Contributors
Donny Barilla writes poems daily as is his custom for many years. Common themes are: nature, love, sexuality, mythology and spirituality. He has recently published his first book titled Treasures. Proudly, Donny, is a native Pennsylvanian and tends to draw inspiration from the beautiful surrounding his great state offers.
Recipient of the Theodore Hoepfner Fiction Award and past writer-in-residence at the Mishkenot Sha’ananim Art Colony in Jerusalem, Perle Besserman was praised by Isaac Bashevis Singer for the “clarity and feeling for mystic lore” of her writing and by Publisher’s Weekly for its “wisdom [that] points to a universal practice of the heart.” Her autobiographical novel, Pilgrimage, was published by Houghton Mifflin, and her Pushcart Prize-nominated short fiction has appeared in The Southern Humanities Review, The Nebraska Review, Briarcliff Review, Transatlantic Review, 13th Moon, Bamboo Ridge, Lilith, Hurricane Alice, Crab Creek Review, Other Voices, Agni, Southerly, North American Review, Page Seventeen, Midstream, and in numerous literary journals online. Her most recent books include a linked story collection Yeshiva Girl (Homebound Publications) and two novels, Kabuki Boy (Aqueous Books) and Widow Zion (Pinyon Publishing).
Besserman’s creative non-fiction includes Oriental Mystics and Magicians, The Way of Witches, Monsters: Their Histories, Homes, and Habits (Doubleday); The Private Labyrinth of Malcolm Lowry: Under the Volcano and the Cabbala (Holt); Kabbalah: The Way of the Jewish Mystic (Doubleday/Random House/Barnes and Noble); The Way of the Jewish Mystics (Shambhala/Random House); Crazy Clouds: Zen Radicals, Rebels and Reformers (with Manfred Steger, Shambhala/Random House); Owning It: Zen and the Art of Facing Life (Kodansha); The Shambhala Guide to Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism (Shambhala/Random House); Teachings of the Jewish Mystics (Shambhala/Random House); Grassroots Zen (with Manfred Steger, Tuttle), A New Kabbalah for Women (Palgrave Macmillan), and A New Zen for Women (Palgrave Macmillan). Her books have been translated into German, Spanish, Japanese, Czech, Italian, Hebrew, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Hungarian, and Thai. She has written for publications as varied as Mademoiselle, Manoa (Honolulu), The Boston Globe, The Village Voice, A Different Drummer, Canadian Literature, and East West. Kabbalah: The Way of the Jewish Mystic has been recorded as a “book on tape” (Sounds True Audio Editions).
Based in Hawai’i and spending part of the year in Melbourne, Australia, the author travels frequently throughout the U.S., Europe, Australia, Asia, and the Middle East, and has appeared on national and international radio and television and in two documentary films in connection with her work.
Visit Perle on the Web at: www.perlebesserman.net.
Ace Boggess is author of three books of poetry, most recently Ultra Deep Field (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2017), and the novel A Song Without a Melody (Hyperborea Publishing, 2016). 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.
Michael Everett Capuano is serving his tenth term as a Representative in Congress for Massachusetts' Seventh District. He is the senior Massachusetts member on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the Financial Services Committee. When Democrats took back a majority in the House, Mike was appointed to head the Transition by Leader Nancy Pelosi. He was also appointed to chair the Special Task Force on Ethics Enforcement. In March of 2008, his resolution establishing an Office of Congressional Ethics passed, involving non-Members of the House in ethics matters for the first time in history. In 2012, Mike’s measure establishing a nationwide tunnel safety inspection program became law. In 2015, the Federal Transit Administration made its nearly $1 billion federal funding commitment to the Green Line Extension official with the signing of a Full Funding Grant Agreement (FFGA), something Mike has been working on for years. Moved by the story of a young man forced out of school and into hiding after telling authorities of a crime he witnessed, Mike filed the "Young Witness Assistance Act" to create a grant program at the Department of Justice for locally developed juvenile witness assistance initiatives. Mike also succeeded in passing a law to require Medicare coverage for vision rehabilitation services. Mike co-founded and co-chairs the Congressional Caucus on Sudan and South Sudan. He has emerged as a leading Congressional voice, working with his colleagues to end the violence and suffering, pushing for an arms embargo and working to avert famine.
