Contributors
A Rutgers graduate, P.C. Allan received an MFA in Film from Columbia University. His film The Snow Field won an award for directing from New Line Cinema. His fiction has appeared in Voices de la Luna. A Yaddo resident, his work has received funding from the New York State Council on the Arts. A Wikipedia enthusiast, YouTube junkie, and armchair historian, he enjoys playing Tex-Mex blues on guitar.
Mr. Ambler’s writing has been published in Apricity Magazine, Christopher Street, City Lights Review Number 2, Euphony Journal, Evening Street Review, Glint Literary Journal, Headway Quarterly, Hearth & Coffin, The James White Review, Nixes Mate Review, The Phoenix, Plainsongs Poetry Magazine, Red Wheelbarrow, and Visitant, among others. Most recently, he was featured in the anthology VOICES OF THE GRIEVING HEART. He won the San Francisco Bay Guardian’s 6th Annual Poetry Contest. He earned a BA in English, specializing in creative writing of poetry, from Stanford University. He delivered singing telegrams and sang with the Temescal Gay Men’s Chorus in Berkeley and the Pacific Chamber Singers in San Francisco. He has worked in nonprofit theater at Berkeley Rep, Geffen Playhouse, Actors’ Equity, and The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. Now retired, he lives in California with his husband, visual artist Edward L. Rubin.
Jay Carson taught for many years at Robert Morris University where he was a founding advisor to the literary magazine, Rune. He has published more than 100 poems in local and national journals, magazines, and collections. He is also the author of Irish Coffee (Coal Hill Press) and The Cinnamon of Desire (Main Street Rag). Jay considers his poetry Appalachian, accessible, the ongoing problem-solving of a turbulent youth, and just what you might need.
Alex Clermont began his working career lifting boxes and selling junk while wearing the logos of various retailers across his chest like a cattle brand. During that time, he attended the City University of New York at Hunter College and graduated with a Bachelor’s in English: Creative Writing. Currently living in Maryland, he works as a copywriter and fiction author with short stories appearing in Foliate Oak, aaduna, and other publications. In 2020 he published is his first novel We Are All Thieves.
Christie Cochrell's work has been published by The First Line, Minerva Rising, Catamaran, Amarillo Bay, Cumberland River Review, Tin House, and a variety of others, and has won several awards and been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize. Chosen as New Mexico Young Poet of the Year while growing up in Santa Fe, she's recently published a volume of collected poems, Contagious Magic. She lives by the ocean in Santa Cruz, California—too often lured away from her writing by otters, pelicans, and seaside walks.
Charles Elin worked with the late writer/editor, Larry Fagin, from January 2012 until his death in 2017. Larry published a chapbook of his poems and stories in 2014. Then added two later stories to Larry’s 2016 magazine, The Delineator. Flash fiction pieces have been published by Columbia Journal, Corium Magazine and Midway. Charles’ poems have appeared in over a dozen literary journals, including Rosebud, Forge, Mantis. By profession, he’s a psychiatric social worker in private practice.
Tom Eubanks’ stories appear in The Woven Tale Press and Oddville Press. His novel, Worlds Apart, was published in 2009 and he co-authored with Milo Speriglio the non-fiction book How to Protect Your Life & Property: An Everyday Survival Guide. Tom’s full-length plays, American Right, Perfect Quiet Place, The Art of Something, In the Midst of All that is Good, and At the End of the Day have been produced by Elite Theatre Company in California. His one-act plays have been produced by Santa Paula Theater Center and Senga Classic Theater. He wrote and directed the feature film Open Spaces, which premiered in Palm Springs, CA, in 2003.
Fabrizia Faustinella is a physician and filmmaker. She practices as an internist in the Texas Medical Center in Houston, Texas. She has published numerous research articles and educational books. More recently, she has been inspired to write about her personal and professional experiences in a number of essays, which have been published in literary magazines and medical journals.
J. R. Forman is an internationally published poet and critic whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in such publications as Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Literature of the Americas, Contemporary Studies in Modernism, Ramify, Make It New, and Clemson University Press. He was a 2019 finalist for the Julia Darling Memorial Poetry Prize. He received a PhD in philology, linguistics, and literature at the University of Salamanca, Spain, and a PhD in literature and MA in English at the University of Dallas, along with a BA in liberal arts at St. John’s College, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Forman is an alum of the Ezra Pound Center for Literature Writing Workshop at Brunnenburg Castle, Italy. He has lived and studied extensively in Europe and Central America, while his work reflects the stories and voices of Appalachia and the Southwest. Forman has presented at such conferences as the Association of Literary Critics, Scholars and Writers; the Spanish Association for American Studies; and the Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture. He is currently a lecturer in Literature and Philosophy at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas.
