Contibutors

ISSUE 1

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S.R. Aichinger’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in |tap| lit mag, Into the Void Magazine, Ghost City Review, Cruel Garters, Bluestem, and The Paragon Journal, among others. He has an MFA from Creighton University and lives in Omaha, Nebraska.

 

Elvira Basevich is a poet and Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan, Dearborn. Her poem is written in response to the fascist march in Charlottesville, Virginia and in memory of her paternal grandmother, Nelli Basevich (1917-2017), a Russian Jew, who was a ballerina, factory worker, schoolteacher, and professional map-maker. Having survived both WWI & II, she lost her faith in god, but, miraculously, gained a stalwart faith in love and the capacity for human goodness. The poem explores the moral courage necessary to maintain this kind of faith and is written as a libretto that narrates the movements of a ballerina.

 

Rebecca Bird was born in 1991. She was named by the Huffington Post as a New British Poet to Watch in 2017. Her debut chapbook Shrinking Ultraviolet was published by Eyewear in June 2017.    

 

Daniel Blokh is a 16-year-old American-Jewish writer with Russian immigrant parents, living in Birmingham, Alabama. He is the author of the memoir In Migration (BAM! Publishing, 2016), the chapbook Grimmening (forthcoming from Diode Editions), and the chapbook Holding Myself Hostage In The Kitchen (Lit City Press, 2017). His work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, DIALOGIST, Permafrost, Blueshift, Cleaver, and more.    

 

Meghan Chou lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She is pursuing a Bachelor’s degree at the University of Michigan in English and Film with concentrations, respectively, in Creative Writing and Screenwriting. She has worked at Midwestern Gothic, Salamander Magazine, The Michigan Daily, and The Michigan Review of Prisoner Creative Writing.

 

Bailey Cohen is an Ecuadorian-American undergraduate student at NYU studying Journalism, English Literature, and Creative Writing. He has poems forthcoming in the Spring 2018 issues of West 10th, Spires Literary Magazine, and more. He also runs the blog Coffee Table which features weekly close-readings of contemporary poetry with an emphasis on upcoming authors.   

 

Tarik Dobbs is an emerging poet. He is a dual-degree candidate at the University of Michigan pursuing a curriculum in General Studies and Art & Design. His poetry sequence ‘Men from Mankind Who Sought Refuge in Men from the Jinn,’ earned him a fellowship in the Fall 2017 Hopwood Awards Program and the Paul and Sonia Handleman Poetry Award. His work explores a reconciliation of identity; what it means to be queer, Arab, and Muslim, in the post-9/11 War on Terror.

 

Curtis Donovan is a visual artist specialising in energetic abstract works, as well as public art and community projects. Born in Birmingham, England, he now operates in South London, showcasing work that brazenly responds to its environment and combines his background in interior design with ten years of street art experience. Each piece becomes a space of its own, presented garishly in a combination of aerosol, brushwork and collage. Curtis’ imagery responds to an examination of metropolitan existence through an alternative lens, presenting intimate stories about human interaction.

 

Elizabeth Ellen is the author of the novel Person/a, the story collections Saul Stories and Fast Machine, and the poetry collection Elizabeth Ellen. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.       

 

Reuben Canning Finkel is a fourth-year undergraduate student currently enrolled in Memorial University of Newfoundland’s Honours Literature Studies. His most recent work can be found in Frontier Poetry, Free Framed and Paragon 7 with honourable mentions in both the E.J. Pratt Poetry Prize and SPARKS Literary Contest. Reuben is currently the editor-in-chief for Memorial University's Cartwheel Literary Journal. He lives in downtown St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.            

 

Nathan Hassall has an MA (Distinction) in Creative Writing from The University of Kent. He is an editor for The Luxembourg Review and co-founder and editor for Guttural. He has been published or is forthcoming in various magazines including, Five:2:One, Watershed Review, cattails, Failed Haiku, Blithe Spirit, Cat on a Leash Review, Angry Old Man Magazine, and Yellow Chair Review. Hassall's most recent chapbook is The Flesh and Mortar Prophecy.

 

Heidi Howell works loosely in the experimental/language/Black Mountain/NY School traditions. Heidi has published poems in online and print literary magazines, including s/word, Psychic Meatloaf, the Eastern Iowa Review, Otoliths, la fovea, What Light, So To Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language and Art, and the Washington Review, which nominated her poems for a Pushcart Prize. She holds an MFA from George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia. 