Mike was the Mayor of Somerville, MA from January of 1990 through January of 1999. Born in Somerville, he graduated from Somerville High School, received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Dartmouth College in 1973, and a law degree from Boston College Law School in 1977. He passed the Massachusetts Bar in 1977. Mike is married to Barbara Teebagy Capuano. They have two sons, Michael and Joseph.
Bob Carlton (www.bobcarlton3.weebly.com) lives and works in Leander, TX.
Dennis Perry Clark is a retired chef, and writer. He is self-taught, and continues to learn through reading, research, and of course, writing. His work appears in Figroot Press (issue six), and is forthcoming in Indigo Lit, Poydras Review, and Oberon Poetry Magazine. He currently resides in Northern California with his wife and daughter.
Holly Day’s published books include the nonfiction books Music Theory for Dummies, Music Composition for Dummies, Guitar All-in-One for Dummies, and Piano All-in-One for Dummies, and the poetry books Ugly Girl (Shoemusic Press) and The Smell of Snow (ELJ Publications). Her needlepoints and beadwork have recently appeared on the covers of Your Impossible Voice, Sinister Wisdom, and QWERTY Magazine.
Jamie Eldridge has served as State Senator for the Middlesex and Worcester district since January 2009. Senator Eldridge serves as the Senate Chair of the Joint Committee on Financial Services, and is known for his leadership on progressive issues. Previously, Senator Eldridge served as State Representative for the 37th Middlesex district, after being elected the only Clean Elections candidate to public office in Massachusetts history in November 2002. For the 2017-18 session, Senator Eldridge, has filed bills aimed at reducing the wealth gap, improving health care, protecting the environment, increasing education opportunities, reforming the criminal justice system, and safeguarding the civil rights of immigrants and Muslims in Massachusetts.
Donna Emerson recently retired from college teaching and her practice as a licensed clinical social worker. Her publications include Alembic, CQ (California Quarterly), CALYX, The Chaffin, Denver Quarterly, Dos Passos Review, Eclipse, Edison Literary Review, Fourth River, Fox Cry Review, The Griffin, The Los Angeles Review, LUX, Naugatuck River Review, New Ohio Review, Paterson Literary Review, The Paragon Journal, Passager, Persimmon Tree, Praxis: Gender & Cultural Critiques (formerly Phoebe), Quiddity, Sanskrit, Slipstream, Soundings East, So To Speak, The South Carolina Review, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Spillway, Spry, Stone Canoe, Tower Journal, and Weber—The Contemporary West.
Her work has received numerous prizes and awards including being selected as a finalist in the 2016 Trio House First-Book Awards and the 24th Annual Tom Howard/John H. Reid Fiction and Essay Contest, Editor’s Choice in the 2017 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award and honorable mention in the 2015 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award, nominations for the Pushcart Prize (2013), and Best of the Net (2012). Her second chapbook, Body Rhymes (2009), nominated for a California Book Award, and third and fourth chapbooks, Wild Mercy (2011) and Following Hay (2013), have been published by Finishing Line Press. Her work can also be seen in anthologies such as Echoes (2012), Keeping Time: 150 Years of Journal Writing (Passager Press), Chopin with Cherries, A Tribute in Verse (Moonrise Press), Music In The Air (Outrider Press), and The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems of the San Francisco Bay Watershed (Sixteen Rivers). Her first full-length poetry collection, The Place of Our Meeting, will be published by Finishing Line Press in January 2018.
R. Daniel Evans was a co-founder of Painted Bride Quarterly. His work has appeared in several magazines including Cleaver, Peregrine, Jonathan and Pangolin Papers which nominated one story for a Pushcart Prize.
Philip George is in his 11th year teaching high school English. He has taught the last 8 years at Framingham High School and 3 years at Trinity Catholic High School in Newton. He teaches AP Literature and Composition to seniors, college preparatory English to freshmen, and he taught 5 years of special education inclusion to freshman. Phil has a BA in English and Secondary Education from Boston College, a M.E.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from Boston College, and a MA in English from Middlebury College. He is also the head coach of the Wayland Men's Volleyball team.
Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over twelve-hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad, including The Courtship of Winds. 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.
