Contributors
Scott Bassis has had short stories published in Litbreak Magazine, Poydras Review, The Furious Gazelle, The Writing Disorder, JAB, Sweet Tree Review, The Acentos Review, Trouvaille Review, Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, Me First Magazine, Image Outwrite, Quail Bell Magazine, The Missing Slate, Jumbelbook, Furtive Dalliance, Fiction on the Web and Rainbow Curve.
Michael Bates is a retired international publishing executive. Although born in the USA, he has lived most of his professional life in Latin America and Europe. Currently he resides in St. Petersburg, Florida and maintains a web/blogsite of his poetry entitled three by 3 <http://michaeljbates.com> Many of his poems have been published in print and electronic form. The most recent are in: Passager, The Columbia Review, Miller’s Pond, Verse-Virtual.
John Bowden is a retired high school English teacher and administrator who now spends his time enjoying his spouse and grandson, reading, writing, traveling, and praying for baseball to return. He lives in Haddon Heights, NJ, with his husband, Russell.
Rebecca Burns is an award-winning writer of short stories, over thirty of which have been published online or in print. Her story collections – Catching the Barramundi (2012) and The Settling Earth (2014) – were both longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Award. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2011, winner of the Fowey Festival of Words and Music Short Story Competition in 2013 (and runner-up in 2014), winner of the Black Pear Press Short Story Competition in 2014 and, in 2016, was listed for competitions including the Evesham Festival of Words and Music, the Chipping Norton Festival, the Sunderland Short Story Award, and the Green Lady Press Short Story Award. She has also been profiled as part of the University of Leicester’s “Grassroutes Project”, a project that showcases the 50 best transcultural writers in the county. Her debut novel, The Bishop’s Girl, was published by Odyssey Books in September 2016. This was followed by Artefacts and Other Stories in 2017 and Beyond the Bay in 2018. Her new novella, Quilaq, will be published in July 2020.
Edward M. Cohen's novel, "$250,000," was published by Putnam. His story collection, Before Stonewall, won the 2019 Awst Press Book Award and will be published next year. His plays have been produced at Playwrights Horizon, O'Neill Theatre Center, Theatre at St. Clements, Jewish Repertory Theatre and elsewhere.
Sunset Combs is a recent graduate from Earlham College who is headed to Colorado State University in the fall to earn her Master's in creative nonfiction.
Andy Conner is a Birmingham, UK-based poet and educator, with a long track record of performing his work nationally and internationally. His work has also been featured in numerous publications. His credits include BBC Radio 4, Jaipur Literature Festival and India International Centre.
Shannon Cuthbert is a writer and artist living in Brooklyn. Her poems have appeared in Bluepper, Collidescope, and Chronogram, among others. Her work is forthcoming in Ligeia Magazine, Green Silk Journal, The Oddville Press, and Schuylkill Valley Journal.
jerom.e.david lives in New York City, alone with his dog Clover. A writer and playwright, he has recently started a free newsletter (the9inchcurse.substack.com) in which he plans on posting some of his past, present and future works.
Colin Dodds is a writer with several novels and books of poetry to his name. He grew up in Massachusetts and lived in California briefly, before finishing his education in New York City. Since then, he’s made his living as a journalist, editor, copywriter and video producer. Over the last seven years, his writing has appeared in more than three hundred publications including Gothamist, Painted Bride Quarterly, and The Washington Post, and has been praised by luminaries including Norman Mailer. His poetry collection Spokes of an Uneven Wheel was published by Main Street Rag Publishing Company in 2018. Colin also writes screenplays, has directed a short film, and built a twelve-foot-high pyramid out of PVC pipe, plywood and zip ties. One time, he rode his bicycle a hundred miles in a day. He lives in New York City, with his wife and daughter. You can find more of his work at thecolindodds.com.
Ellis Elliott has been published in Literary Mama and participated in the Palm Beach Poetry Festival 2015 Workshop with poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil. She received a bachelor’s degree in English from Rhodes College and currently is enrolled in the MFA program of Queens University. For more than thirty years, she taught dance and owned her own dance studio. She also has studied and taught yoga for the past ten years. Ellis and her husband have a blended family of six grown sons. She enjoys mixed-media art and art journaling, paddleboarding, running, kinesiology, and choreography.
