SUSAN KAY ANDERSON is the author of Mezzanine (Finishing Line Press, 2019). She is a 2010 National Poetry Series Finalist, and was the poetry editor of Big Talk in Eugene, Oregon, a free publication in the early 1980s which showcased up-and-coming NW punk bands. She earned degrees in anthropology from the University of Oregon (BS), English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Colorado, Boulder (MA & Jovanovich Award), and Eastern Oregon University (MFA). Her recent work appears in Beat Scene, BlazeVox Journal, Concis, Caliban Online, Guernica, Oregon East, Prairie Schooner, and Tom Clark Beyond The Pale. She blogs at Hawaii Teacher Detective.
GILIANE BADER is a self-taught artist, who explores her art without constraints and goes with the flow. Her sensitivity to nature along with her meditation practices are her source of inspiration. The fauna and flora, patterns and light qualities she encountered in Africa, the Mediterranean and Tahiti flow surreptitiously throughout her work. Her passion for nature and technology blend with her current work. Each piece is crafted with digital tools on an iPad Pro while she maintains a respect for tradition through her selection of ink and print material.
LINDA BAMBER is a fiction writer, poet, essayist, and Professor of English at Tufts University. Her recent fiction collection, Taking What I Like and her poetry collection, Metropolitan Tang were published by David R. Godine, Publisher. Widely reprinted and anthologized, her critical book on Shakespeare, Comic Women, Tragic Men: Gender and Genre in Shakespeare, was published by Stanford University Press. Bamber has published widely in periodicals such as The Harvard Review, The Nation, Ploughshares, The New York Times, The Kenyon Review, Raritan, and Tikkun. Bamber is currently writing a novella based on the cross-country expedition of Lewis and Clark.
GALE BATCHELDER lives in Cambridge. Her work has been published in the poetry anthologies New Smoke (2009) and Triumph of Poverty (2011), in White Whale Review, Amethyst Arsenic, SpoKe4, and is forthcoming in Colorado Review (Spring 2020). Gale is co-author (with Judson Evans and Susan Berger-Jones) of the manuscript Chalk Song, an experiment in collaboration inspired by Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a documentary about cave art dating back 35,000 years.
ACE BOGGESS is author of four books of poetry, most recently I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So (Unsolicited Press, 2018) and Ultra Deep Field (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2017,) and the novel, A Song Without a Melody (Hyperborea Publishing, 2016). His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, RATTLE, River Styx, North Dakota Quarterly and many other journals. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia.
CATHERINE BRODERICK’s poetry has appeared in 2River View. She works as an administrator at Brandeis University and lives in Waltham, MA.
ANN CALANDRO is a writer, editor, artist, and classical piano student. Her fiction and poetry have been published in print and online, and her artwork has been exhibited and published.
VANESSA CHARLOT, a Miami native, is a self-taught documentary photographer who began her art career while exploring the rural parts of Haiti. She started to document intimate images of everyday people in rural Haiti and amassed an impressive body of work that explores spirituality, socio-economic issues, and sexual intersectionality. Experiencing life in developing countries became the catalyst by which Vanessa actively documents marginalized people throughout the world. As a documentary photographer, she seeks to capture the raw beauty of black and brown people as they balance their lives on the fine line of resilience and struggle.
T. CLEAR is a Seattle resident and co-founder of Floating Bridge Press and facilitates Re/Write, a monthly poetry workshop. Recent publications include Entropy, Raven Chronicles, Bracken Magazine and Rise Up Review. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Award and Independent Best American Poetry Award. In September 2020, she’s hosting Poets at Carrowholly, a 6-day poetry workshop in the West of Ireland: poetsatcarrowholly.com.
KAILYN DEKKER-BLACK was born in Holland, Michigan and spent her childhood pretending to be a mermaid in Lake Michigan, stealing blueberries from her neighbor’s farm, and exploring the Terabithia-like woods around her Grandma’s house. She studied chemical technology at Kalamazoo Valley Community College and biomedical sciences at Western Michigan University(WMU) before earning her MFA in creative writing from WMU.