Joseph Hardy lives in Nashville, Tennessee. His work has been published in: Appalachian Review, Cold Mountain Review, Inlandia, Poet Lore, and Poetry City among others. He is the author of a book of poetry, “The Only Light Coming In.”
Benjamin Harnett is a poet, fiction writer, historian, and digital engineer. His poetry has appeared recently in Poet Lore, Saranac Review, ENTROPY, and the Evansville Review. His short-story "Delivery" was Longform's Story of the Week; he was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize in Poetry; and has been nominated for a Pushcart. He lives in Beacon, NY with his wife Toni and their collection of eccentric pets. He works for The New York Times.
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.
William Hayward was born in Birmingham, England. He has been writing for several years, mainly in short fiction. He's previously been published in The Emerald City Review, Something Involving a Mailbox!, The White Wall Review, Terrain.org and Walter at the University.
Geoffrey Heptonstall is the author of Heaven's Invention, a novel [Black Wolf 2017] and two poetry collections published by Cyberwit, The Rites of Paradise [2020] and Sappho’s Moon [2021]. A number of plays have staged and/or published. A current project is Virginia, a filmed monologue directed by Neal Yeager.
Doug Van Hooser's poetry has appeared in Roanoke Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, After Hours, Wild Roof Journal, and Poetry Quarterly among other publications. His fiction can be found in Red Earth Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, and Bending Genres Journal. Doug’s plays have received readings at Chicago Dramatist Theatre and Three Cat Productions. More at dougvanhooser.com
David Brendan Hopes is a playwright living in Asheville, NC.
Poet and photographer Margaret B. Ingraham was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and “grew up” exploring the woods behind her childhood home. She is the author of a poetry collection Exploring this Terrain (Paraclete Press, 2019), of This Holy Alphabet (Paraclete Press), lyric poems adapted from her original translation from the Hebrew of Psalm 119 and a chapbook Proper Words for Birds (Finishing Line Press), nominated for the 2010 Library of Virginia Award in poetry. Ingraham is the recipient of an Academy of American Poetry Award, a Sam Ragan Prize, and numerous residential Fellowships at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. New poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Nonconformist Magazine, THINK: A Journal of Poetry, Fiction and Essays, Mount Hope Magazine, The Hollins Critic and Evening Street Review. Ingraham resides in Alexandria, Virginia.
Lowell Jaeger (Montana Poet Laureate 2017-2019) is founding editor of Many Voices Press and recently edited New Poets of the American West, an anthology of poets from eleven western states. Jaeger is a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, winner of the Grolier Poetry Peace Prize, and recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Montana Arts Council. He was awarded the Montana Governor’s Humanities Award for his work in promoting civil civic discourse.
Rin Kelly’s stories have been published in Kenyon Review, The Fabulist, Contemporary Magazine/Denver Post. Her “Kafkaesque” story has been accepted by Penumbric. She was invited to read her fiction at San Francisco LitQuake, Bang! Bang! Gun Amok in New York City, Writers with Drinks and at other venues. Her completed novel The Bright and Holo Sky currently is being edited and prepared for publication. Rin studied fiction writing with Heddie Jones at the New School in New York City and took classes at the Writers Grotto in San Francisco and with The Writers Salon. Outside of her fiction writing, she was a fellow of the Stabile Center at Columbia School of Journalism and film/culture editor of LA RECORD. Her investigative reporting and features have appeared in Salon.com and in publications nationwide including Lisa Carver’s Money Matters.
Eight of Judy Klass' full-length plays have been produced onstage, including After Tartuffe. It was produced in the New York Fresh Fruit Festival in 2015: a vision of American dystopia and apocalypse just before things got really dystopian and apocalyptic. After Tartuffe was also a Finalist for the Christopher Brian Wolk Award at the Abingdon Theatre in NYC and it was a winner in Manhattan Theatre Works’ NewBorn Festival competition. Judy’s full-length play Cell was nominated for an Edgar and is published by Samuel French/Concord. Her full-length play Country Fried Murder won the SOPS competition and was produced at the Shawnee Playhouse in Pennsylvania in 2019. It had a virtual production and was released as a Zoom recording/podcast during the pandemic by Quarantine Players. Thirty-six of Judy’s one-act plays have been produced onstage, many with multiple productions, all over the US. A few have been staged in the UK and Ireland, and three are set to be produced in festivals in Canada, when the world comes back.
