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Issue #3, January 2022

Click author name to access publication.

Poetry
  • Maria Hiers is an MFA candidate in Poetry at the University of Houston. She has previously been published in the Tampa Bay Times and Ethos Literary Journal. 
     

  • Sarah Butkovic is a prospective MA student at Loyola University in Chicago. She loves any and all things literary: writing, reading, teaching, editing etc. Sarah's favorite genre to read and write in is fiction, but poetry is more or less her persistent mistress.
     

  • William Pattee is a writer and Master’s student at the University at Albany. His work has appeared in Albany Poets, and he published a short collection, The Rain, As It Knows Us, in November 2020. His work closely focuses on the plights of toxic masculinity, identity, and contemporary expressions of poverty.
     

  • David Banach teaches philosophy in New Hampshire, where he tends chickens, keeps bees, and watches the sky. He has published poems in Symmetry Pebbles and the Poets' Touchstone, and was a Pushcart nominee. He also has a poem, “Resurrection,” in the forthcoming COVID Spring II anthology published by Hobblebush Books. He is also a Poetry Reader at Passenger’s Journal.
     

  • Anastasia Vassos is the author of Nike Adjusting Her Sandal (Nixes Mate, 2021). Her chapbook The Lesser-Known Riddle of the Sphinx was a finalist in Two Sylvias Press 2021 Chapbook Contest. She is a reader for Lily Poetry Review, speaks three languages, and is a long-distance cyclist. She lives in Boston.
     

  • Wendy Drexler's third poetry collection, Before There Was Before, was published by Iris Press in 2017. She is a four-time Pushcart-Prize nominee, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Barrow Street, Cider Press Review, Ibbetson Street, J Journal, Nimrod, Prairie Schooner, Pangyrus, RHINO, Salamander, Solstice, Sugar House, The Atlanta Review, The Comstock Review, The Lily Poetry Review, The Hudson Review, The Mid-American Review, The Threepenny Review, and the Valparaiso Poetry Review, among others; featured on Verse Daily and WBUR’s Cognoscenti; and in numerous anthologies. Wendy is the Programming Co-Chair for the New England Poetry Club and, since 2018, the poet in residence at New Mission High School in Hyde Park, MA.
     

  • Jessica Willingham is a Lighthouse Writer's Workshop graduate. She is a former editor at Bustle and current fiction reader for Five South magazine. Her work has appeared in Thought Erotic. She lives and writes in Oklahoma, where she calls home. You can find her @jesswcreative.
     

  • Margaret D. Stetz, author of "Shadow Rabbit," is the Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies and Professor of Humanities at the University of Delaware. Although she has spent most of her life teaching and writing about literature, she still finds it hard to reconcile academia with the world that she knew as a working-class child growing up in Queens, New York. Many of her poems reflect this class-based tension and disjunction, along with issues such as domestic violence and abuse.
     

  • Amelia Díaz Ettinger is a Latinex BIPOC poet and writer. Her published books include Learning to Love a Western Sky by Airlie Press, Speaking at a Time /Hablando a la Vez by Redbat Press. and a chapbook, Fossils in a Red Flag by Finishing Line Press. Her poetry and short stories appear in many literary journals and anthologies. She resides in Eastern Oregon.
     

  • Michael Jemal has traveled the road for years and now is settled in Rhode Island, where he raises his son who has become Michael's greatest teacher. Along the way Michael has studied with Stephen Dunn and BJ Ward. They have been great mentors.
     

  • Casey Killingsworth has work in The American Journal of Poetry, Two Thirds North, and other journals. His first book of poems, A Handbook for Water was released by Cranberry Press in 1995 and his new collection is A nest blew down (Kelsay Books 2021). Casey has a Master’s degree from Reed College.
     

  • Christopher Riesco is a graudate of the MMU Writing School. He lives and works in Manchester, UK, and reviews poetry books on substack under the name of Lord Minimus. His own attempts at poetry sometimes turn up in the more tolerant journals.
     

