Inaugural Issue 1.1
Spring/Summer 2008
Contributors

Kristin Abraham is the author of two chapbooks: Little Red Riding Hood Missed the Bus (Subito Press, 2008); and Orange Reminds You of Listening (Elixir Press, 2006). Her poetry has appeared in Best New Poets 2005, Court Green, The Journal, LIT, and Rattle. She teaches at Ashford University in Iowa.

Joshua Thomas Armstrong is an instructor of French at Northern Michigan University and writes academically as well as creatively. His fiction has been published by The Modern Word and The Southwestern Review. "Shaddow Puppets" Read || Listen

Salvatore Attardo joined the circus at a very young age and was trained in juggling, sword-swallowing, and Marxist economics. He literally stumbled into his professional position from where he emerged at high speed. He writes intensely autobiographical persona poems. Ildebrando and Hugo Zacchini are his idols.

Chad Baldwin “would like to acknowledge the hundred or so napkins, envelopes, receipts, and other assorted scraps of paper that acted as a foster home for [his] thoughts.” Chad studied English and theology at Cornell College and was pursuing a graduate degree in creative writing, averring, “I am a writer because I have no other choice. It is the one arena where I can be honest with my lies and tell the fiction of my truth." A prolific poet, Chad worked as a taxi driver, preferring the fringes of life and night. He passed away in January of this year. “Hush now, I hear a story, and it’s heading this way.”

Louis E. Bourgeois teaches writing at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. His most recent book, The Gar Diaries, was released by Community Press in January of this year. Bourgeois is also editor of VOX PRESS.

Torsten Caeners is a lecturer for English and American Studies at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany and Coordinator for Cultural Economics. He is working on his PhD thesis investigating the process of poetic writing and its application for psychoanalytical treatment. In his rare spare time, he writes poetry and meets with friends. "Nell on Campus" Read || Listen

 

Carol Carpenter’s poems and stories have appeared in numerous publications and anthologies, including Not What I Expected (Paycock Press, 2007). Her work has been exhibited by art galleries and produced as podcasts. Formerly a college writing instructor, journalist, and trainer, she now writes full time in Livonia, Michigan.

 

Patrick Carrington is poetry editor at Mannequin Envy and author of Thirst (Codhill, 2007); Rise, Fall and Acceptance (Main Street Rag, 2006); and Hard Blessings (forthcoming from Main Street Rag). His work will be appearing soon in The Connecticut Review, Tar River Poetry, American Literary Review, and Sycamore Review, among others. "Convenient Trees" Read || Listen "Dead Man's Float" Read || Listen

Helen Degen Cohen’s awards include the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, first prize in the British Stand Magazine's fiction competition, and fellowships to major art colonies. She co-edits Rhino and coordinates its workshop, The Poetry Forum. She’s been an Artist-In-Education and has taught for Roosevelt University.

David Cornwell was born in 1985 in Grahamstown, South Africa. Since then, he has lived in Germany, London, Mexico, Tennessee, and South Korea. His favorite authors include Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver, Denis Johnson and Richard Ford. Cornwell is an avid fan of American roots music and plays banjo, harmonica, and Dobro in a band called Railway Sleeper. He is presently working on a collection of short stories.

Lightsey Darst lives in Minneapolis, where she writes dance reviews, curates mnartists.org’s “What Light” poetry contest, and teaches English and humanities. In 2007, she received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in literature. Publications include The Antioch Review, The Literary Review, Gulf Coast, and New Letters.

"The Carpenter's Lady" Listen
"Black Magic" Read || Listen

Carol V. Davis is the author of a bilingual collection, It’s Time to Talk About…, and two chapbooks: Letters From Prague and The Violin Teacher. She received the 2007 T.S. Eliot Prize for Into the Arms of Pushkin: Poems of St. Petersburg. She is the 2008 Poet-in-Residence at Olivet College and teaches at Santa Monica College in California.

