Contributors
Poetry
Michele Parker Randall is the author of Museum of Everyday Life (Kelsay Books 2015) and A Future Unmappable, chapbook (Finishing Line Press 2021). Her poetry can be found in Nimrod International Journal, Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Tar River Poetry, and elsewhere
Originally from San Antonio, Texas, Jonathan Fletcher currently resides in New York City, where he is pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing in Poetry at Columbia University’s School of the Arts. He has been published in Arts Alive San Antonio, Door is a Jar, FlowerSong Press, Lone Stars, OneBlackBoyLikeThat Review, riverSedge, The Thing Itself, TEJASCOVIDO, Unlikely Stories Mark V, Voices de la Luna, and Waco WordFest. His work has also been featured at the Briscoe Western Art Museum.
PW Covington writes in the Beat tradition of the North American highway. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, he has been invited to share his work as a featured reader at events from Woodstock, NY to San Francisco’s Beat Museum. PW’s latest collection of poetry, malepoet, is available from Gnashing Teeth Publishing.
Lily Rose Kosmicki is a beekeeper and librarian at the public library and by night she is a collector of dreams. Her zine Dream Zine won a Broken Pencil Zine Award for Best Art Zine 2018. Her work appears in Bombay Gin, Interim, Seisma Magazine, and elsewhere.
Leonardo Chung is a young aspiring writer from Phillips Exeter Academy who has attended several programs such as the Juniper Summer Writing Institute, Sewanee Young Writers' Conference, and Iowa Young Writers’ Studio. His work has been previously accepted by many literary magazines. He dedicates his time musing the art of poetry through life experiences and imagination.
Katharyn Howd Machan writes poetry and memoir on her dragon patio when weather allows and elsewhere when it doesn’t. As a professor in the Department of Writing at Ithaca College she mentors students in fairy-tale-based creative writing courses. Her most recent publications are A Slow Bottle of Wine (The Comstock Writers, Inc., 2020) and Dark Side of the Spoon (The Moonstone Press, 2022). For spirit and body, she belly dances.
Alex Van Huynh received his Ph.D. in Biology from Lehigh University and is currently an assistant professor of biology at DeSales University. His poetry can be found in multiple literary journals and his first full-length collection will appear in Fall 2022.
W. D. Mainous works as a tutor and also healthcare. He holds an English bachelors from the University of Texas pan American and a history bachelors from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. He is a resident of Edinburg, Texas and it's proud to call the El Valle his home.
Sandra Salinas Newton is a Filipina-American currently living in Austin, Texas. Her published work includes texts, essays, fiction, poetry in over forty online and print journals. She was recently one of four finalists in the 2022 Writers’ League of Texas Manuscript Contest (Historical Fiction category). Her website is www.snewton.net.
Gail Nielsen holds a Master of Arts Degree in Religious Studies and works as a psychotherapist and education consultant. She co-authored The Control Freak's Guide(tm) to Living Lightly and her poetry has been published (or is forthcoming) in Kindling Journal, Flights, Academy of the Heart and Mind, Visitant Lit., The Courtship of Winds, Evening Street Review, Jelly Bucket, and Wrath-Bearing Tree. Gail is currently working on her first collection of poetry.
Born and raised in Ecuador, Anai Gonzalez is a 22-year-old recent graduate from the University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business. Being a first-generation immigrant, she carries out her life’s purpose by expressing the essence of her soul through her art. She is currently working to publish two poetry books, the first of the series being daydreams + nightmares.
Edward Vidaurre is an award-winning poet and author of eight collections of poetry. He is the 2018-2019 City of McAllen, Texas Poet Laureate, 2022 inductee to the Texas Institute of Letters, and publisher of FlowerSong Press. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Texas Observer, Los Angeles Review of Books, as well as other journals and anthologies. Vidaurre resides in McAllen, Texas with his wife and daughter.
Jesús Mena, son of undocumented Mexican immigrants who grew up as a migrant farm worker, had essays and stories published in: Latinx Writing Los Angeles: Nonfiction Dispatches
from a Decolonial Rebellion; 201 Homenaje a La Ciudad de Los Angeles: Latino Experience in Literature and Art; Solo en San Miguel—anthology of short stories; op-eds in the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Oakland Tribune, and a commentary on NPR’s “All Things Considered.”
M.R. “Chibbi” Orduña is a Mexican-born, Texas-raised queer poet, editor, publisher and community organizer. He has self-published 2 books, was the co-editor of Contra: Texas Poets Speak Out (Flowersong Press, 2020), and has work in/forthcoming The Texas Review, The Acentos Review, Los Angeles Poet Society, Wax Wing, The Latino Book Review Magazine, Allium, The B’K, Buzzfeed, We Are Mitu, Button Poetry, Write About Now, and elsewhere. You can find him on IG @gemineyes and on Twitter @gemineyespoetry.
