L. Ward Abel’s work has appeared in Rattle, The Reader, The Istanbul Review, The Worcester Review, The Honest Ulsterman, hundreds of others, and is the author of three full collections and ten chapbooks of poetry, including Jonesing For Byzantium (UK Authors Press, 2006), American Bruise (Parallel Press, 2012), Little Town gods (Folded Word Press, 2016), A Jerusalem of Ponds (erbacce-Press, 2016), The Rainflock Sings Again (Unsolicited Press, 2019), Floodlit (Beakful, 2019), and The Width of Here (Silver Bow, 2021).
M. Anne Alexander’s poetry generally explores restorative relationships with Nature, especially in landscapes with spiritual, historical and contemporary significance. Her background is as a lecturer in English and teacher of Music. She began writing poetry as an outcome of counselling. Poems are published regularly in the Bury Free Press and in Poetry Space, including in their recent Locked Down Anthology. Other poems are to appear in the August and September issues of Dreich. She is also author of Thomas Hardy: the “dream-country” of his fiction – a study of the creative process (Vision Press/Barnes & Noble).
In the beginning was the Word, an essay, and ‘Cernunnos’, a poem
Barbara Alfaro is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award for her play Dos Madres and the IndieReader Discovery Award for Best Memoir for her memoir Mirror Talk. Her poems have appeared in various journals including Poet Lore, Variant Literature, and Glassworks. Her poetry collection, Catbird, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. http://www.BarbaraAlfaro.net
Thomas Allbaugh‘s poems and stories have appeared in Relief, Mars Hill Review, Broken Sky, and other publications. His novel, Apocalypse TV, appeared in 2017. He has also published a chapbook, The View from January (January 2020) and a collection of short stories, Subtle Man Loses His Day Job and Other Stories (September 2020). He is professor of English at Azusa Pacific University, where he teaches composition and creative writing.
Edward Alport is a retired teacher and proud Essex Boy. He occupies his time as a poet, gardener and writer for children. He has had poetry, stories and articles published in a variety of webzines and magazines. He sometimes posts snarky micropoems on Twitter as @cross_mouse.
Conclusion of a Report into the Condition of an Urban Graveyard
Matthew J. Andrews is a private investigator and writer who lives in Modesto, California. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Funicular Magazine, The Inflectionist Review, Red Rock Review, Sojourners, Kissing Dynamite, and Deep Wild Journal, among others. He can be contacted at matthewjandrews.com
Jane Angué teaches English Language and Literature in France. She contributes in French and English to print and online journals such asLe Capital des Mots, Amethyst, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Acumen, Erbacce, Poésie/première, Traversées, Mille-feuille. A pamphlet, des fleurs pour Bach, was published in 2019 (Editions Encres Vives).
Writing and Spirituality – a reflection
Paul Attwell lives in Richmond, London, with his partner Alis, and Pudsey the cat. Paul’s experiences of depression and ADHD help shape his work. The pamphlet, Blade is available from Wrong Rooster Publishing at https://www.wrongroosterpublishing.com/
Sayuri Ayers explores everyday spiritual experiences in her poetry and prose. A Pushcart and Best of Net Nominee, her work is forthcoming in SWWIM Every Day and Parentheses Journal. Please visit her at sayuriayers.com.
Leo Aylen was born in KwaZulu, South Africa, was educated in England and has lived in London, New York, LA. He has 5 prizes, about 100 poems in anthologies, 100 broadcast, 9 collections published, the latest The Day The Grass Came, called “a triumph” by Melvyn Bragg, “Stupendous” by Simon Callow, “An energy which could leave readers gasping” by Martyn Halsall. He often writes in strict forms.
Lorelei Bacht is a European poet living in Asia with her family, which includes two young children and a lot of chaos. Her current work is primarily concerned with motherhood, marriage, and aging as a woman. This year, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in such publications as OpenDoor Poetry Magazine, Litehouse, Global Poemic, Visual Verse, Visitant and Quail Bell. She can be found on instagram: @lorelei.bacht.writer
A branch, a branch, a plum, a fig
A spiritual director, bigender person, and quasi-hermit, John Backman writes about ancient spirituality and the unexpected ways it collides with postmodern life. This includes personal essays in Catapult, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Tiferet Journal, Amethyst Review, and Sufi Journal, among other places. Last year John was named a top 10 creative nonfiction finalist in the Wild Atlantic Writing Awards.
