Contributor Bios

New Alchemy Finalists

Ava Bergen is a freelance writer, artist, and videographer based in Minneapolis. She鈥檚 studied Creative Writing at Oxford University, and recently graduated with degrees in Communication and English from Houghton College. You can follow more of her work on Instagram @avatoast.

AJ Cunder graduated from Seton Hall University with a Masters in Creative Writing after receiving his bachelor鈥檚 degree in English and Philosophy. His work appears or is forthcoming in Harpur PalateBreath & ShadowQuantum Fairy TalesRose Red ReviewFlash Fiction Magazine, and NAILED Magazine, among others. He has served as a volunteer firefighter, a police officer, earned a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, and has advocated for those with disabilities, living with type I diabetes himself since the age of seventeen months. Follow him on Twitter @aj_cunder

Tania De Rozario is a visual artist, writer, and winner of Singapore鈥檚 2011 Golden Point Award for English Poetry. She is the author of And The Walls Come Crumbling Down and Tender Delirium (2016/2013, Math Paper Press), and her work has been showcased in London, New York, Amsterdam, San Francisco, Goa, Spain, Canberra, and Singapore. She is currently working on her third book, The Body in a Series of Echoes.

Stephen D. Gutierrez is the author of three books, including Live from Fresno y Los, which won an American Book Award, and The Mexican Man in His Backyard: Stories & Essays. He is a widely published short story writer and essayist, as well as a dramatist. Most recently, his work has appeared or is about to appear in Catamaran Literary Reader, Under the Gum Tree, The Los Angeles Review, The Manifest-Station, Goliad, East Bay Review, and the Pact Press anthology Speak and Speak Again. Originally from Los Angeles, he teaches at Cal State East Bay in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

Carlene Kucharczyk earned her MFA in Poetry from North Carolina State University and BA in Literature from Wagner College. Her work has appeared in Tupelo QuarterlyStrange Horizons, and Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, and is forthcoming in the Connecticut River Review. She is the recipient of a scholarship from The Frost Place Poetry Seminar and currently lives in Connecticut.

John Langfeld is a retired musician and arts educator who believes that, in the forest and on top of desks, digits make noise.  His poetry has been called epigrammatic, a term joined at the hip with 鈥渁phoristic鈥 and 鈥渁pothegmatic.鈥  He prefers the moniker 鈥渂revitist.鈥  It is easier on the tongue.

Lynn Lu is a visual artist trained in the USA, France, Japan, and Australia. She lives and works in Singapore and London. Lynn exhibits, performs, and lectures worldwide. Recent venues include the National Gallery Singapore (2017), the Barbican Centre in London (2016), Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2015), Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (2013), Singapore Art Museum (2012), Tate Modern (2010), and 798 Art Zone in Beijing (2009).

Ian Maxton, a writer and poet, has been published previously in Confluence MagazineVague Visages, and Bright Wall/Dark Room.

Jeff Pearson is a graduate of the University of Idaho鈥檚 MFA Program and has been published by Noble/Gas QuarterlyBlack Rock & SageOtis Nebulaa capella zooHeavy Feather ReviewShampooSalt FrontOpen Minds QuarfterlyAxolotlBarrelhouse, and Moon City Review. He is The Managing Editor for Blood Orange Review and Poetry Editor for 5脳5 Lit Mag as well as an instructor at Washington State University. Tweets at @legoverleg.

Jakin Rintelman is a video editor, writer, and gamer who spends most of her time 草榴社区 to podcasts and trying to find a way to trisect angles. Apparently, this is impossible, but she remains determined nonetheless. She recently graduated from Houghton College with a B.S. in Media Arts and Visual Communication and is always on the lookout for collaborators who want to find new and innovative ways to tell stories.

Roe Sellers is from Baltimore, Maryland, but currently lives in Georgia where he is an MFA Candidate and a Graduate Teaching Fellow at Georgia College & State University. He lives remarkably close to campus with a weiner dog, a beagle, and another human. This is his first publication.