 

Lynn Domina is the author of a collection of poetry, Corporal Works, and the editor of Poets on the Psalms (forthcoming from Trinity University Press). Recent poetry appears in The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, and New Letters, among others. She presently lives in the western Catskill region of New York. "Dry Bones" Read || Listen

Thomas J. Erickson is an attorney in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. After not writing poetry since his undergraduate days at Beloit College, he began writing a poem while sitting in court several years ago. Since then, he has had numerous poems published and is now working on his first book-length manuscript.

John Estes is a doctoral student and instructor at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Another Chicago Magazine, Zoland Poetry, Ninth Letter, The Journal, Notre Dame Review, Literary Imagination, among others. A chapbook, Breakfast with Blake at the Laocoön, is available from Finishing Line Press.

 

Poetry readings, awards, and book signings have taken Gretchen Fletcher from Fort Lauderdale, where she lives, to San Francisco, Chicago, Kansas City, Boston, New York City, Dallas, Houston, and Washington, DC. She publishes articles about her travels and leads writing workshops for the Florida Center for the Book, an affiliate of the Library of Congress. "Chain Links" Read || Listen "Memento Mysterium" Read || Listen

John Flynn has published stories, poems, and translations of Romanian poetry in a variety of literary magazines, including Paterson Review, Connecticut Review, and Fifth Wednesday Journal. A fourth chapbook is forthcoming (Pudding House), and he has stories forthcoming in The Iconoclast, and Salt Flats Annual. He’s been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and he's earned writing awards from the Peace Corps and the New England Poetry Club.

"The Four-Cent Tip" Read || Listen

Peter Funk lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he manages the vagaries of being a single father, and where he has put his BA in English to good use by starting an area-wide courier service. His work has appeared in Rattle, Ghoti, Juked, The Slate.

"From a Golden Retriever in Heaven" Listen
"Untangling" Read || Listen

Bill Garvey lives in New Hampshire. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming in several journals, including MARGIE, The Worcester Review, 5AM, Slant, Diner, Concho River Review, New York Quarterly, and others. Finishing Line Press published his chapbook, The Burden of Angels, in 2007. Bill received his MFA from New England College. "Kahlil" Read || Listen "I Found Myself on Mona's Sofa" Listen

 

nancy genevieve teaches creative writing at the University of Illinois. Her poetry, shared in literary journals and a NYX trilogy, as well as in readings in several states, “celebrate[s] those life-affirming values that enable us to do battle with the darkness” (Midwestern Miscellany).

 

Giles Goodland was born in Taunton, England, and has lived in Wales, Australia, and California before settling in London, where he lives with his wife and two children. He works as a lexicographer. His last book was Capital (Salt, 2006). Previous to that was A Spy in the House of Years (Leviathan, 2001).

 

Colleen Harris grew up on Long Island but prefers the southern United States, having attended college and graduate school there. She is an assistant professor and librarian at the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga, where they don’t mind her serious tattoo habit. She is pursuing an MFA in creative writing at Spalding University.

Susan Hazen-Hammond has lived in the southwest United States for three decades and is the author of nine books, including Spider Woman's Web (Penguin Putnam). She writes in English and in Spanish. Awards include a Benjamin Franklin Award, a South Carolina Book Award, and, in Mexico, El Primer Premio Nacional de Periodismo.

Jim Hill, born in Decatur, Illinois in 1933, is a graduate of Millikin University. In 1966, he moved to California, where he met and worked with West Coast photographers Ruth Bernhard, Brett Weston, Ansel Adams, and Wynn Bullock, among others. He was darkroom printer for Bullock from 1973 to 1975. He has taught landscape and human form photography, along with fine-art black-and-white darkroom printing workshops for the University of California Santa Cruz, Friends of Photography in Carmel, Monterey Peninsula College and UC Berkeley. He presently resides in Illinois with his wife, Alice.

Elizabeth Kerlikowske lives in Michigan’s palm and teaches at Kellogg Community College. Her fifth book, Dominant Hand, was just published by Mayapple Press. She earned her PhD from Western Michigan University in 2007 and is president of Friends of Poetry, which runs The Poems That Ate Our Ears contest for kids.

"Invention #6" Read || Listen

Helga Kidder has lived in the Tennessee hills for 30 years, raised two daughters, a half a dozen cats, and a few dogs. She received a BA in English from the University of Tennessee and an MFA in writing from Vermont College. She is co-founder of the Chattanooga Writers Guild and leads their poetry group.

