Contributors
A Pushcart nominee, Lana Bella is an author of two chapbooks, Under My Dark (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2016) and Adagio (Finishing Line Press, forthcoming), has had poetry and fiction featured with over 300 journals, 2River, California Quarterly, Chiron Review, Columbia Journal, Poetry Salzburg Review, San Pedro River Review, The Hamilton Stone Review, The Homestead Review, The Ilanot Review, The Writing Disorder, Third Wednesday, Tipton Poetry Journal, Yes Poetry, and elsewhere, among others. Lana resides in the US and the coastal town of Nha Trang, Vietnam, where she is a mom of two far-too-clever frolicsome imps.
Dmitry Blizniuk is an author from Ukraine. His most recent poems have appeared in Dream Catcher, Reflections, and The Ilanot Review. He is a finalist for 2017 Award "Open Eurasia," "The Best of Kindness 2017"(USA). He lives in Kharkive, Ukraine.
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. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in a range of journals and magazines including The Lake, Ink Sweat and Tears, Poetry Pacific, Interpreters House and Jet Fuel 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.
Terry Dawson wrote poetry in the mid-seventies. It found its way into Connecticut's Red Fox Review (issues 1975-1978). In the spring of 1978 one of his poems was chosen as a finalist in the Chase Going Woodhouse Poetry competition. He then gave up poetry to make a living as an ordained pastor for nearly three decades. Retiring, he returned to writing. His work appears in the Austin International Poetry Festival diverse-city anthology (issues 2016-2017). Dr. Dawson also reads with a multi-ethnic poetry, jazz and live painting group called Five Voices, One Brush. They have performed in Austin and their work has aired on KUTX radio.
Daniel David is a visual artist and writer living along the southern shore of Lake Erie in North America. His graphite drawings have been exhibited widely in solo, group and juried exhibitions, nationally and internationally, in the Toledo Museum of Art, the Toyohashi City Museum, Japan and illustrated in a book of poetry titled Ultrasound. A professor of art, he teaches studio art and art history and is director of the Little Gallery. His poems have appeared widely in a number of venues across the United States, in Canada and the United Kingdom. His publications also include articles in the Journal of Creative Behavior; chapbooks Close to Home and Two Buddha; and his novel, Flying Over Erie.
Artist’s Statement: My endeavor is to pursue a drawing that embodies natural and immediate expression. My aim is not to produce the sensational or the intellectually novel, but to validate a point of encounter, a tenuous fragment or impression. I acknowledge a kind of readiness for an image more so than the notion of inspiration. This readiness requires listening to my surroundings; a humility of purpose and acceptance; and a quiet, often exasperating, patience. I relish the elusive aspect of emergence and honor this transient beginning as a place of discovery. There is no delineated, predictable destination; there are few preconceptions. The initial inception is expanded, combined with newly discovered associations, and gradually finds a voice of intent. At its best, the drawing retains the freshness and spontaneity of the original vision.
Morgan Leigh Davies is a writer whose work has appeared in The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Brooklyn Magazine, and elsewhere. She co-hosts the pop culture podcast Overinvested, and recently completed a master's degree in Victorian literature at the University of Oxford.
Adam Fout is a 32-year-old writer masquerading as a marketer. He lives in North Texas with his young wife and middle-aged cat. His web site is found here: adamfout.com.
Gary Glauber is a poet, fiction writer, teacher, and former music journalist. His works have received multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations. He champions the underdog to the melodic rhythms of obscure power pop. His collection, Small Consolations (Aldrich Press) is available through Amazon, as is a chapbook, Memory Marries Desire (Finishing Line Press).
Dolores Hayden’s poetry collections are American Yard (2003) and Nymph, Dun, and Spinner (2010). Exuberance is forthcoming from Red Hen Press. She’s won awards from the PSA and from the New England Poetry Club. Professor of Architecture and American Studies (Emerita) from Yale, her most recent non-fiction is A Field Guide to Sprawl. Her author’s web site is www.DoloresHayden.com
Mark Jacobs has published 117 stories in magazines including The Atlantic, Playboy, The Baffler, The Iowa Review, and The Kenyon Review, and has a story forthcoming in The Hudson Review. A full list of his publications including books can be found at markjacobsauthor.com.
Sandra Kohler's third collection of poems, Improbable Music, appeared in May, 2011 from Word Press. Her 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. Her poems have appeared over the past thirty-eight years in journals including Prairie Schooner, The New Republic, Beloit Poetry Journal, APR, Slant, The Missouri Review, The Gettysburg Review, Tar River Poetry, and The Colorado Review.
Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician currently residing on Salt Spring Island BC, is a Pushcart nominee with over a thousand poems published internationally in magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. His books are The So-Called Sonnets (Silenced Press), An Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy (Cawing Crow Press) and Like As If (Pskis Porch), all available via Amazon.
Tom Montag is the author of In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013. He has been a featured poet at Atticus Review (April, 2015), Contemporary American Voices (August, 2015), Houseboat (April, 2016), and Basil O'Flaherty Review (July, 2016), and received Pushcart Prize nominations from Provo Canyon Review, Blue Heron Review, and The Lake.
Charles O'Melia is a student at the University of Maryland in College Park, from Baltimore, Maryland. His most recent work, "star-gazing," was a Finalist for the 2016 Jimenéz-Porter Prize in Fiction.