Nels Hanson grew up on a small farm in the San Joaquin Valley of California and has worked as a farmer, teacher and contract writer/editor. His fiction received the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award and Pushcart nominations in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016. His poems received a 2014 Pushcart nomination, Sharkpack Review’s 2014 Prospero Prize, and 2015 and 2016 Best of the Net nominations.
Mickele Hieronymus is an M.A. in English/Fiction student at Southern New Hampshire University. Her work has appeared in the Queens Signet.
Sarah Cannon Holden has three children and seven grandchildren. She has served on various town boards including the L-S School Committee for 9 years. She is currently Lincoln's Town Moderator. She has been politically active as an advocate, participant and a writer. She has worked with groups of 8th graders in Lincoln to guide them through the citizen petition process from conception to Town Meeting. She is particularly interested in the teaching of civics and effective oral and written advocacy. Professionally, Sarah is a lawyer and labor arbitrator/mediator.
Cecilia Hylton worked as a public school teacher for five years in Cambridge and Acton, Massachusetts, where she taught U.S. and world history and government to high school students. In that time, she served as a faculty advisor for the CRLS Environmental Action Club, a team member for the "Level Up" program that worked to desegregate the freshman humanities experience at CRLS, and as an advisor for senior thesis projects. In August 2017, Cecilia left teaching to join the Communications team at the Barr Foundation--an organization that invests in the arts, education, and climate change in New England. Cecilia earned her master’s degree in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and her Bachelor of Arts in History from the College of William and Mary. She lives in Jamaica Plain with her husband, Brendan.
Glenn Ingersoll works for the Berkeley Public Library where he hosts Clearly Meant, a reading & interview series. He has two chapbooks, City Walks (broken boulder) and Fact (Avantacular). He keeps two blogs, LoveSettlement and City Walks. Recent work has appeared in Poetry East, Askew, and Hearty Greetings.
Denise Kline’s writing credits include publication in Origami Journal, Dime Show Review, a handful of stones, OneTitle (now known as OneTitle Reviews) and Honorable Mention in the Glimmer Train Very Short Fiction competition.
Sandra Kolankiewicz’s poems and stories have appeared widely over the past 35 years.
Individual entries on Richard Kostelanetz’s work appear in various editions of Readers Guide to Twentieth-Century Writers, Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature, Contemporary Poets, Contemporary Novelists, Postmodern Fiction, Webster's Dictionary of American Writers, Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, Directory of American Scholars, Who's Who in America, NNDB.com, Wikipedia.com, and Britannica.com, among other distinguished directories.
Richard Krause’s collection of fiction, Studies in Insignificance, was published by Livingston Press, and his epigram collection, Optical Biases, was published by EyeCorner Press in Denmark. His second collection of epigrams, Eye Exams, will be published by Propertius Press later this year. Another collection of his stories, The Horror of the Ordinary, has been accepted by Unsolicited Press for publication next March. Since 2017 his fiction has appeared in Hackwriters Magazine, ink&coda, Cold Creek Review, Subtle Fiction, EXPOUND, a Nigerian magazine, and is upcoming in Scarlet Leaf Review. His unpublished prose poem collection is called Observations East & West. He teaches at Somerset Community College in Kentucky.
Colleen L. Meaney is the Director of the Theodore R. Sizer Teachers’ Center at the Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School in Devens, MA. Rooted in the Ten Common Principles of the Coalition of Essential Schools, Parker is known for performance-based assessments, integrated curriculum, student-centered pedagogy, mastery-based promotion, and democratic decision-making. The Sizer Teachers’ Center provides professional development and customized experiences in progressive methodologies. Colleen is a National Facilitator with the School Reform Initiative, has served in school leadership roles from Dean of Faculty, Assistant Principal, New England Association of Secondary Schools & Colleges Commission Member, to Board of Trustees, and consults with schools to support both educators’ and students’ learning and well-being, strengthen equity and achievement, as well as facilitate whole school and programmatic redesign.
Matt Nagin is a writer, educator, actor, filmmaker and standup comedian. His poetry has been published in Antigonish Review, Dash Literary Journal, The Charles Carter, Grain Magazine and Arsenic Lobster, among other markets. His first poetry collection, Butterflies Lost Within The Crooked Moonlight, was released in 2017, and has obtained very strong reader reviews on Amazon. More info at mattnagin.com.