Questions Never Really Answered at the Awards Dinner – an essay
KC Bailey is a writer from the UK. Publication credits for poetry, fiction and non-fiction include The Ekphrastic Review, The Hellebore, Black Bough Poetry, Monkey Kettle, The Tide Rises, Black Flowers, The Failure Baler, Idle Ink, CaféLit and the BBC. She has an MA in Creative Writing and Tweets @KCBailey_Writer.
Yvonne Baker has been published widely in magazines. Her work has been included in Second Light, Paper Swans, Emma Press and Poetry Space anthologies.
Ray Ball is a history professor, an editor at Coffin Bell and Juke Joint, and the author of Tithe of Salt (Louisiana Literature, 2019) and Lararium (Variant Lit, 2020). Her poems have been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net. She has recent work in descant, Glass, and Waccamaw.
Will the afterlife be sweeter than jubilant pomegranates?
Elodie Barnes is a poet, reviewer, fiction writer, and essayist who can be found writing in France, Spain or the UK (usually mixing up her languages). Her flash fiction has been nominated for Best of the Net, and she is guest editor of the Life in Languages series at Lucy Writers’ Platform. Find her online at http://elodierosebarnes.weebly.com and on Twitter @BarnesElodie.
Rebecca Barrow is the author of the contemporary teen titles You Don’t Know Me But I Know You and This Is What It Feels Like, as well as the Archie Horror novel Interview with the Vixen. Her YA thriller Bad Things Happen Here is forthcoming in 2022.
body politic – a mixed-media prose poem
Amy Baskin‘s work is currently featured in Bear Review, River Heron Review, and is forthcoming in Pirene’s Fountain. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, an Oregon Literary Arts Fellow, and an Oregon Poetry Association prize winner. When she’s not writing, she matches international students at Lewis & Clark College with local residents to help them feel welcome and at home during their time in Oregon.
Gershon Ben-Avraham’s writing has appeared in journals and magazines, including Amethyst Review, Big Muddy, Gravel, Image, Jewish Literary Journal, Poetica, Psaltery & Lyre, Rappahannock Review, and Tipton Poetry Journal. His short story, “Yoineh Bodek,” (Image) earned “Special Mention” in the Pushcart Prize XLlV: Best of the Small Presses 2020 Edition.
Laurel Benjamin holds an MFA from Mills College. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has appeared in Turning a Train of Thought Upside Down: An Anthology of Women’s Poetry, California Quarterly, Wild Roof Journal, The Midway Review, Mac Queens Quinterly, Poetry and Places, Global Quarantine Museum Pendemics issue, Silver Burch Press, including honorable mention in the Oregon Poetry Association’s Poetry Contest 2017 and 2020, long-listed in Sunspot Literary Journal’s long list, among others. She is affiliated with the Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon and the Port Townsend Writers. More of her work can be found at https://thebadgerpress.blogspot.com
Susan Bennett is a ritualist and emerging poet. She has been leading women’s spirit circles in Northern Virginia for fifteen years. Her poem “In the Center Ring” was published in Gargoyle Magazine, Spring 2021. She is a graduate of the University of California, San Diego.
Wayne-Daniel Berard, PhD, teaches Humanities at Nichols College, Dudley, MA. He publishes broadly in poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. His poetry chapbook, The Man Who Remembered Heaven, received the New Eden Award in 2003. His non-fiction When Christians Were Jews (That Is, Now), subtitled Recovering the Lost Jewishness of Christianity with the Gospel of Mark, was published in 2006 by Cowley Publications. A novel The Retreatants, was published in 2012 (Smashwords). A chapbook, Christine Day, Love Poems, was published in 2016 (Kittatuck Press). His novella, Everything We Want, was published in 2018 by Bloodstone Press. A poetry collection, The Realm of Blessing, was published in 2020 by Unsolicited Press.
Jean Biegun, retired in Sacramento, CA, began writing poetry in 2000 as a way to overcome big-city job stress, and it worked. Poems have been published in Mobius: The Poetry Magazine, After Hours: A Journal of Chicago Writing and Art, World Haiku Review, Presence: International Journal of Spiritual Direction and other places.
Mathew Block is editor of The Canadian Lutheran magazine and communications manager for the International Lutheran Council. His writing has been featured in a variety of publications, both sacred and secular, including First Things, The National Post, Converge Magazine, The Mythic Circle, and more.
