Contributors
Danny P. Barbare has recently been published in Plainsongs and North Dakota Quarterly. He resides in the Upstate of the Carolinas with his wife and family and small sweet dog, Miley.
Crystal Davis is a mixed-media artist and freelance writer, editor, and social media marketer. She was born and raised in Jersey City, New Jersey, and is the author and creator at Crystal Letters and the co-producer of OpenRoad Poetry. Her art and writing projects, Crystal Letters and OpenRoad Poetry, have collaborated with local arts nonprofit organizations and artists across the Tri-State area.
Her work has been published in several print and online publications, including MookyChick, In Her Words from In Full Color (2019), Best Emerging Poets 2019 and 2018 from Z Publishing, Megazine vol. II (2018), Unapologetic Women, and PATHS from New Jersey City University. Her work is inspired by nature, color, and the utilization of practical craft through art in the visual and written form. To see more of her work, visit https://crystal-letters.blogspot.com.
Brian Dickson is the author of the chapbooks Maybe This Is How Tides Work (Finishing Line Press) and In a Heart’s Rut (High5 Press) and the book All Points Radiant (Cherry Grove Collections), and has been published in various journals. He teaches composition, poetry, and literature at the Community College of Denver and is the faculty editor for Ourglass, the CCD literary magazine. When not teaching, he avoids driving as much as possible and wanders the Front Range region by foot, bike, bus, or train.
Jack Donahue has published numerous short stories and poems in journals such as North Dakota Quarterly, Laldy! (Scotland), Stand (U.K.), Poetry Salzburg Review (Austria), Armarolla (Cyprus), Bindweed (Ireland), Opossum, and others throughout North America, Asia, and Europe. His book of poems, InsideOut, was published earlier this year.
J. K. Durick is a retired writing teacher and online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Literary Yard, Vox Poetica, Synchronized Chaos, Madswirl, Pendemic, Eskimo Pie, and in the anthology Along the Way.
Tim Fab-Eme experiments with poetic forms; he writes about the environment, identity, and exploitation. His work has appeared in The Malahat Review, New Welsh Review, Magma, apt, The Fiddlehead, Reckoning, and other journals. Tim enjoys exploring the mangrove forests and rainforests of the Niger Delta.
Louis Faber is a retired corporate attorney and college English literature instructor with an MFA in writing. His work has previously appeared in Atlanta Review, Arena Magazine (Australia) Exquisite Corpse, Rattle, Eureka Literary Magazine, Borderlands: The Texas Poetry Review, Midnight Mind, Pearl, Midstream, European Judaism, Greens Magazine, The Amethyst Review, Afterthoughts, The South Carolina Review and Worcester Review, among many others, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
He blogs daily at https://anoldwriter.com and at bird-of-the-day.com, the former devoted to poetry, the latter to a photo a day from his backyard, which abuts a small wetland with all manner of birds who have seen him through the pandemic (although they do request that he keep six wingspans’ distance).
Jane Ellen Glasser’s poetry has appeared in numerous national journals, such as Hudson Review, Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Georgia Review. In the past, she reviewed poetry books for the Virginian-Pilot, edited poetry for the Ghent Quarterly and Lady Jane’s Miscellany, and co-founded the nonprofit arts organization and journal New Virginia Review. She won the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry 2005 for her collection Light Persists, and The Long Life won the Poetica Publishing Company Chapbook Contest in 2011. Her most recent collections, In the Shadow of Paradise (2017) and Jane Ellen Glasser: Selected Poems (2019) are available from FutureCycle Press and Amazon. To preview her work and access her books, visit the website www.janeellenglasser.com.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. He has recently been published in Sin Fronteras, Dalhousie Review, and Qwerty, with work upcoming in Plainsongs, Willard & Maple, and Connecticut River Review.
Elizabeth Jaeger’s photos, essays, short stories, book reviews and poetry have been published in various print and online journals, including Watchung Review, Peacock Journal, Boston Accent Lit, and Italian Americana. She is the book reviews editor at Ovunque Siamo. When Jaeger isn’t taking pictures, reading, or writing, she enjoys going hiking and taking road trips with her son. You can find her on Instagram@jaegerwrites.
