Contributors
Ramzi Iben Ammar is a Tunisian self-taught artist specializing in hyperrealistic portraits created with ballpoint pen and charcoal.
Patricia Quintana Bidar is a western writer from the Port of Los Angeles area, with family roots in Santa Fe, the Sonora Desert, and the Great Salt Lake. Her work has been included in Flash Fiction America (W.W. Norton), Best Small Fictions 2023 and 2024 (Alternating Current), Best Microfiction 2023 (Pelekinesis Press) and nominated six times for the Pushcart Prize. Patricia’s book of short works, Pardon Me for Moonwalking, is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press. She lives with her family and unusual dog outside of Oakland, California. Twitter is @patriciabidar. See more at patriciaqbidar.com.
Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as seven poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was twice nominated for a Pushcart. Her latest: Do Oceans Have Underwater Borders? (Kelsay Books, July 2022), Whistling in the Dark (Ciberwit, July 2022), and Saudade (December 2022) are available on Amazon. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/
B. A. Brittingham, formerly of New York City and South Florida, is currently a resident of Southwestern Michigan and has published essays in the Hartford Courant; short stories in Florida Literary Foundation’s hardcover anthology, Paradise; with the University of Georgia Center for Continuing Education; in the 1996 Florida First Coast Writers’ Festival, and Britain’s World Wide Writers.
Also a photographer, she believes in evaluating the differences and similarities between words and images to understand how they convey their stories.
Her photos have appeared in The Critical Pass Review, the Center for Bioethics & Humanities Journal, Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, The Moving Force, and The Otherwise Engaged Arts Journal.
Cara Losier Chanoine is the author of Philosopher Kings (Silver Bow Publishing, 2023), Bowetry: Found Poems from David Bowie Lyrics (Scars Publications, 2013), and How a Bullet Behaves (Scars Publications, 2016). Her poetry has most recently appeared in the Reedy Branch Review and Book of Matches.
Matthew Evans Chelf resides in Portland, Oregon. His work has been featured in Northwest Review, Five Points, Hobart, and more.
Cortney Collins is a poet living on the Front Range with her two beloved feline companions. Cortney is founder of the pandemic-era virtual poetry open mic community Zoem, which produced two editions of an anthology of its poets’ (otherwise known as “The Magpies”) work. Her poetry has appeared in various online and print journals. She holds a B.A. in religious studies and a J.D. with a focus in Native American law, both from the University of Arizona. Cortney loves poetry in community and continues to be active in poetry communities.
Melinda Coppola penned her first poem–about the color pink–at the tender age of eight. Her relationship with writing was mercurial for decades, but once she learned that her blood type is, in fact, poet, she has settled into a kind of quiet cohabitation with her muses. Melinda’s work has been published in many fine books, magazines, and journals, including Spirit First, Third Wednesday, Willows Wept Review, and Thimble Literary Magazine. She also makes art, teaches yoga, and communes with stones on Cape Cod beaches. She is currently seeking a publisher for her first full-length book of poetry, which focuses on her journey parenting her autistic daughter.
Jeffrey Dreiblatt is a poet, artist, and volunteer firefighter. His work has been published in New Feathers Anthology, The Madison Rag, Bluepepper, and other publications across the English-speaking world. He lives in Copake, New York.
Jomil Ebro is a nondual poet and professor at Arapahoe Community College. His Ph.D. is in English and consciousness studies. He has received training at the Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa, and degrees in cultural studies and communication at New York University. In all sincerity and without hyperbole, Jomil believes that poetry–in particular, the way it can teach us to give a name to the nameless so that it can be thought and sensed more fully–as such, can save the world. He lives in Golden, Colorado, with his wife and son.
S. T. Eleu (they, them) was raised in Vegas then exiled to Chicago and is a musician, teacher, and consummate Vulcan. Autism is their default universe, and though sparsely populated, is a glorious place to escape to, write in, and display an impressive collection of action figures. Their most recent publications were in Haven Spec, Star*Line, and Aphelion Webzine.
Jayce Elliott is a young student living on the Northeast coast, where he spends more time outside than in. His work is forthcoming in The Bridge Journal. He keeps a garden of random necessities, meditates by the pond behind his home, and watches the sky for inspiration.