Lisa Borkovich lives in Hamilton, Ontario and writes when inspired.
Heather Bourbeau’s fiction and poetry have been published in 100 Word Story, Alaska Quarterly Review, Cleaver, Francis Ford Coppola Winery, and The Stockholm Review of Literature. She is the winner of La Piccioletta Barca’s inaugural competition and the Chapman University Flash Fiction winner. She is finishing her latest collection, Monarch, a poetic memoir of overlooked histories from her American West (CA, NV, OR, and WA).
David Bowman is the founding member of the Clemson Writer’s group. His poems have appeared in The Atlanta Review, Badlands, Wayne State Review, Mid-West Review, Pea River Journal and others. He is currently working on a collection of short stories set in Wyoming.
Don Brandis is a retired healthcare worker living quietly near Seattle. His poems have been published in Leaping Clear, Free State Review, Neologism Poetry Review, Poetry Quarterly and elsewhere.
Barry T. Brodie is a poet, playwright, actor, director and teacher. He has written two books: The Language of the Star – Journals of the Magi and Tom Thomson – On the Threshold of Magic (Black Moss Press). He is a co-founder of Shō Arts Studio in Windsor, Ontario. He teaches a course on the creative process at the University of Windsor.
John J. Brugaletta is professor emeritus at California State University, Fullerton, where he taught classes on Shakespeare, Dante, and Homer, as well as the writing of poetry. He now lives in retirement on the northern coast of California.
Jacob Budenz is a queer writer, multi-disciplinary performer, educator and witch with an MFA from University of New Orleans and a BA from Johns Hopkins University. The author of PASTEL WITCHERIES (Seven Kitchens Press 2018), Budenz has fiction and poetry in Slipstream Press, Wizards in Space, Entropy Magazine, Pussy Magic, and more, as well as anthologies by Mason Jar Press, Lycan Valley Press, and Mad Scientist Journals. You can follow Jake’s work on Instagram (@dreambabyjake), Twitter (@jakebeearts), or the internet beyond (www.jakebeearts.com).
Keith Burton graduated from Brown University with a major in psychology and a minor in English. As a professional musician, his love of poetry helped him write songs and lyrical cadences continue to interest him. He honors all faiths and is fascinated by their intersection.
Leonor Scliar Cabral is one of Brazil’s leading linguists. She is also a poet who still loves traditional forms, such as the sonnet. Her book Consecration of the Alphabet consists of one rhymed sonnet for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
The Sheaves of Grain, Submissive Now, Bend Low
Natalie Callum is a writer and poet living between St. Louis, Missouri and Wyoming. When she is not writing, she can be found outside free climbing and exploring with her much beloved husband.
Ranney Campbell earned BS and MFA degrees from the University of Missouri at St. Louis and lives in Southern California. Her poetry has been published by Misfit Magazine and Shark Reef, among others, and is forthcoming in Haight Ashbury Literary Journal. Her chapbook, “Pimp,” is published by Arroyo Seco Press.
Dan Campion is the author of Peter De Vries and Surrealism and co-editor of Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song, a third edition of which was issued in 2019. His poetry has appeared in Poetry, Rolling Stone, and many other magazines. A selection of his poems titled The Mirror Test will be published by MadHat Press in February 2022. He lives in Iowa City, Iowa.
David Capps is a philosophy professor at Western Connecticut State University. He is the author of three chapbooks: Poems from the First Voyage (The Nasiona Press, 2019), A Non-Grecian Non-Urn (Yavanika Press, 2019), and Colossi (Kelsay Books, 2020). He lives in New Haven, CT.
Lauren Carlson is the author of a chapbook Animals I Have Killed which won the Comstock Writers Group chapbook prize in 2018. Her work has been published in Pleiades, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, The Windhover, and Blue Heron Review among others. She recently graduated with an MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson, the first low residency program in the United States. https://laurenkcarlson.com/
Carol Casey lives in Blyth, Ontario, Canada. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in The Prairie Journal, Sublunary Review, Plum Tree Tavern and others, including a number of anthologies, most recently, Tending the Fire and i am what becomes of broken branch. Facebook: @ccaseypoetry; Twitter: @ccasey_carol; Webpage: https://learnforlifepotential.com/home-2/poetry/
Johanna Caton, O.S.B., is a Benedictine nun. She was born in the United States and lived there until adulthood, when her monastic vocation took her to England, where she now resides. Her poems have appeared in The Christian Century, The Windhover, The Ekphrastic Review, Green Hills Literary Lantern, The Catholic Poetry Room, and other venues, both online and print.