Christine Toy Johnson is an award-winning writer, actor, and advocate for inclusion. Her work has been produced and/or developed by the Roundabout, Village Theatre, O’Neill Center, Barrow Group, Prospect Theater, Weston Playhouse, CAP 21 and more, and is included in the Library of Congress’s Asian Pacific American Playwrights Collection. Johnson is also a member of the Dramatists Guild Council and a host of the Guild’s podcast Talkback on Broadway Podcast Network, and was a cast member of the first national tour of Come from Away. She is a Rosetta LeNoire, JACL, and an Asian American Arts Alliance awards recipient. Details: www.christinetoyjohnson.com.
Veronica Zora Kirin is a queer writer and entrepreneur whose work focuses on disrupting the status quo. She is the author of Stories of Elders: What the Greatest Generation Knows about Technology That You Don’t, which chronicles the experience of the Greatest Generation with a topic that most do not associate with them—technology—and asks readers to consider its use in their own lives. Her current book, Stories of COVID™, is being written in real time to document the impact of the pandemic. Learn more at https://veronicakirin.com/books.
Alexander Limarev is a freelance artist, mail art artist, curator, poet, and photographer from Siberia/Russia. He has participated in more than eight hundred international projects and exhibitions. His artworks are part of private and museum collections in sixty-three countries. His artworks, as well as poetry, have been featured in various online publications, including Undergroundbooks.org, Boek861, Killer Whale Journal, Bukowski Erasure Poetry Anthology (Silver Birch Press), nokturno.fi, Treehouse Arts, Zoomoozophone Review, Backchannels, Briller Magazine, The Gambler Mag, Caravel Literary Arts Journal, StyleBlueprint, Tuck Magazine, Angry Old Man Magazine, Caliban Online Magazine, Degenerate Literature, Sonic Boom Journal, Gallery & Studio Arts Journal, Zouch Magazine, Maintenant and others.
Artwork, for him, is the way to speculate upon and explain to himself such universal existential problems as a person’s life, double standards, and their influence on individuals, public loneliness, social impotence, search for God, resistance to Evil. He thinks of his artwork as inner monologues developing over a particular thought or event and thus resembling nonsense, stream of consciousness in visual art, based on paradox, absurd, broken causative-consecutive and chronological connections, reflecting discrepancy, injustice of the outer reality. However, decorative artworks are a happy exception.
Octavio López (born Comitán, Chiapas, 1995) is a music composition student at National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), currently living in Mexico City. He writes as a way of approaching sound and symbols other than with music, and his pieces are usually inspired by literature and poetry. Some of his music may be found on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCpGcec1lzbDYDXJOyTZWFg
Lorette C. Luzajic is an award-winning visual artist in Toronto, Canada. Her collage paintings are collected and exhibited all over the world. They have appeared in galleries, museums, in dozens of literary journals, on several literary anthology covers, on a billboard in New Orleans, as a prop on a renovation TV show, in an ad campaign for Madrid's Carrera Y Carrera luxury jewelry line, and on coronavirus masks. Visit her at www.mixedupmedia.ca.
Edwin Miles is a moving image artist, filmmaker, and documentarian from the West Midlands, UK. After graduating with a degree in film studies at Falmouth University, Cornwall, he went on to complete a film and television postgraduate degree at the University of Bristol, which then drove him to move to London. This journey to the capital has been a major influence on his current work, which often turns to the contrast between his current circumstances and his upbringing in a riverside town. To see more of his work, visit his website: https://edwinmilesfilm.wordpress.com/
Cameron Morse was diagnosed with a glioblastoma in 2014. With a 14.6-month life expectancy, he entered the creative writing program at the University of Missouri—Kansas City and, in 2018, graduated with an M.F.A. His poems have been published in numerous magazines, including New Letters, Bridge Eight, Portland Review and South Dakota Review. His first poetry collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press's 2018 Best Book Award. His latest is Baldy (Spartan Press, 2020). He lives with his wife Lili and two children in Blue Springs, Missouri, where he serves as poetry editor for Harbor Review. For more information, check out his Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/cameronmorsepoems) or website (https://cameronmorsepoems.wordpress.com/).
Lisa Mottolo is a lifelong writer and the project manager for Atmosphere Press. She studied copyediting at UC San Diego, and her writing has been published in Barren Magazine and Coffin Bell. Lisa is from upstate New York and currently lives in Austin, Texas. She loves birds and has four adopted parrots at home.