Michelle Nguyen started drawing after losing her dad. It became a way for her to disconnect from the world. She has been drawing for three years. She fell in love with using colorpencils because of the control with the pencil itself.
Simon Perchik’s poetry has also appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, The New Yorker and elsewhere.
Richard King Perkins II is a state-sponsored advocate for residents in long-term care facilities. He lives in Crystal Lake, IL, USA with his wife, Vickie and daughter, Sage. He is a three-time Pushcart, Best of the Net and Best of the Web nominee whose work has appeared in more than a thousand publications.
Juanita Rey is a Dominican poet who has been in this country five years. Her work has been published in Pennsylvania English, Harbinger Asylum, Petrichor Machine and Madcap Poets.
Hal Salzman is Professor at Rutgers University, Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy and Senior Faculty Fellow at the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development. His research focuses on science and engineering labor markets, workplace restructuring, skill requirements, and globalization of innovation, engineering and technology design. Current projects as Principal Investigator include several studies of science and engineering education and careers, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the National Science Foundation. Salzman’s previous research on science and engineering education and the workforce includes: “Making the Grade” in Nature and “What Shortages?” in Issues in Science and Technology. He has testified to Senate and House committees on science and engineering workforce and globalization issues. His work has been cited in Nature, Science, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, PBS Newshour, NPR, and other media. His other area of research and teaching is on human capital development, firm strategy, and community sustainability in the Arctic. He is also collaborating on a National Science Foundation project developing interdisciplinary high school math and science modules to attract a diverse population of learners to STEM disciplines by engaging them in sustainability topics, at the Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science, Rutgers. His publications include: Transforming the US Workforce Development System: Lessons for Research and Practice (co-editor) and articles on issues of technology, skills, and the workplace, and forthcoming, Engineers in the Global Economy Richard Freeman and Hal Salzman (eds.) National Bureau of Economic Research/University of Chicago Press.
Andrew Shen is the Principal of RJ Grey Junior High School in the Acton-Boxborough School District. Prior to this role, he served as an Associate Dean and Director of the Asian American Center at Northeastern University. Andrew began his career in education as a History teacher at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School. He has a B.A. in History and in Educational Studies, and a Master of Arts in Teaching (M.A.T.) from Brown University, and an M.Ed in School Leadership from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education.
Daniel James Sundahl is Emeritus Professor in English and American Studies at Hillsdale College where he taught for thirty-three years.
Ann Christine Tabaka was born and lives in Delaware. She is a published poet, an artist, a chemist, and a personal trainer. She loves gardening, cooking, and the ocean. Chris lives with her husband and two cats. Her poems have been published in numerous national and international poetry journals, reviews, and anthologies. Chris was selected as the resident Haiku poet for Stanzaic Stylings.
Arthur Unobskey graduated from Yale with a BA in History in 1989, a MAT from Brown in 1991, and a Ed.D. from Boston College in 2009 He taught English and History for 10 years in middle and high school in urban and suburban schools. He was an assistant principal for 2 years and a principal for 6 years in the Boston Public Schools. He was a principal at Concord MIddle School for 6 years. He was Assistant Superintendent in Gloucester for 2 years. He has been Superintendent in Wayland since July 2017. Also, in 1994, he co-founded The Writers' Express, a writing camp for urban and suburban middle school and high school students based at Simmons College
This is Clem Vahe’s first published work.
Airica Parker's works appear or are forthcoming in Weber: The Contemporary West, Camas, CALYX, The Sun, and The Fiddlehead: Atlantic Canada's International Literary Journal, among others. The Poetry Foundation selected her as a 2011 finalist for a Ruth Lilly fellowship. She is commonly spotted in Colorado where she owns and operates Held Space Healing and teaches undergraduates at Colorado State University. Performer, painter, and lover of breathing greens, Parker is an MFA graduate of University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Christopher Woods is a writer, teacher and photographer who lives in Chappell Hill, Texas. His published works include a novel, The Dream Patch, a prose collection, Under a Riverbed Sky and a book of stage monologues for actors, Heart Speak. HIs short fiction has appeared in many journals including The Southern Review, New Orleans Review and Glimmer Train. He conducts private creative writing workshops in Houston. His photography can be seen in his gallery - http://christopherwoods.zenfolio.com/
