William Aarnes
William teaches English at Furman. He has two
collections of poems—Learning to Dance
(1991) and Predicaments (2001)—both
published by Ninety-Six Press. Recent poems have
appeared online at Sunset and Silencers,
Umbrella, and nth position.
Jeffrey C. Alfier
Jeffrey received an honorable mention for the Rachel
Sherwood Poetry Prize. Recent credits include
Blue Earth Review, Pearl Magazine, River Oak
Review, and The Saint Ann's Review. He
is the author of a chapbook, Strangers within the
Gate (2005). He occasionally works as a drayman
and a thresher.
Jacob M. Appel
Jacob has published short stories in more than one
hundred literary journals including Conjunctions,
Missouri Review and Virginia Quarterly
Review. Jacob is a graduate of the MFA program
in fiction at New York University, Harvard Law School
and the College of Physicians and Surgeons at
Columbia University. He currently practices medicine
at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. More
at: http://www.jacobmappel.com.
Nathalie Boisard-Beudin
Nathalie is a middle-aged French woman living in
Rome, Italy. She has more hobbies than spare time,
alas—reading, cooking, writing, painting and
photography—so hopes that her technical colleagues at
the European Space Agency will soon come up with a
solution to that problem by stretching the fabric of
time. Either that or send her up to write about the
travels and trials of the International Space
Station, the way this was done for the exploratory
missions of old. Clearly the woman is a dreamer.
http://wordofthedayfreshfresh.blogspot.com/
Shane Borrowman
Shane is a freelance writer in northern Nevada. His
work has appeared in publications ranging from
Brevity: A Concise Journal of Literary
Nonfiction through Rhetoric Review to
Renaissance magazine. Despite delays, 2010
should see the publication of his latest composition
textbook, The Cost of Business and two
edited collections: Rhetoric in the Rest of the
West and On the Blunt Edge. His
children are unimpressed.
Katarina Boudreaux
Katarina is originally from south Louisiana. She
graduated with honors from TCU with a BA in English,
and a BA in music. A private vocal and piano teacher
by day, poetess and musician by night and early
morning light, Lines + Stars, Inscape, and
the Northville Review will feature new work
in 2010. She currently lives in Connecticut with two
cats, two pianos, and a veritable city population of
books. http://www.katarinaboudreaux.com
Kevin Brown
Kevin has had work published in over seventy journals
and was nominated for a 2007 Journey Award and a
Pushcart Prize. His first book Ink On Wood
is scheduled to be published in the summer of 2010.
His website is: http://www.InvisibleBodies.com
Scott Cadman
Scott Cadman is 15-years-old and lives in London. He
specializes in UrbEx photography, Urban Exploration,
which envolves documenting the arts of abandoned,
decaying buildings. You can view his photos on
http://www.flickr.com/photos/berngraffiti/
You can contact him: scott.cadman1@btinternet.com"
You can contact him: scott.cadman1@btinternet.com"
Lisa Carl
Lisa lives in Chapel Hill, NC, and teaches
literature, writing, and journalism at North Carolina
Central University in Durham. She previously taught
at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. She has published
poetry and short fiction in small journals,
including, most recently, a poem, “In the Driveway,”
in Exquisite Corpse: Journal of Letters and
Life. She exhibited her photographs in a solo show in
Chapel Hill in 2005.
Kristina Carroll
Kristina has been drawing pictures since she could
hold a crayon. When she was old enough to have those
funny little coloring books where you would dip a pen
in water and then put it on the pictures to
"magically" reveal the colors, she would rather
create her own picture stories on the back, blank
pages than color the pictures already there. Growing
up, nearly every page of her notebooks in school had
a doodle on them or even a little story spreading
over multiple pages and art was always her favorite
subject. After her high-school graduation in 2000,
she fled Montana and came to New York City to study
Theatre. Quickly after graduating from The American
Musical and Dramatic Academy, she realized she liked
art more than theatre and is currently working on
expanding on her first love. She studied with the
legendary Irwin Greenberg at the Art Students League
of New York for over a year and is now finishing up a
BFA in Illustration at the School of Visual Arts in N
YC. In addition to private commissions and
freelancing, she apprentices with top illustrator and
friend Donato Giancola in his studio. http://www.kristinacarrollart.com
Jill Christman
Jill's memoir, Darkroom: A Family Exposure,
won the AWP Award Series in Creative Nonfiction and
was published by the University of Georgia Press in
2002. Recent essays appearing in River Teeth
and Harpur Palate have been nominated for a
Pushcart Prize. Her work has also been published in
Brevity, Barrelhouse, Descant, Literary Mama,
Mississippi Review, Wondertime, and other
journals and magazines. She teaches creative
nonfiction in Ashland University’s low-residency MFA
program and at Ball State University in Indiana where
she lives with her husband, Mark Neely, and their two
children.
C.A. Cole
C.A. lives in Colorado. Once employed in the health
field, she sometimes looks for work. Recent
publications include stories and flash in
Straylight, and The Broken Plate,
as well as various journals online. She can be
contacted at c2london@comcast.net
Sarah Coleman
Sarah recently moved from Los Angeles to New London,
CT to get in on the fantastic art scene there. She is
also a director, actress, illustrator and
singer/songwriter. She designed the elegant labels
for the official Neil Gaiman Stardust
perfume line by Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab and has
exhibited her work in a number of galleries across
the country. In April she will be directing the debut
of Heartbreaker written by Michael R.