EMILY DROMGOLD’s most recent work appears in Paragon Pres. She has also been published in the Marble Collection, The Wellesley Review, Counterpoint, and recognized with honors by Scholastic Art and Writing Awards.
AUDREY DUBOIS is a poet from Rhode Island, and is currently a creative writing graduate student at Emerson College. She likes weird antiques, frozen yogurt, and PBS documentaries about Karen Carpenter.
AR DUGAN is the author of the chapbook Call / Response (Finishing Line Press, 2019) and has an MFA in creative writing from Emerson College. He reads poetry for Ploughshares. His poetry can be seen or is forthcoming in a number of literary magazines and reviews; recently his poem “Milk Thistle” was a contest finalist in Sweet. He taught high school English in southeastern Massachusetts for nine years. AR currently teaches literature and writing at Emerson College and Wheaton College. He lives in Boston.
JOSH FEIT is a speechwriter for the Puget Sound’s regional transit agency. Prior to that, Feit was the speechwriter for the Seattle mayor’s office. Before working as a speechwriter, Feit was a journalist. His poetry has been published in High Shelf Press, Spillway, Cathexis Northwest Press, and The Halcyone.
BRIDGET GAGE-DIXON has writing published in Cortland Review, Poet Lore, New York Quarterly as well as several other journals.
GLORIA J. GOGUEN is an emerging artist living and creating in the Central Massachusetts area. She creates botanical works of art with a spiritual connection to nature and light. Goguen has studied at Worcester Art Museum, Worcester State University, and Tower Hill Botanical Garden Boylston, MA. and has always created art in some medium since an early age, working in color pencils, watercolors, acrylics, oil, photography, fabric, clay, and fibers. She has recently had work shown at Worcester Art Museum, Arts Worcester, and The Danforth Art Museum. Her work has been published in Heliotrope French Heritage Women Create, edited by Rhea Cote Robbins. Her affiliations include the American Society of Botanical Artists, the New England Society of Botanical Artists, and the Colored Pencil Society of America.
DANE HAMANN works as an editor for a textbook publisher in the southwest suburbs of Chicago. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Northwestern University, where he has served as the poetry editor of TriQuarterly for the past five years. His chapbook Q&A was recently published by Sutra Press.
OZ HARDWICK is a poet, photographer and musician based in the north of England. His chapbook Learning to Have Lost (Canberra: IPSI/Recent Work, 2018) won the 2019 Rubery International Book Award for poetry, and has been followed by The Lithium Codex (Clevedon: Hedgehog, 2019). Oz is co-editor, with Anne Caldwell, of The Valley Press Anthology of Prose Poetry (Scarborough: Valley, 2019).
LOIS MARIE HARROD’s 17th collection Woman is forthcoming from Blue Lyra in December 2019. Her Nightmares of the Minor Poet appeared in June 2016 from Five Oaks; her chapbook And She Took the Heart appeared in 2016, and Fragments from the Biography of Nemesis (Cherry Grove Press) and the chapbook How Marlene Mae Longs for Truth (Dancing Girl Press) appeared in 2013. A Dodge poet, she is published in literary journals and online ezines from American Poetry Review to Zone 3. She teaches at the Evergreen Forum in Princeton and at The College of New Jersey. Links to her online work at www.loismarieharrod.org
DIANE HELENTJARIS is a photographer and writer living in Virginia’s piedmont. Her photography has been featured in art galleries, publications and solo exhibits. Her work can be seen at http://www.dianehelentjaris.zenfolio.com.
LUCAS JACOB’s work has appeared in journals including Southwest Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, RHINO, and Hopkins Review. His first full-length poetry collection, a finalist for Eyewear Publishing’s Beverly Prize, is forthcoming later this year, as is his chapbook, Wishes Wished Just Hard Enough (Seven Kitchens Press). In 2015 his debut chapbook, A Hole in the Light, was published by Anchor & Plume Press. Jacob teaches high school, and served as a Fulbright Teaching Fellow in Budapest, Hungary.