Writing and the Sacred – a reflection
Ruth Chad is a psychologist who lives and works in the Boston area. Her poems have appeared in the Aurorean, Bagels with the Bards, Connection, Psychoanalytic Couple and Family Institute of New England, Constellations, Ibbetson Street, Montreal Poems, Muddy River Poetry Review, Lily Poetry Review and several others. Her chapbook, The Sound of Angels was published by Cervena Barva Press in 2017.
To Plant a Lupine at Twilight in the Company of the Earthworm
Melissa Chappell is a native South Carolinian who, along with her affinity for writing, also loves music. She plays the piano, the lute, the guitar, and is a classically trained vocalist. She is a contralto who has performed in numerous choirs. Her latest book is Doors Carelessly Left Ajar, published by Alien Buddha Press, 2020.
Susan Charkes, writer and poet, lives in southeastern Pennsylvania. Her poetry chapbook, sp. was published in 2017. She is a member of Montco Wordshop and Tenth Sky Poets. More at susancharkes.com.
Vesper Bluets at Marsh Creek Lake
David Chorlton is a longtime resident of Phoenix, who has grown into the desert climate and likes it. Visits to Costa Rica and the rainforest made a significant and vastly contrasting impression on him compared to his usual dry surroundings.
Roberto Christiano won the 2010 Fiction Prize from The Northern Virginia Review for his story, “The Care of Roses.” He received a Pushcart nomination from Prairie Schooner for his poetry and was anthologized in The Gávea-Brown Book of Portuguese-American Poetry. His chapbook, Port of Leaving, is currently available through Finishing Line Press. Other work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Sow’s Ear, New Verse News, and Delmarva.
Jennifer Clark is the author of a children’s book and three full-length poetry collections, most recently A Beginner’s Guide to Heaven (Unsolicited Press). She has a hybrid collection, Kissing the World Goodbye, forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in 2022. She lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Her website is jenniferclarkkzoo.com.
Sarah Clayville writes and teaches from the wilds of central Pennsylvania with a particular focus on moments of discovery. Her work can be seen in such journals as The Threepenny Review, Literary Orphans, and The Gravity of the Thing. For more of her writing and her literary adventures with her daughter, head to SarahSaysWrite.com.
Laura Cordts has been writing poems for about 50 years, but is brand new at submitting them. Recently retired from a career in healthcare, she lives, walks, gardens, bakes, and writes in Northern New York. Laura Cordts has been writing poems for about 50 years, but is brand new at submitting them. Recently retired from a career in healthcare, she lives, walks, gardens, bakes, and writes in Northern New York.
Susan Michele Coronel is a NYC-based poet and educator. She has a B.A. in English from Indiana University-Bloomington and an M.S. Ed. in Applied Linguistics from the City University of New York. Her poems have appeared in publications including Prometheus Dreaming, Hoxie Gorge Review, Ekphrastic Review, Passengers Journal, Street Cake, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Newtown Literary, and HerWords.
Was My Mother the Ocean or a Rainstorm?
Susan Cossette is the author of Peggy Sue Messed Up (2017). A two-time recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize, her work has appeared in Rust and Moth, Clockwise Cat, Anti-Heroin Chic, and in the anthologies Tuesdays at Curley’s and After the Equinox.
Jill Crainshaw is a professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, NC. Her poems have been published by Amethyst Review, The New Verse News, Panoply, Poets Reading the News, and Writing in a Woman’s Voice.
Poets Victoria Crawford and George R. Ross became writing partners meeting in Thailand while retired. Their poems are so closely written by two hands that who can tell who wrote which line or word was written by whom. Some of their joint work has been published in Braided Way, Cold Noon, Active Muse, and others. George lives in Boston currently with family while Victoria still calls Chiang Mai home.
Four Poems by Victoria Crawford and George R. Ross
James Crews is the author of four collections of poetry, The Book of What Stays, Telling My Father, Bluebird, and Every Waking Moment. He is also the editor of two anthologies: Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. jamescrews.net
Elizabeth Crowell was born and raised in New Jersey. She has a B.A. in English from Smith College and an M.F.A. in poetry from Columbia University. She has taught high school and college English. She lives outside Boston with her wife and two children.