McGuire at the Eugene O'Neill Theater. You can keep
up with Sarah at: http://www.thesarahcoleman.com
& http://www.twitter.com/thesarahcoleman
Molly Crabapple
Molly is an artist, author, and the founder of Dr.
Sketchy's Anti-Art School. You can find out more
about it at http://www.drsketchy.com and
more about Molly at http://www.mollycrabapple.com
Stacey Debono
Bored and disillusioned by the corporate rat race,
Stacey decided to turn her focus to her lifelong
creative dream - photography - and she hasn’t looked
back since. Now a freelance photographer with a
passion for images that tell a story all on their
own, especially black and white images, Stacey
strives to push herself to learn new techniques, new
perspectives, new ways of seeing things. She is often
inspired by the tone of an image, the power of an
expression, the glint of an eye - this is what draws
a viewer in and creates a mood. Please feel free to
contact her at stacey@staceyzgallery.com or visit her
website at http://www.cafepress.com/urbangarden
for prints, gifts, portraits and special orders.
Christophe Dessaigne
Christophe is a French artist who lived in south of
France, in a small town called Perpignan, near Spain
on the Mediterranean coast. His creations are open
doors on fantastic and dreamy horizons where digital
photography serves the fanciful imagery of surrealist
photomontages. His universes are desolate, vast,
insubstantial. Gigantic scaled structures rule the
landscapes, dwarfing human beings to the size of
ants. His post-apcalyptic kingdoms, equally poetic
and terrifying, are visions of the end of the world.
His work has appeared in cover art book and CD covers
in Europe, and has recently been featured in
Advanced Creations and PSD Photoshop
Magazine. His photographic visions are
invitations to remote and chimeric territories. A
travel into a mysterious journey. http://www.flickr.com/photos/midnight-digital/
and http://www.midnight-artwork.com
Rahul Dhankani
Rahul is just beginning his journey into professional
photography at 21 years of age. Photography came as a
natural extension of his lust for travel and
exploration. Through the viewfinder of his camera, he
looks into the different worlds of his subjects and
forms deep connections with people, understanding
their culture and way of life. To see more of his
work, please visit http://www.rahuldhankaniphotography.50webs.com
Danny diCrispino
Danny, a music school dropout, holds an MFA in
Creative Writing from Roosevelt University where his
collection of poetry Salju won the graduate
college’s outstanding thesis award. He was the
2007-2008 editor-in-chief of Oyez Review and
in 2006 he founded the Maryland State Poetry &
Literary Society’s publication Attic. His
poetry has appeared or will appear in journals such
as Poems & Plays, Gargoyle, Rambler, After
Hours, Manorborn, and Into the Teeth of the
Wind. He will also appear in the forthcoming
Pudding House anthology Reeds and Rushes.
Danny currently teaches in Gwangmyeong, South Korea.
Denise Duhamel
Denise's most recent books are Ka-Ching!
(University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009), Two and
Two (Pittsburgh, 2005), Mille et un
Sentiments (Firewheel, 2005); Queen for a
Day: Selected and New Poems
(Pittsburgh, 2001); The Star-Spangled Banner
(Southern Illinois University Press, 1999); and
Kinky (Orchises Press, 1997). A bilingual
edition of her poems, Afortunada de mí
(Lucky Me), translated into Spanish by Dagmar
Buchholz and David Gonzalez, came out in 2008 with
Bartleby Editores (Madrid.) A recipient of an NEA
Fellowship, she is an associate professor at Florida
International University in Miami.
Kathleen Dusenbery
Kathleen is a PhD candidate in English Studies at
Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois. Her
critical and creative work has appeared recently in
Sub-Lit, The International Journal of
Arts in Society, 2008 AWP Pedagogy Forum, The Spoon
River Poetry Review, Critiphoria, Euphemism, and
l’bourgeoizine, among others. Her research
and dissertation focus is cognitive poetics and
creative writing.
Ana Elsner
Ana is a multilingual poet and author educated in
Europe and at Georgetown University. She holds a
Magister Artium degree in Linguistics. Her poems are
published in seven countries in the original text and
in translation. She is a frequent featured speaker at
libraries, seminars and literary venues. Ana Elsner
promotes equal access to poetry for a broad and
diverse audience worldwide. She makes it her mission
to mentor and encourage the next generation of poets.
Elsner conducts informal poetry workshops and
supports creative writing in any literary genre. She
is currently working on a new manuscript titled
Resurrected Omissions - Poems by Ana Elsner.
Website:
http://www.redroom.com/author/ana-elsner and
http://anaelsner.blogspot.com/
http://www.redroom.com/author/ana-elsner and
http://anaelsner.blogspot.com/
Michael was born and raised in New York, but his soul
has always been timeless. He likes to think his
images reveal as much of him, as his subjects. You
can find out more about his work by visiting http://www.loophole7.net/. He
can be contacted by email:
michael@loophole7.net.
Donald G. Evans
Donald is the author of the novel Good Money
After Bad and editor of the anthology Cubbie
Blues: 100 Year of Waiting Till Next Year. Other
stories in his collection An Off-White
Christmas have been published in Story
Quarterly, The Journal, Pinyon, Narrative Magazine,
Xavier Review, and The Write City
Magazine. The title story received a citation in
Best American Short Stories and two others
Pushcart Prize nominations.