J. Ray Paradiso is a recovering academic in the process of refreshing himself as a photographer and writer.
Amanda Pauley began writing fiction as an English major at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and continued through a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies degree at Hollins University. Later, she returned to Hollins University, and completed the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program in 2014. Her stories have appeared in the Press 53 Open Awards Anthologies, Cargoes, Clinch Mountain Review, Canyon Review, West Trade Review, Shenandoah: The Washington and Lee University Review, The Masters Review Anthology III, 2014, Gravel Literary Journal, Steel Toe Review, Mud Season Review, Crab Fat Literary Magazine, Ember: A Journal of Luminous Things, Canary, Atticus Review, and The Tishman Review. She was a 2012 Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize finalist, a runner up for the 2013 Andrew James Purdy Prize for Short Fiction, the runner up in the 2013 Bevel Summers Short Short Story Contest, the winner of the Arts & Letters Prize for Fiction in 2013, and the third place winner in the 2015 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest.
Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collection is The B Poems published by Poets Wear Prada, 2016. For more information, including free e-books, his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.
Bill Plott is a 1970 graduate of Beloit College with B.A. in English. Since then he has dropped out of several graduate programs. He began teaching English and Drama at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School in 1971; he became director of the LSB Players in 1991. During his years at L-S he directed forty-five productions; after retiring in 2008, he has been involved in four productions, the latest of which was Beckett's "Krapp's Last Tape." Bill is currently trying to write plays, contemplating a production of The Importance of
Being Earnest, and swearing a great deal at news programs.
Judy Plott: After finishing my M.A.T. from Simmons College in 1969, in the spring semester student teaching at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional H.S., I stayed at L.S. until 2011--I hope not overstaying my welcome--retiring in 2009 and spending the next two years as a teacher emeritus. For the last 20 years at L.S. I was English Department Head and was involved in many curriculum projects. I worked with Bill Plott in the Drama Program for about 20 years as well. All this has given me plenty of background for retirement.
Eleanor Rector studies Forensic Psychology in Chicago. She enjoys exploring abandoned places in the middle of the night, drinking tea, and studying brains.
Isabella Ronchetti is a young artist and writer originally from San Francisco, California. She spent a few years studying in Florence Italy, and currently is living in Virginia. She enjoys spending her free time reading psychology books, swimming, and people-watching. Her writing and artwork have won awards and appeared in magazines such as FishFood Magazine, Glass Kite Anthology, The Sigh Press, and Canvas Literary Journal.
M. A. Schaffner has had poems published in Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, Agni, and elsewhere – most recently in Former People, Raintown Review, and Rock River Review. Long-ago-published books include the poetry collection The Good Opinion of Squirrels and the novel War Boys. Schaffner spends most days in Arlington, Virginia juggling a laptop, smart phone, percussion caps, pugs, and a Gillott 404.
Former and more-or-less continuing student of Bill and Judy Plott (whose answers to the Digital Forum are in this issue), Michael Sohn teachers freshman composition at Long Island University Brooklyn where he also trains and supports graduate teaching assistants. His courses focus on children's literature, the graphic novel and whatever else might make students suffer. He has published poetry and translations in Zen Monster and Downtown Brooklyn and has also published two essays on the French poet André du Bouchet.
Tim Suermondt is the author of three full-length collections of poems: Trying To Help The Elephant Man Dance (The Backwaters Press, 2007), Just Beautiful (New York Quarterly Books, 2010) and Election Night And The Five Satins (Glass Lyre Press, 2016) – along with three chapbooks. He has poems published in Poetry, The Georgia Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Blackbird, Bellevue Literary Review, North Dakota Quarterly, december Magazine, Plume Poetry Journal, The Southeast Review, Poetry East, and Stand Magazine, among others. He is a book reviewer for Cervena Barva Press and a poetry reviewer for Bellevue Literary Review. He lives in Cambridge (MA) with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.
Born in Paris in 1947, Esther Tellermann is both a poet and a psychoanalyst. Normalienne and agregée de Lettres, she won the grand prize of l’Académie Française for her first book, Première apparition avec épaisseur (1986). She also won the François Coppée prize for Guerre extrême in 2000 and in 2016 the Max Jacob prize for Sous votre nom.
Publications:
Première apparition avec épaisseur. Flammarion, 1986 (reedited in 2007).
Trois plans inhumains. Flammarion, 1989
Distance de fuite. Flammarion, 1993.
Pangéia. Flammarion, 1996.
Guerre extrême. Flammarion, 1999.
Mental Ground (trans. Keith Waldrop). Burning Deck, 2002.
Encre plus rouge. Flammarion, 2003.
Une odeur humaine, story. Farrago/Léo Scheer, 2004.
Terre exacte. Flammarion, 2007.
Contre l’épisode. Flammarion, 2011.
Le Troisième. Editions Unes, 2013.
Avant la règle. Fissile, 2014.
Carnets à bruire. La Lettre volée, 2014.
Nous ne sommes jamais assez poète, essay. La Lettre volée, 2014.
Un point fixe. Fissile, 2014.
Sous votre nom. Flammarion, 2015.
Éternité à coudre. Editions Unes, 2016.
Don Thompson is San Joaquin fauna who has been writing about the region for over fifty years. For info and links to his publications, visit his website at www.don-e-thompson.com.
Edward Wells II is beyond half-way through serving two years; You still don't know Him. He has a manuscript sceduled for release in 2017 by MadHat Press.