JENNIFER JEAN was born in Venice, California, and lived in foster-care until she was seven. Her ancestors are from the Cape Verde Islands. Her debut poetry collection is The Fool (Big Table); and, her awards include: a 2018 Disquiet FLAD Fellowship; a 2017 “Her Story Is” Residency—where she worked with Iraqi women artists in Dubai; and, a 2013 Ambassador for Peace Award for her activism in the arts. Jennifer’s poems and translations have appeared in: POETRY Magazine, Rattle Magazine, Waxwing Journal, Crab Creek Review, The Common, and more. She’s an editor at Talking Writing Magazine, and the director of Free2Write Poetry Workshops for Trauma Survivors.
CHRISTINE JONES is a massage/physical therapist, and an MFA graduate from Lesley University. She’s founder/chief-editor of poems2go, a public poetry project. Her poetry can be found at 32 poems, Salamander, Crab Creek Review, Naugatuck Review, Cimarron Review, and elsewhere. Her debut Poetry collection, Girl Without a Shirt, published in January 2020 from Finishing Line Press. She can often be found swimming or surfing alongside her husband near their home in Cape Cod, MA.
DANIELLE JONES holds an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Boston, and is associate director of the Writers House at Merrimack College. Her work has appeared in Best New Poets, Beloit Poetry Journal, Memorious, Southern Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She’s the recipient of a 2014 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award.
BABO KAMEL’s poems have appeared in literary reviews in the US, Australia, and Canada. She holds an MFA from Warren Wilson’s Program for Writers, is a Best of Net nominee, and a five-time Pushcart nominee. Her chapbook, After, is published with Finishing Line Press. Find her at: babokamel.com
ANNIE LAMPMAN is a creative writing professor at the Washington State University Honors College and has served as fiction editor of the literary journal Blood Orange Review. Lampman’s essays, poetry, and fiction have been published or are forthcoming in literary journals and anthologies such as The Normal School, Orion Magazine, The Massachusetts Review, and Women Writing the West, among numerous others. Her work has been awarded the 2020 Literature Fellowship special mention by the Idaho Commission on the Arts, a 2019 Dogwood Literary Award in Fiction, a Best American Essays “Notable” selection, a Pushcart Prize Special Mention, first place in the Everybody Writes poetry contest, an Idaho Arts writing grant, a national wilderness artist’s residency through the Bureau of Land Management, and has been recently shortlisted or longlisted in several national writing contests.
FABIO LASTRUCCI was born in Naples, Italy in 1962. Sculptor and illustrator, he has worked for the main national television networks, as well as lyrical and prose theatre. In the late ‘80 he begin to draw comic-books (La guerra di Martìn, Esodare incerto), and to publish comics with the magazines Ronin and Sherazade. His artwork and covers are published by the American magazines Typehouse, The Tishman Review, Gone lawn, Metaphorosis and the anthology Ordinary Madness vol. 2. He’s published humorous novels, as well as a fantasy saga.
HECTOR LEDESMA’s art is influenced by the western culture fused with the Caribbean culture, basically the Dominican, highlighting its popular aspect. He likes to work on issues of emigration, ecology, the influences of technologies as well as the popular argo within the behavior of modern man, all within an anthropological point of view he proposes to approach the treatment of his themes through the silhouette, from a complex perspective of the identity, thus confirming an iconic status, where the objects participate in a non-linear narration with other images, marks and symbols that coexist in an ambiguous space.
EDWARD LEE’s poetry, short stories, non-fiction and photography have been published in magazines in Ireland, England and America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen and Smith’s Knoll. He is currently working on two photography collections: Lying Down With The Dead and There Is A Beauty In Broken Things. He also makes musical noise under the names Ayahuasca Collective, Lewis Milne, Orson Carroll, Blinded Architect, Lego Figures Fighting, and Pale Blond Boy.His blog/website can be found at https://edwardmlee.wordpress.com
KENDRA PRESTON LEONARD is inspired by the local, historical, and mythopoeic. She is especially interested in addressing issues of social justice, the environment, and disability through poetry. Her first chapbook, Making Mythology, will be published in late 2019 by Louisiana Literature Press, and her novella in verse, Protectress, is forthcoming in 2021 from Unsolicited Press.
