Contributors
JC Alfier’s (they/them) most recent book of poetry, The Shadow Field, was published by Louisiana Literature Press (2020). Journal credits include The Emerson Review, Faultline, Los Angeles Review, New York Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, Penn Review, and Vassar Review.
ARTIST STATEMENT: Though interpretive narratives are left to the viewer's eye, some of these pieces depict partial, oblique, or frontal female nudity to illustrate Carl Jung’s concept of the Anima: the female part of the male psyche — sensual, often oblique female archetypes where allegories give shape to dreamscapes of the unconscious, even as the faint image of the female reflects an abstracted, fluid persona — the objective and the subjective. My intents touch upon transgender femininity. Overall, my artistic directions and aesthetics are informed by photo-artists Yoko Mizuki, Francesca Woodman, and especially Katrien De Blauwer.
Tohm Bakelas is a social worker in a psychiatric hospital. He was born in New Jersey, resides there, and will die there. He is the author of twenty-seven chapbooks and several collections of poetry, including “Cleaning the Gutters of Hell” (Zeitgeist Press, 2023). He runs Between Shadows Press.
Years ago, Joseph Biancalana went to graduate school in English then switched to law school. He practiced for a few years then taught law and did research in medieval English legal history. He published a book and several articles, two of which won awards from the American Society for Legal History. He decided to go back to his first love, literature, and moved up to something much harder: writing short stories. He took a graduate workshop in fiction at the University of Cincinnati, where he was teaching law. He moved back to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he had gone to graduate school and law school and had lived when he had practiced law. He took fiction workshops at The Harvard Extension School and workshops and craft courses at Grub Street, Boston. He has had stories published or accepted for publication by the Broadkill Review, Chariton Review, Constellations, Penman Review, Rockford Review, and South Dakota Review.
Lawrence Bridges' poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, and The Tampa Review. He has published three volumes of poetry: Horses on Drums (Red Hen Press, 2006), Flip Days (Red Hen Press, 2009), and Brownwood (Tupelo Press, 2016). You can find him on IG: @larrybridges
Doug Bruns is a writer, traveler, and thinker living in the Mid-Atlantic (US). He is currently at work on a book of essays on Montaigne, the 16th century French philosopher, whom he has been reading for four decades. Besides The Courtship of Winds, his work can be found at the Hooghly Review, The Artisanal Writer, and other outlets, digital and analogue. A one-time professional photographer, you can follow him on Instagram @roamingstoic. His e-journal is [The House I Live In](https://thehouseilivein.me/). An avid outdoorsman, Doug was once a licensed Maine wilderness guide, has climbed and trekked in South America and the Himalayas, but is satisfied these days taking long walks with his dog, Cooper, a Carin Terrier. He flosses every night.
Maureen Clark is retired from the University of Utah where she taught writing for 20 years. She was the director of the University Writing Center from 2010-2014. She was the president of Writers @ Work 1999-2001. Her poems have appeared in Colorado Review, Alaska Review, The Southeast Review, and Gettysburg Review among others. Her first book This Insatiable August was released by Signature Books in February 2024.
Shawna Ervin has an MFA in nonfiction and poetry from Rainier Writers
Workshop. She is a recent alum of Tin House, Bread Loaf, and Kenyon Review workshops. She is a poetry reader for Adroit Journal and on the faculty of the Tupelo Press Teen Writers Center. Recent publications include *American Literary Review, Bangalore Review, Chicago Quarterly Review,* *Rappahannock Review, **Blue Mesa Review, Drunk Monkeys, Sonora Review, Sweet: A Literary Confection, *and elsewhere. Shawna was a finalist in *Kenyon Review's *2024 Developmental Editing Fellowship contest.
Rosalie Hendon (she/her) is an environmental project manager living in Columbus, Ohio. Her work is published in Ravens Perch, Quibble Lit, Sad Girls Diaries, Pollux, Blue Bottle, and Willawaw, among others. Rosalie is inspired by ecology, relationships, and stories passed down through generations.