  • Amanda Erin Miller is a Brooklyn-based writer and performer who earned her MFA in Creative Writing from The New School. Her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, The Blue Mountain Review, Freerange Nonfiction, Sylvia Magazine, JewishFiction.net, Poetry in the Time of Covid-19, Cratelit, So Long: Short Memoirs of Loss and Remembrance, Underwired Magazine and other publications. She is the co-editor of Words After Dark: A Lyrics, Lit & Liquor Anthology (2020) and author of One Breath, Then Another: A Memoir (2012). Since 2012, she has produced Lyrics, Lit & Liquor, an NYC literary and performance series. www.lucidriverpress.com.
     

  • Mary Ann Honaker is the author of Becoming Persephone (Third Lung Press, 2019). Her poems have appeared in Euphony, JMWW, Juked, Little Patuxent Review, Rattle.com, Sweet Tree Review, and elsewhere. Mary Ann holds an MFA from Lesley University. She currently lives in Beaver, West Virginia.
     

  • Subhaga Crystal Bacon the author of two volumes of poetry, Blue Hunger, 2020 from Methow Press, and Elegy with a Glass of Whisky, BOA Editions, 2004. A Queer Elder, she lives, writes, and teaches on the east slope of the North Cascade Mountains in Twisp, WA. Her recent work appears or is forthcoming in Queer Southeast Asia: A Journal of Transgressive Art, Queer Toronto Literary Magazine, River Heron Barks, and the Indianapolis Review. Her work can be found on www.subhagacrystalbacon.com.
     

  • Michelle McMillan-Holifield is a recent Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee. Her work has been included in or is forthcoming in Boxcar Poetry Review, Nelle, Sky Island Journal, Stirring, The Collagist, The Main Street Rag, Whale Road Review and Windhover among others. She hopes you one day find her poetry tacked to a tree somewhere in the Alaskan Wild.

Prose
  • Milo Todd's fiction focuses on the trans experience and the trans body. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming from SLICE Magazine, Response Magazine, Foglifter Journal, Home is Where You Queer Your Heart (Foglifter Press), Emerge: The 2019 Lambda Fellows Anthology (Lambda Literary Press), Writer Unboxed, Dead Darlings, GrubWrites, Everyday Feminism, and more. He was selected for the 2021 Tin House Winter Workshop, received a 2021 Monson Arts residency, was a 2020 Pitch Wars Mentee, a 2019 Lambda Literary Fellow in Fiction, and a 2016 Pechet Fellow for the Novel Incubator. He's Assistant Fiction Editor for Foglifter Journal, and a Fiction Reader for Split Lip Magazine.
     

  • Gillian Wills is an author and arts writer who has published with Australian Stage Online, Limelight, Griffith Review, Australian Book Review, The Australian, Weekend Review, Good Reading, The Strad (UK) Cut Common, Loudmouth, Arts Hub and Artist Profile. Her memoir, "Elvis and Me: how a world-weary musician. and a broken racehorse rescued each other, Finch" was released in 2016 in The UK, USA, Australia, Canada and NZ.
     

  • Alan Abrams has work published in the Black Boot.  He was the a long time contributor to a monthly newspaper and currently the author, if you will of many house designs over the course of fifty years.
     

  • Peter Newall was born in Sydney, Australia, where he worked as a road-mender, in a naval dockyard and as a lawyer, but later lived in Kyoto, Japan, and now in Odessa, Ukraine, where he sings for a popular local R’n’B band. He has been published in England, Hong Kong, Australia and the USA.
     

  • Kate Sowinski lives outside of Philadelphia with a Siamese cat and is currently writing a children's book series about a chameleon who solves crimes. She has been published by the Sad Girls Club and her artwork has been exhibited by The In Art Gallery, the Grey Cube Gallery, and the American Color Print Society.
     

  • Katy Keffer draws from life outside her window to write nonfiction, poetry and fiction. Some of her work is forthcoming (or found) on Sad Girls Club Literary Blog, the Ravens Perch and A Plate of Pandemic.
     

  • Michael Fontana lives and writes in beautiful Bella Vista, Arkansas. He is a retired activist, teacher and fundraiser. Follow him on Twitter: @mfontanawriter
     

  • Peter Prokesch is a writer and lives in Watertown, Massachusetts. His work has appeared in Four Way Review, and he is a reader for Epiphany. He also works as a carpenter for an energy-efficient construction company, building Net Zero and Passive Houses in the Boston area. He applied to MFA programs for Fall 2022 and hopes to trade in the hammer for the pen.