Sandra Florence received her Master’s in English/Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, and has been writing and teaching in Tucson, Arizona for the last thirty-five years. She taught at the University of Arizona for 19 years, at Pima Community College, and in a number of community education settings working with refugees, the homeless, adolescent parents, women in recovery and juveniles at risk. She has also run writing groups for children and parents. She is the recipient of two NEH grants, one in 1997 under the initiative The National Conversation on American Pluralism and Identity, and through the grant ran a community writing project for three years, and the second in 2015 entitled Border Culture in the Classroom and in the Public Square. She has published scholarly articles on writing and healing and writing as a tool for public dialogue. She published a book of poems, entitled The Radiant City, in 2015 and is currently working on a short story collection.
Gary Galsworth grew up in the New York City area. He spent three years in the Marine Corps before studying painting and filmmaking at the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Chicago. His work has been featured in Abstract, Bitterzoet Magazine, Contemporary Expressions, Evening Street Review, Litbreak Magazine, Nebo: A literary Journal, Pennsylvania English, Pioneertown, Poydras Review, Temenos, Broad River Review, Obsidian, Riverfeet Press, Main Street Rag, and others. In addition to writing poetry, he is a professional plumber and a student of Zen and Vipassana practice. He’s published three books of poems: Yes Yes, Beyond the Wire, and Nothing Itself. Gary lives in Hoboken, NJ.
B.P. Greenbaum’s work has been published or is forthcoming in The Alembic, American Writer’s Review, Arcturus, The Binnacle, The Cape Rock, Crack The Spine, The Dos Passos Review, Eclectica, Fiction Fix, Forge, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Hawaii Pacific Review, Hog River Review, Inscape, The Louisville Review, Main Street Rag, Pearl, Prick of the Spindle, The MacGuffin, Marathon Review, The Massachusetts Review, Noctua Review, Slab, The Penmen Review, Underwood Review, Verdad, and Willow Review. She has studied with Michael White, Suzanne Strempek Shea, Brad Barkley, and Jack Driscoll. In 2011, Greenbaum was awarded a Teaching Arts Fellowship from Surdna, now known as the National Artist Teacher Fellowship (NATF), to develop a memoir. In addition, her work won second place in the 2006 Fiction CT Authors and Publishers Association (CAPA) contest. Greenbaum has a B.A. in English from the University of Hartford, an M.A. in secondary education from St. Joseph College, and an M.F.A. from the University of Southern Maine Stonecoast. She retired from her career as a creative writing teacher at a public magnet arts high school in Willimantic, CT and has worked as an adjunct professor at Eastern Connecticut State University. In addition to writing, she is a volunteer at The Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Soundings East, Dalhousie Review and Connecticut River Review. Latest book, “Leaves On Pages” is available through Amazon.
A native of Moscow, Andrey Gritsman emigrated to the United States in 1981. He is a physician who is also a poet and essayist. He has published five volumes of poetry in Russian. He received a 2019 Best of the Net anthology nomination. He received the 2009 Pushcart Prize Honorable Mention XXIII and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize several times (2005–2011), and also was on the Short List for PEN American Center Biennial Osterweil Poetry Award. His poems, essays, and short stories in English have appeared or are forthcoming in over 60 literary journals, including Pirene’s Fountain, Forge, Emprise Review, Amarillo Bay, The Anemone Sidecar, Left Curve, Midwest Quarterly, Nimrod International Journal, Sanskrit, Blue Mesa, Carbon Culture Review, Confrontation, Cimarron Review, Euphony, The Fourth River, Grub Street, Absinthe: New European Writing, Hotel Amerika, Mad Hatter’s Review, Foliate Oak, decomP, Gloom Cupboard, Ghost City Review, Newfound, New Orleans Review, Notre Dame Review, Oracle, Wisconsin Review, Studio One, Denver Quarterly, Hawaii Review, Hunger Mountain, Projected Letters, Permafrost, A Gathering of the Tribes, The Magnolia Review, Poet Lore, Poetry International, Puerto del Sol, Reed Magazine, Riggwelter, Richmond Review (London), Fortnight (N. Ireland, UK), Landfall (New Zealand), Ars Interpres (Stockholm, Sweden), Schuylkill Valley Journal, The South Carolina Review, Steam Ticket, Stickman Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Harpur Palate, Tampa Review, Texas Review, Two Cities Review, Verdad, Whistling Shade, The Writer’s Chronicle, and The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review. His work has also been anthologized in Modern Poetry in Translation (UK), Crossing Centuries (New Generation in Russian Poetry), The Breath of Parted Lips: Voices from the Robert Frost Place, Stranger at Home: American Poetry with an Accent, Visions International, and in Killer Verse: Poems on Murder and Mayhem. He received my MFA in poetry from Vermont College. He runs the Intercultural Poetry Series in a popular literary club, Cornelia Street Café, in New York City.