Douglas Favero
Douglas is a writer and photographer from the Midwest
living in Oaxaca, Mexico. You may find contact
information and links to more of his work at http://faveroso.wordpress.com
Jackie Fox
Jackie is a full-time public relations manager and
occasional poet. She lives in Nebraska with her
husband and their vintage cat. In addition to
Conclave: A Journal of Character, her work
has appeared most recently in Plainsongs and
Nebraska Life. You can reach her at
jhog@cox.net or visit http://secondbasedispatch.wordpress.com
where she blogs about breast cancer and poetry.
Magnus Fröderberg
Magnus has been working as a photographer, journalist
and editor since 1994. At present he is
editor-in-chief for a Swedish photo magazine. He also
do some freelancing and works with his own projects.
He likes to do reportage, portraits, and street
photography. You may see more of his photography at
http://www.froderberg.com
Vinayak Garg
Vinayak, an engineer by qualification, found his love
for traveling when he spent a year in France as an
exchange student and got the opportunity to travel
across Europe. He continued his quest to travel even
after his return to India. Besides traveling, Vinayak
is passionate about education sector reforms and has
founded an NGO, V.I.S.V.A.S. and an IT company for
improvement of educational standards in India. You
can email him at: vinayakgarg@gmail.com; His personal
blog is: www.vinayakgarg.com; some of
his photos are available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vinayakgarg/
Eliza Gauger
Eliza travels constantly, sleeps uneasily, paints
recklessly, speaks nasally, and frowns by default.
She is a perseid mirror to the Gaze, bouncing it back
on itself. http://toxoplasm.org
Daniel Gewertz
Daniel has worked for 27 years as a Boston-based
freelance journalist, writing largely about the
performing arts. From 1995 to 2005, he was the sole
writer of the Boston Herald's weekly folk/blues music
column. He's been teaching writing for 22 years at
Cambridge Center for Adult Education, and recently,
at Lesley University. As a journalist, he’s lunched
with Glenn Close, been served tea by Jeremy Irons,
drank soda with Liberace, rode to the airport with
Judy Collins, been upbraided by Pearl Bailey, been
called “a metaphysical conversationalist” by Rosanne
Cash, been drunk under the table by Richard Yates,
and been sung to by Ray Charles. In college, he was
best known for his Elvis Presley imitation. As a 16
year-old, he was extended, but sadly turned down, an
offer to join a small, one-ring traveling circus.
Mark Gilligan
Mark is a professional photographer based in England
who has recently been awarded one of Europe’s top
landscape awards for his work. He has been in the
business for over 30 years now and is well respected
in his field as a professional. http://www.picturesandwords.org
Michael S. Glaser
Michael served as a professor and administrator at
St. Mary's College of Maryland from 1970 until his
retirement in June of 2008. A recipient of the Homer
Dodge Endowed Award for Excellence in Teaching and
the Columbia Merit Award for service to poetry,
Glaser is widely sought as a speaker and workshop
leader. His most recent collections of poetry are
Being a Father and Fire before the
Hands. Glaser has served as Poet Laureate of
Maryland since August, 2004. His poem “Eve’s Reach”
will be published in a forthcoming Chapbook,
Remembering Eden, to be published by
Finishing Line Press. His website is www.smcm.edu/poet/. He may be
contacted at msglaser@smcm.edu.
Richard Goodman
Richard is the author of The Soul of Creative
Writing and French Dirt: The Story of a
Garden in the South of France. He has written on
a variety of subjects for many national publications,
including the New York Times, Harvard Review,
Vanity Fair, Saveur, Creative Nonfiction, Louisville
Review, Ascent, French Review, and the
Michigan Quarterly Review. He teaches creative
nonfiction at Spalding University's MFA in Writing
Program. His website is www.richardgoodman.org.
Jonathan Greenhause
Jonathan’s poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart
Prize, has appeared or is forthcoming in over a
hundred literary reviews, most recently in
Borderlands, The Chaffin Journal, Many Mountains
Moving, and Roanoke Review, and his
book review of Karen Solie’s Pigeon will be
published in Interim’s 2010 issue. In his everyday
life, he works as a Spanish interpreter and eats lots
of dark chocolate. When he forgets to comb his hair,
he sort of looks like Tintin the Belgian reporter.
Lisa Van Orman Hadley
Lisa has a B.A. in English from the University of
Utah. She is currently a student in the Warren-Wilson
MFA Program for Writers. She grew up in Florida and
Utah and now lives in Somerville, Massachusetts with
her husband and one-eyed cat. Her email address is
lisavhadley@gmail.com.
Maura Henn
Maura is an artist, writer, and part time Derby Girl
living in Western Wisconsin. Her work can be found at
www.maurahenn.com
Mark Hinderliter
Mark is 45-years-old and lives with his wife and son
in the Seattle area. He is an IT professional by
trade, and his main recreational interest is
photography, specifically street portraiture.
Dustin M. Hoffman
Dustin has an MFA in fiction from Bowling Green State
University. He is currently working on his PhD in
creative writing at Western Michigan University. His
work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in
Takahe, Sugar House Review, Black Warrior
Review, and Gargoyle.
Beth Hommel
Beth is a photographer, art-maker, writer, fighter,
lover, blogger, wanderer, and impulsive optimist. She
took this photograph of a stranger; nine months
later, her subject is now both her boss and her
friend. She takes this as proof that the universe has
more in store for us than we may realize at a given
moment. Beth has the words "aut viam inveniam aut
faciam" tattooed on her wrist, and she lives by them.