KALI LIGHTFOOT writes in Salem, MA. Her poems and reviews of poetry books have appeared in several journals and anthologies, and been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. Her debut full-length collection is forthcoming from CavanKerry Press in 2021. Kali earned an MFA in Writing at Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2015, find her at kali-lightfoot.com.
GABRIELLE MASSON is a recent graduate from University of Wisconsin-Madison, majoring in Creative Writing and Criminal Justice. She worked for a year as a staff writer at Illumination, the undergraduate humanities journal.
ISLA MCKETTA is the author of Polska, 1994 (Éditions Checkpointed) and co-author of Clear Out the Static in Your Attic: A Writer’s Guide for Turning Artifacts into Art (Write Bloody). She earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Goddard College in Port Townsend, Washington. Isla makes her home in Seattle where she writes fiction, poetry, and book reviews. Find her on Twitter at @islaisreading and on the web at www.islamcketta.com. Recent poems can be found at Cascadia Rising, {isacoustic*},Riddled with Arrows, and antiBODY.
MICHAEL MCINNIS served in the Navy chasing white whales and Soviet submarines. He was the founder of the Primal Plunge, Boston’s only bookstore dedicated to zines, underground culture, and small press literature. He is a co-founding editor and designer of Nixes Mate Review. His third book, Secret Histories, is forthcoming from Cervená Barva Press.
ELIZABETH MERCURIO is a poet living in Tampa, Florida. She earned an MFA in poetry from The Solstice Low-Residency Program of Pine Manor College. Her work has appeared in Third Point Press, Philadelphia Stories, The Skinny Poetry Journal, The Literary Nest, and Fledgling Rag. She was nominated for a Best of the Net award and was the 2016 recipient of The Sharon Olds Fellowship for Poetry. Mercurio’s debut chapbook Doll was published by Lily Poetry Review Books in 2020.
MICHAEL MERCURIO lives and writes in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts. His poems have appeared in the Indianapolis Review, Crab Creek Review, poems2go, and Rust + Moth. You can find him at poetmercurio.com.
ANDREW MILLER has been published in the Massachussett’s Review, Ekphrasis, Iron Horse, Shenandoah, Spoon River Reivew, Laurel Review, Hunger Mountain, Rattle and New Orleans Review. In addition, he’s had poems appear in How Much Earth, Anthology of Fresno Poets (2001) and The Way We Work: Contemporary Literature from the Workplace (2008). He co-edited of The Gazer Within, The Selected Prose of Larry Levis (2001) and the author of Poetry, Photography Ekphrasis: Lyrical Representations of Photography from the 19th Century to the Present (2015).
RITA MOOKERJEE’s poetry is featured in Aaduna, GlitterMOB, Sinister Wisdom, Berfrois, and Cosmonauts Avenue. Her critical work has been featured in the Routledge Companion of Literature and Food, the Bloomsbury Handbook to Literary and Cultural Theory, and the Bloomsbury Handbook of Twenty-First Century Feminist Theory. She is a PhD candidate at Florida State University and a poetry staff reader for The Southeast Review and [PANK].
CINDY HUNTER MORGAN is the author of a full-length poetry collection and two chapbooks. Harborless (Wayne State University Press) is a 2018 Michigan Notable Book and the winner of the 2017 Moveen Prize in Poetry. Apple Season won the Midwest Writing Center’s 2012 Chapbook Contest, judged by Shane McCrae. The Sultan, The Skater, The Bicycle Maker won The Ledge Press 2011 Poetry Chapbook Award. She writes regularly for Murder Ballad Monday, a blog devoted to the exploration of the murder ballad tradition in folk and popular music. Her work has appeared in a variety of journals, including Tin House Online, The American Journal of Poetry, Salamander, The Pinch, and West Branch.
