Editors:
Denise Bickford (They/Them/Theirs) is a queer poet from mid-coast Maine. Their work has been featured in Stolen Island, Lipstickparty Magazine, Baest Journal, and Foglifter among others. A graduate of Boise State University (2016) with their MFA in creative writing, they have also headlined as a reader at Ghost and Projectors and Storyfort in Boise, Idaho, as well as at the Death Rattle Literary Festival in Nampa, Idaho. Their chapbook, Repka, is available through Dancing Girl Press. Currently, they work as a freelance copywriter in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, where they live with their partner, Miles.
Sam Campbell grew up in the Cary, Illinois area and currently resides in Reno, Nevada. His work has been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology and can be found in numerous journals including Sierra Nevada Review, Poetry City, USA; Zoomoozophone Review; Yes, Poetry; and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from Boise State University and teaches English at Western Nevada College.
Issue 3 Contributors
A R R A S S I is a Nigerian poet, and writer. His recent works have appeared in or are forthcoming from Clover and White, Global Poemic, Lumiere Review, Window Facing Window Review, 433 Magazine, Cathartic, Giallo, Cultural Weekly, and elsewhere. He was shortlisted for the 2020 Alpine Fellowship Academic Writing Prize.
Yuan Changming started to learn the English alphabet in Shanghai at age 19 and published monographs on translation before leaving China. With a Canadian PhD in English, Yuan currently edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan in Vancouver. Credits include ten Pushcart nominations, eight chapbooks, the 2018 Naji Naaman’s Literary (honor) Prize, the Jodi Stutz Award in Poetry (2020) & publications in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17), & BestNewPoemsOnline, among 1,729 others across 46 countries.
Ally Chua is a Singaporean poet. She works for a botanical attraction, and writes when she’s not replying to emails within seven working days. She is the 2019 Singapore Unbound Fellow for New York City, and a member of local writing collective /s@ber. Ally has been published in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Cordite Poetry Review, and Lammergeier Magazine. An avid solo traveler and reader, Ally finds inspiration from a wide variety of sources, including her travels, Richard Siken’s words, the lyrics of Brian Fallon, and zombie video games.
Rosalie (Rosie) Eck works, plays and makes art with people of many different ages throughout Baltimore, Maryland. She often draws and crafts with her friends and neighbors, as well as artists at excellent organizations like Make Studio, Farring-Baybrook Therapeutic Rec Center and the Hussman Center for Adults with Autism. During the summer, she is a camp director at Teen Adventure Quaker Camp, a spiritual growth and wilderness expedition camp in Virginia.
Nathan Erwin is a rural poet, educator, community mediator, and researcher at the School of International Service, American University. With a family tree rooted in the North and South, Alabama moonshiners and Vermont dairy farmers, Erwin grew up in the hills of Newark Valley, New York. Nathan Erwin works as a poetry editor for Folio and Barrelhouse Magazine. His poetry has appeared in a number of print and online publications, including Redactions, Wordgatherings, Levee Magazine, Lullwater Review, and COUNTERCLOCK. His book Hemp and Farm Justice (Mandel-Vilar Press) is forthcoming Fall 2020.
Halley Friedeman has enjoyed art since she was able to pick up a marker and most recently, has encouraged art in the lives of those that she cares for as a Family Nurse Practitioner. She currently serves Navajo Nation as a provider with Indian Health Services. In the past, Halley studied Art, Psychology, and Nursing. Although her current focus is Family Medicine, she is most interested in collaborating with Art Therapists to offer alternative therapies to individuals and one day, obtain her PhD in Integrative Medicine. Halley currently works with and treats all individuals, with a special interest in helping those with Substance Use Disorders, Eating Disorders, and those seeking Sexuality and Gender Identity Counseling. Halley lives in New Mexico near the Four Corners Region where she is continuously inspired by the High Desert and goes on many outdoor excursions with her furry friend & companion, Koko.
Halley’s Lightbulb Series represents the ideas that build up inside of us as artists in moments of stagnation with the subsequent explosion of expression that we feel when we are finally granted creative release, as Halley felt so many times while enduring the formality of graduate school.
