Please give a warm welcome to our Summer 2013 contributors.

Taryn Alexander grew up in Northern California and now lives in Tampa, Florida where she hates the palmetto trees but loves her pet chickens. Taryn is accomplished at culinary projects such as making cheese and pickles. She holds a BA in Creative Writing from USF and was recently published in Sleet Magazine.

Elaine Barnard‘s stories have been published in the following literary journals: Relections; Lightship Anthology; Literary Hatchet; Litter Box; Timber Creek Review; The Storyteller; R.KV.R.Y; Kalliope; Writers Forum; Sage; Pearl; and Apple Valley Review.

Doug Bolling‘s poetry has appeared widely in literary journals including Georgetown Review, Blue Unicorn, Slant, Poetalk, Indefinite space, Tribeca Poetry Review, Basalt, Water-Stone Review and Convergence among others. He has received three Pushcart Prize nominations and currently lives outside Chicago in Flossmoor, Illinois.

S. B. Brody is a hapless young San Franciscan currently lost somewhere in the Northeast, where she is often cold. Her work has also appeared in Eunoia Review and Bartleby Snopes.

Alexandra Daley is an unpublished poet and creative nonfiction writer living in the Charleston, South Carolina area. She is currently composing a collection of poetry and is working on her first novel.

Francis DiClemente lives in Syracuse, New York, where he works as a video producer. In his spare time he writes and takes photographs. He is the author of three poetry chapbooks, In Pursuit of Infinity (Finishing Line Press, 2013), Vestiges (Alabaster Leaves Publishing, 2012) and Outskirts of Intimacy (Flutter Press, 2010).

William Doreski‘s work has appeared in a number of journals and some small press publications.

Melanie Pappadis Faranello has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and received various mentions such as winner of The New School Fiction Chapbook Competition; semi-finalist in Sarabande Books’ Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction; finalist in The Dana Awards for the Novel; and a top twenty-five winner in Glimmer Train’s Very Short Fiction Contest. She received her MFA in creative writing from The New School. Originally from Chicago, she currently lives with her husband and two sons in Connecticut.

Chris Featherman‘s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Rattle, Prick of the Spindle, Hunger Mountain, The Cortland Review, The Ledge, and elsewhere. Raised in Pennsylvania, he currently lives in Seattle, WA, with his wife and son.

Jonathan Flike is a writer, artist, and starving student. His poems have appeared in Viewpoints and Wilde Magazine. Jonathan’s first major collection of poetry, Tales from Room 225, was published in June, 2011. His second collection, It Gets Worse is set for a February 2013 release date.

Ernestia Fraser is a writer and poet from Nassau, Bahamas. She is currently an artist-in-residence at the Writer’s Institute of Diversity in Los Angeles, CA, working on various writing projects, including a tribute collection of poems entitled Shallow Water: a short history of where I’m from. Her poems — “My Caribbean Mother,” “Mangoes,” “Tamarind,” “Sour Sop,” Shallow Water,” and “Why I Wanted to be a Mother” — have appeared in and are forthcoming in Tongues of the Ocean, The Caribbean Writer, and St. Somewhere Journal.

Rob Ganson is a poet from the Wisconsin shore of Lake Superior. He has been published in anthologies like Realms of Gold, Love Stories from the Bay, and Feeling is First. Rob has also been published in journals such as Illumen, Free Verse, Verse Wisconsin, The Talkin’ Blues, etc.

Trina Gaynon holds an M.F.A. from University of San Francisco in Creative Writing. Recently, her poems have appeared numerous journals including Natural Bridge, Reed and the final issue of Runes.

Elizabeth Genovise is a graduate of the MFA program at McNeese State University in Louisiana. Her has been published in The Southern Review, Cold Mountain Review, Labletter, The Pinch, Yemassee, The Mustard Seed Risk, and other journals.

Anne Germanacos’ work has appeared in close to one hundred literary journals and anthologies. Her collection of short stories, In the Time of the Girls, was published by BOA Editions. She and her husband live in San Francisco and on Crete. http://www.annegermanacos.com

Gail Goepfert is a Midwest teacher, poet, and nature photographer. She has been published in a number of anthologies and journals including Avocet, Off Channel, After Hours, Caesura, Florida English, Journal of Modern Poetry, Poetic License Press, Cram 11 and 13, and online such as Brevity Poetry Review and Bolts of Silk. She was a featured poet. Two of her poems were selected to ride a PACE bus in Highland Park, Illinois’s Poetry That Moves contest. She recently was a runner-up in the Contemporary American Poetry Prize sponsored by C.J. Laity on Chicagopoetry.org

John Grey is an Australian born poet, works as financial systems analyst. Recently published in Bryant Poetry Review, Tribeca Poetry Review and the horror anthology, “What Fears Become”with work upcoming in Potomac Review, Hurricane Review and Osiris.