Christa Fairbrother, MA, is a Pushcart Prize–nominated poet living in Florida. Her poetry has appeared in DMQ Review, Medical Literary Messenger, Orca, and The Sunlight Press, among others. She’s been a resident with the Sundress Academy for the Arts, a participant in Writers in Paradise, and her chapbook, Chronically Walking, was a finalist for the Kari Ann Flickinger Memorial Prize. She’s also the author of the multiple award-winning book Water Yoga (Singing Dragon, 2022). Connect with her on IG @christafairbrotherwrites or her website: www.christafairbrotherwrites.com.
Lizzie Ferguson (they/she) is a Chicago-based poet. Previously they have been published in Gardy Loo and by BottleCap Press. Their 2022 Chapbook, I Never Leave Lost Teeth Under My Pillow, is an investigation of the narrator’s spirals of the mind, from innocence to experience. Lizzie holds an MA in religious studies and focuses much of their writing on the intersections of mind, body, and spirit in the human experience.
Samuel Frech attended Tidewater Community College, then shifted gears and worked as a snowboard and ski instructor at Snowshoe, West Virginia, Beaver Creek/Vail, Colorado, and Whitefish, Montana. He later left to help his father. Presently, he is a barista at Starbucks and an avid photographer.
Jane Ellen Glasser’s poetry has appeared in numerous journals, such as The Hudson Review, The Southern Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Georgia Review. In the past she served as the poetry critic for The Virginian-Pilot, poetry editor for the Ghent Quarterly and Lady Jane’s Miscellany, and co-founder of the nonprofit arts organization and journal New Virginia Review. She won the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry for Light Persists (2006), and the Poetica Publishing Chapbook Contest for The Long Life (2011). Jane Ellen Glasser: Selected Poems(2019), Staying Afloat during a Plague (2021). and Crow Songs (2021) are her recent collections. To learn more about the poet and her work, visit www.janeellenglasser.com.
Kathleen Gray was born and grew up in Scotland, which she left aged eighteen. She lived in London, then The Hague, before ending up in Paris, France, where she’s now spent most of her adult life, working as an editor and translator, because she loves this city so much.
M. K. Greer lives in Maryland with her family. Previous publications include Whale Road Review, Kissing Dynamite, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Rust + Moth. You can find her on Twitter: @MKGreerPoetry.
Ellen Harrold is an artist and writer. She uses painting, drawing, text, and textiles to explore how physics and ecology are understood through creative abstraction. She has recently published art in The Storms Journal, An Áitiúil, and Orion and poetry in magazines such as Shearsman, Die Leere Mitte, and Skylight 47. She has published her first book Aesthetics and Conventions of Medical Art with Boom Graduates. She can be found via her website, https://ellenharrold.art/ or on Instagram @ellenharroldart.
Pamela Hughes’s second collection of poems, Femistry, is forthcoming in 2024. Her first collection, Meadowland Take My Hand, was published in 2017 (Three Mile Harbor Press). Her poetry and prose have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Brooklyn Review, Minnesota Review, Canary; Literary Mama; PANK Magazine; The Paterson Literary Review; The Red Wheel Barrow; Thema; My Body My Words anthology and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing classes at Bloomfield College of Montclair State University and has an MFA in Creative Writing from Brooklyn College. She is also the editor of the literary magazine Narrative Northeast.Please visit her at www.narrativenortheast.com.
Josh Humphrey was born and bred in Kearny, New Jersey. His career as a librarian, which is into its second decade, has been the source of much poetry in his life. Recently, his poems have been published in the Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow, Paterson Literary Review, US1 Worksheets, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Streetlight, and Oberon. He has upcoming work in Southeast Review. He is a current nominee for a Pushcart Prize.
Claire Ibarra received her MFA in creative writing from Florida International University, where she also served as art director for Gulf Stream Magazine. Her artwork most recently appeared in Artemis Journal. Claire is an artist member of the North Boulder Art District, as well as an artist member of D’art Gallery, on Santa Fe in Denver.
Yuna Kang is a queer, Korean-American writer based in Northern California. She has been published in journals such as Strange Horizons, Sinister Wisdom, and many more. They were also nominated for the 2022 Dwarf Stars Award. Their website link is https://kangyunak.wixsite.com/website.