Emily Hageman is a music and theater educator currently residing in Sioux City, Iowa. Her plays have seen production with Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival, Heartland Theatre Company, A Light in Dark Places, the Red Eye 10s International Play Festival, Midwest Dramatists Conference, the Growing Stage Theatre, Theatre Evolve, Spokane Stage Left, Iowa State University, Memoriam Development Nightshade, Chagrin Valley Little Theatre, and Gi60s. Emily is published with YouthPLAYS and Stage Partners.
Mark Hannon is a retired firefighter. He and his family make their home in Baltimore. He is the author of the novel Every Man for Himself and The Vultures, the latter to be released in October 2020.
Dr, Harris has published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, the American Journal of Psychotherapy, and the Annual of Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry and psychoanalysis have provided his livelihood for many years. For many years he’s sculpted wood, exhibited his work in local galleries and juried shows, and learned the metaphorical implications of tools. He is the often-chagrined husband in a loving forty-two year marriage where he’s had many occasions to learn to listen better. He’s also the highly absorbed grandfather of three girls, a five-year-old and ten-year-old twins, who’ve taught him a great deal about how to appreciate other worlds
Abbie Hart is a 16 year old from Texas who is trying to make her voice heard. She’s found that playing with verse and metaphors helps her cope with her emotions, and that her finished pieces have an odd and unconventional feel to them.
Kyle Heger, former managing editor of Communication World magazine, lives in Albany, CA. His writing has won a number of awards and hs been accepted by 64 publications, including London Journal of Fiction, Nerve Cowboy and U.S. 1 Worksheets.
DAH’s ninth poetry collection is SPHERICAL (Argotist Press) and his poems have been published by editors from the US, UK, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Spain, Canada, Japan, Poland, Philippines, Singapore, Australia, Africa, and India. He is a multiple Pushcart nominee, Best Of The Net nominee, and the lead editor for the poetry critique group, The Lounge. DAH lives in Berkeley, California where he is working on the manuscript for his first collection of short fiction. Visit: www.dahlusion.wordpress.com
Jacqueline Henry is a writer/editor and creative writing instructor. Her credits include: The New York Times, TSR: The Southampton Review, Abstract: Contemporary Expressions, Clarion, After the Pause, BoomerLitMag, The Cape Rock, Carbon Culture Review, Euphony, Evening Street Review, Front Range Review, Mad River Review, The North Atlantic Review, Prism Review, The Round, Slant: A Journal of Poetry, California Quarterly, Streetlight Magazine, and Writer’s Digest magazine. In 2019, she was a finalist in the James Jones First Novel Fellowship contest for her novel Sadie’s Passage.
Jake Hunter is a poet from St. Louis, Mo. He has two black cats, Seahorse and Coal.
Paul Ilechko is the author of the chapbooks “Bartok in Winter” (Flutter Press) and “Graph of Life” (Finishing Line Press). His work has appeared in a variety of journals, including Juxtaprose, As It Ought To Be, Cathexis Northwest Press, Thin Air Magazine and Pithead Chapel. He lives with his partner in Lambertville, NJ.
Clinton Inman is a retired school teacher, renaissance painter, poet, and piano player, born in England, graduated from SDSU in 1977.
Marilyn Johnston is a writer and filmmaker, and the recipient of an Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship for Writers, and winner of a Robert Penn Warren Award and the Donna J. Stone National Literary Award for Poetry. Her work has been screened at film festivals in Oregon, California, Toronto, and Washington, D.C. She teaches creative writing in the Artists-in-the-Schools Program.