Nels Hanson has worked as a farmer, teacher, and contract writer/editor. He graduated from UC Santa Cruz and the U of Montana and his fiction received the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award. His stories have appeared in Antioch Review, Texas Review, Black Warrior Review, Southeast Review, Montreal Review, and other journals. “Now the River’s in You,” a 2010 story which appeared in Ruminate Magazine, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and “No One Can Find Us,” which was published in Ray’s Road Review, has been nominated for the 2012 Pushcart Prize.

José Hernández Díaz is currently working on his MFA in poetry at Antioch University Los Angeles, where he serves as co-poetry editor of Lunch Ticket. He earned his BA in English Literature from UC Berkeley. His work has appeared in The Best American Nonrequired Reading Anthology 2011, Bombay Gin, The Progressive, Kuikatl, Poetry Flash, 3:AM Magazine (UK), Tan lejos de dios (MEX), The Delinquent (UK), El norte que viene (ESP), ditch poetry (CAN), Kerouac’s Dog (UK), Blood Lotus, Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Huizache, Counterexample Poetics, Revista Contratiempo, La Gente Newsmagazine, BlazeVOX12, among others. He has edited five novels for Floricanto Press.

Watering the Dead, Jason Irwin‘s first full-length collection won the 2006/2007 Transcontinental Award and was published by Pavement Saw Press in 2008. “Some Days It’s A Love Story” won the 2005 Slipstream Chapbook Prize. Individual poems have been published in various journals, most recently in Grey Sparrow, Potomac, Red Fez, and Future Cycle Press’ Anthology What Poets See.

Paul Kavanagh lives in Charlotte.

Amaris Ketcham is an honorary Kentucky Colonel and a former managing editor at Willow Springs magazine. She contributes the arts and literature blog Bark. She has been published in Sacred Fire, Rio Grande Review, Flycatcher Journal, Bosque, and the Utne Reader.

Annalee Kwochka is from Asheville, NC, and is currently a sophomore at Davidson College, where she is a Patricia Cornwell creative writing scholar and competes in spoken-word poetry. She has worked with poets Tony Abbott and Cathy Smith Bowers, and has been published numerous times in the North Carolina Poetry Society’s annual awards publication.

Jane Rosenberg LaForge lives in New York with her husband, daughter, and her daughter’s cat. She is the author of the full-length poetry collection, With Apologies to Mick Jagger, Other Gods, and All Women, (The Aldrich Press 2012) and the forthcoming poetry chapbook, The Navigation of Loss,’ one of three winners in the Red Ochre Press‘ 2012 chapbook competition. She has also published short stories, personal and critical essays online and in print. More information is available at Jane-Rosenberg-LaForge.com.

Theresa Lang is an MFA student at Eastern Kentucky University. She has been published in Inscape.

Eva Langston has an MFA in fiction writing. Her stories have been published in The Normal School, The GW Review, and the Sand Hill Review.

Trevor Lanuzza

Lyn Lifshin has published over 130 books including 3 from Black Sparrow. Recent books: Barbaro: Beyond Brokenness and The Licorice Daughter: My Year with Ruffian. Recent books: Ballroom, All the Poets (Mostly) Who Have Touched me, Living and Dead. All True, esp the Lies. Just out, Knife Edge & Absinthe: The Tango Poems. NYQ books will publish A Girl Goes into The Woods. Also just out Hitchcock Hotel.

Marlee Lisker has been writing for several years and is currently studying Creative Writing. In the past, her poetry was published in The Cornwall Local, after winning the Timothy Mumford Memorial Poetry Competition. She has recently begun writing for her university’s newspaper, The Miami Hurricane.

Hill Lowinsky lives in Millerton, NY. He holds a BA in psychology from SUNY New Paltz. He speaks Spanish and French, and hopes to learn German next. This is his first publication.

Victor Macrinici is currently a Yale undergraduate, living in the Chicago area. He is also a staff member for the Yale Literary Magazine. He has been published in Poetry Quarterly and Westward Quarterly.

Joan Mazza is an author, poet, and speaker. She has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, writing coach, certified sex therapist, and medical microbiologist, has appeared on radio and TV as a dream specialist and led personal growth workshops. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Perigee/Penguin/Putnam). Her work has appeared in many publications, including Kestrel, Stone’s Throw, Writer’s Digest, Playgirl, and Writer’s Journal. She now writes poetry and does fabric art in rural central Virginia. http://www.JoanMazza.com

Jenean McBrearty is a graduate of San Diego State University, and former community college instructor who taught Political Science and Sociology. She received the EKU English Department’s Award for Graduate Non-fiction (2011), and have been published in Main Street Rag Anthology, Wherever It Pleases, Danse Macabre, bioStories, Cobalt Review, and Black Lantern, among a slew of others. She now resides in Kentucky, and writes full time.