Her photography and other art is live at http://www.bethhommel.com.
Randall Horton
Randall is the author of The Definition of
Place (Main Street Rag) and the coeditor for
Fingernails Across the Chalkboard: Poetry and
Prose on HIV/AIDS from the Black Diaspora (Third
World Press). He was born in Birmingham, AL and now
resides in Albany, NY.
Louisa Howerow
Louisa writes poetry, fiction and creative
non-fiction. Her flash fiction has appeared in
Night Train, Carousel (Canada),
Bateau, and The Birmingham Arts
Journal.
Leland James
Leland was a recent winner of the Portland Pen Poetry
Contest and the Writers' Forum Short Poem contest. He
was runner up for the Fish International Poetry Prize
and received the Franklin-Christoph Merit Award for
poetry. His work has placed or received honorable
mentions in several other contests, including the St.
Louis Writers Guild, Tom Howard, New Millennium
Writers, and By Line. His work has appeared in
publications in the US, Canada, England, Ireland,
Scotland, and Israel, including New Millennium
Writers, Orbis, Magma, Reach Poetry, Barnwood
International Poetry Mag, Voices of Israel, Osprey
Journal, Cyclamens and Swords, Galaxy, The Umbrella,
The Delinquent, Thirty First Bird Review, Carillon
Magazine, joyful, Inspirit, Harûah, Shine, Ruminate,
The Enigmatist, Conclave, Dawntreader and
Tipton Poetry Journal.
Stephen Johnston
Stephen was President of the Short Mystery Fiction
Society from July 2006 to July 2008. He has published
stories in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine,
Mouth Full Of Bullets (The Best of Year One),
Amsterdam Scriptum, and the short story
anthology Doses of Death. His story Jimmy
Crick won both First Place and the Reader's Choice
Award in the Clarity of Night Midnight Road contest.
Although originally Canadian, Stephen lives with his
wife and two children near Amsterdam in the
Netherlands, where he is currently writing a
thriller. He can be contacted at
stephen.johnston@casema.nl.
Lawrence Kessenich
Lawrence has published poetry in cream city
review, Energy Review and Chronogram
and will soon be published in Ibbetson Street. His
chapbook Strange News was published by
Pudding House Publications in March 2008. He has also
published essays on CommonTies.com and Arkansas
Public Radio’s Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. Mr.
Kessenich was an editor at Houghton Mifflin Company
in Boston for ten years, where he read for the
publisher’s annual poetry series and worked on
Selected Poems: Anne Sexton and Anne
Sexton: A Biography. He also worked with two
Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award-winning
novelists and many other fiction and nonfiction
writers. He lives in Boston and now makes his living
as a part-time marketing writer.
Claire Keyes
Claire is Professor Emerita at Salem State College,
where she taught English for 30 years. Her poems,
essays and reviews have appeared in such journals as
Valparaiso Review, Calyx, Blueline, and
The Women’s Review of Books, as well as in
several anthologies, including Letters to the
World: Poems from the Wom-Po Listserv. Winner of
the Beullah Rose Poetry Prize from Smartish Pace, she
is a recipient of a grant in poetry from the
Massachusetts Cultural Council and a fellowship from
the Wurlitzer Foundation. The Question of
Rapture, a book of poems, was recently published
by Mayapple Press.
Kathy Coudle King
Kathy is a playwright, essayist, and novelist. She
holds a BFA in dramatic writing from NYU and an M.A.
in English from the University of North Dakota. Kathy
teaches writing and women studies at the U. of North
Dakota. For more info on her plays, please visit at
www.dakotalit.com. Her email
is: katking@dakotalit.com.
Manda Lander
Manda is a self-taught artist living and working out
of Ohio. Her illustrations are a mixture of the
whimsical and the macabre, using traditional mediums.
She has mainly done with private commissions and
recently did some label design for The Black Phoenix
Alchemy Lab. To see more of her work or to contact
her, please visit http://lunchboxmonkey.deviantart.com/profile.
Gérard Lavalette
Gérard has been a photographer for 40 years. He
participates in the publication of books on the
history of Paris and Parisians. His web site
specializes on the 11 ème district of Paris: www.parisfaubourg.com. Gérard
may be contacted at glavalette@gmail.com.
Amanda Leduc
Amanda grew up in Ontario, Canada, and now lives in
Scotland, where she is completing a Masters degree in
Creative Writing at the University of St. Andrews.
She has had articles published in various periodicals
in Canada, the United States, and England, and is
currently working on a novel and a collection of
short stories.
Giang Lê
Giang was born in Vietnam during the aftermath of the
war, and raised and educated in Germany, the US, and
Canada. As a teenager, he became fascinated with the
power and emotions images can evoke in people. He has
since then tried to share this passion through his
captures. You may view more of his work at: http://www.milleluce.com. He
may be contacted: giang@milleluce.com
Justin Leahey
Justin is currently working on a narrative
non-fiction book about the siege of Breslau in 1945.
Soo Young Lee
Soo is a Korean American writer and modern dancer who
splits her time between two cities, Brooklyn and
Baltimore. In New York, she is studying to become a
fashion designer and learning to put her art where
her heart is. Bi-cultural, bisexual, and bilingual,
she often flounces back and forth between her many
worlds and finds beauty in the gray areas in between.