Diane Kendig has published four collections of poetry, most recently "Prison Terms" (2018). She co-edited "In the Company of Russell Atkins" and translated Nicaraguan poetry for "A Pencil to Write Your Name." A proponent of public workshops and local poets, Kendig conducts creative writing workshops in prison, schools, and community centers and she curates a weblog with 4000 subscribers, “Read + Write: 30 Days of Poetry” for National Poetry Month. She’s on the web at dianekendig.com
A graduate of Vassar College, Sharon Kennedy-Nolle holds an MFA and doctoral degree from the University of Iowa. A participant in the Bread Loaf Conferences in both Middlebury and Sicily in 2016, she was also accepted to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference in 2018. In 2019, she was awarded a scholarship to the Sarah Lawrence Summer Writing Institute as well as a full scholarship to the Frost Place Summer Writing Program. Her poetry has appeared or is upcoming in Zone 3, The Round, Prism Review, SLAB, Potomac Review, Pennsylvania English, OxMag, Bluestem Magazine, Juked, Euphony, apt, Cape Rock, Sanskrit, Vox Poetica, Talking River, Storyscape, Delmarva Review, FRiGG, Qwerty, Jelly Bucket, The Dickinson Review, Lindenwood Review, Rogue Agent Journal, Elm Leaves Journal, Door is a Jar, Radar Poetry, Schuylkill Valley Journal of the Arts, Chaffin Journal, Free State Review, Edison Literary Review, Streetlight Magazine, Drunk Monkeys, Chantwood Magazine, Virginia Normal, Menacing Hedge, Chicago Quarterly Review, and The Midwest Quarterly among others, while her dissertation was published as Writing Reconstruction: Race, Gender, and Citizenship in the Postwar South (University of North Carolina Press, 2015). Her chapbook Black Wick was a semi-finalist for the 2018 Tupelo Snowbound Chapbook Contest.
Most of Robert Kinerk’s stories are about people on islands, the result of growing up on an island in Alaska and later living on an island in Maine. 'The Stone Hut' is from his series of Alaska stories. His fiction has recently been accepted at The Hunger Journal, Five on the Fifth, Th Blotter, Narrative, New Guard Literary Magazine and by others.
Pamela Kingsley is an actress, director and playwright. Her plays have been selected to be produced in theatre festivals throughout the U.S. including Cleveland, Santa Fe, Kansas City, Richmond, Indianapolis, New Haven, Seattle, and Spokane, among others. Many of Pamela’s plays have been featured as part of the Pacific Northwest Playwrights’ Forum Festival (PFF is now in its 32nd year). These include: Boxes and Finding Mother Courage (2020); The Sitting and Mother’s Day (2019); Donny and Doodie (2018). Her play Mother’s Day won the “Audience Choice Award” at the 2019 PFF. Mother’s Day was also selected as a finalist for the 2019 James Stevenson Prize for Short Comedic Plays. Additional plays include: Scars, Owasco Sons, Little Darlin’ and In a Manor of Speaking. Pamela holds a BFA in Theatre Performance and a MA in Theatre Education and she has taught acting and playwriting throughout the Pacific Northwest.
Kate LaDew is a graduate from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a BA in Studio Art. She resides in Graham, NC with her cats Charlie Chaplin and Janis Joplin.
Richard Leise recently accepted The Perry Morgan Fellowship in Creative Writing from Old Dominion University. While completing a MFA, he has a novel out on submission, and is finishing a collection of short stories. His work may be found in numerous publications, and was recently awarded Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions nominations.
Walter B. Levis was nominated for a 2006 Pushcart Prize and is author of the novel MOMENTS OF DOUBT (2003). His literary fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in a variety of publications, including North Dakota Quarterly, The Amherst Review, The Cimarron Review, Connecticut Review, Evening Street Review, Forge, Hobo Pancakes, New Plains Review, North Atlantic Review, Permafrost, Bluestem Magazine, Boomer Lit Mag, Storyglossia, and Willow Review, among many others. His nonfiction has appeared in The National Law Journal, The Chicago Reporter, The New Republic, Show Business Magazine, and The New Yorker. Complete publication and biographical information is at www.walterblevis.com.