Her work has been included in The Bellevue Literary Review, where it has twice won the non-fiction prize, Tishman Review, Raven’s Edge and most recently Levee.
Ann Cuthbert enjoys writing and performing poems, usually with the Tees Women Poets collective. Her work has been widely published in magazines and anthologies online and in print, most recently 14 and Not Very Quiet magazines. Her poetry chapbook is Watching a Heron with Davey (Black Light Engine Room Press).
Dennis Daly has published seven books of poetry and poetic translations. He writes reviews regularly for The Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene and on occasion for the Notre Dame Review, Ibbetson Street, Wilderness House, and the Somerville Times. He occasionally reads his poetry at various venues. Please see his blog at dennisfdaly.blogspot.com.
Barbara Daniels’s Talk to the Lioness was published by Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press in 2020. Her poetry has appeared in Cleaver, Faultline, Small Orange, Meridian, and elsewhere. Barbara Daniels received a 2020 fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
Andie Davies (they/them) is a London based queer poet, where they are beginning their MA in Creative Writing. They run the student literary journal Roey Writes On and have been published in that journal and in the UniSlam 2020 Anthology. They perform at spoken word events and share their work @thepoetandie
Recent poems by Margo Davis have appeared in Dead Mule School of Southern Lit, Panoply, Deep South Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, MockingHeart Review, & Odes and Elegies: Eco-Poetry from the Texas Gulf Coast. A three-time Pushcart nominee, Margo’s forthcoming chapbook with Finishing Line Press is due out late-fall 2021.
Judy DeCroce is an internationally published poet, flash fiction writer, educator, and avid reader whose recent works have been published by The BeZine, Brown Bag Online, North of Oxford, The Poet Magazine, Amethyst Review, The Wild Word, OPEN:Journal of Arts & Letters, and many journals and anthologies. As a professional storyteller and teacher of that genre, she also offers, workshops for all ages in flash fiction.
Judy lives and works in upstate New York with her husband poet/artist, Antoni Ooto.
Kathryn de Leon is from Los Angeles, California but has been living in England for ten years. Her poems have appeared in several magazines in the US including Calliope, Aaduna, and Black Fox, and several in the UK including The Blue Nib, Snakeskin, Trouvaille Review, and The High Window where she was the Featured American Poet.
Diane Elayne Dees is the author of the chapbook, Coronary Truth (Kelsay Books); she has two other chapbooks forthcoming. Diane, who lives in Covington, Louisiana, also publishes Women Who Serve, a blog that delivers news and commentary on women’s professional tennis throughout the world.
David Dephy: A Georgian/American award-winning poet and novelist. The winner of the Finalist Award in the 2020 Best Book Award National Contest by American Book Fest, the winner of the Spillwords Poetry Award, the finalist of the Adelaide Literary Awards for the category of Best Poem. He is named as A Literature Luminary by Bowery Poetry, The Stellar Poet by Voices of Poetry andThe Incomparable Poet by Statorec. His works have been published and anthologized in USA, UK and all over the world by the many literary magazines, journals and publishing houses. He lives in New York.
Keren Dibbens-Wyatt is a chronically ill writer and artist with a passion for poetry, mysticism, story and colour. Her writing features regularly on spiritual blogs and in literary journals. Her latest book is Recital of Love (Paraclete Press, 2020). Keren lives in South East England.
Robert Donohue’s poetry has appeared in Grand Little Things, Better Than Starbucks, The Raintown Review, The Ekphrastic Review, among others. He lives on Long Island, NY.
Anabell Donovan (Anna Eusthacia) is a psychologist and educator dedicated to student success. She is driven by her love of words, their sound, weight, origin, and meaning and wants to “start where language ends.”
Clive Donovan devotes himself full-time to poetry and has published in a wide variety of magazines including Agenda, Amethyst Review, Fenland Poetry Journal, Neon Lit. Journal, Prole, Sentinel Lit. Quarterly and Stand. He lives in Totnes, Devon, U.K. by the River Dart. His debut collection will be published by Leaf by Leaf in November 2021.