Jose Luis “Nico” Pablo, a poet and a communications manager for a nonprofit, is pursuing a master’s degree in creative writing at the University of the Philippines Diliman. His poetry has been published in Likhaan: The Journal of Contemporary Philippine Literature, Cordite Poetry Review, Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine, and is forthcoming from other publications. He has won awards from the Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio Literary Contest and Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature.
Elizabeth Harmatys Park is a sociologist, a prison volunteer, and a poet. Park has received the First Place Jade Ring Poetry Prize awarded by the Wisconsin Writers Association. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals and in anthologies such as Bards Against Hunger, Ariel, and The Milwaukee Anthology and Leaves of Peace. She writes with Authors Echo in Burlington, Wisconsin, and is a regular contributor to the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets’ annual Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar.
Daniel Mark Patterson’s work has appeared in Sweet Wolverine, The Maple Tree Literary Supplement, and Silver Bow Press Anthology among others. He also has upcoming work to be published in The Gateway Review.
He has been a voice on stages across North America for over ten years, but has only recently forayed into literary waters. In 2018, he won the Art in Action Award for his video poem “Autobiography of a Body” and its portrayal of mental illness. In September 2017, he appeared in In Their Words, a TV documentary following the lives of five spoken word poets.
James Penha, a native New Yorker, has lived for the past quarter century in Indonesia. Nominated for Pushcart Prizes in fiction and poetry, his verse appeared in 2019 in Headcase: LGBTQ Writers & Artists on Mental Health and Wellness (Oxford UP), Lovejets: Queer Male Poets on 200 years of Walt Whitman (Squares and Rebels), and What Remains: The Many Ways We Say Goodbye (Gelles-Cole). His essays have appeared in The New York Daily News and The New York Times. Penha edits The New Verse News, an online journal of current-events poetry. Twitter: @JamesPenha
Effat Pourhasani’s work is inspired by nature and the Persian culture, which believes that images of trees symbolize freedom and integrity. The Persian culture believes that a tree’s essence carries truthfulness, so anyone who breathes the scent of a tree cannot be deceitful. We are dependent on something much bigger than we think. We are all connected. We ruin nature, and the tree deformations in Pourhasani’s paintings are her struggle to make people notice and be aware of destroying Mother Nature.
Her works can be found in private collections in Iran, Turkey, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Thailand, Taiwan, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. For more information, go to her website: www.saatchiart.com/Effat.Pourhasani.
Suzanne S. Rancourt, of Abenaki/Huron descent, has authored two books: Billboard in the Clouds (Curbstone Press/NU Press 2nd print), which received the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas First Book Award and murmurs at the gate (Unsolicited Press, released May 2019). A USMC and Army veteran, her works are published/forthcoming in The Ilanot Review, Cathexis, Pif Magazine, Other Worldly Women Press Anthology,Mizmor Anthology, Rat’s Ass Review, Lucky Jefferson, The Wrath-Bearing Tree, Free State Review, Event Magazine, Pangyrus, BigCityLit, Callaloo, Cimarron Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Ginosko, Tupelo Press Native Voices anthology, and New Reader Magazine. For more info: www.expressive-arts.com.
Kurt Ribak’s albums feature his own original, yet accessible, compositions. Kurt describes his music as “Charles Mingus meets the Meters. They go to Duke Ellington’s house to jam. Cachao and Thelonious Monk sit in.”
Kurt went to UC Berkeley, then won scholarships to Berklee College of Music and graduated with top honors. He’s shared the stage with circus performers, preachers, and fire-breathing strippers--but never all three at once.
His recordings are played on KCSM-FM, KPFA, KZSC, KZFR, KKUP, San Diego's Jazz 88, and Public Radio International’s Jazz After Hours. He’s had sold-out appearances at Yoshi’s and performed at SFJAZZ in the San Francisco Jazz Festival. Kurt has appeared at the Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse, San Jose Jazz Festival, Nor-Cal Jazz Festival, Fillmore Street Jazz Festival, and Blue Note Napa. Other venues include a club where someone stashed a loaded .45 in his bass bag.
Kurt’s recordings are available on iTunes, Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon. Just type “Kurt Ribak” in the search window.
Sheila Robertson seeks beauty and stories off the beaten path, in the varied landscapes that define the Northwest. With notebook and camera, she is happiest wandering the Pacific’s edge or camped out under the stars in Idaho’s remotest desert.
Sheila grew up on the Oregon coast, but moved to southern Idaho as an adult. With the inspiration and support of her husband, her articles, stories and poetry reflect these rich landscapes. Her work has been printed in many publications, including Crab Creek Review, Travel & Leisure Magazine, Writers in the Attic, and North Coast Squid.