Lisa Lewis has published six books of poetry, most recently Taxonomy of the Missing (The Word Works, 2018) and The Body Double (Georgetown Review Press, 2016). She directs the creative writing program at Oklahoma State University and serves as editor of the Cimarron Review. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in Crazyhorse, Gulf Coast, South Dakota Review, New England Review, Laurel Review, Florida Review, Tampa Review, and elsewhere.
Naomi Lowinsky’s poem “Madelyn Dunham, Passing On” won first prize in the Obama Millennium Contest. She also has won the Blue Light Poetry Chapbook Contest. Her 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, Caveat Lector, The Chaffin Journal, The Charles Carter, Circle Show, Compass Rose, Comstock Review, Crack the Spine, Darkling, decomP, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Dogwood Review, Drunk Monkeys, Dying Dahlia Review, Earth’s Daughters, Eclipse, ellipsis…literature and art, Emprise Review, Euphony, Evening Street Review, Fourth River, Freshwater, Front Porch, G.W. Review, Ginosko, Ibbetson Street Press, Ink Pantry, Into the Teeth of the Wind, Jewish Women’s Literary Annual, Juked, Left Curve, Lindenwood Review, Magnolia Review, Mantis, Main Street Rag, Meridian Anthology Of Contemporary Poetry, Minetta Review, Monkeybicycle, Nassau Review, Oberon Poetry Magazine, Origins Journal, The Penmen Review, The Pinch, Poem, Poydras Review, Prick of the Spindle, poetrymagazine.com, Quiddity, Qwerty, Rattle, Reed Magazine, Runes, Sanskrit, Schuylkill Valley Journal Of The Arts, Serving House Journal, Shark Reef, Ship of Fools, Sierra Nevada Review, SLAB, Sliver of Stone, Soundings East, South Dakota Review, Southern Humanities Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Stand, Stickman Review, Straight Forward Poetry, The Texas Review, Tiger’s Eye Journal, Tightrope, Verdad, Visions International, Weber Studies, Westview, Whistling Shade, West Trestle Review, Wild Violet, Willow Review, and in the anthologies Child of My Child, When the Muse Calls, and The Book of Now. Her fourth poetry collection is called The Faust Woman Poems. She is 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.
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 Why Dance?
Roderick McKenzie’s work has appeared in The Yale Review, Mantis, The Round, Talking River, Minnetonka Review, Pearl, and the anthology Hipology from Broadside Press. He taught pre-school for many years, then worked as a park ranger. Look for him outdoors, snorkeling, canoeing, camping, or hiking.
Bob Meszaros taught English at Hamden High School in Hamden, Connecticut, for thirty-two years. He retired from high school teaching in June of 1999. During the 70s and 80s his poems appeared in a number of literary journals, such as En Passant and Voices International. In the year 2000 he began teaching part time at Quinnipiac University, and he once again began to submit his work for publication. His poems have subsequently appeared in The Connecticut Review, Main Street Rag, Red Wheelbarrow, Tar River Poetry, Concho River Review, and other literary journals.
Stephen C. Middleton is a writer working in London, England. He has had five books published, including A Brave Light (Stride) and Worlds of Pain / Shades of Grace (Poetry Salzburg). He has been in several anthologies, including Paging Doctor Jazz (Shoestring), From Hepworth’s Garden Out (Shearsman, 2010), & Yesterday's Music Today (Knives Forks And Spoons, 2015). For several years he was editor of Ostinato, a magazine of jazz and jazz related poetry, and The Tenormen Press. He has been in many magazines worldwide. He is currently working on projects (prose and poetry) relating to jazz, blues, politics, outsider (folk) art, mountain environments, and long-term illness.
Rich Murphy’s collection of essays is Prophetic Voice Now (2020 Common Ground Research Network). His latest poetry collection is Practitioner Joy (2020 Wipf and Stock). His poetry collections have won two national book awards: Gival Press Poetry Prize 2008 for Voyeur and in 2013 the Press Americana Poetry Prize for Americana. Other collections included Asylum Seeker (2018); Body Politic (2017); The Apple in the Monkey Tree (2007); Great Grandfather; Family Secret; Hunting and Pecking; Phoems for Mobile Vices; and Paideia.