Following a career as a U.S. Army musician, Gordon Kippola earned an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Tampa, and calls Bremerton, Washington home. His poetry has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Rattle, Post Road Magazine, District Lit, The Road Not Taken, The Main Street Rag, The Courtship of Winds, Southeast Missouri State University Press, and other splendid publications.
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, Carbon Culture Review, Existere Journal, Flumes Literary Journal, 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. She also won first place in the November 2009 California State Poetry Society contest.
Mario Loprete writes: “In this year, I worked exclusively at my concrete sculptures. For my concrete sculptures I use my personal clothing. Throughout some artistic process, in which I use plaster, resin and cement, I transform them into artworks to hang. My memory, my DNA, my memories remain concreted inside, transforming the person that looks at the artworks into a type of post-modern archeologist that studies my work as if they were urban artifacts. I like to think that those who look at my sculptures created in 2020 will be able to perceive the anguish, the vulnerability, the fear that each of us has felt in front of a planetary problem that was covid 19 ... under a layer of cement there are my clothes with which I lived this nefarious period – clothes that survived covid 19, very similar to what survived after the 2,000-year-old catastrophic eruption of Pompeii, capable of recounting man's inability to face the tragedy of broken lives and destroyed economies. In the last 2 years about 250 international magazines wrote about my work, turning the spotlight on my art project, attracting the attention of important galleries and collectors. I believe much in this project and I hope that I can exhibit in important art spaces other those already in program:
from 4th september 2021 at North Carolina University of Charlotte
from 1st october 2021 at Bibliotheke of Venlo in Netherlands
from 5 may 2022 at Arts College of Prescott Arizona
and in the summer 2022 in my art Studio in Loosdrecht in Netherlands”
DS Maolalai has been nominated nine times for Best of the Net and five times for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in two collections, Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden (Encircle Press, 2016) and Sad Havoc Among the Birds (Turas Press, 2019).
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. Currently he is resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, artistic renderings of LGBTQI historical figures, organizations and allies predominantly before Stonewall, https://thestephenmeadchromamuseum.weebly.com/
Anne Michaud is a veteran, award-winning journalist and author. Her nonfiction book, Why They Stay: Sex Scandals, Deals, and Hidden Agendas of Eight Political Wives (Ogunquit-NY Press), was published as a second edition in June 2021. She is currently a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. More at www.annemichaud.com.
Gail Nielsen is a duel citizen of Canada and the United States and holds a Master of Arts degree from the University of Windsor (Ontario, Canada). She is a psychotherapist who has worked in agencies and private practice for more than twenty years and also works as a professional performance coach for elite athletes, an educational consultant, and a writer/researcher. Her interests include classical mythology, nature, and holistic healthcare. In her work in the field of mental health counseling she spent several years as an online counselor offering asynchronous text-based counselling, and she values the use of art and writing for physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual healing. She co-authored The Control Freak’s Guide™ to Living Lightly which was featured on the national morning show, Canada A.M., and has had articles published in WECAN’s Gateways and in Kindling Journal.
David Obuchowski is an established writer of longform essays and fiction. His non-fiction has appeared in Longreads, Salon, Jalopnik, The Awl, Deadspin, Fangoria and others. His short stories have appeared in The Baltimore Review, The West Trade Review, Border Crossing, Jet Fuel Review, and many others. He has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes in fiction, and once more for non-fiction. His fiction is also in contention to be included in the Best American Short Stories collection. His first children’s book is a collaboration with his wife, Sarah Pedry, and will be published in 2023 by Minedition (Astra Publishing House).
Catherine Parilla’s stories have been published in Avalon Literary Review, Evening Review, and Paperplates. Her poems have appeared in The Alembic, Compass Rose, Crack the Spine, DASH Literary Journal, descant, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Eclipse, Evening Street Press, Green Hills Literary Lantern, The Griffin, Knightscapes, Painted Bride Quarterly, Pisgah Review, Poem, and Wisconsin Review. She is a civic-minded academic with a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature. For over five years she has served on the Juvenile Conference Committee, an intervention board supported by the courts of Bergen County, and chair the Planning Board in my community.