Bruce Van Noy was born in Seattle, raised in Northern California, educated in genetics and molecular biology at the University of California, Berkeley and in poetry and creative writing at the University of Redlands. A former commercial fisherman in 草榴社区, and a long time professional ski instructor in Ketchum, Idaho, he currently lives on Orcas Island, a few miles off the far northwestern coast of Washington and a stone鈥檚 throw across the water from Canada.

 

Fiction

Bryce Berkowitz is an MFA candidate at West Virginia University. He is the Editor-in-Chief at Cheat River Review. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Third Coast, Passages North, The Pinch, Eleven Eleven, Tampa Review, Permafrost, Evansville Review, San Pedro River Review, Watershed Review, Hawai鈥檌 Pacific Review, among other publications.

Shawn Campbell was born in Eastern Oregon in 1983.  He currently resides in Portland where he works as an economist and lives with a house plant named Morton.  This is his eleventh short story to be published and his first book, The Uncanny Valley, is available for purchase on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo.

Craig Chanin teaches in the Writing Program at Rutgers University鈥揘ewark and he is a writing tutor at St. Joseph鈥檚 College.  His work has also appeared in Necessary Fiction.

Shebana Coelho is a writer and director, originally from India, now based in New Mexico. She received a Fiction Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts and a Fulbright grant to Mongolia. Her stories and poems have appeared in numerous US and international journals. She is currently working on a short story collection, Falling Off, about characters in India, the US, and nameless places who are anchored and adrift, confronting trust, love, death, sex, and healing. Her website is .

David Colosi has spent a good part of the last few years on islands making audio graffiti with the saxophone in abandoned military structures. Not long ago he team-taught a workshop on Raymond Roussel in Brussels. In 2015 he delivered a lecture on the philosophy of tickling to a packed house of philosophers in New York at 3:50am. His bizarre folktale 鈥淢iss Pumpernickel Bread鈥 is part of the Artist Novels collection at the MHKA in Antwerp. Recently as a host on Clocktower Radio and as a Media Arts Fellow at BRIC, he has recorded his friends answering questions. His writings have appeared in Laughing Blood (Left Hand Books) and From Totems to Hip Hop: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900-2002IntercourseKonchThe Los Angeles Times, and in 2017 he was a finalist in the Furious Flower Gwendolyn Brooks Centennial Poetry Prize from James Madison University. He has exhibited artwork nationally and internationally. He lives in Brooklyn where he continues to make Three-Dimensional Literature. ()

Danielle (Dani) Dunckley is a yoga teacher and a writer. Her short story 鈥淪car鈥 recently appeared in (b)OINK zine.

Ryan Goodwin lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas where he bartends at an Irish Pub and envies everyone with a backyard and a dog. He is the winner of Stephen F. Austin State University鈥檚 2016 Ferguson Award for fiction, along with their 2016 Literary Award for fiction. He was a nonfiction editor for the undergraduate literary journal Humid, where he gained an exclusive interview with Wells Tower, and a reader for the national literary journal REAL. He is currently finishing a first novel.

Mitch Zigler is a writer living and working in Portland, OR. This is his first publication.

 

Nonfiction

David Schweidel writes fiction and creative nonfiction.  His novel Confidence of the Heart won the Milkweed National Fiction Prize.  His nonfiction book, What Men Call Treasure, written with Robert Boswell, was a Western Writers Award finalist.  He lives in Berkeley and teaches poetry as an elementary school volunteer.

 

Hybrid

Paul Dresman is a poet, a translator of poetry in Spanish, co-editor of bi-lingual 丑别濒颈肠贸辫迟别谤辞, a lyrical essayist, and a scholar of 20th century literature who lives in Eugene, Oregon.  He wrote 鈥淐ante Jondo鈥 after a stay in Granada, Spain last year, including a visit to the the former home of Modernist composer Manuel de Falla, where the gathering of eminent Spaniards Picasso, Segovia, Lorca, and de Falla occurred in l922.  It was the earlier home of the Pineda family, including l9th century heroine Mariana, the subject of one of Garcia Lorca鈥檚 first plays.