Martina Reisz Newberry is the author of 6 books of poetry. Her most recent book is BLUES FOR FRENCH ROAST WITH CHICORY, available from Deerbrook Editions. She is the author of NEVER COMPLETELY AWAKE ( from Deerbrook Editions), and TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME (Unsolicited Press). She is also the author of WHERE IT GOES (Deerbrook Editions). LEARNING BY ROTE (Deerbrook Editions) and RUNNING LIKE A WOMAN WITH HER HAIR ON FIRE: Collected Poems (Red Hen Press). She has been included in "The Sixty Four Best Poets of 2018" (Black Mountain Press/The Halcyone Magazine editorial staff). Newberry has been included in As It Ought to Be, Big Windows, Courtship of Winds, The Cenacle, Cog, Futures Trading, and many other literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. Her work is included in the anthologies Marin Poetry Center Anthology, Moontide Press Horror Anthology, A Decade of Sundays: L.A.'s Second Sunday Poetry Series-The First Ten Years, In The Company Of Women, Blessed Are These Hands and Veils, and Halos & Shackles: International Poetry on the Oppression and Empowerment of Women. She has been awarded residencies at Yaddo Colony for the Arts, Djerassi Colony for the Arts, and Anderson Center for Disciplinary Arts. Passionate in her love for Los Angeles, Martina currently lives there with her husband, Brian, a Media Creative.
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 Reflection in a Glass Eye published by Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, 2020. For more information including free e-books and his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com. To view one of his interviews please follow this linkhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSK774rtfx8
After receiving a master’s degree in English Literature from the University of Denver, Alita Pirkopf became increasingly interested in feminist interpretations of literature. Eventually, she enrolled in a poetry class at the University of Denver taught by Bin Ramke. Poetry became a long-term focus and obsession. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Alembic, Artifact Nouveau, Burningword Literary Journal, Caduceus, The Cape Rock, The Chaffin Journal, Cimarron Review, Concho River Review, Crack the Spine, The Distillery, The Edison Literary Review, Euphony Journal, Evening Street Review, Existere, Good Works Review, The Griffin, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Harpur Palate, Illya’s Honey, Ink Pantry, Lullwater Review, Moon City Review, The Paragon Journal, The Penmen Review, Quiddity, riverSedge, Rubbertop Review, Ship of Fools, Stonecoast Review, Temenos Journal, Vending Machine Press, Vox Poetica, Westview, and Willow Springs Review.
Bill Pruitt is a writer, storyteller and assistant editor for Narrative Magazine. He has published poems in such places as Ploughshares, Anderbo.com, Cottonwood, Country Journal, Ravensperch, Otis Nebula and Stoneboat; in two chapbooks from White Pine and FootHills; and the self-published Walking Home from the Eastman House. His short stories appear in recent issues of Indiana Voice Journal, Adelaide Literary Review, Oyster River Pages, Sick Lit, Crack the Spine Literary Magazine, Visitant, Midway and Hypertext.