Leah Rogin is spending her COVID nights sleeping poorly yet dreaming vividly. Her flash fiction has recently been published by Blink and Cliterature, her poetry appeared in The Rumpus’s Enough series, and her collaborative reading list and her essay “108 Books to Read Before You Read Another White Dude” was featured by Literary Citizen. Her flash piece "River and the Cathedral" is forthcoming in Pure Slush's upcoming anthology, 100 Lives. You can find more about her writing at leahrogin.com. She teaches at Red Rocks Community College and lives in the mountains west of Denver with her family, one cat, two dogs, fifteen chickens, and a flock of migratory hummingbirds.
Eduard Schmidt-Zorner is a translator and writer of poetry, haibun, haiku, and short stories. He writes in four languages—English, French, Spanish, and German—and holds workshops on Japanese and Chinese-style poetry and prose.
He has been published in 106 anthologies, literary journals, and broadsheets in the USA, UK, Ireland, Japan, Sweden, Italy, Bangladesh, India, France, Mauritius, Nigeria, and Canada. He also writes under his pen name: Eadbhard McGowan.
Originally born in Germany, he is a member of four writers’ groups in Ireland, has lived in County Kerry, Ireland, for more than twenty-five years, and is a proud Irish citizen.
Tracy Rose Stamper dances with words. Her recently acquired middle name is the most significant word she has written lately, during these days asking us to rise. She lives in a home on a hill in St. Louis with two beloved humans, two rescue beagle boys, and two whimsical wind sculptures. She is a columnist at Rebelle Society,contributing author of Anna Linder’s The Book of Emotions, and has had work appear (or soon to appear) in Dime Show Review, Drunk Monkeys, Feels, borrowed solace, and Six Sentences, among others. You can find her dancing with words at www.facebook.com/DancingPenTracyStamper.
Darija Stipanić (maiden name Brajan) was born in 1973, in Rijeka, Croatia. She graduated with degrees in the interdisciplinary study of fine art and art history, at the University of Rijeka, Croatia, in 1997. Active in sculpture, painting, and print, she has had several solo exhibitons and participated in art exhibitions in Croatia and foreign countries (South Africa, Serbia, Slovenia, Italy, Slovakia, Mexico, China, Canada, Lithuania, Macedonia, Japan, Bulgaria). She is a member of the Croatian Visual Art Society in Rijeka. To see more of her work, visit her website at http://darijastipanic.weebly.com.
Sabine Voigt studied art in Düsseldorf and San Diego. She works as a freelance artist for magazines and publishing companies and has illustrated many books. She lives with her family and dog in Cologne, Germany. To see more of her art, go to her website: www.voigt-sabine.de.
Rebecca Watkins, an educator and poet, is a public high school teacher in the greater New York City area. She earned her MFA. in poetry from the City College of New York and has created and led poetry workshops for all age groups. She is currently an editor for River River Literary Journal, and in 2015, she was awarded a writing residency in Honduras where she taught poetry at an orphanage and bilingual school. Rebecca has been published in the Roanoke Review, The Promethean, Red Mesa Review, Poetry and Performance, Anderbo and SNReview, among other literary journals. Rebecca’s first full-length poetry book, Sometimes, in These Places, was released by Unsolicited Press in September 2017. More of her work can be found at www.rebeccawatkinspoetry.com.
Marilyn Wegner lives in San Diego, California. She enjoys the act of creating and considers herself an intuitive mixed media artist. She likes to let her art build on itself and take her to unexpected places.
Gregory Wolos is the author of more than ninety short stories published or forthcoming in journals like Glimmer Train, Georgia Review, descant, Florida Review, The Pinch, Post Road, Nashville Review, A-Minor Magazine, Yemassee, Baltimore Review, Madison Review, The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review, Los Angeles Review, PANK, Superstition Review, Tahoma Literary Review, and Southern Humanities Review. His stories have earned six Pushcart Prize nominations and have won awards sponsored by descant, Solstice, the Rubery Book Awards, Gulf Stream, New South, Emrys Journal, and Gambling the Aisle. His full-length collection, Women of Consequence, was published in the spring of 2019, by Regal House Publishing, and his collection, Dear Everyone, was released in early 2020, by Duck Lake Books. A third collection, The Thing About Men, will be published by Cervena Barva Press, in 2021. For full lists of publications and commendations, visit www.gregorywolos.com.