Writing and the Sacred – a reflection
Joanne Durham is a retired educator living on the North Carolina coast, with the ocean as her backyard. She was a finalist for the 2021 NC Poetry Society’s Laureate Award and the NC State Poetry Contest. Her publications and background can be found at https://www.joannedurham.com/.
Tim Dwyer’s chapbook is entitled Smithy Of Our Longings (Lapwing). His poems have recently appeared in Cyphers and the anthology of the Irish Poetry Chair, Hold Open The Door, and forthcoming in Atrium. He recently moved from the United States and now lives in Bangor, Northern Ireland.
Elijah East is a support worker for disabled adults in Leeds. His poetry concerns queer bodies and the queer experience, whilst also contemplating the spiritual. His work can also be found on Instagram @elijahjayx .
Jo Angela Edwins lives and teaches in Florence, SC. Her chapbook Play was published in 2016, and she has poems appearing or set to appear in The A3 Review, Quarterday Review, Red Rock Review, and Thimble. She has received awards from Winning Writers, Poetry Super Highway, and the SC Academy of Authors, and she currently serves as poet laureate of the Pee Dee region of South Carolina. Aside from poetry, she loves animals, flowers, and far too many television crime shows.
Brennon Elzy is a person from West Virginia who occasionally writes poetry. He received his Bachelor of Arts in Poetry from West Virginia University. Twitter: @BrandonElzby
Liz Enochs is a writer from southeast Missouri. Her nonfiction has been published by Narratively, Leafly, Bustle, and many others. So far, her fiction has been published or is forthcoming in Open: Journal of Arts and Letters, Remington Review, and The Raven Review. Often, you’ll find her in the woods.
The Woman in the Lake – a short story
Amelia Díaz Ettinger is a ‘Mexi-Rican,’ born in México but raised in Puerto Rico. She has two poetry books published, Learning to Love a Western Skyby Airlie Press, and a bilingual poetry book, Speaking at a Time by Redbat Press. A chapbook was released by Finishing Line Press in February, Fossils on a Red Flag. Currently, Amelia Díaz Ettinger is working on an MFA in creative writing at Eastern Oregon University.
Nada Faris is a writer and teaching-artist who received an Arab Woman Award in 2018 from Harper Bazaar Arabia for her impact on Kuwait’s creative sector. Her work has been published in Nimrod, Sukoon, Norton’s Anthology for Hint Fiction, The Indianapolis Review, and elsewhere. Website: www.nadafaris.com. Twitter: @nadafaris.
Anna Ferris is a high school writer from Pittsburgh, PA. She is a rising senior. Sometimes she is reading, sometimes she is walking. Sometimes both. She is Lebanese, Syrian, German, and human.
Melanie Figg is the author of the award-winning poetry collection, Trace. She is a recent NEA Fellowship winner and her poems and essays are published widely. As a certified professional coach, she offers workshops and writing retreats and works remotely with writers on their work and their creative process. www.melaniefigg.net
Catherine Fletcher is a poet and a playwright. Recent work has appeared in The Hopper, Kissing Dynamite, Hopkins Review, Burning House Press, and the concert series Concept Lab. She was a TWP Science and Religion Fellow at Arizona State University from 2016-18. She also served as Director of Poetry Programs at the New York-based organization, City Lore. She lives in Virginia, USA.
Laura Foley is the author of seven poetry collections. Why I Never Finished My Dissertation received a starred Kirkus Review and was among their top poetry books of 2019. Her collection It’s This is forthcoming from Salmon Press. Laura lives with her wife among the hills of Vermont.
Alfred Fournier is a writer and community volunteer living in Phoenix, Arizona. His poems have appeared in Plainsongs, The Main Street Rag, Third Wednesday, Kind Writers, Ocotillo Review and elsewhere.
Sometimes We Must be Swallowed
When not writing about rock ’n roll or youthful transgressions, Richard Fox focuses on cancer from the patient’s point of view drawing on hope, humor, and unforeseen gifts. He is the author of four poetry collections and the winner of the 2017 Frank O’Hara Prize. – smallpoetatlarge.com
Meg Freer grew up in Montana and lives in Kingston, Ontario. She has worked as an editor and currently teaches piano. She enjoys taking photos and being active outdoors year-round. Her writing has been published in anthologies and various journals such as Vallum, Arc Poetry, and Sunlight Press.