Paul Rabinowitz is an author, photographer and founder of ARTS By The People, a nonprofit arts organization based in New Jersey. Paul’s photography and short fiction have appeared in many magazines and journals including Long Exposure Magazine, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Pif Magazine, and others. Paul is the author of Limited Light, a book of prose and portrait photography, and a novella, The Clay Urn, (Main Street Rag, 2020). Paul is currently at work on two novels Confluence and Grand Street, Revisited. Paul has produced many mixed media performances and poetry animation films that have appeared on stages and in theaters in New York City, New Jersey, Tel Aviv and Paris. Paul is a written word performer and the founder of “The Platform,” a monthly literary series in New Jersey, and Platform Review, a journal of voices and visual art from around the world. www.paulrabinowitz.com
Paul Steven Ray has been composing and performing in NYC since 1981. He has been heard in a wide range of venues including Issue Project Room, The Stone, ShapeShifterLab, Trans Pecos, KnockdownCenter, The Knitting Factory, IBEAM, and Tonic. He has presented his work in such festivals as Noise Festival at Richard Foreman’s Ontological Theater, the International Electro-Acoustic Festival, Cosmoson-Paris,CERF Festival, New York Jazz Festival, and the North River Music Series. Collaborations with other artists include Theresa Rosas, Bora Yoon, Vernon Reid, Nate Wooley, Oblaat, Pheeroan Ak Laff, Brandon Ross, Yuko Fujiyama, Cyro Baptista, Eli Fountain, Val–Inc., Ha Yang Kim, Lisette Santiago, and Kiori Kawai. His compositions for other media include work created for Laura Staton Dance (Judson Movement Research Series) and the score for Sikay Tang’s Phrases/s Lesson 5. He is the leader/composer of BlueBlackDream, VERTICALSON, NineNine, and partner with Theresa Rosas in the Ray-Rosas Project(AKA Aquiaconverse). He has composed four operas: Sally Distance (premiered by Bora Yoon at Galapagos Art Space), Sleeperhold (premiered at Issue Project Room), SplitRock (premiered at ShapeShifterlab), and most recently the Good Narrow Night (premiered at The Church of the Intercession Crypt. Ray’s BlueBlackDream released its debut album, MAPS in 2017. His poetic soundscape multimedia piece, Looking For The Bells was recently performed at Arete Gallery He is currently working on a new opera, Lila’s Tattoo, a multimedia piece, Box is Blue, and new material for an upcoming trio recording. His “Listener Activated Sound Environments” are installations designed to create an ultra-sensitive sonic experience for the listener-performer. He was curator of the experimental concert series PSYCHELOUNGE and continues to pursue his goal of bridging the various camps of creative artists in the city and elsewhere. Continuing through the pandemic lockdown, Paul Steven Ray released two solo recordings: The Ticking and Some People Float available on bandcamp.
A writer, photographer, painter, and creative writing facilitator, Laurie Lessen Reiche lives part time in London, where she concentrates on photographing the city, particularly Virginia Woolf’s Bloomsbury. She is the author of The Dance of the Carbon-Atom (Mellen Poetry Press, 1996) and has won first place in several contests, including the Riverrun Literary Publication of the University of Colorado Poetry Competition, the national Charlotte Newberger Poetry Prize sponsored by Lilith, and the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference Contest. She is also a member of the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. Her work has won the Editors’ Choice Award for the best poetry in Inscape 2019 and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. It has been her good fortune to share writing with all kinds of people in various settings; from elementary school classrooms and retirement homes to her own house, where she has facilitated a writing group for years. As an avid reader, her house holds approximately 5,000 books (if not more), and was once open to the public as part of a home libraries tour. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Phoebe: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Feminist Scholarship, After Happy Hour Review, The Borfski Press, Bryant Literary Review, The Dalhousie Review, Descant, Door Is A Jar, Euphony Journal, Folio Literary Journal, Inscape Magazine, Magnolia Review, The Plains Poetry Review, Pegasus Literary Magazine, MORIA Literary Magazine, Princeton Arts Review, Rosebud Magazine, Sanskrit Literary-Arts Magazine, Sundog Lit, Slant, Sonoma Mandala, Valley Women’s Voices, Swamp Ape Review, Poetry: San Francisco, Sanskrit Literary-Arts Magazine, Grasslands Review, Plainsongs, and Southern Poetry Review, among others.
Radoslav Rochallyi was born in Bardejov, Slovak Republic. The author finished his studies in Philosophy at the UNIPO (1999–2005) and completed postgraduate Ph.D. studies. Rochallyi has a close relationship with mathematics. In the philosophical essay Mythra Invictus, he wroten: "Mathematics requires an active principle, and it is in the mathematical understanding of the world that you can approach perfection."
Lindsay Rockwell won first prize in the October Project Poetry Contest in April 2020. She has been published in the Straw Dog Writers’ Guild Blog; the Journal of Clinical Oncology; and coauthored In Defiance of Death (Praeger, 2008). She participated in Straw Dog Writers’ Guild events with Ellen Watson, Straw Dog Writers’ Guild Poetry Critique Meet-Ups, and the 24 Pearl Street event with Nancy K. Pearson. She works as a medical oncologist and lives in Northampton with her wife and three furry children.
Benjamin Schmitt is the author of three books, most recently Soundtrack to a Fleeting Masculinity. His poems have appeared in the Antioch Review, Hobart, Worcester Review, Columbia Review, Roanoke Review, 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.