Leila Farjami is a poet, literary translator, and psychotherapist. In addition to publishing seven poetry books in Persian, her work has appeared in Nimrod Journal; was published by Tupelo Press for their 30/30 Project; and has been translated into Swedish, Arabic, Turkish, and French. Leila has appeared in poetry readings and on Persian TV and radio interviews about her poetry. She studies poetry with Rachel Kann, enjoys translating sacred poetry by Rumi into English, and has translated a comprehensive volume of Sylvia Plath’s poetry into Persian.
Fiction
Rob Granader’s work has been featured in Washington Post, Washingtonian magazine, New York Times, Blue Lake Review, borrowed solace, Doubly Mad: A Journal of Arts and Ideas, Gris-Gris, Front Porch Review, Mariashriver.com, Pennsylvania English, and Umbrella Factory. He has won writing awards from Bethesda Magazine and Writer’s Digest. In 2022, he published a collection of short stories, Writing in the Q. He has attended various workshops at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, MD, as well as the Key West Literary Seminar and Writer’s Digest Conference in Los Angeles. He has a BA in English from the University of Michigan and a JD from The George Washington University. He has published more than 400 short stories, articles and essays in over sixty publications and is now the CEO of Marketresearch.com.
Kate Krautkramer’s work has appeared in such publications as North American Review, Colorado Review, Fiction, National Geographic Magazine, Washington Square, Mississippi Review, Orca, The Normal School, and the New York Times (Modern Love). Her work has been included in The Beacon Best, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and Best of the West anthologies and have twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has stories currently in South Carolina Review and Evocations Review as well as a story forthcoming in Iron Horse Literary Review. She lives in rural Colorado with her husband and children.
Heather Rutherford has been published in Life in 10 Minutes Online Magazine and Stirring: A Literary Collection. She has attended numerous writing workshops, including Teaching Writing in the Community; classes at the Virginia Fine Arts Museum Studio School; and “Life in 10 Minutes,” a Richmond writing school, online magazine, and press. Heather grew up in upstate New York and escaped the cold by attending the University of Richmond to earn an English literature bachelor’s degree. She lives in Richmond, Virginia, with her family where she is a yoga and meditation instructor and the newsletter writer and editor for the yoga center.
James Sullivan is from the American Midwest. His stories and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in venues such as Third Coast, Fourth Genre, Phoebe, Fourteen Hills, X-R-A-Y, and Hobart. Connect on Twitter @jfsullivan4th
Nancy Temple has written short and full-length plays. Her short plays have been produced in numerous festivals in the US and in Canada. Her play for high-schoolers, “Victoria for President! 1872” was published by Next Stage Press (2020). Her full-length “The Caregivers,” received a staged reading by the North Shore Readers in December of 2020, and was published ARTemis Wisdom Anthology (2021). Nancy received her MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University in June 2021.
Harrison Bae Wein’s fiction and poetry has appeared in several literary journals, most recently in ONE ART. Harrison has won several awards as a health and science writer, and his work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Richmond Times-Dispatch and many other outlets. He founded and now edits two health publications at the National Institutes of Health. You can find him online at http://harrisonwein.com.
Creative Nonfiction
Gabriel Carlos Lopez is the pen name of an itinerant autistic math professor, writer, and artist residing in the southwest Texas borderlands. He and his wife, his three children, and their cat inhabit a rickety old house by an infamous gunfighter's grave.
Dramatic Scripts
James English is a fiction writer and playwright. Short story credits include: The Drum, Hobart, Litro, Liars’ League NYC, and The Stockholm Review of Literature. The Radio Theatre Project recently produced his short play, “Saint Rita.” It can be heard on SoundCloud.
Art and Graphic Lit.
Texas Born Valley-raised artist Alexis Marie Ramos, of Weslaco, received her MFA at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Drawing from being raise in el Valle Del Rio Grande Valle, her sculptures, installations, and paintings illustrate the remedies used to treat culture-bound syndromes. Ramos explorations of local cultural relationships with food, religion, folk medicine, and kitchen curanderas. Exploring where food and folk medicine blur.
David Sheskin is an artist and writer whose work has appeared in numerous publications including The Dalhousie Review, Puerto del Sol, The Satirist and The Florida Review. Among his recent books are Plaid Cats, Art That Speaks and David Sheskin’s Cabinet of Curiosities.