Alex Lindquist is a writer, artist, and teacher. She is presently Editorial Consultant for Inkwell, an award-winning literary journal of Manhattanville College, where she recently earned an MA in writing. She served as the journal's Editor-in-Chief for two years. Her poems and essays have appeared in various newspapers, magazines and journals.

"Flickers" Read

Ellaraine Lockie has received eleven Pushcart Prize nominations and the 2007 Elizabeth R. Curry Prize. Forthcoming are a Rooftop Chaplet from Adrienne Lewis' series and a poetry/art broadside from Brick Bat Review. Blue Ribbons at the County Fair, a chapbook collection of her first-place contest winning poems, was recently released by PWJ Publishing. "Missouri River Roots" Listen "Rebirth" Listen

 

Rachel Losh is a traveling salesperson in Northern California.

Eileen Malone lives and writes in the coastal fog at the edge of the San Francisco Bay Area. She has been published in over 300 literary journals and anthologies. Last year, two of her poems were nominated for Pushcart Prizes.

Robert Manaster has published work in various journals, including Many Mountains Moving, Wisconsin Review, International Poetry Review, and The Literary Review. Recently, he was chosen as the recipient of the Dorothy Norton Clay Poetry Fellowship for the Mary Anderson Center.

Naomi Neal is seventeen. She lives next to the ocean with a cat and several hundred books. She is on the staff of her high school’s literary journal and hopes to assume editorship her senior year. She loves swimming, sunny days, and slumber parties. "Wilderness" Read || Listen

 

J.O.J. Nwachukwu-Agbada is both a writer and a university teacher based in his country, Nigeria. He has published four novels, a collection of short stories, and book of poetry. He has contributed to over a hundred publications on various aspects of African literature, including the proverb.

Lucyna Prostko was born in Poland. She received her MFA in poetry from New York University, where she was awarded the New York Times Fellowship. Her poetry has appeared in The Bitter Oleander, Fugue, Washington Square, Painted Bride Review, New York Spirit, and Five Points.

Rachel Reischling is a second-year MFA student in poetry at the Ohio State University; in her spare time she sings English folk songs and punk rock to her parakeet and kills beautiful, unfortunate houseplants. This is her first publication.

A native of Dublin, Moya Roddy has a novel published, The Long Way Home. Her stories have been published by Penguin, Serpent’s Tail, and Arlen House, among others. Her work has appeared on RTÉ and CBS, and she’s been commissioned to write several screenplays. Moya is presently studying writing at The National University of Ireland in Galway.

Lori Romero’s chapbook, Wall to Wall, was published by Finishing Line Press. Her short story, “Strange Saints,” was a semifinalist in the Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award. Her poetry and short stories have been published in more than seventy journals and anthologies. She was recently nominated for her second Pushcart Prize. "Deconstructing Hands" Read || Listen "Chamisa" Read || Listen

 

Amy Sayre-Roberts is completing a fiction MFA at the University of Illinois. She is presently finishing a novel and beginning a collection of short stories. Her publications include Chicago Noir, Ninth Letter, Rain Taxi, and a story forthcoming in an anthology from Rutgers University Press.

 

Peter Serchuk’s poems have appeared in journals big and small, including Boulevard, Denver Quarterly, The Texas Review, South Carolina Review, and MARGIE, among others. His poem, “The Naked Women,” was recently included in the anthology Best American Erotic Poems from 1800 to the Present, edited by David Lehman and published by Scribner.

Marian Kaplun Shapiro practices as a psychologist and poet in Lexington, Massachusetts. She is the author of a professional book, Second Childhood (Norton, 1988); a poetry book, Players in The Dream, Dreamers in The Play (Plain View Press, 2007); and two chapbooks: Your Third Wish (Finishing Line, 2007); and The End of the World, Announced on Wednesday (Pudding House, 2007).