Sarah Escue is a poet, visual artist, and editor in Boulder, Colorado. Her poems and artwork appear or are forthcoming in Gulf Stream Literary MagazineAtticus ReviewThe ElephantsDialogist, Idle MagazineDIAGRAMWildnessLullwater Review, and others. Her first chapbook Bruised Gospel is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press in the fall of 2017. You can visit her website at .

J.I. Kleinberg is artist, poet, freelance writer, and co-editor of Noisy Water: Poetry from Whatcom County, Washington (Other Mind Press, 2015). A Pushcart nominee and winner of the 2016 Ken Warfel Fellowship, her found poems have appeared recently in DiagramHeavy Feather ReviewRise Up ReviewThe Tishman ReviewHedgerowOtoliths, and elsewhere. She lives in Bellingham, Washington and blogs most days at thepoetrydepartment.wordpress.com.

Antonio Lopez is a native of East Palo Alto, California. Raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, he received a double B.A. in Global Cultural Studies (Literature) and African-American studies from Duke University (Class of 2016). He鈥檚 an inaugural John Lewis Fellow, a recipient of the Rudolph William Rosati Creative Writing Award, and a finalist for the 2017 Nazim Hikmet Poetry Prize. His undergraduate thesis, Spic鈥檌ng into Existence, explored the concept of ethnopoetics as people of color鈥檚 artistic-political response to regimes of power. His nonfiction has been featured in TeenInk, The Chronicle, and PEN/America, and his poetry in Gramma PressEclectica, Hispanecdotes, Acentos ReviewSinking City, and What Rough Beast. He is currently pursuing a Master in Fine Arts (poetry) at Rutgers University-Newark.

Gleah Powers is the author of the novella Edna and Luna, published by Vine Leaves Press and named a Finalist in the Novella Category of the 2017 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. A recipient of an award from the Barbara Deming Memorial fund and a Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared in print and online in Longridge Review, Southwestern American Literature, Prime Number Magazine, Red Savina Review, New Delta Review, and many other literary journals. She completed her formal art training at the California Institute of the Arts and  has worked professionally as a painter, actor, and dancer in New York, Los Angeles, and Mexico City. Currently, she is at work on a short story collection and a memoir. Visit her website at 

Sarah J. Sloat lives in Frankfurt, a stone鈥檚 throw from Schopenhauer鈥檚 grave. Her poems and prose have appeared in The OffingHayden鈥檚 Ferry Review, and Sixth Finch, among other journals. Sarah鈥檚 poetry chapbook on typefaces and texts, Inksuite, is available from Dancing Girl Press, which also published Heiress to a Small Ruin in 2016.

Dr. Masha Sukovic is a writer, a professor of Gender Studies, a mother, a chef, a performer, a visual artist, and an immigrant from a country that no longer exists. She speaks five languages and has a super power called synesthesia: her brain interprets words as moving images, numbers as colors, and tastes as shapes, colors, and sounds. She can taste a recipe simply by reading it. In her writing, she explores the intersections between various dimensions of identity, gender and sexual expression, bodily trauma, psychic wounds, stigma, and citizenship status. Her work attempts to give a voice to the experiences of immigrants and disenfranchised individuals, especially those who identify as neurodivergent, LGBTQ+, or disabled, as well as people of underrepresented races, cultures, and religions. She was the winner of the 2017 San Francisco Writing Contest in the Adult Fiction Category with the first chapter of her novel-in-progress, The Taste of Names and Other Things.

 

Poetry

Daniel Aristi was born in Spain. He studied French Literature as an undergrad (French Lycee in San Sebastian). He now lives and writes in Switzerland with his wife and two children. Daniel鈥檚 work is forthcoming or has been recently featured in Queen鈥檚 Ferry Press Anthology Best of Small Fictions 2016 (judged by Stuart Dybek), Superstition ReviewDewpoint, and New Plains Review. Daniel is a Pushcart nominee (2015). He can be contacted at aristi.daniel@gmail.com.