Her favorite words are ineffable, evanescent, and
wahlguhduk, which means wild, unruly girl in Korean.
Her greatest inspiration is her 14-year-old son whose
writing and art makes her cry. http://mountainmermaid.blogspot.com/
Albert R. Levy
Albert is a 73-year-old man who used to be a
biochemist and is now a psychotherapist in private
practice. He takes pictures of things he likes and
likes to see. Albert says, “Don't look for symbolic
meaning in my images.”
Vikki Littlemore
Vikki is twenty-four and lives in Cheshire, England.
She is studying English and Creative Writing at
Chester University and writes articles for various
newspapers and student publications. Her website is
http://vikkilittlemore.wordpress.com
or www.twitter.com/florentinemuray
Sebastián Utreras Lizana
In 1999, Sebastián began to study at the Professional
Communications and Art Institute (ARCOS). Two years
later he got the chance to start as an assistant
photographer in "Paula", one of the top fashion
magazines in Chile, recognized by its photographic
work. Few months later he scaled to photographer, a
position that he has held until today. In 2004,
Sebastián took the seminar dictated by the
Argentinean photographer Daniel Barraco. In 2005, he
earned a scholarship, the New Journalism
Iberoamerican Foundation grants, to take a seminar in
photojournalism with Susan Meiselas, sponsored by the
Photographic Reporters Association of Argentina
(ARGRA). And in 2007, Sebastián took a postgraduate
seminar about Digital Creation in ARCOS. His work may
be viewed at http://www.sebastianutreras.com, and he
may be contacted at info@sebastianutreras.com.
Christina Lovin
Christina is the author of What We Burned for
Warmth and Little Fires. An
award-winning poet and Pushcart nominee, her work is
widely published and anthologized in such
publications as Harvard Summer Review, Diner,
Poet Lore, Susan B & Me, and others.
Recently named Emerging Poet by the Southern Women
Writers’ Conference, she holds an MFA in Creative
Writing from New England College. She is the
recipient of several artists’ grants from the
Kentucky Arts Council (most notably a 2007 Al Smith
Fellowship) and the Kentucky Foundation for Women.
Lovin teaches college writing courses and presents
writing workshops around the country.
Sarah Maloney
Sarah is a sophomore at the San Francisco School Of
The Arts. She enjoys living in and making art around
the bay area. She hopes, one day, to move to Kansas.
She can be reached at Bluehornedmonkey@comcast.net.
Tom Maremaa
Tom is the author of a half dozen novels, the latest
of which, Metal Heads, is forthcoming from
Künati Books in Spring of 2009. He lives in Mountain
View, California, and works at Apple Inc in software
engineering. He can be reached at
tom.maremaa@gmail.com.
Jessica Hubbard Marr
Jessica was born in Greenwich, Connecticut in 1982
and is a 2005 Kenyon College graduate with a BA in
English. In addition to being a photographer, she is
also a teacher of both Art and English as a foreign
language. She has resided in Oaxaca de Juarez, Mexico
since August 2008 where she also works with the non
profit group, "Friends of Oaxacan Folk Art" (FOFA).
To view more of her work, visit: http://www.jessicahubbardmarr.com
and contact her via: jhubbardmarr@gmail.com.
Tara L. Masih
Tara has published fiction, poetry, and essays in
numerous anthologies and literary magazines (such as
Confrontation, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Natural
Bridge, New Millennium Writings, Red River
Review, and The Caribbean Writer), and
her essays have been read on NPR. Two limited edition
illustrated chapbooks featuring her flash fiction
have been published by The Feral Press (Oyster Bay,
NY: 2006). Awards for her work include first place in
The Ledge Magazine’s fiction contest, second place in
Jane’s Stories Flash Fiction contest, a finalist
fiction grant from the Massachusetts Cultural
Council, and a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Web
nomination. She judges the intercultural essay prize
for the annual Soul-Making Literary Contest, and is
editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to
Writing Flash Fiction, due out from Rose Metal
Press in 2009. www.taramasih.com.
Michael Matlach
Michael is an international travel photographer and
tour guide. He primarily focuses on documenting the
human spirit in Asia and Latin America. You can find
his images at www.michaelmatlach.com.
Salva Mehtash
Salva was born in 1984 in Tehran, Iran. He moved to
the Netherlands in 1991 where he met Xu-Ling Tu, who
was born in 1985 in Venlo. Together they started
making photographs in 2008 to show how they see the
world. Their work may be viewed at http://www.miec.nl/pixel.
Michelle Menting
Michelle grew up in the northwoods of Wisconsin and
Upper Michigan and now lives in Lincoln, Nebraska.
She teaches at UNL where she is a PhD student in
Creative Writing. Some of her recent work can be
found in Diagram, Boxcar Poetry Review, Double
Room, and other literary journals.
Emily Miller
Emily is a mother of three who always loved
photography. Never formally trained, everything that
she learned was from shooting and improving. Her goal
is to eventually have a successful photography
business, focusing on children and babies. Her website
is www.emilymphotography.com. She
can be reached at emily@emilymphotography.com.
Jack Miller
Jack hates writing bios, yet enjoys referring to
himself in the third person, so it's sort of a wash.
His poetry has appeared in several journals, most
recently RHINO, Harpur Palate, and
Packingtown Review. His next bio may employ
the majestic plural, just to shake things up a bit.