Molly Fuller is the author of the full-length collection For Girls Forged by Lightning: Prose & Other Poems (All Nations Press) and two chapbooks Tender the Body (Spare Change Press) and The Neighborhood Psycho Dreams of Love (Cutty Wren Press). Her work has appeared in Nothing to Declare: A Guide to the Flash Sequence, New Poetry from the Midwest, 100 Word Story, NANO Fiction, and Bellingham Review. She is the recipient of a 2020 Artist Residency from both Vermont Studio Center and Wassaic Project. Fuller is the winner of the Gris Gris2020 Summer Poetry Contest. You can find her on Instagram and twitter @mollyfulleryeah.
We Measure by the Second-Hand Circling
Annette Gagliardi has poetry published in the Southwest Journal, Dreamers Creative Writing Online, Down in the Dirt Online Magazine, Trouble Among the Stars, Poetry Quarterly, Poetic Bond and others. She has work in three State’s poetry anthologies and her poem “Gourmand of Orange” has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
What lies below affects the surface
Jeff Gallagher is a poet and playwright from Sussex, England. He has had numerous plays for young people published and performed nationwide. His poetry has appeared in The Journal, One Hand Clapping, Makarelle, Spellbinder and Runcible Spoon.
Preeth Ganapathy lives in Bengaluru, India. Her work has appeared or
is forthcoming in a number of avenues such as Origami Poems Project,
The Buddhist Poetry Review, Better Than Starbucks and Young Ravens
Literary Review. She is also the winner of Wilda Morris’s July 2020
Poetry Challenge.
Fred Gerhard’s poems have appeared in The Heavy Feather Review, The Wild Musette Journal, Black Moon Magazine, Entropy Magazine, and other magazines and anthologies. He writes from a small town in rural New England where he lives with his wife and son.
Susie Gharib is a graduate of the University of Strathclyde with
a Ph.D. on the work of D.H. Lawrence. Her poetry and fiction have
appeared in multiple venues including Down in the Dirt, Impspired
Magazine, Mad Swirl, A New Ulster, Adelaide Literary Magazine, The Ink
Pantry, and the Pennsylvania Literary Journal.
Luke Gilstrap is a writer from Wichita, Kansas, where he lives with his wife, Megan, and his son, Oliver. He received his MFA from Seattle Pacific University and teaches writing at Friends University. A few poems have appeared in River City Poetry and are forthcoming in an anthology published by Darkly Bright Press.
Rachel Grandey, originally from North-East England, studied literature, linguistics and anthropology before moving to South-East Asia to teach English. She enjoys sea-gazing, bird-watching, tea-drinking and early morning forest-exploring. Her proudest literary achievement to date is winning a signed Manchester United football in a poetry competition at the age of fourteen. Her poetry has been published in Vita Poetica.
James Green has published four chapbooks of poetry. His individual poems have appeared in literary magazines in Ireland, the UK, and the USA. Formerly a university professor and administrator, he is now retired and resides in Muncie, Indiana. You may contact him through his website at www.jamesgreenpoetry.net
Silence Heard on San Bernadino Peak
Jane Greer founded Plains Poetry Journal, an advance guard of the New Formalism movement, in 1981, and edited it until 1993. She has two collections of poetry, Bathsheba on the Third Day (The Cummington Press, 1986), and Love like a Conflagration (Lambing Press, 2020) and lives in North Dakota.
Catherine of Siena to Her Confessor
Gerry Grubbs is an attorney who practices law in Cincinnati OH. He has several books out from Dos Madres Press, the most recent is Chrysanthemum Moon.
Daniel Gustafsson has published volumes in both English and Swedish, most recently Fordings (Marble Poetry, 2020). New poems appear in Trinity House Review, The Brazen Head, North American Anglican and The York Journal. Daniel lives in York. Twitter: @PoetGustafsson Website: www.poetgustafsson.wordpress.com
Huw Gwynn-Jones comes from a line of prize-winning poets in the Welsh bardic tradition, but until his recent retirement to Orkney, had never written a line himself. He now writes to find a different way of hearing the world, and has poems published by Eunoia Review, One Hand Clapping and DreichMagazine.
Mark B. Hamilton is an environmental neo-structuralist, working in forms to transform content, adapting from Eastern and Western traditions.
