Anthology of New Asian North American Poetry, The Nuyorasian Anthology, Breaking Silence, Dissident Song, A Gift of Tongues, About Place, Konch Magazine, Pirene’s Fountain, Tribes, Malpais Review, Anak Sastra, Buddhist Poetry Review and other literary journals. The Country They Know (Neuma Books 2005) is his first collection of poetry. He has a M.A. in English: Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. Currently retired, Oyama taught at California College of Arts in Oakland, University of California at Berkeley and University of New Mexico. His first novel in a trilogy, A Riot Goin’ On, is forthcoming. He is currently at work on a young adult novel and a full-length poetry collection.

Selen Ozturk is a San Francisco-based writer. Her work appears or is forthcoming in publications including the San Francisco Chronicle, SFGATE, Hobart, Evergreen Review, Bayou Magazine, Wilderness House Review, and Senses of Cinema, and has received support from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She holds a philosophy degree from UC Berkeley and works as a journalist. Find her work at freeverse.blog.

Ellis Elliott  My chapbook Break in the Field was published by Old Scratch Press in June 2023. I have been published in Apricity Magazine, Belle Ombre, Big Muddy, The Broken Plate, Brushfire Literature & Arts Journal, Cerasus Magazine, Cider Press Review, Copperfield Review Quarterly, Courtship of Winds, Dash, The Ear, Euphony Journal, The Ignatian Literary Magazine, Isele Magazine, Journal of Undiscovered Poets, Kaleidoscope, Literary Mama, The MacGuffin, Meadow, MORIA Literary Magazine, Pennsylvania English, OPEN: Journal of Arts and Letters, Overheard Magazine, Riggwelter, McNeese Review, Neologism Poetry Journal, Nude Bruce Review, Perceptions Magazine, Pink Panther Magazine, Plainsongs, Platform Review, The Rail, The Round, Signal Mountain Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, Sierra Nevada Review, Spotlong Review, Streetlight Magazine, Thin Air, Umbrella Factory Magazine, Voices De La Luna, Wrath-Bearing Tree, and Your Impossible Voice. My poems “Hyde Lake, Memphis,” “Easy Fix,” “After Words,” and “Our Truest Hungers” have been nominated for the Best of the Net awards. I participated in the Palm Beach Poetry Festival 2015 Workshop with poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil. I was a finalist in the Two Sylvia’s Press Wilder Poetry Book Prize in 2023 for my published book, Break in the Field. I received a bachelor’s degree in English from Rhodes College and an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University. I’ve taught ballet for over 30 years, and currently teach ballet, yoga, and lead online and in-person writing groups. My husband and I have a blended family of six grown sons and I enjoy mixed-media art, swimming, and miniatures.

Nick Godec writes poetry and short fiction, with works appearing in Brief Wilderness, El Portal, Flights, Grey Sparrow, Hedge Apple, MORIA Literary Magazine, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Rue Scribe, Shark Reef, Sierra Nevada Review, Steam Ticket, Thieving Magpie and Thin Air Magazine. He has a B.A. in history and an MBA from Columbia University and currently works in finance in New York City. Nick enjoys spending time with his wife Julia and their miniature pinscher, Emma.

Cynthia Atkins (She, Her) is the author of Psyche’s Weathers, In the Event of Full Disclosure (CW Books), and Still-Life With God (Saint Julian Press 2020), and a collaborative chapbook from Harbor Editions, 2022. Her work has appeared in many journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, BOMB, Cider Press Review, Diode, Green Mountains Review, Indianapolis Review, Los Angeles Review, Rust + Moth, North American Review, Permafrost, SWWIM, Thrush, Tinderbox, and Verse Daily. She earned her MFA from Columbia University and has earned fellowships and prizes from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Writer’s Voice, and Writers@Work. Atkins lives on the Maury River of Rockbridge County, Virginia, with artist Phillip Welch and their family. More work and info at: www.cynthiaatkins.com

Mervyn Seivwright writes to balance social consciousness & poetry craft for humane growth. He is a nomad from a Jamaican family, born in London, England, and left for America at age 10, now residing in Schopp, Germany. He is a Spalding University MFA Grad and has appeared in AGNI, American Journal of Poetry, Salamander Magazine, African American Review, & 64 other journals across 10 countries, receiving recognition as a 2021/2023 Pushcart Nominee & Voices Israel’s Rose Ruben Poetry Competition Honorable-Mention. His new collection Stick, Hook, and a Pile of Yarn, is available through Broken Sleep Books

https://www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/mervyn-seivwright-stick-hook-and-a-pile-of-yarn
Link: https://www.clippings.me/mervynseivwright
Socials: https://www.facebook.com/deep.cobra / https://twitter.com/Deepcobra / https://www.instagram.com/deepcobra/

Ivo Drury  A native of Ireland, Ivo Drury lives along the California Coast. Most recent poetry published in The Ocotillo Review and California Quarterly.

Susannah Winters Simpson’s work has been published in North American Review, Potomac, Wisconsin Review, South Carolina Review, POET, Nimrod International, Poet Lore, MORIA Literary Magazine, Salamander, Sequestrum, South Florida Poetry Journal, SWWIM, and Xavier Review, among others. Simpson’s work was selected twice to be read at the Norton Museum. She was chosen as a 2023 Featured Poet for Miami’s SWWIM/The Betsy Hotel’s Reading Series, and her poems have been included in several anthologies. Four of her poems won second prize in CommuterLit’s 2023 National Poetry Contest. Her book, Geography of Love & Exile, was published by Červená Barva Press. Her manuscript Mother Wind is forthcoming in 2024 by Pine Row Press and Dharma of Death & Desire is forthcoming by Shanti Arts Press in 2025.She is the founder and co-director of the Performance Poets of the Palm Beaches. Simpson holds an MFA in writing & literature from Bennington, a PhD from Binghamton University, and a Certificate of Advanced Study in therapeutic writing. She currently facilitates WriteRecovery groups in treatment centers.

Laura Lambie is a wife, mother and piano teacher who resides in Texas. She has published a story in The New English Review, and she is a finalist in the 2023 J.F. Powers Prize for Short Fiction.

Varley O’Connor I am the author of five published novels, most recently The Welsh Fasting Girl (Bellevue Literary Press 2019) and The Master’s Muse (Scribner 2012). My shorter prose has appeared in Missouri Review, Santa Monica Review, The Examined Life, Capra Review, The Sun, Calyx, Publisher’s Weekly, and elsewhere.

 Mark Lewandowski   I am the author of the story collection, Halibut Rodeo. My stories, essays and scripts have appeared in many anthologies and journals, including The North American Review, The Gettysburg Review and Cimarron Review. My work has also been nominated for numerous Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations, and has been listed as “Notable” in The Best American Essays, The Best American Nonrequired Reading and The Best American Travel Writing. Currently I am a Professor of English at Indiana State University.

Daria Sommers is a writer and filmmaker whose work includes the feature documentary Lioness and the recently completed novel Sawadika American Girl (Vine Leaves Press 2026). She’s been a MacDowell Colony Fellow and a recipient of grants from the NEH, the NYSCA and the Rockefeller Family Fund. www.dariasommers.com