Rafael Miguel Montes
Rafael is a Cultural Studies professor at St. Thomas
University and a Cuban-American writer living and
working in Miami. His literary work reflects his dual
upbringing in the Cuban-American community of
Hialeah, Florida, and the academic communities of a
number of institutions of higher learning. His poetry
has most recently appeared in Tattoo Highway,
Conclave: A Journal of Character, The Honey Land
Review, Paradigm, inscape (Kansas), Triggerfish
Critical Review, Mastodon Dentist and
DASH (Cal State-Fullerton). He is married to
the far superior Cuban-American poet, Celia Lisset
Alvarez.
Indigo Moor
Indigo’s Through the Stonecutter’s Window
was selected for the 2009 Cave Canem Northwestern
University Poetry Prize. His first book
Tap-Root was published in 2007 as part of
Main Street Rag’s Editor’s Select Poetry Series.
Other honors include: Cave Canem writing fellowship;
former vice president of the Sacramento Poetry
Center; 2005 Vesle Fenstermaker Prize for Emerging
Writers; 2008 Jack Kerouac Poetry Prize. http://www.indigomoor.com
Mark Neely
Mark's poems have appeared in Boulevard, Indiana
Review, North American Review, Meridian and
Salt Hill. He is the editor of a literary
magazine, The Broken Plate, and teaches at
Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, where he
lives with his wife, writer Jill Christman, and their
two children. The poems appearing here are part of a
sequence he is working on entitled Fishing With
Lorenzo.
William Orem
William writes in multiple genres. His first
collection of stories, Zombi, You My Love,
won the GLCA New Writers Award in 2000, previously
given to Sherman Alexie, Alice Munro, Louise Erdrich,
and Richard Ford. His second collection, Across
the River, won the Texas Review Novella Prize
for 2009. His first novel, Killer of Crying
Deer, is appearing in September of 2010. Other
stories and poems of his have appeared in over 100
publications, including The Princeton Arts
Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Sou'Wester, and
The New Formalist, and he has been nominated
for the Pushcart Prize in both genres. His plays have
been performed in Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Louisville,
Buffalo and Boston, with a recent staged reading in
Manhattan; currently he is a Writer-in-Residence at
Emerson College. His work can be seen at http://www.williamorem.com
Christina Pacosz
Christina has been writing most of her life. Her most
recent book of poetry is Greatest Hits,
1975-2001, Pudding House, 2002 (A “by invitation
only” series). Her novel The Moon It Gives No
Light was in the top one hundred Amazon
Breakthrough Novel Awards of 2008 and is still in
search of a publisher. She can be reached at
pacosz@earthlink.net.
Susan Petrone
Susan's fiction has been published by Glimmer
Train, Featherproof Books, Muse, and Whiskey
Island. Her first novel, A Body at
Rest, was published in 2009 by Drinian Press.
You can read more of her work at http://www.susanpetrone.com.
She lives in Cleveland, Ohio, with her husband
and daughter and far too many dogs.
Anne Phelan
A two-time Edward F. Albee Foundation Fellow, Anne
Phelan is an award-winning and published playwright.
She has been a Guest Artist at The Juilliard School,
Playwright-in-Residence at the William Inge Theatre
Festival, an Artistic Associate at the Milk Can
Theatre Company; her plays have been produced in New
York City, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Anne is a
member of the Dramatists Guild. www.annephelan.com
Ron Pyke
Ron, a Canadian by birth, is an avid photographer who
works as a teacher of English as a foreign language
in his adopted home of Örebro, Sweden. You may view
his work at his flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sweron/
and his photo website: www.rapyke.com. He can be
contacted at info@rapyke.com.
Christine Beth Reish
Christine's manuscript, Facade was named a
top semifinalist in the 2008 Amazon Breakthrough
Novel Award contest. A second novel is underway. Ms.
Reish lives with her husband and two children in
Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Her website is www.myspace.com/christinebethreish
and she may be contacted at:
christinereish@yahoo.com.
Ryan B. Richey
Ryan is a Knightstown, IN native who has made a
career of straying. From one medium to another. From
jobs as wide-ranging as grave marker salesman to room
service. He went to Purdue for accounting and ended
up with a degree in painting. He currently resides in
Chicago with a MFA in painting from the School of the
Art Institute of Chicago pushing out writings,
paintings and songs from his band Hannis Pannis. For
more information visit his website at: http://www.ryanbrichey.com.
Lori Romero
Lori's short screenplay, “Strange Saints,”
won the Manhattan Short Film Festival’s Screenplay
Competition. Her poetry chapbook, Wall to
Wall, was published by Finishing Line Press.
Lori’s poetry and short stories have been published
in more than eighty journals and anthologies, and she
was recently nominated for a second Pushcart Prize.
Lori can be reached via email at lori@tarecords.com.
Monique Roussel
Monique is a writer, producer and sometime radio talk
show co-host on Sirius Satellite Radio and WBAI 99.5
in New York City. She holds an MA in Creative
Writing/Poetry from New York University. Her poetry
and fiction are slated to appear in upcoming 2010
issues of the Wilderness House Literary Review,
The Porchlight Literary Review, and The
Paris Review.
Richard Rutherford
Richard said, “Maureen Alsop hosted a series of
poetry readings at the Palm Springs Desert Museum.