STEVEN OSTROWSKI is a poet, fiction writer, painter and teacher. His work appears widely in literary journals, magazines and anthologies. He is the author of five published chapbooks–four of poems and one of stories. He and his son Ben are authors of a full-length collaboration called Penultimate Human Constellation, published in 2018 by Tolsun Books. His chapbook, After the Tate Modern, won the 2017 Atlantic Road Prize and is published in 2018 by Island Verse Editions.
CHRISTIE PAGE is an underachieving superhero, survivor #metoo and life. She began painting as a way to express herself during a period of time when her words were stolen or weaponized against her during the judiciary process for her rape trial. Ghost girl was born. She is the world’s FIRST mental health super hero, breaking the chains of silence and living a stigma free existence.
ZEESHAN PATHAN is the author of The Minister of Disturbances (Diode Editions, 2020). He attended Washington University in Saint Louis as a Kenneth E. Hudson Scholar where he studied poetry with acclaimed poets including Mary Jo Bang, Carl Phillips, and Fatemeh Keshavarz. He speaks several languages and translates from Urdu, Turkish, & Persian. At Columbia University, he received a Fellowship to study poetry at the graduate level and he completed his M.F.A. under Lucie Brock-Broido, and worked with other talented poets & translators including former U.S. Poet Laureate Mark Strand. Zeeshan is interested in world literature and literary theory, the poetry of the Middle East and India, and he also writes short fiction. He has been invited to several prestigious writers’ conferences, including the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. His poetry has been featured in Tarpaulin Sky Press Magazine in June 2019 and poems are forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, in an anthology of contemporary American Muslim writings by Red Hen Press, & in other literary journals.
FABRICE B. POUSSIN is the advisor for The Chimes, the Shorter University award winning poetry and arts publication. His writing and photography have been published in print, including Kestrel, Symposium, La Pensee Universelle, Paris, and other art and literature magazines in the United States and abroad.
CAROL RADSPRECHER is a restless artist whose images combine figurative and abstract elements. She earned her MFA in painting from Hunter College, CUNY. A longtime painter, she “discovered” the wonders of digital image-making and found that media well-suited to her need to make a succession of rapidly evolving, narrative images based on distorted representations of the human body, especially the female body. “Her work has appeared in several solo shows and numerous group shows, and has been published in print and online publications. www.carolradsprecher.com.”
HALEY ROBIN is an artist and waitress who lives in Massachusetts and writes for the tender hearted. In 2019 she was awarded the Golden Pencil Award for outstanding poetry within the Creative Media division of Champlain College, where she graduated in May of the same year with honors. She has since healed from the heartbreak that inspired the piece published in this issue. Her work can be viewed on Instagram at @haleyrobin.art.
NEIL SILBERBLATT’s poems have appeared, or will be appearing shortly, in numerous journals, including The American Journal of Poetry, Tikkun Daily, Tiferet Journal, Plume Poetry Journal, The Aurorean, Mom Egg Review, Ibbetson Street Press, Naugatuck River Review, Chantarelle’s Notebook, Muddy River Poetry Review, Nixes Mate Review, and The Good Men Project. His poem, Burnt Offering, was selected by Mass. Poetry as their ‘Poem of the Moment’. His work has also been selected for various anthologies, including Collateral Damage (Pirene’s Fountain); and Culinary Poems (Glass Lyre Press). He has published two poetry collections: So Far, So Good (2012), and Present Tense (2013), and has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize. His most recent poetry book, Past Imperfect (Nixes Mate Books, 2018), was nominated for the Mass. Book Award in Poetry. Neil is the founder/director of Voices of Poetry (VOP) which has organized and presented a series of (more than 300) poetry events, featuring acclaimed poets – including the current or former Poets Laureate of CT, RI, VT & NH – at various venues in NY, NJ, CT and MA (and, in May 2020, in ME). VOP is the recipient of grants from Wellfleet Cultural Council and Lenox Cultural Council.
ANDY SMART is a candidate for the MFA at the Solstice Low-Residency Program at Pine Manor College. He lives between the Midwest and New England. His work has appeared in River Heron Review, Two Thirds North, Red Fez, and elsewhere. Andy is an advocate for the de-stigmatization of mental illness, the prevention of suicide, and the continued influence of the written word. He loves every dog he sees.