Cheryl Sim is a retired American diplomat whose thirty-three-year career focused on Africa and South Asia. Her writing probes cross-cultural engagement, miscommunications, and misplaced expectations. She lives with her husband, who she met in Somalia, just outside of Washington, D.C.
Jennifer A Swallow is known more for writing test preparation questions and cybersecurity software manuals than travel essays, but that doesn't stop her from filling dozens of notebooks with all that creatively inspires her. Her short fiction has recently appeared in Adelaide Literary Magazine, The Metaworker Literary Magazine, and Lowestoft Chronicle. Since 2020 is the year of great upheaval, she left Colorado after twelve years and now lives the nomad life in obscure and delightful rural America.
David Swanson’s poetry began in 1963. For 30+ years he was a North Michigan Avenue copywriter in Chicago. Eventually he couldn't take advertising anymore and for the next 20 years he has earned something like a living as a technical writer/designer—photographer. Through it all the muses pestered and the work has kept coming.
Don Thompson has been writing about the San Joaquin Valley for over fifty years, including a dozen or so books and chapbooks. For more info and links to publishers, visit his website at www.don-e-thompson.com.
F.H. THURMOND lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, and holds graduate degrees in English from Southern Methodist University and Oxford University. His books include a collection of short fiction titled Ring of Five: A Novella and Four Stories (2015) and his memoir Before I Sleep: A Memoir of Travel and Reconciliation (2012). He is currently working on a novel while completing his first poetry collection. In addition to writing, Thurmond is a musician and filmmaker and teaches English at the University of Arkansas.
Meredith Trede’s books are Tenement Threnody, Field Theory, and a chapbook, Out of the Book. Her extensive journal publications include Barrow Street, Friends Journal, Gargoyle, and Paris Review. Meredith was granted Blue Mountain Center, Ragdale, Saltonstall and VCCA fellowships, and the Nicholson Political Poetry Award. She holds a Sarah Lawrence College MFA, a New School MA, a BA from SUNY, Oneonta, and serves on the Slapering Hol Press Advisory Committee. www.meredithtrede.com.
Jason Visconti has attended both group and private poetry workshops. He especially enjoys the poetry of Pablo Neruda and Billy Collins. When not writing, he enjoys solving puzzles and listening to 80's music.
Paul Watsky, a Jungian analyst with a practice in San Francisco and Inverness, and former poetry editor of Jung Journal: Culture and Psyche is co-translator of Santoka (Tokyo, 2006), and has two collections of his own, Telling The Difference (2010), and Walk-Up Music(2015), the latter of which received a recommended review from Kirkus. His work has appeared in Smartish Pace, Interim, The Carolina Quarterly, Rattle, Word Riot, and elsewhere.
Jennifer Weigel is a multi-disciplinary mixed media conceptual artist. Weigel utilizes a wide range of media to convey her ideas, including assemblage, drawing, fibers, installation, jewelry, painting, performance, photography, video and writing. Much of her work touches on themes of beauty, identity (especially gender identity), memory & forgetting, and institutional critique. Weigel’s art has been exhibited nationally in all 50 states and has won numerous awards.
Photography Artist’s Statement:
I have always photographed things that catch my eye, especially the more mundane or overlooked those things might be. I am particularly drawn to views of nature, sky & ground and abstracted details of objects found in urban settings.
Walter Weinschenk is an attorney, writer and musician. Until a few years ago, he wrote short stories exclusively but now divides his time equally between poetry and prose. Walter's writing has appeared in the Carolina Quarterly, Sunspot Literary Journal,The Esthetic Apostle, The Gateway Review and forthcoming in A Rose for Lana. Walter lives in a suburb just outside Washington, D. C.
Anne Whitehouse’s poetry collections include Blessings and Curses, The Refrain, Meteor Shower, and, most recently, Outside from the Inside(Dos Madres Press, 2020). Surrealist Muse, her poem about Leonora Carrington, was published by Ethelzine. She is also the author of a novel, Fall Love.
Anna Zagerson is a writer, dancer, occupational therapist, and NYU MFA grad student. In her free time, she embroiders with her sidekick cat Wolfie