Crystal Davis is a mixed-media artist and freelance writer, editor, and social media marketer. She was born and raised in Jersey City, New Jersey, and is the author and creator at Crystal Letters and the co-producer of OpenRoad Poetry. Her art and writing projects, Crystal Letters and OpenRoad Poetry, have collaborated with local arts nonprofit organizations and artists across the Tri-State area.
Her work has been published in several print and online publications, including MookyChick, In Her Words from In Full Color (2019), Best Emerging Poets 2019 and 2018 from Z Publishing, Megazine vol. II (2018), Unapologetic Women, and PATHS from New Jersey City University. Her work is inspired by nature, color, and the utilization of practical craft through art in the visual and written form. To see more of her work, visit https://crystal-letters.blogspot.com.
Brian Dickson is the author of the chapbooks Maybe This Is How Tides Work (Finishing Line Press) and In a Heart’s Rut (High5 Press) and the book All Points Radiant (Cherry Grove Collections), and has been published in various journals. He teaches composition, poetry, and literature at the Community College of Denver and is the faculty editor for Ourglass, the CCD literary magazine. When not teaching, he avoids driving as much as possible and wanders the Front Range region by foot, bike, bus, or train.
Jack Donahue has published numerous short stories and poems in journals such as North Dakota Quarterly, Laldy! (Scotland), Stand (U.K.), Poetry Salzburg Review (Austria), Armarolla (Cyprus), Bindweed (Ireland), Opossum, and others throughout North America, Asia, and Europe. His book of poems, InsideOut, was published earlier this year.
J. K. Durick is a retired writing teacher and online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Literary Yard, Vox Poetica, Synchronized Chaos, Madswirl, Pendemic, Eskimo Pie, and in the anthology Along the Way.
Tim Fab-Eme experiments with poetic forms; he writes about the environment, identity, and exploitation. His work has appeared in The Malahat Review, New Welsh Review, Magma, apt, The Fiddlehead, Reckoning, and other journals. Tim enjoys exploring the mangrove forests and rainforests of the Niger Delta.
Louis Faber is a retired corporate attorney and college English literature instructor with an MFA in writing. His work has previously appeared in Atlanta Review, Arena Magazine (Australia) Exquisite Corpse, Rattle, Eureka Literary Magazine, Borderlands: The Texas Poetry Review, Midnight Mind, Pearl, Midstream, European Judaism, Greens Magazine, The Amethyst Review, Afterthoughts, The South Carolina Review and Worcester Review, among many others, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
He blogs daily at https://anoldwriter.com and at bird-of-the-day.com, the former devoted to poetry, the latter to a photo a day from his backyard, which abuts a small wetland with all manner of birds who have seen him through the pandemic (although they do request that he keep six wingspans’ distance).
Jane Ellen Glasser’s poetry has appeared in numerous national journals, such as Hudson Review, Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Georgia Review. In the past, she reviewed poetry books for the Virginian-Pilot, edited poetry for the Ghent Quarterly and Lady Jane’s Miscellany, and co-founded the nonprofit arts organization and journal New Virginia Review. She won the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry 2005 for her collection Light Persists, and The Long Life won the Poetica Publishing Company Chapbook Contest in 2011. Her most recent collections, In the Shadow of Paradise (2017) and Jane Ellen Glasser: Selected Poems (2019) are available from FutureCycle Press and Amazon. To preview her work and access her books, visit the website www.janeellenglasser.com.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. He has recently been published in Sin Fronteras, Dalhousie Review, and Qwerty, with work upcoming in Plainsongs, Willard & Maple, and Connecticut River Review.
Elizabeth Jaeger’s photos, essays, short stories, book reviews and poetry have been published in various print and online journals, including Watchung Review, Peacock Journal, Boston Accent Lit, and Italian Americana. She is the book reviews editor at Ovunque Siamo. When Jaeger isn’t taking pictures, reading, or writing, she enjoys going hiking and taking road trips with her son. You can find her on Instagram@jaegerwrites.