 

Brooke June is a poet and violinist residing in Austin, Texas. She grew up in southern California and earned her BA in Music Industry Studies at California State University, Northridge. A lifelong lover of writing, she is currently an active member of the Austin Poetry Society (APS) and maintains a personal blog. She performs regularly at open mic events throughout the Austin community. Her poetry has also been published with Driftwood Press and Third Street Writers.

 

Whitney Kerutis is an Arizona native currently residing in Boulder, Colorado. She is an MFA candidate at University of Colorado Boulder where she works on, currently or previously, several projects including Timber Journal, Subito Press and Letter Machine Editions, as well as holding the founder/editor position for GASHER Journal. She is the 2017 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards poetry winner. Her work has appeared in Breakwater Review, Anamesa, WINDOW, and Thought Erotic. Her first chapbook Chorus Song is forthcoming on Patient Sounds Press.

 

Charles Leipart’s literary work has appeared in the Bayou Magazine, the Jabberwock Review, Burningword Literary Journal, Panolpy Literary Zine, the Eastern Iowa Review, and the Scene and Heard Journal. He also writes for the theatre: Cream Cakes in Munich, 1st Prize Award 2016 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival; an excerpt from his award-winning play about the private life of E.M. Forster, A Kind of Marriage, appears in QU Literary Magazine Winter 2018. Charles is a former fellow of the Edward Albee Foundation, and a member of the Dramatists Guild. He lives and writes in New York City.    

 

J. Adam McGalliard received an MFA in Painting from the New York Academy of Art in 2003. He worked as an artist assistant for world-renowned artist Jeff Koons for four years and taught painting at Brooklyn College and City University of New York. McGalliard's work has been featured in exhibitions at the Museo de la Cuidad de Mexico in Mexico City, Mexico, the Cameron Museum of Art, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Forbes, Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center, Winterrundgang der SpinnereiGalerien in Leipzig, Germany, HDLU Ring Gallery in Zagreb, Croatia and Stolen Space in London, England, Sotheby's and Phillips de Pury.

 

Andrew McIntosh is a Scottish-Highland born painter who lives and works in London. By lifting away small sections of his paintings, Andrew gives small glimpses into the hidden depths behind rough exteriors in vivid landscapes. Exquisitely executed, his paintings have beautiful detail and distinctly Scottish undertones.              

 

Jill Pajka is a rambler, writer, wrangler and teacher living and working at an educational farm in the California redwoods. Originally from Ohio, she currently teaches teenagers about food systems, how to herd opinionated sheep, to experiment with herbal milk-soap, and to recognize their ability to adapt, connect and believe in the power of voice. Her published work includes Orpheus Art and Literary Journal, DaytonMostMetro, and Dayton’s Celebration of the Arts.

 

Chris Pillette is a poet and long-time teacher in New Jersey. He is an MFA graduate of the Creative Writing program at Rutgers University-Newark. Pillette often writes about art and anxiety, human dysfunction, and New York City. 

 

Stav Poleg’s publication credits include The New Yorker, Poetry London and Poetry Ireland Review. Her graphic-novel installation “Dear Penelope,” with artist Laura Gressani, was acquired by the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. She lives in Cambridge, England. 

 

Svetlana Sterlin lives in Brisbane, Australia, and studies a BFA (Creative and Professional Writing). An only child born in New Zealand to a Russian family, Svetlana has grown up an outsider and an immigrant, dragged across the globe by ever-migrating parents. Her work appears in Germ Magazine and Entropy Magazine, and on her fledgling blogs.

 

T.D. Walker’s poems and stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, Web Conjunctions, The Cascadia Subduction Zone, Abyss & Apex, The Future Fire, and elsewhere. She writes about feminism, science fiction, and freethought at her blog Freethinking Ahead.      

 

Sarah Weeks is a career English teacher from New Hampshire. She currently lives on a horse farm in New Jersey with her girlfriend, Lisa, and their Foxhound, Exodus. Her favourite authors include May Sarton, Wallace Stegner, Olive Schreiner, John McPhee, and Joyce Carol Oates.

                                                                          

Eley Williams is writer-in-residence at the University of Greenwich. A poetry pamphlet Frit (Sad Press, 2017) is available, and her collection of prose Attrib. and other stories (Influx Press) was listed among Best Books of 2017 by The Guardian, The Telegraph and The New Statesman and chosen by Ali Smith as one of the year's best debut fiction at the Cambridge Literary Festival. It is currently shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize 2018 and longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize 2018.