One evening Maureen and I discussed the frustration
we shared over compositions that compelled us yet
remained unfinished, so we each traded a poem. Little
of Maureen's language survived, but her mood remains
intact, and in that way the poem still belongs to
her.”
Richard Rutherford is working on a homeless living quarters project he began during the housing boom. He can be reached at rixyrufus@yahoo.com
Richard Rutherford is working on a homeless living quarters project he began during the housing boom. He can be reached at rixyrufus@yahoo.com
Roger Salz
Roger's passion for photography began at an early age
amongst a sea of photography publications: Life,
Look and National Geographic magazines.
Having worked in the travel industry for many years,
Roger has gone beyond the border, finding shots
throughout the world. His work can be seen in small
galleries in the Atlanta area. Aside from travel
photography, his passion includes landscape, black
and white, macro and street photography: http://www.flickr.com/photos/r-salz/
Viola Lorenza Savarese
Viola was born in 1972 and lives between Modena and
Florence, Italy. After a lifetime of loving
photography from afar, she won her first digital
Nikon in 2006 and began to “freeze moments.” Shot
after shot, she discovered that her years devoted to
observation of others’ art had taught her to capture
what most people do not usually see, what does not
seem worthy of attention, what our eyes are not used
to focusing on. With her photography, she hopes to
convey the same emotional involvement that she is
overwhelmed with when shooting the photo. You may see
more of her work at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/viola_lorenza/
and http://www.ifotografi.org/free/violalorenzasavarese/.
She may also be contacted at:
lorenza.savarese@cotamo.it.
Darci Schummer
Darci received her MFA degree from Hamline University
in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 2008. She teaches English
and writing and orbits the city of Minneapolis on its
Metro Transit buses. Her fiction has appeared in
Volume One magazine, and two of her poems
were winners in the 2009 - 2010 cycle of the What
Light poetry competition through mnartists.org and
Magers and Quinn Booksellers. Any correspondence can
be electronically mailed to her at
darci.schummer@gmail.com
Steven Schutzman
Steven has published stories and plays in such
journals as The Pushcart Prize, TriQuarterly,
Alaska Quarterly Review, Night Train, Eclectica
Magazine, Post Road, Third Coast and Painted
Bride Quarterly and is a five-time recipient of
Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Grant
Awards. You can find out more about his work by
visiting http://mysite.verizon.net/stevenschutzman/
or write to him at stevenschutzman@juno.com.
Steven Simoncic
Steven is a Chicago writer whose theatrical
productions include Heat Wave, Broken Fences,
Words with C, Something Blue, and Discovery
Channel. He is currently a resident playwright
at Chicago Dramatists, and his fiction has appeared
in The Chicago Reader, Conclave, New Millennium
Writings, Spork Magazine and Drift. He
has been nominated for a Pushcart prize and has
written several short films. Steven holds an
undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan,
an MFA in fiction from Warren Wilson College and an
MLA from the University of Chicago. When he is not
writing you can find him playing in his band, Supra
Genius, or dancing in the kitchen with Johnny,
Gracie, and Karen.
Danny Sklar
Danny teaches writing at Endicott College. His work
has been published in New York Quarterly, English
Journal, American Dissident, and Harvard
Review. His play, "Teachers Who Smoke
Cigarettes" was published in The Art of the
One-Act in 2007. "Sleeping with the Cat 1963"
was performed at the Firehouse Theater's New Works in
January 2010, and his full-length play, Hack License
was performed in March 2010 at the Actors Studio.
Jeremy Adam Smith
Jeremy is the senior editor of Greater Good
magazine. His essays, poems, and short stories have
appeared in The Nation, San Francisco Chronicle,
San Francisco Bay Guardian, Utne Reader, Watchword,
Wired, and numerous other periodicals and books.
He is the author of The Daddy Shift,
forthcoming from Beacon Press in 2009, and co-editor
of The Compassionate Instinct, forthcoming
from W.W. Norton & Co. in 2009. He lives in San
Francisco. You can learn more about him and his work
at www.jeremyadamsmith.com.
KH Solomon
KH is an agricultural engineer who for years has
pitched water conservation in places common to
strange. He began writing poetry to capture the
sounds and smells of foreign markets, the colors and
textures of new crops, and the remarkable characters
that peopled his agricultural adventures. Now working
on a second career, Ken dilatorily combs beaches in
Morro Bay, CA.; he finds it pays about as well as
poetry. His publication credits include ZYZZYVA,
The English Journal, River Oak Review, The Healing
Muse, Avocet, and others.
Kirsten Spickard
Kirsten is a photographer from Little Rock, Arkansas,
and has been recently published in Fifth
Wednesday Journal, Aisthesis Journal, and
Anderbo. She holds a BFA in studio
art/photography from the University of Central
Arkansas and is making plans to pursue her MFA in the
fall. You may reach her at kristenspickard@gmail.com
Sanna Stacke
Sanna is a 23-year-old woman from Värnamo, Sweden.