Scott Banks is a writer and photographer living in Anchorage, 草榴社区. His poetry has been published in Cirque and Stoneboat literary magazines as well as 49writers Online. His poem 鈥淚 Wore Cowboy Boots To Work Today鈥 was runner up in the Harold McCracken Endowment Poetry Contest. His essays have been published in Gray鈥檚 Sporting JournalThe Drake草榴社区 Magazine草榴社区 Dispatch Sunday Magazine, and American Heritage Magazine, among others. He has an MFA in Creative Writing and Literary Arts from the University of 草榴社区 Anchorage.

Bryce Berkowitz is an MFA candidate at West Virginia University. He is the Editor-in-Chief at Cheat River Review. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Third Coast, Passages North, The Pinch, Eleven Eleven, Tampa Review, Permafrost, Evansville Review, San Pedro River Review, Watershed Review, Hawai鈥檌 Pacific Review, among other publications.

Emma Bolden is the author of medi(t)ations (Noctuary Press) and Maleficae (GenPop Books), as well as four chapbooks. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Best American Poetry, Poetry Daily, and The Best Small Fictions, as well as journals such as Gulf Coast, StoryQuarterly, Shenandoah, The Pinch, Prairie Schooner, New MadridColorado ReviewConduit, and TriQuarterly. Her honors include a 2017 Creative Writing Fellowship from the NEA and the Barthelme Prize for Short Prose. She serves as Senior Reviews Editor for Tupelo Quarterly.

Daniel Blokh is a 16-year-old American writer of Russian-Jewish descent, living in Birmingham, Alabama. He is the author of the memoir In Migration (BAM! Publishing 2016), the micro-chapbook The Wading Room (Origami Poems Project 2016), and the chapbook Grimmening (forthcoming from Diode Editions). His work has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing awards and the Foyle Young Poet awards, and has appeared in DIALOGISTthe Blueshift JournalCleaverGigantic SequinsForage PoetryAvis MagazineThin Air MagazineCicada Magazine, and more. He writes a monthly column for the Wild Word.

Zo Brigley is the author of two books of poetry: Conquest (Bloodaxe, 2012) and The Secret (Bloodaxe, 2007). She has received fellowships from the British Society of Authors, the Welsh Academy, the English Association, and the Humanities Research Centre. She was awarded an Eric Gregory Award for the best British poets under 30, and was listed for the Dylan Thomas Prize for the best international writers under 35. A native of Wales, she now lives in Ohio, where she works as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Ohio State University.

Abigail Chabitnoy earned her MFA in poetry at Colorado State University and was a 2016 Peripheral Poets fellow. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Hayden鈥檚 Ferry ReviewPleiadesTinderbox Poetry JournalNat Brut, Red Ink, and Mud City, and she has written reviews for Colorado Review, the Volta blog, and The Fort Collins Courier.

Adam Chiles鈥檚 first collection, Evening Land, was nominated for the 2009 Gerald Lampert Memorial award for best first book in Canada. His work has been anthologized in Best New Poets 2007 (Samovar) and has appeared in such journals as Barrow Street, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cimarron Review, Copper Nickel, Gulf Coast, Indiana ReviewPainted Bride Quarterly and RHINO. He is the recipient of scholarships and grants from the Banff School of Fine Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers鈥 Conference, the Canada Council, Gilman School in Baltimore, where he was the 2003鈥2004 Reginald S. Tickner Writing Fellow and the Sewanee Writer鈥檚 Conference. Adam is professor of English and Creative Writing at Northern Virginia Community College.

Charlotte Covey is from St. Mary鈥檚 County, Maryland. Currently, she is an MFA candidate in Poetry at the University of Missouri 鈥 St. Louis. She has poetry published or forthcoming in journals such as The Minnesota ReviewSalamander ReviewThe Normal SchoolThe MacGuffin, and Emerson Review. In 2015, she was nominated for an AWP Intro Journal Award. She is co-editor-in-chief of Milk Journal.