Nicola Kelly is a self-taught, realist artist from Co. Dublin, now based in Wexford. Primarily painted in oils, there’s an element of delicate translucency in her work, an ethereal style of visual storytelling that has been strongly influenced by her background in contemporary dance training, which helped her develop an innate understanding of form and movement. Kelly felt compelled to begin painting in 2007. She describes painting as a cathartic process of releasing past traumas, which cannot always be articulated or easily conveyed with words. Kelly’s work has been exhibited in the Signal Arts Center Bray, public architect offices, among other local venues. She was also selected as one of one hundred Irish artists asked to design a “What on Earth” globe sculpture, which was exhibited at CHQ buildings Dublin.
Shelby Lynn Lanaro is a poet, lover of photography, and avid home chef, who firmly believes that cooking is poetry. She is the author of Yellowing Photographs (Kelsay Books) and an award-winning professor at Southern Connecticut State University. Shelby’s photos have been published in Young Ravens Literary Review and Last Leaves Literary Magazine. Her poems have most recently appeared in Thimble Literary Magazine and Last Leaves Literary Magazine. Follow Shelby on Instagram @shelbylynnlanaro or at www.shelbylynnlanaro.com to keep up with her work.
Becca Miles used to write poetry to procrastinate from their biology degree and accidentally procrastinated their way into a writing career. They’ve published individual poems in More Exhibitionism, BFS: Horizons, Vortex, and Poetry for All. In 2020, they contributed twelve poems to the joint collection Steel-Tipped Snowflakes. They live in the UK with their wonderful partner and an elderly lizard called Gizmo.
Jesse Millner’s poems and prose have appeared most recently in Grist and The Southern Poetry Anthology: Virginia. His work was included in The Best American Poetry 2013 and Best Small Fictions 2020. His latest poetry book, Memory’s Blue Sedan, was released in March 2020 by Hysterical Books of Tallahassee, Florida. Jesse teaches writing courses at Florida Gulf Coast University and lives in Estero, Florida, with his dog, Lucy, who is his heart.
Kona Morris is a writer, storyteller, and comedian. She regularly performs at events around L.A. and she has been featured on podcasts such as RISK! and It's Funny Now. She was a regular cast member on Monday Night Live, and she starred in Denver’s Live Drunk History Comedy Troupe. Kona’s stories, prose poems, and articles have appeared in a variety of publications, and she has been featured at literary readings, writing conferences, and comedy shows around the world. For more information, visit her website: KonaMorris.com.
Nicholas B. Morris is the curator of the F-Bomb Reading Series, as well as a professor of humanities at Community College of Denver, a musician, the author of the short story collections Tapeworm and The Boy in the Well, an expatriate of the Deep South, a graduate of Arkansas Tech University and Naropa’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, a former editor of the literary journals Nebo and Bombay Gin, and a resident of Denver, Colorado. His midlife crisis manifests itself in the form of sword fighting with friends.
Linda Nunes is an award-winning, mixed media artist from California’s Bay Area. She’s also a workshop/demo leader, curator, and juror who now lives near Sacramento. She has exhibited paintings, sculpture, permanent and temporary installations locally and in the Bay Area, along with several large commissioned pieces for restaurants and other commercial spaces. Her work is part of numerous private collections throughout California and the U.S. Additionally, Nunes is one of the original three cofounders of Rancho Cordova Arts.
Her gallery work is mostly non-narrative, characterized by gestural marks, texture and color, and is primarily two-dimensional. The work is either created in encaustic (bee’s wax and resin) or cold wax and oil and may include many other media.
She is a dedicated member of the Sacramento-area art community, with a studio art degree from California State University, Sacramento. More art, workshops and event information can be viewed at her website LindaNunesArt.com. She can be reached at [email protected].
Berna Özlem Özcan, born in 1969, graduated from the Bilkent University graphic design department in 1993. She completed her master’s degree in communication design at Long Island University School of Visual and Performing Arts, NY, USA, in 1998. She received a doctorate degree from Hacettepe University Faculty of Fine Arts, department of graphics, in 2005. She is currently working as an associate professor at Mustafa Kemal University, graphic design department. She has participated in many international and national exhibitions and opened five solo exhibitions. Her works are in art museums, galleries, and private collections in countries such as Germany, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Romania, China, Switzerland, Kyrgyzstan, Bulgaria, the USA, South Korea, and Spain.