Shannon Gardner is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point with a Bachelors in Studio Art and a minor in Art History. As an artist, she appreciates the spontaneous process of nature and strives to explore Earth’s unearthed beauty and imitate it’s natural imperfections. Shannon creates art depicting disturbing and horrifying work with elements of occult symbolism and iconography. Her interest in the macabre began while studying nature and the paranormal at a young age. The ethereal mood of her work reaches the extreme and addresses the taboo. Her use of watercolor and India Ink are unforced and create beauty within flaws while crafting an earthy grunge appearance. This technique assists the viewer to observe the Japanese Wabi-Sabi aesthetic– the appreciation of imperfections. Her use of dots creates an impression of a technical drawing. Stippling creates clusters of value implying crisp texture and depth, giving the illusion of change through time.
Izaskun Gracia Quintana (Bilbao, Spain, 1977) studied Basque Philology, Publishing and Graphic Design. She lives in Berlin, Germany and works as a freelance translator, editor and editorial designer, and she writes articles and literary criticism for various media. She writes poetry and prose, mostly in Spanish and Basque. She has published several poetry collections, like saco de humos (2010), ártica / artikoa (2012), vacuus (2016, which combined poems and photographs), despertar lloviendo (2017) and Ohe hutsetan (2018), as well as the short story compilation Crónicas del encierro (2016), nominated for the Euskadi Literature Prize. Her texts have been published in several anthologies and international literary magazines, she has participated in many poetry festivals (like Cosmopoética, Kontraespazioak and poesiefestival berlin) and she has worked with artists such as Anabel Lorca, Zigor Barayazarra, Delphine Salvi, Leire Urbeltz and Liébana Goñi, writing poems for their paintings.
Mike Knowles has spent over 40 years working mainly in comics, along with contributions to TV, radio, animation, gonzo-style journalism for a “top-of-the-shelf” magazine, and odd spells as a digital artist. (Not to mention three gruesome years writing gags for comedians (even though they begged me not to. But what did THEY know about humour? ))
Paul Koniecki lives and writes in Dallas, Texas. He was once chosen for the John Ashbery Home School Residency. His poems feature in Richard Bailey’s movie “One of the Rough” distributed by AVIFF Cannes. His books are available from Kleft Jaw Press, NightBallet Press, Dark Particle Press, and Spartan Press.
Rachel Prizant Kotok, addicted to constrained writing, writes letter-sequenced palindromic poetry, microfiction, and flash. She was a finalist for Southwest Review’s Morton Marr Poetry Prize and the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Award for Poetry. Her work has appeared in Tiferet Journal, Digital Paper, The Centifictionist, Hey, I’m Alive, and Star 82 Review.
Hannah Leighton graduated from the Maryland Institute College of art summa cum laude in May 2015. Post graduation she was accepted to the Green Olive Arts Residency and spent a month painting among the medinas of Morocco. Most recently Leighton’s work was accepted into the publication New American Paintings MFA Issue #141 and West Issue #144. Leighton was awarded the New Mexico Women in the Arts Scholarship and additionally accepted the nomination to become a SITE Santa Fe Scholar. Leighton is thrilled to be back in school at the University of New Mexico where she plans to attain her MFA in the spring of 2021.
ky li is a poet in Louisville, Kentucky whose work has appeared in Brittle Star, Dime Show Review, The Bangalore Review, Timberline Review, The Oddville Press, and other literary journals. ky has a MA in poetry and creative writing, enjoys hiking and cycling, and is a published composer. ky can still recite “A Visit from Saint Nicholas,” a poem memorized in the first grade for a Christmas pageant.
Emanuel R. Marques is a Portuguese visual artist and writer (short stories, poetry, dramaturgic), explorer of universes of the fantastic, symbolism, and existentialism. Emanuel graduated in Audiovisual Communications Technology, and is a collaborator of short stories and poetry in magazines, anthologies and fanzines, as well as a cartoonist. Emanuel also has had photography, painting, and plastic arts in collective and individual exhibitions. One of Emanuel’s preferred techniques is to mix materials and experience the fusion of different artistic areas, in particular painting and collage. Emanuel is the founder of the experimental/ambient/soundtracks project Pineal Vertigo.
