Contributors
Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in a dozen countries and has authored three books of poetry. He has taught tertiary English courses in the US, PR China, and Palestine.
Michael Ansara spent many years as an activist and an organizer starting with the civil rights movement of the 1960’s, going on to be a regional organizer for SDS. He spent 10 years organizing opposition to the war in Vietnam. He was for 15 years a community organizer including directing Mass Fair Share. He has worked on political campaigns, coordinated voter registration efforts, and trained many organizers. He owned and ran two successful businesses. He is the co-founder of Mass Poetry. He currently serves on the Executive Committee of the Redress Movement and the organizing team for Together We Elect. His poems have appeared in numerous journals and his essays have appeared in Vox, Arrowsmith, Solstice and Cognoscenti. He is currently working on a memoir. He lives in Carlisle, MA, with his wife Barbara Arnold and dotes on his three children and six grandchildren.
Richard Dinges, Jr. lives and works by a pond among trees and grassland, along with his wife, two dogs, three cats, and three chickens. Poem, Avalon, Willow Review, Oracle, and Writer’s Block most recently accepted his poems for their publications.
Marco Etheridge is a writer of prose, an occasional playwright, and a part-time poet. He lives and writes in Vienna, Austria. His work has been featured in more than sixty reviews and journals across Canada, Australia, the UK, and the USA. Marco’s volume of collected flash fiction, “Broken Luggage,” is available worldwide. When he isn’t crafting stories, Marco is a contributing editor and layout grunt for a new ‘Zine called Hotch Potch.Author website at: https://www.marcoetheridgefiction.com/
Leila Farjami is a poet, literary translator, and psychotherapist. In addition to publishing seven poetry books in Persian, her work has appeared in Hey, I’m Alive and Nimrod Journal; was published by Tupelo Press for their 30/30 Project; and has been translated into Swedish, Arabic, Turkish, and French. Leila has appeared in poetry readings and on Persian TV and radio interviews about her poetry. She studies poetry with Rachel Kann, enjoys translating sacred poetry by Rumi into English, and has translated a comprehensive volume of Sylvia Plath’s poetry into Persian.
Teresa Burns Gunther is an award-winning author whose fiction and nonfiction have been published widely in US and international literary journals and anthologies, including New Millennium Writings, Mid-American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Everyday Fiction, The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review, Pure Slush Books, Best New Writing, and many others. Her stories have been recognized in numerous contests, including those at Glimmer Train and Narrative; her story “War Paint” was recently awarded the 52nd New Millennium Award for Fiction, 2022, and is included in her short story collection, Hold Off The Night, a Finalist for the Orison Book Prize 2019, and forthcoming from Truth Serum Press, a subsidiary of Bequem Publishing. She is the founder of Lakeshore Writers Workshop where she leads workshops and classes and offers coaching and developmental editing services. Learn more at www.teresaburnsgunther.com.
Alison Hicks was awarded the 2021 Birdy Prize from Meadowlark Press for Knowing Is a Branching Trail. Previous collections are You Who Took the Boat Out and Kiss, a chapbook Falling Dreams, and a novella Love: A Story of Images. Her work has appeared in Eclipse, Gargoyle, Permafrost, and Poet Lore. She was named a finalist for the 2021 Beullah Rose Prize from Smartish Pace, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Green Hills Literary Lantern. She is founder of Greater Philadelphia Wordshop Studio, which offers community-based writing workshops.
Gregory T. Janetka is a writer from Chicago who drinks a great amount of green tea. His work has been featured in XRAY, Heartwood, The Phoenix, and other publications. More of his writings can be found at gregorytjanetka.com. He is currently seeking representation for his first novel.
Gavin Kayner's plays, prose and poetry have won numerous awards and appeared in a variety of publications. He appreciates the opportunity to have is work appear in The Courtship of Winds.
Erren Kelly has been writing poetry for 32 years and has had his poetry published in numerous publications in print and online in the United States, Canada and around the world. Erren recieved his B.A. in English-Creative Writing from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Erren lives in Lynn, Massachusetts.