PAMELA STEWART (known as Jody) is a true “boomer”, New England born and bred. She began writing in grade school because she couldn’t draw. She’s taught creative writing at ASU, University of Arizona, UC Irvine, and University of Houston. In 1982 she received a Guggenheim and traveled to Cornwall, UK where she then lived for 7 years. Jody returned to western Massachusetts and in 1994 she, and her family moved to a farm to raise fiber animals. Over the years she’s published in a number of magazines, received 3 Pushcart publications, and has written 6 full-length books including The Red Window (Univ. of Georgia Press, 1997), and Ghost Farm (Pleasure Boat Studio, 2010.) A chapbook, Just Visiting, was published by Grey Suit Editions, London, 2014. She still lives on the farm with 4 dogs, some elderly sheep, a rescued horse, his donkey, an emu named Nigel, several goats and 3 really old immovable pigs.
ADA LEIGH TENSLEY holds an MFA in poetry from Lesley University. She resides with her wife and daughter in the suburbs of Houston, Texas where she also works as a high school teacher.
GAIL THOMAS has published four books, Odd Mercy, Waving Back, No Simple Wilderness, and Finding the Bear. Her poems have been published in many journals and anthologies including the Beloit Poetry Journal, North American Review, Calyx, and Cumberland River Review. Among her awards are the Charlotte Mew Prize from Headmistress Press, Naugatuck River Review’s Narrative Poetry Prize, and Massachusetts Center for the Book “Must Read.” She has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony and Ucross. Thomas teaches as part of the Pioneer Valley Writers Workshops, speaks at conferences and poetry festivals, and reads her work widely in community and academic settings.
ALICE TURSKI grew up in Houston, Texas. A Langsdorf and Danforth Scholar, Alice obtained her B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis before joining the MD/PhD program at NYU. On leave, indefinitely, Alice received her MFA at Cornell University where she currently teaches Creative Writing and English. Alice has poems forthcoming in journals like The Greensboro Review.
PETER URKOWITZ lives in Salem, Massachusetts, where he works in a college library. He was drawn into the local poetry scene after the death of a poet friend, when the community came together to remember and reflect. He stayed as a spectator, and was soon led into writing his own work, and has been gratified by the warm and supportive response. He has published poems and art in Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, Oddball Magazine, Sextant, and the Lily Poetry Review. His Fake Zodiac Signs are being published in a forthcoming chapbook from Meat for Tea Press.
ANASTASIA VASSOS was born in Cleveland, Ohio and currently lives, writes and teaches in Boston, Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in various journals, including Gravel Mag, Blast Furnace Press, Haibun Today, The Ghazal Page, Literary Bohemian, and Writers Resist. She was a Bread Loaf General Contributor in Poetry, 2017. Her poem “Tinos, August 2012” was named Poem Of The Moment on MassPoetry.org in 2017. She is a long-distance cyclist.
STACEY WALKER is a lecturer at University of Missouri-St. Louis. She has a B.A. from the University of Missouri-Columbia, an M.A. from Southeast Missouri State University, and an M.F.A. from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She is a winner of the 2016 Boulevard Poetry Contest for Emerging Poets, and her work had been published in Proud to Be, Chaleur, Junto, Typishly, portside.org, Big Muddy, and All the Art St. Louis. She currently lives in St. Louis with her son and husband.
ERIK WENNERMARK writes prose. He lives in Tokyo. His novella “The True Story of Yu Fen,” short story collection “Evil Men,” and nonfiction on topics such as the politics of Hong Kong independence and the death rattle of an Indian guru can be found dispersed on the web and beyond.
LUCY ZHANG is a writer masquerading around as a software engineer. She watches anime and sleeps in on weekends like a normal human being. Her work has appeared in various publications, including After Alexei, Digging Through The Fat, and Bending Genres. She can be found at https://kowaretasekai.wordpress.com/ or on Twitter (@Dango_Ramen).