Christine Toy Johnson is an award-winning writer, actor, and advocate for inclusion. Her work has been produced and/or developed by the Roundabout, Village Theatre, O’Neill Center, Barrow Group, Prospect Theater, Weston Playhouse, CAP 21 and more, and is included in the Library of Congress’s Asian Pacific American Playwrights Collection. Johnson is also a member of the Dramatists Guild Council and a host of the Guild’s podcast Talkback on Broadway Podcast Network, and was a cast member of the first national tour of Come from Away. She is a Rosetta LeNoire, JACL, and an Asian American Arts Alliance awards recipient. Details: www.christinetoyjohnson.com.
Veronica Zora Kirin is a queer writer and entrepreneur whose work focuses on disrupting the status quo. She is the author of Stories of Elders: What the Greatest Generation Knows about Technology That You Don’t, which chronicles the experience of the Greatest Generation with a topic that most do not associate with them—technology—and asks readers to consider its use in their own lives. Her current book, Stories of COVID™, is being written in real time to document the impact of the pandemic. Learn more at https://veronicakirin.com/books.
Alexander Limarev is a freelance artist, mail art artist, curator, poet, and photographer from Siberia/Russia. He has participated in more than eight hundred international projects and exhibitions. His artworks are part of private and museum collections in sixty-three countries. His artworks, as well as poetry, have been featured in various online publications, including Undergroundbooks.org, Boek861, Killer Whale Journal, Bukowski Erasure Poetry Anthology (Silver Birch Press), nokturno.fi, Treehouse Arts, Zoomoozophone Review, Backchannels, Briller Magazine, The Gambler Mag, Caravel Literary Arts Journal, StyleBlueprint, Tuck Magazine, Angry Old Man Magazine, Caliban Online Magazine, Degenerate Literature, Sonic Boom Journal, Gallery & Studio Arts Journal, Zouch Magazine, Maintenant and others.
Artwork, for him, is the way to speculate upon and explain to himself such universal existential problems as a person’s life, double standards, and their influence on individuals, public loneliness, social impotence, search for God, resistance to Evil. He thinks of his artwork as inner monologues developing over a particular thought or event and thus resembling nonsense, stream of consciousness in visual art, based on paradox, absurd, broken causative-consecutive and chronological connections, reflecting discrepancy, injustice of the outer reality. However, decorative artworks are a happy exception.
Octavio López (born Comitán, Chiapas, 1995) is a music composition student at National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), currently living in Mexico City. He writes as a way of approaching sound and symbols other than with music, and his pieces are usually inspired by literature and poetry. Some of his music may be found on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCpGcec1lzbDYDXJOyTZWFg
Lorette C. Luzajic is an award-winning visual artist in Toronto, Canada. Her collage paintings are collected and exhibited all over the world. They have appeared in galleries, museums, in dozens of literary journals, on several literary anthology covers, on a billboard in New Orleans, as a prop on a renovation TV show, in an ad campaign for Madrid's Carrera Y Carrera luxury jewelry line, and on coronavirus masks. Visit her at www.mixedupmedia.ca.
Edwin Miles is a moving image artist, filmmaker, and documentarian from the West Midlands, UK. After graduating with a degree in film studies at Falmouth University, Cornwall, he went on to complete a film and television postgraduate degree at the University of Bristol, which then drove him to move to London. This journey to the capital has been a major influence on his current work, which often turns to the contrast between his current circumstances and his upbringing in a riverside town. To see more of his work, visit his website: https://edwinmilesfilm.wordpress.com/
Cameron Morse was diagnosed with a glioblastoma in 2014. With a 14.6-month life expectancy, he entered the creative writing program at the University of Missouri—Kansas City and, in 2018, graduated with an M.F.A. His poems have been published in numerous magazines, including New Letters, Bridge Eight, Portland Review and South Dakota Review. His first poetry collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press's 2018 Best Book Award. His latest is Baldy (Spartan Press, 2020). He lives with his wife Lili and two children in Blue Springs, Missouri, where he serves as poetry editor for Harbor Review. For more information, check out his Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/cameronmorsepoems) or website (https://cameronmorsepoems.wordpress.com/).
Lisa Mottolo is a lifelong writer and the project manager for Atmosphere Press. She studied copyediting at UC San Diego, and her writing has been published in Barren Magazine and Coffin Bell. Lisa is from upstate New York and currently lives in Austin, Texas. She loves birds and has four adopted parrots at home.
Jose Luis “Nico” Pablo, a poet and a communications manager for a nonprofit, is pursuing a master’s degree in creative writing at the University of the Philippines Diliman. His poetry has been published in Likhaan: The Journal of Contemporary Philippine Literature, Cordite Poetry Review, Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine, and is forthcoming from other publications. He has won awards from the Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio Literary Contest and Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature.