Sharon Kennedy-Nolle's poetry has also appeared or is upcoming in Ignatian Literary Magazine, 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, Radar Poetry, 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, MacGuffin, The Midwest Quarterly, and Evening Street Review, among others, while her dissertation was published as Writing Reconstruction: Race, Gender, and Citizenship in the Postwar South (University of North Carolina Press, 2015). She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2020 by Boomerlit Magazine, and she won the 2021 New Ohio Review Contest for poetry. Black Wick: The Complete Elegies has just been chosen as a finalist for the 2021 Black Lawrence Press’s St. Lawrence Book Award and as a semi-finalist for the University of Wisconsin Poetry Series’ Brittingham and Felix Pollak Prizes. A graduate of Vassar College, 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 received funding from the Frost Place Summer Writing Program, which she has attended since 2014.
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 in Rattle, Post Road Magazine, District Lit, The Road Not Taken, The Main Street Rag, Southeast Missouri State University Press, and other splendid publications.
Rhys Lee is a masters candidate at Mount Saint Mary's University. He has poems published in The Driftwood, Literary Heist, and The Metaworker.
Neil Mathison is an essayist and short-story writer who lives in Seattle, Washington, and Friday Harbor, Washington. He is a U.S. Naval Academy graduate and has been a naval officer, nuclear engineer, an expatriate businessman living in Hong Kong, a corporate vice-president, and a stay-at-home-dad. His essays and short stories have appeared in The Ontario Review, Kenyon Review, Georgia Review, Southern Humanities Review, North American Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Agni, Under the Sun, - divide-, Bellowing Ark, Pangolin Papers, Blue Mesa Review, Blue Lyra Review, Blue Lake Review, Moon City Review, Cold Mountain Review, Rappahannock Review, Brooklyner, and elsewhere. Neil’s essay, “Volcano: an A to Z” was recognized as a “notable essay” in Best American Essays 2010. A second essay, "Wooden Boat," was recognized as a "notable essay" in Best American Essays 2013. Neil’s short story “The Cannery” won the 2013 Fiction Attic Short Story Contest and has been published in Modern Shorts: 18 Short Stories from Fiction Attic Press. His essay collection Volcano: an A to Z and Other Essays about Geology, Geography, and Geo-Travel in the American West won the 2016 Bauhan Publishing Monadnock Essay Collection Prize and was published in June 2017. Neil’s author’s website link is http://www.neilmathison.net/
Richard Matta grew up in New York’s rustic Hudson Valley, attended Notre Dame, practiced forensic science, and now lives in San Diego with his golden-doodle dog. Some of his work is found in Ancient Paths, Dewdrop, New Verse News, San Pedro River Review, and Healing Muse.
Caroline Maun is the Chair of English at Wayne State University in Detroit. Her poetry publications include the volumes The Sleeping (Marick Press, 2006), What Remains (Main Street Rag, 2013), and three chapbooks, Cures and Poisons and Greatest Hits, both published by Puddinghouse Press, and Accident, published in 2019 by Alice Greene & Co.
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 appeared in The Connecticut Review, Main Street Rag, Tar River Poetry, Concho River Review, The Courtship of the Winds, The Hungry Chimera, Naugatuck River Review, and other literary journals. He has fully retired from teaching and is now preoccupied with his poetry and his three grandchildren.
Sandra Salinas Newton is a Filipina-American professor emeritus of English. Her published works include introductory texts, fiction, and arts reviews. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Apricity Magazine, Decadent Review, Evening Street Review, Fauxmoir, Neologism Poetry Journal, New Note Poetry, OPEN: Journal of Arts and Letters, Vita Brevis Press, Oberon Poetry Journal 2021, Vultures and Doves, Provenance, Native Skin, Cerasus, Library Love Letter, The Poeming Pigeon, Poetic Sun, and The Woolf. She earned her B.A. from The City College of New York, her M.A. from Hunter College, and her Ph.D. from Fordham University.
Bobby Parrott's poems appear in Spoon River, RHINO Poetry, Rumble Fish Quarterly, Atticus Review, The Hopper, Rabid Oak, and elsewhere. Wearing only a forest-spun jacket of toy dirigibles, he dreams himself out of formlessness in the chartreuse meditation capsule called Fort Collins, Colorado.