Amanda Pendley is a queer twenty-one-year-old writer from Kansas City who is currently studying Creative Writing and Publishing at the University of Iowa. Her recent and forthcoming publications include Homology Lit, Vagabond City Lit, Savant Garde Literary Magazine, and The Shore. She often finds inspiration in Lorde songs, movement, and Harry Styles’ suit collection.
Chath pierSath, born in Battambang, Cambodia in 1970, survived the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia and grew up in the United States. He is the author of three collections of poetry, On Earth Beneath Sky, After and This Body Mystery, and a children’s book, Sinat and the Instrument of the Heart. Also known internationally for his visual art, he has exhibited in Asia, Europe, and North America. He lives and works at the Nicewicz Family Farm in the town of Bolton in the Nashoba Valley of central Massachusetts.
Janet M. Powers, Professor Emerita, Gettysburg College, taught South Asian literature and civilization, women’s studies and peace studies for 49 years. She has published in many small journals, including Azure, Chaleur, Earth’s Daughters, The Poeming Pigeon and The Gyroscope Review. Her chapbook, Difficult to Subdue as the Wind, appeared in 2009. This old lady still writes poetry despite, or because of, our sorry world.
Multi-modal EXAT, Suzanne S. Rancourt, Abenaki/Huron descent, has published 2 books: Billboard in the Clouds, 2nd print, Northwestern UP, received the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas First Book Award, and murmurs at the gate, Unsolicited Press, 2019. A 3rd book, Old Stones, New Roads is forthcoming spring 2021, Main Street Rag Book Publishers. Her 4th book, Songs of Archilochus, seeks a press. She is a USMC and Army Veteran who holds an MS in psychology – SUNY, Albany and an MFA in writing – VCFA. Suzanne is widely published. Please visit her website for a complete publication list: www.expressive-arts.com
Sam Smith is editor of The Journal (once ‘of Contemporary Anglo-Scandinavian Poetry’), and publisher of Original Plus books. He has been a psychiatric nurse, residential social worker, milkman, plumber, laboratory analyst, groundsman, sailor, computer operator, scaffolder, gardener, painter & decorator… working at anything, in fact, which paid the rent, enabled him to raise his three daughters and which hasn’t got too much in the way of his writing. He has several poetry collections and novels to his name, has won prizes and awards, organised festivals and readings. Now in his 70s he has ended up living in South Wales. https://sites.google.com/site/samsmiththejournal/
Sarah Uheida is 22 year old Libyan poet and experimental memoirist who received her Bachelor of Arts in English Studies and Psychology from Stellenbosch University, South Africa. At the age of 13, Sarah and her family escaped the Libyan civil war and immigrated to South Africa where she is still currently residing. She was the recipient of the 2020 Dan Veach Prize for Younger Poets and the Miles Morland Writing Scholarship. She has also featured in literary journals such as New Contrast, Eunoia Review, The Shore, fresh.ink., Plume, the South African, Sonder Midwest, Stone Thursday, Everyday Fiction, Flock, and Atlanta Review.
Diane Vogel Ferri is a teacher, poet, and writer living in Solon, Ohio. Her essays have been published in Scene Magazine, Cleveland Stories, Cleveland Christmas Memories, and Good Works Review among others. Her poems can be found in numerous journals such as Plainsongs, Rubbertop Review, and Poet Lore. Her previous publications include Liquid Rubies, (poetry), The Volume of Our Incongruity (poetry), and The Desire Path (novel), which can be found on amazon.com. A former special education teacher, she holds an M.Ed from Cleveland State University and is a founding member of Literary Cleveland. Diane’s latest book of biographical fiction is No Life But This: A Novel of Emily Warren Roebling.
Maggie Wang is an undergraduate at the University of Oxford. Her writing has appeared in K’in, Ruminate, Shards, the Literary Nest, and Rigorous, among others. She has also won awards from the Poetry Society, Singapore Unbound, and the Folger Shakespeare Library. When not writing, she enjoys playing the piano and exploring nature.
Wend Poetry 