Mike Crossley works in Los Angeles as an IT consultant. His fiction, poetry, and photography has appeared in various publications, such as Hobart and Prelude Magazine. He splits his time between the recording studio and the library. More at .

Fred Dale is a husband to his wife, Valerie, and a father to his dog, Earl.  He is a Senior Instructor in the English Department at the University of North Florida.  His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Sugar House ReviewCrack the SpineChiron ReviewClackamas Literary  Review, and others.

Garrett De Temple received his MFA in poetry from Manhattanville College in 2014. His work has appeared in various magazines, most recently Ground Fresh Thursday Press and Drunk Monkeys. He is currently the editor for a financial advisory firm for nonprofits by day and a musician and writer by, well, later in the day and night, and one half of the songwriting duo Curly-DeTemple and the band SkyMagik ().

Danielle DeTiberus teaches Creative Writing at the Charleston School of the Arts. Her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry 2015Arts & Letters[PANK], RattleThe Southeast ReviewSpoon River Poetry ReviewTar River Poetry, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of fellowships from the South Carolina Academy of Authors and the Poetry Society of South Carolina (PSSC). She currently serves as the PSSC鈥檚 Program Chair, inviting and hosting nationally renowned poets for readings and seminars in Charleston. You can read more about her work at .

Aran Donovan lives in the charming squalor of New Orleans. Her poetry has appeared in such journals as RhinoRattle, New Ohio Review, and Best New Poets 2013. She can only spell occasionally sometimes, and she always tweets sporadically @barelymarigny.

Frankie Drayus has recent work in Gemini Magazine, BROAD! and Poet Lore.  She lives in Los Angeles.

Keith Mark Gaboury earned an M.F.A. in creative writing from Emerson College. While his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in such literary journals as After Happy Hour Review, Fife:2:One Magazine, The Birds We Piled Loosely, and New Millennium Writings, Keith has been rejected from The Boston ReviewThe Paris Review, and Poetry. He also co-founded a social justice-themed online literary magazine, Words Apart. While spending his days as an early childhood educator, he spends his nights writing poetry in San Francisco, California.

David Gewanter鈥榮 new poetry book, Fort Necessity (U. Chicago Press, 2018) shapes documents into poems about factory and prison labor, industrial violence, and how we are formed and broken by work.  Previous poetry books: War BirdThe Sleep of Reason; and In the Belly (all from Chicago).  Prizes include: Whiting; Witter Bynner; Hopwood; Academy of American Poets; Zacharis; English Speaking Union.  He co-edited Robert Lowell: Collected Poems (FSG), and teaches at Georgetown.

Henry Goldkamp loves in Saint Louis / New Orleans / the spirit of gratitude. He drinks river humidity / savors his luck. His recent work appears in Mudfish / Hoot / Blood Orange Review / b(OINK) / Sierra Nevada Review / Pretty Owl / Folaite Oak / etc. His public art has been covered by Time / NPR / etc. To read up on / contemporarily stalk Henry, google 鈥渉enry goldkamp鈥 / 鈥榞ram @wthstl with a fresh beverage.

Carolyn Guinzio is the author of four collections, most recently SPINE (Free Verse Editions, Parlor Press, 2016). She lives in Fayetteville, AR. Find her online at .

Emma Hyche is an MFA candidate at Colorado State University. A winner of the 2016 AWP Intro Journals Project, her work is forthcoming in The Tampa Review and online at .

Paul Jolly was raised in Oakland California and now lives in the outskirts of Washington DC.  His poems have also appeared in the Columbia Journal.

Tom Kelly is an incoming Creative Writing PhD candidate at Florida State University (fall 2017). He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Old Dominion University and his poems appear or are forthcoming in The Southeast ReviewBarrelhouseGulf StreamPainted Bride QuarterlyGargoyledecomP, and other journals. Follow him on twitter @tomvkelly.