Yvonne Pearson is a freelance writer and retired clinical social worker who lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her poetry and essays have appeared in various publications, including Amethyst and Agate: Poems of Lake Superior, Main Street Rag, Chrysalis Reader, Wolf Head Quarterly and others. She is the recipient of a McKnight Writing Fellowship, a Loft Creative Non-Fiction Award, the Shabo Award in children’s literature, and two Minnesota State Arts Board grants. She has also published books for children.
Frederick Pollack is 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 (Courtship of Winds 2016, 2020, 2021).
Paul Rabinowitz is an author, poet, photographer and founder of ARTS By The People. His works appear in The Sun Magazine, New World Writing, Burningword, Evening Street Press, The Montreal Review and elsewhere. Rabinowitz was a featured artist in Nailed Magazine in 2020 and Mud Season Review in 2022. He is the author of The Clay Urn and Limited Light, a book of prose and portrait photography, which stems from his Limited Light photo series, nominated for Best of the Net in 2021. His poems and fiction are the inspiration for 4 award winning short films.
Rebecca Ressl is a nonprofit grant writer, poet, and prose writer, amongst other things. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in Sky Island Journal, Masque & Spectacle, Flash Fiction Magazine, and Lily Poetry Review. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin with her partner, child, rambunctious dog, very old cat, and piles of books.
David Reuter has been published in The Cape Rock, El Portal, Existere Journal, Neologism Poetry Journal, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Perceptions Magazine, Sandpiper, Sanskrit Literary-Arts Magazine, Visitant, and Vox Poetica. He has attended William Paterson University’s Writer’s Conference in 2018 and the Rutgers Writers’ Conferences in 2017, 2018 and 2019. He has a bachelor’s degree from Caldwell College and works as a paralegal.
Danley Romero has been published in The Massachusetts Review, the New Orleans Review, and Pom Pom, and is a recent graduate of the University of New Hampshire's MFA Writing program.
Murray Silverstein has been published in RATTLE, The Brooklyn Review, Cape Rock Poetry, Spillway, Poetry East, West Marin Review, RUNES, Nimrod, Connecticut Review, ZYZZYVA,California Quarterly, Elysian Fields Quarterly, Fourteen Hills, Louisiana Literature, The MacGuffin, Pembroke Magazine, Pennsylvania English, Sweet Tree Review, and Under a Warm Green Linden, 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).
Nathan Thomas is a poet and recent college graduate based in Providence, Rhode Island. He is driven toward the grammatically interrogative, allusive and elusive sound, and the interrelation between vestige, language, and landscape.
Regina Thomas is a writer and renewable energy attorney based in Pacifica, California. Her mission statement as a writer is to create the sort of works that were missing from the bookshelves when she was a young Black girl in Kentucky always maxing out her checkout limit at the local library. Her work has been published in Packingtown Review, The Penmen Review, and Press Pause Press.
Will Walker lives in San Francisco with his wife and their dog. He has two books available from Blue Light Press: Wednesday after Lunch, and Zeus at Twilight.
Anne Marie Wells (She | They) has been published in The Dallas Review, Passengers Journal, Brain Mill Press, Santa Fe Writers Project, and others. Anne Marie is the recipient of the 2020 Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce Rising Star Award for community service and the 2018 Marius P. Hanford IV Award for playwriting. She was a 2021 Wyoming Woman of Influence nominee in the arts category. Currently a faculty member of the Community Literature Initiative through the Sims Library of Poetry, Anne Marie received her bachelor’s degree from the University at Buffalo and her master’s in applied ecology from Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal. You can learn more about Anne Marie at her website, AnneMarieWellsWriter.com.
Brenda Yates is the author of Bodily Knowledge (Tebot Bach) with poems, reviews, interviews and hybrids published in journals and anthologies based in Australia, Canada, China, England, India, Ireland, Israel, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal and the United States, including Mississippi Review; Antigonish Review; The Shanghai Literary Review. Notably, she was a Kyoto, Letheon, Princemere, Sundress, Wolverine and Robinson Jeffers Tor House finalist. Awards include the Patricia Bibby and Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center Poetry Prize.
Jim Zola is a poet and photographer living in North Carolina.