Elizabeth Harmatys Park is a sociologist, a prison volunteer, and a poet. Park has received the First Place Jade Ring Poetry Prize awarded by the Wisconsin Writers Association. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals and in anthologies such as Bards Against Hunger, Ariel, and The Milwaukee Anthology and Leaves of Peace. She writes with Authors Echo in Burlington, Wisconsin, and is a regular contributor to the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets’ annual Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar.
Daniel Mark Patterson’s work has appeared in Sweet Wolverine, The Maple Tree Literary Supplement, and Silver Bow Press Anthology among others. He also has upcoming work to be published in The Gateway Review.
He has been a voice on stages across North America for over ten years, but has only recently forayed into literary waters. In 2018, he won the Art in Action Award for his video poem “Autobiography of a Body” and its portrayal of mental illness. In September 2017, he appeared in In Their Words, a TV documentary following the lives of five spoken word poets.
James Penha, a native New Yorker, has lived for the past quarter century in Indonesia. Nominated for Pushcart Prizes in fiction and poetry, his verse appeared in 2019 in Headcase: LGBTQ Writers & Artists on Mental Health and Wellness (Oxford UP), Lovejets: Queer Male Poets on 200 years of Walt Whitman (Squares and Rebels), and What Remains: The Many Ways We Say Goodbye (Gelles-Cole). His essays have appeared in The New York Daily News and The New York Times. Penha edits The New Verse News, an online journal of current-events poetry. Twitter: @JamesPenha
Effat Pourhasani’s work is inspired by nature and the Persian culture, which believes that images of trees symbolize freedom and integrity. The Persian culture believes that a tree’s essence carries truthfulness, so anyone who breathes the scent of a tree cannot be deceitful. We are dependent on something much bigger than we think. We are all connected. We ruin nature, and the tree deformations in Pourhasani’s paintings are her struggle to make people notice and be aware of destroying Mother Nature.
Her works can be found in private collections in Iran, Turkey, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Thailand, Taiwan, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. For more information, go to her website: www.saatchiart.com/Effat.Pourhasani.
Suzanne S. Rancourt, of Abenaki/Huron descent, has authored two books: Billboard in the Clouds (Curbstone Press/NU Press 2nd print), which received the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas First Book Award and murmurs at the gate (Unsolicited Press, released May 2019). A USMC and Army veteran, her works are published/forthcoming in The Ilanot Review, Cathexis, Pif Magazine, Other Worldly Women Press Anthology,Mizmor Anthology, Rat’s Ass Review, Lucky Jefferson, The Wrath-Bearing Tree, Free State Review, Event Magazine, Pangyrus, BigCityLit, Callaloo, Cimarron Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Ginosko, Tupelo Press Native Voices anthology, and New Reader Magazine. For more info: www.expressive-arts.com.
Kurt Ribak’s albums feature his own original, yet accessible, compositions. Kurt describes his music as “Charles Mingus meets the Meters. They go to Duke Ellington’s house to jam. Cachao and Thelonious Monk sit in.”
Kurt went to UC Berkeley, then won scholarships to Berklee College of Music and graduated with top honors. He’s shared the stage with circus performers, preachers, and fire-breathing strippers--but never all three at once.
His recordings are played on KCSM-FM, KPFA, KZSC, KZFR, KKUP, San Diego's Jazz 88, and Public Radio International’s Jazz After Hours. He’s had sold-out appearances at Yoshi’s and performed at SFJAZZ in the San Francisco Jazz Festival. Kurt has appeared at the Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse, San Jose Jazz Festival, Nor-Cal Jazz Festival, Fillmore Street Jazz Festival, and Blue Note Napa. Other venues include a club where someone stashed a loaded .45 in his bass bag.
Kurt’s recordings are available on iTunes, Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon. Just type “Kurt Ribak” in the search window.
Sheila Robertson seeks beauty and stories off the beaten path, in the varied landscapes that define the Northwest. With notebook and camera, she is happiest wandering the Pacific’s edge or camped out under the stars in Idaho’s remotest desert.
Sheila grew up on the Oregon coast, but moved to southern Idaho as an adult. With the inspiration and support of her husband, her articles, stories and poetry reflect these rich landscapes. Her work has been printed in many publications, including Crab Creek Review, Travel & Leisure Magazine, Writers in the Attic, and North Coast Squid.