Born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, performance poet Jean Howard resided in Chicago from 1979 to 1999. She has since returned to Salt Lake City. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Off The Coast, Clackamas Literary Review, Harper’s Magazine, Eclectica Magazine, Eclipse, Atlanta Review, Clare, Folio, Forge, Fugue, Fulcrum, Crucible, Gargoyle, Gemini Magazine, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Jet Fuel Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, decomP, DMQ Review, The Tower Journal, Minetta Review, The Burning World, The Distillery, The Oklahoma Review, OxMag, Pinch, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Penmen Review, Pisgah Review, ken*again, Chronogram, The Cape Rock, Quiddity Literary Journal, Grasslimb, apt Online, Rattlesnake Review, Concho River Review, Spillway, Spoon River Review, Straight Forward Poetry, Stirring: A Literary Collection, Verdad, Wild Violet, Willard & Maple, Wisconsin Review, WomenArts Quarterly Journal, Word Riot, and The Chicago Tribune, among seventy other literary publications. Featured on network and public television and radio, she has combined her poetry with theater, art, dance, video, and photography. A participant in the original development of the nationally acclaimed “Poetry Slam” at the Green Mill, she has been awarded two grants for the publication of her book, Dancing In Your Mother’s Skin (Tia Chucha Press), a collaborative work with photographer, Alice Hargrave. She organized the annual National Poetry Video Festival for seven years with her own award-winning video poems airing on PBS, cable TV, and festivals around the nation.
Sandra Kolankiewicz's fiction and poetry have appeared widely over the past several decades. Her most recent chapbook is Even the Cracks. "The Volunteer Fireman" is from a series of stories told from eleven different points of view, all focusing on the aftermath of a tragic incident.
Eleanore Lee has been writing fiction and poetry for many years in addition to her regular job as a legislative analyst for the University of California system. Her work has appeared in a range of journals, including Alabama Literary Review, Atlanta Review, Avatar Literary Review, Carbon Culture Review, Existere Journal, Flumes Literary Journal, Front Range Review, IHRAF, Medicine and Meaning, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Portland Review, and Tampa Review. She was selected as an International Merit Award Winner in Atlanta Review’s 2008 International Poetry Competition and also won first place in the November 2009 California State Poetry Society contest.
Chris Lisieski is an attorney and poet. He graduated from Antioch College with a degree in philosophy and creative writing, and from the University of Virginia with a J.D. His work has been published by In Parentheses and is forthcoming in the Journal of Undiscovered Poets. He has one good dog, one other dog, a geriatric cat, and a multitude of rotating hobbies.
Joan Lownds has worked as an award-winning writer and reporter for several newspapers and magazines, including "The San Francisco Chronicle," "The Litchfield County Times," "The Greenwich Citizen," "Fairfield Magazine," "The Yale Alumni Magazine," "Baseball Digest Magazine" and "New England Magazine." She is also the author of two acclaimed works of non-fiction, "Man Overboard: Inside the Honeymoon Cruise Murder," and "The Dogs of Camelot: Stories of the Kennedy Canines." (both published by Globe Pequot Press) "Man Overboard" drew high praise from such notables as Congressman Jim Himes and former Secretary of State, John Kerry. "The Dogs of Camelot" received a starred review from Publishers' Weekly and was lauded by the highly regarded novelist Tommy Hays as "a miraculous book." Previously she was the recipient of fellowships to The Breadloaf Writers Conference and The Wesleyan Writers Conference.
Professor of English at the Lock Haven campus of Commonwealth University, Marjorie Maddox has published 16 collections of poetry—including Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation (Yellowglen Prize); Begin with a Question (International Book and Illumination Book Award Winners); and the Shanti Arts ekphrastic collaborations Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For (with photographer Karen Elias) and In the Museum of My Daughter’s Mind, a collaboration with her artist daughter, Anna Lee Hafer (www.hafer.work) and others. How Can I Look It Up When I Don’t Know How It’s Spelled? Spelling Mnemonics and Grammar Tricks (Kelsay) and Seeing Things (Wildhouse) are forthcoming in 2024. In addition, she has published the story collection What She Was Saying (Fomite) and 4 children’s and YA books. With Jerry Wemple, she is co-editor of Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania and the forthcoming Keystone: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (PSU Press) and is assistant editor of Presence. She hosts Poetry Moment at WPSU. See www.marjoriemaddox.com
Ani Martin has been published or is forthcoming in Flying Ketchup Press, Across the Margin, Brackish, Radical Beauty, Malibu Times, and the anthology Side Eye On the Apocalypse. She has attended the Middlebury Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Port Townsend Writers Conference. Ani received her BFA in screenwriting from USC Cinema Arts. She has worked on a hospice team, run a wine and olive oil vineyard in the Napa Valley, and is the proud mother of two young adult daughters.
Michael Moreth is a recovering Chicagoan living in the rural, micropolitan City of Sterling, the Paris of Northwest Illinois.
In addition to self-publishing three so-called “literary” novels, “Jane Davies,” “Wokokon,” and “Little Book,” Douglas Nordfors has published poems in over 70 print and online journals, including “The Iowa Review,” “Quarterly West,” “Poetry Northwest,” “Poet Lore,” “The Louisville Review, ” “Chariton Review,” “Potomac Review,” “California Quarterly,” “The Evansville Review,” “The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review,” “JuxtaProse Literary Magazine,” and “Valparaiso Poetry Review,” as well as three books of poetry, "Auras" (2008), "The Fate Motif" (2013), and “Half-Dreaming” (2020), all with Plain View Press.