Originally from New England, Noel Sloboda presently lives in Pennsylvania, where he serves as dramaturg for the Harrisburg Shakespeare Festival and teaches at Penn State York. His poetry has appeared in a variety of places, including Chronogram, Waterways, BLOW, Cape Rock, Blue Earth Review, Ghoti, Free Verse, erbacce, and the Ottawa Arts Review. He has also published in Studies in the Humanities and the collection In/Fidelity: Essays on Film Adaptation.

Victoria Sprow received her BA from Harvard University (summa cum laude/Phi Beta Kappa) and her MPhil in creative writing from Trinity College Dublin. She is presently a candidate for the MFA in fiction at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she is working on a novel.

Illinois Poet Laureate Kevin Stein has received numerous awards and accolades for his work, which includes scholarly books and essays as well as poetry anthologies and collections. His most recent collection of poetry, Sufficiency of the Actual, is forthcoming from the University of Illinois Press (2008). He has published in The American Poetry Review, Boulevard, Colorado Review, The Kenyon Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, and TriQuarterly, among others.

Canadian fiction writer, playwright, and poet J. J. Steinfeld lives on Prince Edward Island. He has published a novel, Our Hero in the Cradle of Confederation (Pottersfield Press); nine short story collections (the previous three from Gaspereau Press), including Should the Word Hell Be Capitalized?, Anton Chekhov Was Never in Charlottetown, and Would You Hide Me?; as well as a poetry collection, An Affection for Precipices (Serengeti Press).

 

Truth Thomas is an emerging musician and poet. Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and raised in Washington, DC, he is presently Writer-in-Residence for the Howard County Literary Society in Maryland. Party of Black, his first collection of poetry, was recently published in the Flipped Eye Mouthmark Book Series. "The Power of a Teenage Brain" Read || Listen "Dreamgirl" Read || Listen "Homeless" Listen "A Day of Presence" Listen

Jean Tupper has worked as a magazine writer and editor, but her present writing love is poetry. Her first full-length book of poems, Woman in Rainlight, was recently published. The poems in this collection span two decades of her work and “move convincingly between humor and heartbreak” (Robert Cording).

"Let Me Show You My Dark-Eyed Beauties." Read

Wendy Vardaman resides in Madison, Wisconsin, and has a PhD in English from the University of Pennsylvania. Her poems, reviews, and interviews appear in a variety of anthologies and journals, including Riffing on Strings, Letters to the World, Poet Lore, Poemeleon, qarrtsiluni, Free Verse, Wisconsin People & Ideas, Women’s Review of Books, and The Portland Review.

"My younger brother's scar" Read || Listen

Benjamin Vogt is a PhD candidate at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in both poetry and creative nonfiction. His poetry chapbook, Indelible Marks, is available from Pudding House, and he’s received a poetry grant from the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Fund and nominations in two genres for the Pushcart Prize. His work has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Cream City Review, Diagram, Fugue, Puerto del Sol, and Verse Daily.

Asha Vose studied English literature internationally before becoming a freelance journalist and short story writer. Her fiction has been published in Harpur Palate, and her nonfiction has appeared in Eva Mag, Metro Pulse, and Knoxville Voice. She is presently at work on her debut short story collection.

"Vietnam Visits Uncle Bill"
(Asha Vose, author; Daniel Vose, recording and sound art)
Listen

Daniel Vose is an audio engineer and producer, specializing in post-production and composition with virtual instruments. He recently earned his bachelor’s degree in music technology and is involved in a number of collaborative projects, one of which is his debut album.

Amie Whittemore is presently an MFA student in poetry at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. She is the recipient of a Master’s Fellowship from SIU-C, and one of her poems is awaiting publication in Packingtown Review.

Laura Madeline Wiseman is working on her dissertation at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her creative writing has appeared in Blackbird, Spoon River Poetry Review, Geist, and Talking River, among others. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She reads for Prairie Schooner. "The Long Con of 1862" (or Fingersmith) Read || Listen

 

Robert E. Wood teaches in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture at Georgia Tech. He is the author of Some Necessary Questions of the Play, a study of Hamlet. His work appears online in flashquake. Poetry publications include The Chattahoochee Review, Wind, Southern Humanities Review, and South Carolina Review. "Gray Tuesday" Read || Listen "Here and There" Listen "October" Listen