Music
  • Jessamyn Rains is a writer and musician living with her ridiculous husband and four odd children in Walden, Tennessee. Her interests are legion and include falling asleep to Trollope and playing music in downtown Chattanooga on the weekends.
     

  • Karyn Ann, Portland-based Soul/Americana singer-songwriter, has been described as a “combination of Patty Griffin grit and Amy Winehouse grace.” Her debut album Into the Depths (2015) and subsequent follow-up Be Loud (2018) garnered critical acclaim and radio play, leading this once geologist-turned-road musician to a steady following along the West Coast and beyond. She’s shared stages with Haley Johnson, Liam St. John, and Fox and Bones, as well as Emily Saliers of the Indigo Girls (at the 2017 Women’s Redrock Music Festival), and has performed at the legendary Bitter End in NYC . Her work is featured in the award-winning full-length film Undeserved (2016), and most recently in the indie-short Second Story (2022).
     

  • Robin Echo Young is a song writer and singer who plays guitar and performs as Folk Angel, a name given to her by a friend after knowing her for years but never hearing her sing hears her for the first time. Growing up in San Diego her dad and brother played guitar and taught her to play as a teenager. She loves folk songs from the 60s and 70s especially the music of John Denver, Emmylou Harris, Joan Baez and Peter, Paul and Mary. It was her dad that gave her a love of classic country music. She also does a Patsy Cline tribute show all over Southern California.
     

  • Bobbo Byrnes is a storytelling singer/songwriter, a throwback to a bygone era of mix tapes and AM Gold. Bobbo read too much Kerouac as a youth and though he no longer hitchhikes he is still a vagabond at heart seeking to continue on his path - singing and strumming, learning and sharing stories, and connecting with people.
     

  • Meng Ren is a DJ and a ph.D. student in ethnomusicology at University of North Texas.
     

  • Keith Morris earned his BA in English and Psychology from the University of Mississippi and earned his MA in English from Mississippi State University. His poems appear in FishFood, Sonder Midwest, Cathexis Northwest, The View from Woodall, and The Louisville Review. His music appears in Tenth Street Miscellany. Other releases can be found at https://keithmorris11.bandcamp.com/. He teaches English at Itawamba Community College in Fulton, MS, and lives in Tupelo, MS, with his wife and two sons.
     

  • Joel Peckham is a musician, poet, and essayist. Joel has published seven books of poetry and nonfiction, most recently Bone Music (SFAU) and Body Memory (New Rivers). Individual poems and essays have appeared recently in or are forthcoming Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, The Sugar House Review, Cave Wall, The Beloit Poetry Journal, The Sun, and many others. Currently, he is editing an anthology of ecstatic poetry for New Rivers Press, titled Wild Gods: The Ecstatic in American Poetry and Prose.
     

  • The Odd Birds are two of the least cool rock stars you'll ever meet (no really, we met doing musical theatre). They realized they shared a love of music and decided to make some together. They've been playing and singing their blend of Americana/country/folk-y music throughout California for over a decade and just finished a tour in Europe. The Odd Birds strength lies in their vocal harmonies - with Ron's rougher twang complementing Jennifer's sweeter voice, they bring out the best in each other. They play intimate music about healing broken hearts and repairing broken connections, with a focus on a sound that's real and accessible. They released their first EP Better Days in 2020 and now are excited to release their first full-length album Tremolo Heart.
     

  • Rivky Gee is a NYC singer-songwriter, recipient of the $5,000 NY arts grant, nominated by the IMEA Awards, selected for New York Musical Theater’s top female artists of 2019, with her song, “Hear Me Mr. Honey," produced by Grammy-winning Amy Lee of Evanescence. Rivky’s music has appeared on PBS’s Mysteries Of Mental Illness. Her career jump-started composing for Off-Broadway, meeting her friend and Cellist Brian Sanders, releasing their first album, inviting them to The Kennedy Center, and stages featuring Suzanne Vega. Rivky also happens to live with a form of schizophrenia, performing while speaking of her lived experiences, combining advocacy work, pushing the boundary to welcome more neurodiverse inclusion on mainstream music stages, which often doesn’t exist for every unique artist. linktr.ee/rivkygmusic

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