Kelly Miller‘s work has appeared in Southern Indiana Review, Nano Fiction, Quick Fiction, Flashquake and Parting Gifts. A piece was short-listed for the 2012 Bridgeport Prize.

Denise Mostacci-Sklar is from Hamilton, MA. She began life as a dancer and now, later in her career, she has had the good fortune to discover writing as a new way to move through, remember and keep looking at life. She particularly enjoys the stillness…waiting for words to make an entrance. Her work has been published in Poetry Super Highway, LYRICAL of the Sommerville NEWS , Dark Lady Poetry and in Wilderness House Literary Review and will appear in an upcoming issue of Haunted Waters Press.

Larissa Nash, an alumna of Loyola University New Orleans, is in pursuit of an M.F.A. in Poetry from Pacific University. Larissa resides in the dusty, neglected outskirts of Austin, Texas, where she attempts to appease the fickle rain god with haiku. She often participates in Francesca Lia Block’s online workshops, and her work has appeared in Bohemia, Dinosaur Bees, Fortunates, Red Poppy Review, and Siren. Larissa is the founding editor of Rose Red Review. Please visit her at: http://www.underwaterlily.org

Joseph Nicholas is studying psychology at Burlington VT’s Champlain College. He is a broccoli and cat enthusiast who is to be published in the upcoming Willard & Maple.

Amelia Jane Nierenberg is a Junior at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York. She is a Fiction Reader for the Adroit Journal, and spends much of her free time painting and writing. She has been published in the December issue of Amazing Kids! Magazine, and Tap Magazine Issue 25: Bare. Her work is forthcoming in Prick of the Spindle, the Blue Pencil Online and the Blue Lake Review.

Al Ortolani is a teacher in Kansas. His poetry and reviews have appeared in journals such as New Letters, The Midwest Quarterly, The English Journal and the New York Quarterly. He has three books of poetry, The Last Hippie of Camp 50 and Finding the Edge, published by Woodley Press at Washburn University and Wren’s House, published by Coal City Press in Lawrence, Kansas. He is an editor for The Little Balkans Review and works closely with the Kansas City Writer’s Place.

Deonte Osayande is a two time Dudley Randall Poetry Contest winner, a winner of Wayne Literary Review’s 2011 Poetry Contest, among other distinctions. A former Presidential Ambassador for the University of Detroit Mercy he has a B.A. in Elementary Education with a focus in Mathematics and English and is studying a Master’s degree of Arts in Liberal Studies. He has had poems published previously in Curbside Splendor, Requiem Magazine, Quantum Poetry Review, Wayne Literary Review, Red Poppy Review, Front Porch Review and Emerge Literary Journal.

Amanda Preston is an English professor at Eastfield College and a graduate student at the University of Texas at Dallas. She is currently working on her second Master’s degree in Applied Cognition and Neuroscience to compliment an MA in Humanities. Inspired by those multimodal thinkers who have constructed stiles to breech disciplinary fences, Preston moved into the brain sciences to better understand language, memory, and meaning in a way that weds creative and analytic traditions. Her studies, like her aesthetic inclinations, expand within agonistic moments of serious play: lines tightly suspended between limited pasts (knowns) and generative potentials yet to crystallize—there for the thrill of dangerous ledges and uncommon intersections. Preston’s poetry has been translated and read in Germany, as well as published, read, and installed in several gallery exhibition spaces within the Dallas metroplex where she currently resides. She also served in the U.S. Army as a broadcast journalist in both Europe and Asia prior to pursuing an academic career. Her first full collection of poetry was recently published in One Song, Three Composers, as a focused study on synaesthesia for New Zealand artist Shannon Novak.

Anina Robb is a 42 year old poet and mom of two neat kids: Lucas and Helena. She earned an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. She’s published poems in Nebo, The White Pelican Review, Rivendell, and Oatmeal and Poetry. She lives in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

Lisa Robertson has been recently included, or is forthcoming, in Babble, The Apple Valley Review, The Tahoe Blues Anthology, The Cancer Poetry Anthology, and Barrelhouse. Her fiction and essays have been nominated for a Best of the Web Award, a Pushcart Prize, and has received an Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train’s short fiction contest. She is a reader for Memoir Journal, and has worked in epidemiology for thirteen years.

Will Roby‘s poems have appeared at Tri-Quarterly Review, storySouth, 32 Poems, Anti-,and others. He lives in Texas with his trusty mutt, Tom Dooley. Jake Russell has had a poem published in the second edition of The Weekenders Magazine. He works as a reporter in Jacksonville, Ill., and has had similar stints in Omaha, Neb., and Washington, D.C., since graduating with a bachelor’s degree in English from Greenville College in 2007.