Since she finished high school, Sanna has been
travelling and studying in Europe and the United
States, where she has managed to capture some moments
on the way. She loves taking photos but does it more
as a hobby. One of her favorite themes is fathers and
their children. She currently lives in Lund, in the
south of Sweden, and studies psychology. http://www.videkisse.com/
yt sumner
yt was born in the UK, raised all over Australia, and
settled happily in Melbourne. Her short stories have
appeared in various literary journals, anthologies
and magazines worldwide and she’s currently coaxing a
motley group of them into a collection. She plans to
spend the rest of 2010 expanding her vinyl
collection, finishing her tattoos, and filling her
bookshelves. Contact her here— ytsumner@gmail.com
Read her here—http://lambeatswolf.wordpress.com
Alison Sweidan
Alison is currently living in France, with her
husband, two small children, and their big dog. She
has arrived there via stints in five other countries.
It's a great place to take photos, but hopefully it
is not the final stop on the journey.
Gillian Sze
Gillian was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her work has
appeared in various national and international
journals. She is the author of three chapbooks
published by Withwords Press; and her collection,
Fish Bones (DC Books, 2009), was shortlisted
for the QWF McAuslan First Book Prize. She has a
Master's degree in Creative Writing from Concordia
University. She presently resides in Montreal.
http://www.gilliansze.com
Kendra Ann Thomas
Kendra has been writing stories since she was in Mrs.
Jewel's first grade class for dyslexic learners.
After overcoming her disability, she went on to
become a Middle School Language Arts teacher. She is
also the author of Absence with Pictures, an
award winning play produced at Verser Theater in
Arkansas, and a forthcoming young adult novel,
Ravenheart. Kendra Thomas now lives in
Raleigh with her husband, Chris, who is and will
always be her knight in shining armor.
Savannah Thorne
Savannah's poetry has appeared in over a dozen
regional and international literary journals. A
literary agent is currently marketing her first novel
to publishers. She holds a magna cum laude M.A. from
DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois; a summa cum
laude M.S. from Norwich University in Northfield,
Vermont; and a B.A. from the University of Iowa where
she studied in the Writers’ Workshop under notable
poets.
John J. Trause
John is the Director of the Oradell Public Library in
New Jersey. His chapbook of poetry Seriously
Serial is published by Poets Wear Prada,
Hoboken, NJ. His translations, poetry, and visual
work appear or are forthcoming in Sensations
Magazine, Cover, Global City Review, Xavier Review,
The Alternative News, Parse (Alchemy), Radix, Now
Culture, The Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow, Off the
Coast, TAU-USA, Maintenant, The Journal of New Jersey
Poets, and many others. His chapbook
Latter-Day Litany in its performance version
has been staged Off-Off Broadway and elsewhere by
Daniel P. Quinn. Trause was a participant in the City
Lights Books 50th Anniversary East Coast celebration
and reading at the Poetry Project, St. Mark’s Church,
NYC, at which he interpreted work from Frank O’Hara’s
Lunch Poems (1964) and shared the stage with Steven
Van Zandt, Anne Waldman, and Karen Finley. Trause was
chosen along with Jerome Rothenberg to participate in
the Visible Word exhibition and poetry reading
(Stevens Institute, Hoboken, NJ), which paired poets
and visual artists. In 2005 he co-founded the William
Carlos Williams Poetry Cooperative in Rutherford, NJ,
where he serves as programmer and host. He was
nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2009.
Jeffrey Warzecha
Jeffrey is a recent graduate of Eastern Connecticut
State University. He is the recipient of the Leslie
Leeds poetry prize awarded by The Connecticut Review
and has work in, among others, The Connecticut
Review, The SNReview, Poetry Midwest, The Rio Grande
Review, The Edison Literary Review, Thieves
Jargon and the Oak Bend Review.
Andrea L. Watson:
Co-editor of the poetry journal, HeartLodge:
Honoring the House of the Poet, Andrea L.
Watson’s poetry has appeared in Poet, Runes,
Ekphrasis, The Dublin Quarterly, Sendero, Sin
Fronteras: Writers Without Borders, and
International Poetry Review. Her show,
Braided Lives: A Collaboration Between Artists
and Poets, has traveled from Taos, NM to San
Francisco, Denver, and Berkeley.
Peter Weltner
Peter has published five books of fiction:
Beachside Entries/Specific Ghosts(1989),
Identity and Difference (1990), In a
Time of Combat for the Angel (1991), The
Risk of His Music (1997), and How the Body
Prays (1999). His stories have appeared in
several anthologies, among them O. Henry Prize
Stories, 1993 and 1998. His books of poetry are
Laguna Beach: After Shelter (Barnwood
Poetry, 2009), From a Lost Faust Book
(Finishing Line Press, 2009), From a Lost Gospel
of Mark (2River View, 2010), and News from
the World at My Birth: A History (Standing Stone
Books, 2010).
Thomas Weschta
Thomas was born 1965 in Bavaria, Germany. He began
photographing in 1983 and painting in 1988. Learn
more about his work by visiting: http://www.weschta.eu/.
Claire Wise
Claire is a professional photographer located in
Nashville, Tennessee, who specializes in children’s
photography using natural light. Claire uses an
impressionist style of photography and works hard to
capture childhood as it happens. You can see more of
her work at www.clairewisephotography.com.
Baron Wormser
Baron is the author/co-author of twelve books, most
recently the paperback edition of The Road Washes
Out in Spring: A Poet’s Memoir of Living Off the
Grid, Scattered Chapters: New and Selected
Poems, and a work of fiction entitled The
Poetry Life: Ten Stories. He is a former poet
laureate of Maine who teaches in the Stonecoast MFA
Program and the Fairfield University MFA Program and
works widely in schools. Wormser has received
fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts
and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.