Hailing from South Central, Los Angeles, Tauwan Patterson is a recent graduate of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Queens University of Charlotte, North Carolina who, with his poetry, aims to, in the words of the great Poet and Thinker Marcus Jackson, announce his freedom and presence. Making a sound that echoes in the end that says Tauwan Patterson. No more. No less.
Garrett Phelan is the author of the micro-chapbooks Unfixed Marks and Standing where I am (Origami Poem Project). His poems have appeared in numerous publications including Harpy Hybrid, Slipstream, Potomac Review, Connecticut River Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, and Third Wednesday. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee. He taught poetry in a variety of institutions from The Kennedy Center Education Dept to a maximum-security prison in Connecticut.
Kenneth Pobo (he/him) is the author of twenty-one chapbooks and nine full-length collections. Recent books include Bend of Quiet (Blue Light Press), Loplop in a Red City (Circling Rivers), Lilac And Sawdust (Meadowlark Press) and Gold Bracelet in a Cave: Aunt Stokesia (Ethel Press). His work has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, Asheville Literary Review, Nimrod, Mudfish, Hawaii Review, and elsewhere.
Ken Poyner’s four collections of brief fictions, four collections of speculative poetry, and one mixed media collection can be found at most online booksellers. He spent 33 years in information systems management, is married to a world record holding female power lifter, and has a family of several cats and betta fish. Individual works have appeared in “Café Irreal”, “Analog”, “Danse Macabre”, “The Cincinnati Review”, and several hundred other places. www.kpoyner.com
Over the past several years Jill Ruscoll has participated in writing classes with Nancy McMillan, and poet Holly Wren Spaulding. During the week she is a creative director of visual design. In her free time, Jill enjoys hiking, biking, climbing, and being outside while spending time with family and friends. Her work is published or forthcoming in The Broken Plate, El Portal, Evening Street Review, MacGuffin, Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, The Round, SLAB Magazine, and Thin Air Magazine.
Rochelle Jewel Shapiro has published essays in the New York Times (Lives), Newsweek, and in many anthologies and magazines. Her short stories and poetry have appeared in such magazines as The Moment, MacGuffin, Entropy, Foliate Oak, Storgy, Permafrost, The Ohio Review. One of her poems was nominated by Spry Magazine for Best of the Net, 2018, and another for a Pushcart by Schuylkill Valley Review. She teaches writing at UCLA Extension. Find her at: http://rochellejshapiro.com @rjshapiro
Michael Shoemaker is a poet, photographer and writer from Magna, Utah. He is the author of a poetry/photography collection Rocky Mountain Reflections (Poets’ Choice) and the forthcoming Grasshoppers in the Field. His photography has appeared in Writers on the Range, Sea to Sky Review, the Denver Post, the Salt Lake Tribune, Yahoo.com and elsewhere. He lives in Magna, Utah with his wife and son where he enjoys looking out on the Great Salt Lake every day. His online photography portfolio is at https://michaelshoemaker.crevado.com/. Michael has been awarded an artist residency at the Wolff Cottage in Fairhope, Alabama for October 2025.
Richard Spilman is the author of two collections of short fiction, The Estate Sale and Hot Fudge, which was a New York Times Notable Book. He was born and raised in Normal, Illinois, and now lives in Hurricane, West Virginia, three hundred miles from the nearest ocean.
David Summerfield has been an editor, columnist, and contributor to various publications within his home state of West Virginia. His fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and photo art has appeared or is due to appear in White Wall Review, Emerge Magazine, Cafe Lit Magazine, Young Ravens Literary Review, Military Experience and the Arts, Empyrean Literary Magazine, Rind Literary Magazine, Stick Figure Poetry Quarterly, Star82Review, The Remington Review, In Parentheses Literary Magazine, Night Picnic Press, New Square Literary Magazine, Just Good Poems, Literary Heist Magazine, Amphora Magazine, The Journal of Expressive Writing, Door Is A Jar Literary Magazine, Carmina Magazine, The Rye Whiskey Review, and El Portal (EUNM) Literary Journal. He is a graduate of Frostburg State University, Maryland, and a veteran of the Iraq war. Website: davidsummerfieldcreates.com
Andrew Zhou is a writer and medical device engineer who grew up in the Minneapolis area but currently resides in Boston. He holds a bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota and a master's degree in Biomedical Engineering from Columbia University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in South Dakota Review, Foglifter, Faultline, Jabberwock Review, and elsewhere. Find him at zhouandrew.com.