Ayhan Özer was born in Gaziantep in 1977. In 2013, he founded the Gaziantep University painting department. He still works as an associate professor there. He has participated in many national and international art events.
Drew Pisarra, a literary grantee of the Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation, has authored two poetry collections, Periodic Boyfriends (2023) and Infinity Standing Up (2019); two short story collections, You’re Pretty Gay (2021) and Publick Spanking (1996); and two radio plays, The Strange Case of Nick M. (2021) and Price in Purgatory (2023).
Robert Rinehart (he/him) moved to Aotearoa, New Zealand, from Washington State in 2008 and has lived there ever since. His work has been included in Chelsea, Midway Review, TAPJOE, Mayhem, a fine line, and others.
Barb Ristine escaped from the law years ago and hasn’t stopped running. Her flash fiction has appeared in multiple journals, including Milk Candy Review and Retreats from Oblivion.
Lauren Scharhag (she/her) is an award-winning author of fiction and poetry, and a senior editor at Gleam. Her latest poetry collection, Moonlight and Monsters, is now available from Gnashing Teeth Publishing. A short story collection, Screaming Intensifies, is forthcoming from Whiskey City Press. She lives in Kansas City, Missouri. https://linktr.ee/laurenscharhag.
Virginia Schultz is a poetry expansionist, planner, minder of resolve, ideator, and systems thinker living within strawbale walls on the lower north side of Gold Hill, Colorado in the Doug Fir–Ponderosa Pine Forest of the Left Hand/St. Vrain/South Platte Watershed. Virginia is intrigued by the mycorrhizal network, the breathing of trees, the colors and sounds of nature, and the many forms of water. It enjoys exploring the wiggleness of the world in bits and bites, chewed on and filtered into poems using words both common and imagined, and often wonders how we have forgotten our connection to all beings.
Innokenty Sharkov was born in 1973 in Moscow, Russia. He lives and works in Samoš, Serbia. Ceramics bear the stamp of arts and crafts and, therefore, are not perceived by many in the context of modern media. Sharkov works with ceramics, aiming to liberate them from purely decorative purposes by synthesizing ceramics with metal, wood, resins, and polymers. From a complex and diverse mix of visual and sound information, Sharkov catches what resonates with him the most, reduces it to an extremely clear image, and transmits it in physical form. To learn more, go to www.isharkov.com or https://www.instagram.com/innsharkov/.
Alexandria Tannenbaum is a poet and national board–certified educator working outside of Chicago, Illinois. In addition to teaching, she is pursuing a master of fine arts in poetry. Her poems are published in the magazines Across the Margin, Amphora, Bluepepper, As It Ought to Be, Cerasus, and the book So It Goes, by the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library. Her poems “Elegy for the Loneliest Whale in the World” and “[polite]” will be published in the next issue of Canyon Voices Lit Magazine.
Anna Ursyn, PhD, professor, University of Northern Colorado, combines programming, software, and various media. Her work has been shown in fifty single shows and two hundred fine art exhibitions, including 12x ACM SIGGRAPH Art Galleries and traveling shows, including at Louvre, Paris, NTT Museum in Tokyo (five thousand texts and two thousand images representing the twentieth century), Virtual Media Network, Dallas, TexaS. Sprung8, NYC. Denver Capitol and Airport. Her work in ABAD 1/2 is in collections of the Museum of Modern Art in NYC, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. NASA/CMU selected her work for the Moon Museum: http://moonarts.org/, Centre Pompidou, Paris. Ursyn has written twelve books on knowledge visualization and coding. To learn more about her work go to Ursyn.com. Email her at [email protected].
Christopher Woods is a writer and photographer who lives in Texas. He has published a novel, The Dream Patch, a prose collection, Under a Riverbed Sky and a book of stage monologues for actors, Heart Speak. His novella, Hearts in the Dark, was published in an anthology by Running Wild Press in Los Angeles. His poetry chapbook, What Comes, What Goes, was published by Kelsay Books (kelsaybooks.com). He has received residencies from the Ucross Foundation and the Edward Albee Foundation, and a grant from the Mary Roberts Rinehart Foundation. You can find more of his work at https://christopherwoods.zenfolio.com.