Frederick Pollack is the author of two book-length narrative poems, The Adventure and Happiness (Story Line Press; the former to be reissued by Red Hen Press), and two collections, A Poverty of Words (Prolific Press, 2015) and Landscape with Mutant (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018). Many other poems in print and online journals.
Ken Poyner offers four current collections of poetry, and four collections of flash fiction. Two new collections of poetry, Stone the Monsters, or Dance and Lessons From Lingering Houses will be out in late 2021. He spent 33 years working in the information arts, and lives with his power lifting wife, several rescue cats, and multiple betta fish in the lower right-hand corner of Virginia.
Madhurika Sankar is an impact investor and freelance writer/journalist whose work frequently appears in The Hindu, India’s leading national newspaper, in the Op Ed section. She’s an engineer and holds a Masters in Biotechnology from Columbia University, New York. She loves to write, but lives for music. She lives in Chennai, India. Madhurika’s short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in literary journals and magazines such as The Bangalore Review, The Bombay Review, The Dillydoun Review, Tether's End Magazine, Visible Magazine, Firewords Magazine, the Tatterhood Review, and Litro Magazine, with more short works forthcoming in Rock & Sling Magazine, Drunk Monkeys Magazine, and The Avenue Journal. Her debut novel, a fantasy, is forthcoming in Spring 2022, with Vraeyda Literary, a Canadian publisher of speculative friction.
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 Home and Two Buddha; and a novel, Flying Over Erie.
Murray Silverstein has been published in RATTLE, The Brooklyn Review, Spillway, Poetry East, West Marin Review, RUNES, Nimrod, Connecticut Review, ZYZZYVA, California Quarterly, Fourteen Hills, Pembroke Magazine, Elysian Fields Quarterly, among others. He has authored two books of poetry, Master of Leaves (2014) and Any Old Wolf (2007), the latter of which received the Independent Publisher’s Bronze Medal for Poetry in 2006. Silverstein is the senior editor of the anthology America, We Call Your Name: Poems of Resistance and Resilience (2018), winner of the Independent Publisher’s Silver Medal for Anthologies in 2017. All were published by Sixteen Rivers Press. A retired architect, Silverstein also co-authored four books about architecture, including A Pattern Language (Oxford University Press) and Patterns of Home (The Taunton Press). He holds a master’s degree in architecture.
Richard Carl Subber is a freelance copy editor, a writing mentor, and a historian. He lives with his family in Natick, Massachusetts, USA. He writes mostly free verse and haiku to indulge his love of the right words. Rick has published three poetry books on Amazon: Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups, Seeing far: Selected Poems, and In Other Words: Poems for Your Eyes and Ears. His poems appeared in The Four Elements: Effects and Influences, an anthology by Poets Collective. His poetry has been accepted by the Aurorean, The Australia Times Poetry, miller’s pond, Colorado Central Magazine, Literati Magazine, and elsewhere.
J. Tarwood has been a dishwasher, a community organizer, a medical archivist, a documentary film producer, an oral historian, and a teacher. After a life spent in East Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, he currently lives in China, and has published five books: The Cats in Zanzibar, Grand Detour, And For The Mouth A Flower, What The Waking See, and The Sublime Way. He has always been an unlikely man in unlikely places.
Don Thompson has been writing about the San Joaquin Valley for over fifty years, including a dozen or so books and chapbooks, most recently, "The Art of Stone Axes" (Broadstone Books). For more info and links to publishers, visit his website at www.don-e-thompson.com.
Esme DeVault is an attorney and poet living in Rhode Island with her husband, son, and dog Charlie. She was previously an English teacher and an academic reference librarian. She has had poems published in Motherscope, Jonah Magazine, The Big Windows Review, Inkling Literary Magazine, Kissing Dynamite: A Journal of Poetry, October Hill Magazine, Solum Literary Journal, Spadina Literary Review, WINK: Writers in the Know Magazine, and Street Light Magazine and forthcoming in Raintown Review.
Alise Versella is a Pushcart nominated contributing writer for Rebelle Society whose work has been published widely in such journals as The Opiate, Entropy, Crack the Spine and Poydras. Her full length When Wolves Become Birds is available now and you can find her at www.aliseversella.com.
Hannah Jane Weber’s poetry has been published in I-70 Review, Kansas City Voices, The Poeming Pigeon, The Seattle Star, and Wrath-Bearing Tree. She is also a recipient of the Dylan Thomas American Poet Prize. Hannah Jane is a children’s librarian and tennis enthusiast. She lives with her husband and their golden retrievers.