Lisa Lewis鈥檚 most recent books are Burned House with Swimming Pool (American Poetry Journal Prize, Dream Horse Press, 2011) and The Body Double (Georgetown Review Press, 2016).  New work appears or is forthcoming in New England ReviewPlumeCarolina QuarterlyFour Way ReviewAmerican Literary Review, Florida Review, and elsewhere.  She teaches creative writing at Oklahoma State University and serves as poetry editor for the Cimarron Review.    

Ellyn Lichvar is the managing editor of The Louisville Review and works on the staff of Spalding University鈥檚 MFA in Writing program. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in DIAGRAMBOAATThe JournalMeridianThe Minnesota ReviewWhiskey Island, and others.

Kate Lindroos teaches writing in Western Massachusetts. Recent poems appear or are forthcoming in JubilatSixth Finch, and Barrow Street.

Ray Liversidge is an Australian poet. His latest book is no suspicious circumstances: portraits of poets (dead) published in 2012. His other books are: Obeying the Call; The Barrier Range; Triptych Poets: Issue One; The Divorce Papers. He has a new book coming out later this year. Ray has his own website at .

Regina Marie started writing with great urgency late in life after a long career designing software. She recently received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has appeared in Poet Lore, CALYX, and Briarcliff Review. She lives with her wife in Salt Lake City, UT.

Kat Moore was the winner of the 2016 Profane Nonfiction Prize. Her essays are in Sidereal MagazineBlunderbussSalt HillNew SouthWhiskey IslandPithead ChapelYemassee, and others. She has poems in Maudlin HousedecomP, and Souvenir. She was also awarded a residency this June at the Sundress Academy of the Arts. She teaches writing to middle schoolers in Memphis, TN.

Jessica Morey-Collins is a Pushcart nominated poet and educator living in New Orleans, Louisiana. She received her MFA from the University of New Orleans, where she won an Academy of American Poets award and worked as associate poetry editor for Bayou Magazine. She was a finalist for the 2016 Iron Horse Review Chapbook Contest and the 4th Annual Gigantic Sequins Poetry Contest. Her poems and essays can be found in PleiadesThe PinchJukedAnimal Literary Journal, and elsewhere.

Irene O鈥橤arden鈥檚 poetry has found its way to stage, e-screen, hardcover, literary magazines, and anthologies. Her critically acclaimed play , (Samuel French) played sold-out houses at Off-Broadway at the Cherry Lane Theatre and was nominated for a . O鈥橤arden won a Pushcart Prize for her lyric essay 鈥淕lad To Be Human鈥 (Untreed Reads). Harper published her memoir Fat Girl (Untreed Reads,e-form) and her poems and essays have been featured in dozens of literary journals and anthologies. O鈥橤arden founded The Art Garden, a performing literary magazine which she produced and hosted for twenty-five years. She now contributes to the spoken word event 650-Where Writers Read, in New York City and Sarah Lawrence College. Irene is also a Poetry Educator with the Hudson Highlands chapter of the national River Of Words program, connecting children to nature via poetry and art. Her new book of poetry, Fulcrums: Selected Poems was just published by Nirala Press and is available on Amazon.

Tanner Pruitt is a poet from Macon, Georgia. He is an MFA candidate in poetry at the Iowa Writers鈥 Workshop, and his poems have appeared in American Chordata, the Greensboro Review, and the Minnesota Review, among other places.

Billy Reynolds was born and raised in Huntsville, Alabama (鈥淭he Rocket City鈥).His poems have been published in 32 PoemsBellevue Literary ReviewChattahoochee ReviewIron Horse Literary ReviewSewanee Theological Review, and Zone 3, among others. Currently, he lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Jonathan Riccio is a PhD candidate at the University of Southern Mississippi鈥檚 Center for Writers. His work has appeared in BoothCleaverCutBank OnlineHawai鈥檌 ReviewRedividerSwitchback, and Waxwing, among others. He received his MFA from the University of Arizona.