Patricia Quintana Bidar is a western writer from the Port of Los Angeles area, with family roots in Santa Fe, the Sonora Desert, and the Great Salt Lake. Her work has been included in Flash Fiction America (W.W. Norton), Best Small Fictions 2023 and 2024 (Alternating Current), Best Microfiction 2023 (Pelekinesis Press) and nominated six times for the Pushcart Prize. Patricia’s book of short works, Pardon Me for Moonwalking, is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press. She lives with her family and unusual dog outside of Oakland, California. Twitter is @patriciabidar. See more at patriciaqbidar.com.
Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as seven poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was twice nominated for a Pushcart. Her latest: Do Oceans Have Underwater Borders? (Kelsay Books, July 2022), Whistling in the Dark (Ciberwit, July 2022), and Saudade (December 2022) are available on Amazon. https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/
B. A. Brittingham, formerly of New York City and South Florida, is currently a resident of Southwestern Michigan and has published essays in the Hartford Courant; short stories in Florida Literary Foundation’s hardcover anthology, Paradise; with the University of Georgia Center for Continuing Education; in the 1996 Florida First Coast Writers’ Festival, and Britain’s World Wide Writers.
Also a photographer, she believes in evaluating the differences and similarities between words and images to understand how they convey their stories.
Her photos have appeared in The Critical Pass Review, the Center for Bioethics & Humanities Journal, Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, The Moving Force, and The Otherwise Engaged Arts Journal.
Cara Losier Chanoine is the author of Philosopher Kings (Silver Bow Publishing, 2023), Bowetry: Found Poems from David Bowie Lyrics (Scars Publications, 2013), and How a Bullet Behaves (Scars Publications, 2016). Her poetry has most recently appeared in the Reedy Branch Review and Book of Matches.
Matthew Evans Chelf resides in Portland, Oregon. His work has been featured in Northwest Review, Five Points, Hobart, and more.
Cortney Collins is a poet living on the Front Range with her two beloved feline companions. Cortney is founder of the pandemic-era virtual poetry open mic community Zoem, which produced two editions of an anthology of its poets’ (otherwise known as “The Magpies”) work. Her poetry has appeared in various online and print journals. She holds a B.A. in religious studies and a J.D. with a focus in Native American law, both from the University of Arizona. Cortney loves poetry in community and continues to be active in poetry communities.
Melinda Coppola penned her first poem–about the color pink–at the tender age of eight. Her relationship with writing was mercurial for decades, but once she learned that her blood type is, in fact, poet, she has settled into a kind of quiet cohabitation with her muses. Melinda’s work has been published in many fine books, magazines, and journals, including Spirit First, Third Wednesday, Willows Wept Review, and Thimble Literary Magazine. She also makes art, teaches yoga, and communes with stones on Cape Cod beaches. She is currently seeking a publisher for her first full-length book of poetry, which focuses on her journey parenting her autistic daughter.
Jeffrey Dreiblatt is a poet, artist, and volunteer firefighter. His work has been published in New Feathers Anthology, The Madison Rag, Bluepepper, and other publications across the English-speaking world. He lives in Copake, New York.
Jomil Ebro is a nondual poet and professor at Arapahoe Community College. His Ph.D. is in English and consciousness studies. He has received training at the Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa, and degrees in cultural studies and communication at New York University. In all sincerity and without hyperbole, Jomil believes that poetry–in particular, the way it can teach us to give a name to the nameless so that it can be thought and sensed more fully–as such, can save the world. He lives in Golden, Colorado, with his wife and son.
S. T. Eleu (they, them) was raised in Vegas then exiled to Chicago and is a musician, teacher, and consummate Vulcan. Autism is their default universe, and though sparsely populated, is a glorious place to escape to, write in, and display an impressive collection of action figures. Their most recent publications were in Haven Spec, Star*Line, and Aphelion Webzine.
Jayce Elliott is a young student living on the Northeast coast, where he spends more time outside than in. His work is forthcoming in The Bridge Journal. He keeps a garden of random necessities, meditates by the pond behind his home, and watches the sky for inspiration.