Leah Rogin is spending her COVID nights sleeping poorly yet dreaming vividly. Her flash fiction has recently been published by Blink and Cliterature, her poetry appeared in The Rumpus’s Enough series, and her collaborative reading list and her essay “108 Books to Read Before You Read Another White Dude” was featured by Literary Citizen. Her flash piece "River and the Cathedral" is forthcoming in Pure Slush's upcoming anthology, 100 Lives. You can find more about her writing at leahrogin.com. She teaches at Red Rocks Community College and lives in the mountains west of Denver with her family, one cat, two dogs, fifteen chickens, and a flock of migratory hummingbirds.
Eduard Schmidt-Zorner is a translator and writer of poetry, haibun, haiku, and short stories. He writes in four languages—English, French, Spanish, and German—and holds workshops on Japanese and Chinese-style poetry and prose.
He has been published in 106 anthologies, literary journals, and broadsheets in the USA, UK, Ireland, Japan, Sweden, Italy, Bangladesh, India, France, Mauritius, Nigeria, and Canada. He also writes under his pen name: Eadbhard McGowan.
Originally born in Germany, he is a member of four writers’ groups in Ireland, has lived in County Kerry, Ireland, for more than twenty-five years, and is a proud Irish citizen.
Tracy Rose Stamper dances with words. Her recently acquired middle name is the most significant word she has written lately, during these days asking us to rise. She lives in a home on a hill in St. Louis with two beloved humans, two rescue beagle boys, and two whimsical wind sculptures. She is a columnist at Rebelle Society,contributing author of Anna Linder’s The Book of Emotions, and has had work appear (or soon to appear) in Dime Show Review, Drunk Monkeys, Feels, borrowed solace, and Six Sentences, among others. You can find her dancing with words at www.facebook.com/DancingPenTracyStamper.
Darija Stipanić (maiden name Brajan) was born in 1973, in Rijeka, Croatia. She graduated with degrees in the interdisciplinary study of fine art and art history, at the University of Rijeka, Croatia, in 1997. Active in sculpture, painting, and print, she has had several solo exhibitons and participated in art exhibitions in Croatia and foreign countries (South Africa, Serbia, Slovenia, Italy, Slovakia, Mexico, China, Canada, Lithuania, Macedonia, Japan, Bulgaria). She is a member of the Croatian Visual Art Society in Rijeka. To see more of her work, visit her website at http://darijastipanic.weebly.com.
Sabine Voigt studied art in Düsseldorf and San Diego. She works as a freelance artist for magazines and publishing companies and has illustrated many books. She lives with her family and dog in Cologne, Germany. To see more of her art, go to her website: www.voigt-sabine.de.
Rebecca Watkins, an educator and poet, is a public high school teacher in the greater New York City area. She earned her MFA. in poetry from the City College of New York and has created and led poetry workshops for all age groups. She is currently an editor for River River Literary Journal, and in 2015, she was awarded a writing residency in Honduras where she taught poetry at an orphanage and bilingual school. Rebecca has been published in the Roanoke Review, The Promethean, Red Mesa Review, Poetry and Performance, Anderbo and SNReview, among other literary journals. Rebecca’s first full-length poetry book, Sometimes, in These Places, was released by Unsolicited Press in September 2017. More of her work can be found at www.rebeccawatkinspoetry.com.
Marilyn Wegner lives in San Diego, California. She enjoys the act of creating and considers herself an intuitive mixed media artist. She likes to let her art build on itself and take her to unexpected places.
Gregory Wolos is the author of more than ninety short stories published or forthcoming in journals like Glimmer Train, Georgia Review, descant, Florida Review, The Pinch, Post Road, Nashville Review, A-Minor Magazine, Yemassee, Baltimore Review, Madison Review, The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review, Los Angeles Review, PANK, Superstition Review, Tahoma Literary Review, and Southern Humanities Review. His stories have earned six Pushcart Prize nominations and have won awards sponsored by descant, Solstice, the Rubery Book Awards, Gulf Stream, New South, Emrys Journal, and Gambling the Aisle. His full-length collection, Women of Consequence, was published in the spring of 2019, by Regal House Publishing, and his collection, Dear Everyone, was released in early 2020, by Duck Lake Books. A third collection, The Thing About Men, will be published by Cervena Barva Press, in 2021. For full lists of publications and commendations, visit www.gregorywolos.com.