Brittney Scott鈥檚 first poetry collection, The Derelict Daughter, won the New American Poetry Prize. She is also a recipient of the Joy Harjo Prize for Poetry, as well as the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Best New Poets, The Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, The New Republic, Narrative Magazine, Cincinnati Review, 草榴社区 Quarterly Review, Linebreak, and elsewhere. She homesteads on seven acres in rural Virginia.

James Wyshynski received his MFA from the University of Alabama. He is a former editor of the Black Warrior Review. His poems have appeared in Hayden鈥檚 Ferry ReviewTerminus, River StyxInterimThe Chattahoochee ReviewNortheast Corridor, and others. They are forthcoming in the The Cortland Review and Passager. His manuscript, Romancing Akhmatova, is in search of a publisher. He currently lives and works in Marietta, Georgia.

 

Art

Linda Laino is an artist, writer, and teacher who has been making art in one form or another for over 35 years. Holding an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, she enjoys playing with words as much as form and color. Since 2012, she has resided in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico where the surreal atmosphere and sensuous colors have wormed their way into her paintings. Finding beautiful things on the ground is a favorite pastime. Her art can be seen at Some of her essays and poetry can be found on,, and.

Sandeep Kumar Mishra is an outsider artist, an international freelance writer, and a lecturer. His works are artistic manifestation of his actual self and show the heart for nature and its beautiful creations including humankind especially woman. He runs an academy called 鈥淜ishlaya Outsider Art Academy鈥 in his hometown to train the novice art students. His first art exhibition was in the National Club Art gallery, Sujangarh, Rajasthan, India, January 1-January 3, 1994. His latest art exhibition is by Visart, Shelter Group Brightview, September 7 鈥 September 18, 2016,Concourse Gallery, Rockville, MD,USA.

Ian Park is southern queer artist from Little Rock, Arkansas. He spent his childhood in the tiny town of Hartman, AR and later attended college at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock where he earned his BA in Ceramics and Secondary Art Education. He primarily works in clay, paper, and mixed media. For three years he taught art in the Little Rock public school system. Afterwards, he continued teaching for another year as an artist in residence at the Flower City Arts Center in Rochester, New York. He has had his works in shows such as the Arkansas Delta ExhibitionSip, a ceramic cup show in Savannah, Georgia; and Twin Cups at MWSU in Missouri. Currently he is a working artist aspiring to achieve his MFA or another ceramics residency program for the 2017-2018 year.

Rebecca Pyle lives in at the foot of blue-purple mountains in Salt Lake City, not far from the Great Salt Lake.  Long, long ago she lived, as a child, in 草榴社区, not very far from Fairbanks.  She is an oil painter.  Her paintings and drawings have appeared on the cover of Raven Chronicles Journal, within Raven Chronicles Journal, and numerous times accompanying other writers鈥 work for Hawai鈥檌 Review, New England Review, and (forthcoming) Inklette. (She is also a writer.) See her art website: 

Louis Staeble, fine arts photographer and poet, lives in Bowling Green, Ohio. His photographs have appeared in AgaveBlinders JournalBlue Hour,  Conclave Journal,  Elsewhere MagazineGFT MagazineFifth Wednesday Journal,  Four Ties Literary Review,  Inklette MagazineLight: A Journal of Photography,  Paper Tape MagazineQwertyRevolution JohnRose Red Review,  Sonder ReviewTimber Journal,  Tishman ReviewWindmill, and Your Impossible Voice. His work was shown in The Black Swamp Arts Festival 2016 as part of the Wood County Invitational.

Chloe Watson is an artist based in Sydney, Australia. She uses her own photographs and found images to create her collages. For more information and images visit  or find her on instagram at 

Carol Wellart, the expedition artist is a term for someone who is creatively working while in the meantime traveling and exploring nature. Carol Wellart is a Czech illustrator, constantly on the road with her partner and photographer Paul Schlemmer. She鈥檚 inspired by the everyday outside stuff. The mountain character and the folk life are often-repeated themes in her art and together with Paul, she is searching the new impulses in this environment. Exploring the world wilderness, studying animals, and surviving in the Earth鈥檚 oldest reliefs make Carol鈥檚 work come alive.