Christa Fairbrother, MA, is a Pushcart Prize–nominated poet living in Florida. Her poetry has appeared in DMQ Review, Medical Literary Messenger, Orca, and The Sunlight Press, among others. She’s been a resident with the Sundress Academy for the Arts, a participant in Writers in Paradise, and her chapbook, Chronically Walking, was a finalist for the Kari Ann Flickinger Memorial Prize. She’s also the author of the multiple award-winning book Water Yoga (Singing Dragon, 2022). Connect with her on IG @christafairbrotherwrites or her website: www.christafairbrotherwrites.com.
Lizzie Ferguson (they/she) is a Chicago-based poet. Previously they have been published in Gardy Loo and by BottleCap Press. Their 2022 Chapbook, I Never Leave Lost Teeth Under My Pillow, is an investigation of the narrator’s spirals of the mind, from innocence to experience. Lizzie holds an MA in religious studies and focuses much of their writing on the intersections of mind, body, and spirit in the human experience.
Samuel Frech attended Tidewater Community College, then shifted gears and worked as a snowboard and ski instructor at Snowshoe, West Virginia, Beaver Creek/Vail, Colorado, and Whitefish, Montana. He later left to help his father. Presently, he is a barista at Starbucks and an avid photographer.
Jane Ellen Glasser’s poetry has appeared in numerous journals, such as The Hudson Review, The Southern Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Georgia Review. In the past she served as the poetry critic for The Virginian-Pilot, poetry editor for the Ghent Quarterly and Lady Jane’s Miscellany, and co-founder of the nonprofit arts organization and journal New Virginia Review. She won the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry for Light Persists (2006), and the Poetica Publishing Chapbook Contest for The Long Life (2011). Jane Ellen Glasser: Selected Poems(2019), Staying Afloat during a Plague (2021). and Crow Songs (2021) are her recent collections. To learn more about the poet and her work, visit www.janeellenglasser.com.
Kathleen Gray was born and grew up in Scotland, which she left aged eighteen. She lived in London, then The Hague, before ending up in Paris, France, where she’s now spent most of her adult life, working as an editor and translator, because she loves this city so much.
M. K. Greer lives in Maryland with her family. Previous publications include Whale Road Review, Kissing Dynamite, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Rust + Moth. You can find her on Twitter: @MKGreerPoetry.
Ellen Harrold is an artist and writer. She uses painting, drawing, text, and textiles to explore how physics and ecology are understood through creative abstraction. She has recently published art in The Storms Journal, An Áitiúil, and Orion and poetry in magazines such as Shearsman, Die Leere Mitte, and Skylight 47. She has published her first book Aesthetics and Conventions of Medical Art with Boom Graduates. She can be found via her website, https://ellenharrold.art/ or on Instagram @ellenharroldart.
Pamela Hughes’s second collection of poems, Femistry, is forthcoming in 2024. Her first collection, Meadowland Take My Hand, was published in 2017 (Three Mile Harbor Press). Her poetry and prose have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Brooklyn Review, Minnesota Review, Canary; Literary Mama; PANK Magazine; The Paterson Literary Review; The Red Wheel Barrow; Thema; My Body My Words anthology and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing classes at Bloomfield College of Montclair State University and has an MFA in Creative Writing from Brooklyn College. She is also the editor of the literary magazine Narrative Northeast.Please visit her at www.narrativenortheast.com.
Josh Humphrey was born and bred in Kearny, New Jersey. His career as a librarian, which is into its second decade, has been the source of much poetry in his life. Recently, his poems have been published in the Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow, Paterson Literary Review, US1 Worksheets, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Streetlight, and Oberon. He has upcoming work in Southeast Review. He is a current nominee for a Pushcart Prize.
Claire Ibarra received her MFA in creative writing from Florida International University, where she also served as art director for Gulf Stream Magazine. Her artwork most recently appeared in Artemis Journal. Claire is an artist member of the North Boulder Art District, as well as an artist member of D’art Gallery, on Santa Fe in Denver.
Yuna Kang is a queer, Korean-American writer based in Northern California. She has been published in journals such as Strange Horizons, Sinister Wisdom, and many more. They were also nominated for the 2022 Dwarf Stars Award. Their website link is https://kangyunak.wixsite.com/website.