Andrew Ruzkowski lives and writes in Chicago. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Columbia Poetry Review, The New Writer, Willows Wept Review, Black Tongue Review, analogpress.net, and The Bakery, among others. He has been nominated for a 2012 Pushcart Prize and was a finalist for the 2012 Atlantis Award.

Genevieve Salazar is a writer whose poetry has been published in UIC Red Shoes Review, Rose Red Review, and The Way Home Project. She is the author of The Maniac’s Path, a blog dedicated to the cultivation of healing and support for those suffering from dermatillomania.

Suzanne Samples is currently a doctoral candidate in Victorian Literature at Auburn University. She teaches English at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, and resides in Asheville, NC, where she plays roller derby for the Blue Ridge Roller Girls. She has been published by fictionweekly.com, where she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. The Alarmist and Milk Sugar have also recently published her works.

Cara Schiff was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. Currently, she lives in Denver and works in radio. Her work has been featured in amphibi.us, Burner Magazine and Carginogenic Poetry.

Samantha Seto is a writer. She has been published in various anthologies including Ceremony, The Screech Owl, Nostrovia Poetry, Ydgrasil, Soul Fountain, and Black Magnolias Journal.

Michael Stewart lives and works in Bristol, UK. He is a prize-winning author of short fiction, a journalist and a travel writer. His flash fiction stories have appeared online including at Everyday Fiction, Red Fez, Waterhouse Review and East of the Web. He recently finished his first novel.

Mitchell Storar is an emerging writer, and a medical student at Ohio University. His poems have appeared in Psychic Meatloaf, Weave, Jelly Bucket, and Dead Flowers.

Sean Sutherlin is studying for his PhD in Arts and Humanities at The University of Texas Dallas where he also teaches Rhetoric. His poetry has appeared as part of a multimedia performance at RO2 Gallery in Dallas and also in the art installation and accompanying book One Song, Three Composers by New Zealand artist Shannon Novak. He was awarded First Place for Undergraduate Poetry by the Texas Association of Creative Writing Teachers in 2006.

Jon Svec was born on a cherry farm in Southwestern Ontario. He studied English at the University of Waterloo before accepting a job at St. Francis Xavier University located in Antigonish, NS. His stories have been published in The Frequent and Vigorous Quarterly.

Christine Tsen is a cellist and chamber musician performing throughout New England. She attended Eastman School and the New England Conservatory of Music. She is a published musician and poet. Her poems are published in THRUSH Poetry Journal, Requiem Magazine, and Eunoia Review. In her experience so much of poetry feels like music, and music like poetry ~ and to her one lights up the other! More: http://www.ChristineThomasTsen.com.

Tina Vivian is the costume designer at Alma College, a small liberal arts college in the middle of Michigan.

Steven Wheat has been writing for the last seven years while teaching abroad, publishing pieces from Prague, Japan, China, Oman, and most recently Saudi Arabia. His works have most recently appeared in The Hobble Creek Review.

Abigail Whitehouse recently earned a BA in English with a concentration in Creative Writing from Eastern Kentucky University.

Jacqulyn Wilson has published work in the Orange Room Review. She is working towards my M.F.A. in Poetry at West Virginia University. She lives in Morgantown, WV with her son, Quentin.

MM Wittle is a professor of writing with an MFA from Rosemont College in Creative Writing. Her play, “Family Guidance” had a reading at the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia, PA and was selected for honorable mentioned at the 5th Annual Philadelphia Theatre Workshop’s Playwriting Competition. “The Education of Allie Rose” was a finalist in the Philadelphia Ethical Society Playwriting competition and was shortlisted in the Windsor Fringe Kenneth Branagh Award for New Drama in England. Her monologue, “Raised Right?” was featured in the NYCPlaywrights August Play of the Week. Her fiction has appeared in Nailpolish Stories, Transient, The Bond Street Review, Free Flash Fiction, The Fox Chase Review, and Philly Flash Inferno. For the past seven years, she’s been a fiction board member of the local non-profit literary magazine, Philadelphia Stories and am now a PS Books director.

Maggie Woodward is currently an undergraduate student at Western Kentucky University, studying English Literature, Creative Writing, and Gender & Women’s Studies. She was born and raised in the South—living in Mississippi, Florida, Tennessee, and Kentucky (twice). She loves the people and the fried pickles but hates the heat.

Jerrold Yam is a Singaporean first-year law undergraduate at University College London and the author of two poetry collections, Chasing Curtained Suns (2012) and Scattered Vertebrae (2012). His poems have been published worldwide, in journals such as Third Coast, The Enchanting Verses Literary Review, fwriction : review, Mascara Literary Review, nether magazine, Poetry Quarterly, Quantum Poetry Magazine, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Softblow and Washington Square Review, as well as featured in Pi Media, Singapore Memory Project and The Substation Love Letters Project. He won the National University of Singapore’s Creative Writing Competition 2011. Find him at http://jerroldyam.wordpress.com/.