Nicola Kelly is a self-taught, realist artist from Co. Dublin, now based in Wexford. Primarily painted in oils, there’s an element of delicate translucency in her work, an ethereal style of visual storytelling that has been strongly influenced by her background in contemporary dance training, which helped her develop an innate understanding of form and movement. Kelly felt compelled to begin painting in 2007. She describes painting as a cathartic process of releasing past traumas, which cannot always be articulated or easily conveyed with words. Kelly’s work has been exhibited in the Signal Arts Center Bray, public architect offices, among other local venues. She was also selected as one of one hundred Irish artists asked to design a “What on Earth” globe sculpture, which was exhibited at CHQ buildings Dublin.
Shelby Lynn Lanaro is a poet, lover of photography, and avid home chef, who firmly believes that cooking is poetry. She is the author of Yellowing Photographs (Kelsay Books) and an award-winning professor at Southern Connecticut State University. Shelby’s photos have been published in Young Ravens Literary Review and Last Leaves Literary Magazine. Her poems have most recently appeared in Thimble Literary Magazine and Last Leaves Literary Magazine. Follow Shelby on Instagram @shelbylynnlanaro or at www.shelbylynnlanaro.com to keep up with her work.
Becca Miles used to write poetry to procrastinate from their biology degree and accidentally procrastinated their way into a writing career. They’ve published individual poems in More Exhibitionism, BFS: Horizons, Vortex, and Poetry for All. In 2020, they contributed twelve poems to the joint collection Steel-Tipped Snowflakes. They live in the UK with their wonderful partner and an elderly lizard called Gizmo.
Jesse Millner’s poems and prose have appeared most recently in Grist and The Southern Poetry Anthology: Virginia. His work was included in The Best American Poetry 2013 and Best Small Fictions 2020. His latest poetry book, Memory’s Blue Sedan, was released in March 2020 by Hysterical Books of Tallahassee, Florida. Jesse teaches writing courses at Florida Gulf Coast University and lives in Estero, Florida, with his dog, Lucy, who is his heart.
Kona Morris is a writer, storyteller, and comedian. She regularly performs at events around L.A. and she has been featured on podcasts such as RISK! and It's Funny Now. She was a regular cast member on Monday Night Live, and she starred in Denver’s Live Drunk History Comedy Troupe. Kona’s stories, prose poems, and articles have appeared in a variety of publications, and she has been featured at literary readings, writing conferences, and comedy shows around the world. For more information, visit her website: KonaMorris.com.
Nicholas B. Morris is the curator of the F-Bomb Reading Series, as well as a professor of humanities at Community College of Denver, a musician, the author of the short story collections Tapeworm and The Boy in the Well, an expatriate of the Deep South, a graduate of Arkansas Tech University and Naropa’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, a former editor of the literary journals Nebo and Bombay Gin, and a resident of Denver, Colorado. His midlife crisis manifests itself in the form of sword fighting with friends.
Linda Nunes is an award-winning, mixed media artist from California’s Bay Area. She’s also a workshop/demo leader, curator, and juror who now lives near Sacramento. She has exhibited paintings, sculpture, permanent and temporary installations locally and in the Bay Area, along with several large commissioned pieces for restaurants and other commercial spaces. Her work is part of numerous private collections throughout California and the U.S. Additionally, Nunes is one of the original three cofounders of Rancho Cordova Arts.
Her gallery work is mostly non-narrative, characterized by gestural marks, texture and color, and is primarily two-dimensional. The work is either created in encaustic (bee’s wax and resin) or cold wax and oil and may include many other media.
She is a dedicated member of the Sacramento-area art community, with a studio art degree from California State University, Sacramento. More art, workshops and event information can be viewed at her website LindaNunesArt.com. She can be reached at [email protected].
Berna Özlem Özcan, born in 1969, graduated from the Bilkent University graphic design department in 1993. She completed her master’s degree in communication design at Long Island University School of Visual and Performing Arts, NY, USA, in 1998. She received a doctorate degree from Hacettepe University Faculty of Fine Arts, department of graphics, in 2005. She is currently working as an associate professor at Mustafa Kemal University, graphic design department. She has participated in many international and national exhibitions and opened five solo exhibitions. Her works are in art museums, galleries, and private collections in countries such as Germany, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Romania, China, Switzerland, Kyrgyzstan, Bulgaria, the USA, South Korea, and Spain.
Ayhan Özer was born in Gaziantep in 1977. In 2013, he founded the Gaziantep University painting department. He still works as an associate professor there. He has participated in many national and international art events.
Drew Pisarra, a literary grantee of the Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation, has authored two poetry collections, Periodic Boyfriends (2023) and Infinity Standing Up (2019); two short story collections, You’re Pretty Gay (2021) and Publick Spanking (1996); and two radio plays, The Strange Case of Nick M. (2021) and Price in Purgatory (2023).
Robert Rinehart (he/him) moved to Aotearoa, New Zealand, from Washington State in 2008 and has lived there ever since. His work has been included in Chelsea, Midway Review, TAPJOE, Mayhem, a fine line, and others.
Barb Ristine escaped from the law years ago and hasn’t stopped running. Her flash fiction has appeared in multiple journals, including Milk Candy Review and Retreats from Oblivion.
Lauren Scharhag (she/her) is an award-winning author of fiction and poetry, and a senior editor at Gleam. Her latest poetry collection, Moonlight and Monsters, is now available from Gnashing Teeth Publishing. A short story collection, Screaming Intensifies, is forthcoming from Whiskey City Press. She lives in Kansas City, Missouri. https://linktr.ee/laurenscharhag.
Virginia Schultz is a poetry expansionist, planner, minder of resolve, ideator, and systems thinker living within strawbale walls on the lower north side of Gold Hill, Colorado in the Doug Fir–Ponderosa Pine Forest of the Left Hand/St. Vrain/South Platte Watershed. Virginia is intrigued by the mycorrhizal network, the breathing of trees, the colors and sounds of nature, and the many forms of water. It enjoys exploring the wiggleness of the world in bits and bites, chewed on and filtered into poems using words both common and imagined, and often wonders how we have forgotten our connection to all beings.
Innokenty Sharkov was born in 1973 in Moscow, Russia. He lives and works in Samoš, Serbia. Ceramics bear the stamp of arts and crafts and, therefore, are not perceived by many in the context of modern media. Sharkov works with ceramics, aiming to liberate them from purely decorative purposes by synthesizing ceramics with metal, wood, resins, and polymers. From a complex and diverse mix of visual and sound information, Sharkov catches what resonates with him the most, reduces it to an extremely clear image, and transmits it in physical form. To learn more, go to www.isharkov.com or https://www.instagram.com/innsharkov/.
Alexandria Tannenbaum is a poet and national board–certified educator working outside of Chicago, Illinois. In addition to teaching, she is pursuing a master of fine arts in poetry. Her poems are published in the magazines Across the Margin, Amphora, Bluepepper, As It Ought to Be, Cerasus, and the book So It Goes, by the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library. Her poems “Elegy for the Loneliest Whale in the World” and “[polite]” will be published in the next issue of Canyon Voices Lit Magazine.
Anna Ursyn, PhD, professor, University of Northern Colorado, combines programming, software, and various media. Her work has been shown in fifty single shows and two hundred fine art exhibitions, including 12x ACM SIGGRAPH Art Galleries and traveling shows, including at Louvre, Paris, NTT Museum in Tokyo (five thousand texts and two thousand images representing the twentieth century), Virtual Media Network, Dallas, TexaS. Sprung8, NYC. Denver Capitol and Airport. Her work in ABAD 1/2 is in collections of the Museum of Modern Art in NYC, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. NASA/CMU selected her work for the Moon Museum: http://moonarts.org/, Centre Pompidou, Paris. Ursyn has written twelve books on knowledge visualization and coding. To learn more about her work go to Ursyn.com. Email her at [email protected].
Christopher Woods is a writer and photographer who lives in Texas. He has published a novel, The Dream Patch, a prose collection, Under a Riverbed Sky and a book of stage monologues for actors, Heart Speak. His novella, Hearts in the Dark, was published in an anthology by Running Wild Press in Los Angeles. His poetry chapbook, What Comes, What Goes, was published by Kelsay Books (kelsaybooks.com). He has received residencies from the Ucross Foundation and the Edward Albee Foundation, and a grant from the Mary Roberts Rinehart Foundation. You can find more of his work at https://christopherwoods.zenfolio.com.