His new eco-poetry volume, OYO, The Beautiful River: an environmental narrative, (Shanti Arts, 2020) explores the reciprocity between self, culture, history, and the contemporary environment of the polluted Ohio River. Please see: www.MarkBHamilton.WordPress.com
Peggy Hammond’s poetry is featured or forthcoming in The Lyricist, Oberon Poetry, High Shelf Press, San Antonio Review, Inklette, West Trade Review, Rogue Agent, Ginosko Literary Journal, and Trouvaille Review. Her full-length play A Little Bit of Destiny was produced by OdysseyStage Theatre in Durham, North Carolina.
Cordelia Hanemann is writer and artist in Raleigh, NC. She has published in journals: Atlanta Review, Southwestern Review, and Laurel Review; anthologies, The Poet Magazine’s Friends and Friendship, Heron Clan and Kakalakand in a chapbook. Her poems have won awards and been nominated for prizes. Recently the featured poet for Negative Capability Press and The Alexandria Quarterly, she is now working on a first novel, about her roots in Cajun Louisiana.
David Hanlon is a welsh poet living in Cardiff. He is a Best of the Net nominee. You can find his work online in over 40 magazines, including Rust & Moth, Icefloe Press & Mineral Lit Mag. His first chapbook Spectrum of Flight is available for purchase now at Animal Heart Press.
James Hannon is a psychotherapist in Massachusetts where he accompanies adolescents and adults recovering from disappointments, deceptions, and addictions. His poetry and non-fiction have appeared in journals including Amethyst Review, Blue River, Cold Mountain Review and in Gathered: Contemporary Quaker Poets. His collection, The Year I Learned The Backstroke,was published by Aldrich Press.
John Hansen received a BA in English from the University of Iowa and an MA in English Literature from Oklahoma State University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Summerset Review, Trouvaille Review, 50-Word Stories, One Sentence Poems, The Dillydoun Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Oddball Magazine, Eunoia Review, Litro Magazine, Drunk Monkeys, and elsewhere. He is English Faculty at Mohave Community College in Arizona. Read more at johnphansen.com.
The Rev. Dr. Cole Hartin is an Anglican priest serving in Saint John, New Brunswick Canada. His poetry has been published in Montreal Writes and The Nashwaak Review.
Robert Stewart Heaney is a teacher and writer. He is the author of three scholarly books and editor and contributor to numerous collections on religious thought, history, and the intersections of art and transformative action. Originally from Ireland, he holds a D.Phil from the University of Oxford and lives and works in the USA.
Richard Manly Heiman lives in the pines of the Sierra Nevada. He works as an English teacher and writes when the kids are at recess. Richard has been published by Rattle, Sonic Boom, Spiritus (Johns Hopkins U.), and elsewhere. His URL is poetrick.com.
Bryan Edward Helton is a poet and fiction writer from Georgia. His work has been published or is forthcoming in South Florida Poetry Journal, Oracle Bone, and The Collidescope. He was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2019. He earns a living by driving a forklift for a logistics corporation.
Sister Lou Ella Hickman’s poems and articles have appeared in numerous magazines and journals as well as four anthologies. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and in 2020. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published in 2015. (Press 53)
Fredric Hildebrand is a retired physician living in Neenah, WI. He is the author of two poetry chapbooks, “Northern Portrait” (Kelsay Books, 2020), and “A Glint of Light” (Finishing Line Press, 2020). His recent poetry has appeared in The MacGuffin and Sky Island Journal.
When not writing or reading, he plays acoustic folk guitar and explores the Northwoods with his wife and two Labrador retrievers.
fredrichildebrandpoetry.com
Nancy Himel spent 30 years teaching high school English in the hood near Los Angeles before she retired in August, 2019. Prairie Schooner published one of her poems in 2007, and now that she is a full-time poet, she is hoping more of her work will be published soon. She lives in Tucson, Arizona where she is working on a memoir-in-verse, tentatively titled From Ruach’s Cradle.
Somewhere There is Hunger, Somewhere, Fear
Daniel Hinds won the Poetry Society’s Timothy Corsellis Young Critics Prize and he was one of the winners of the Shortlist Book Review Competition, held in celebration of the Dylan Thomas Prize. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming in The London Magazine, The New European, Wild Court, Stand, Blackbox Manifold, The Honest Ulsterman, Finished Creatures, and elsewhere. Twitter: @DanielGHinds
Mary Beth Hines writes from her home in Massachusetts following a career as a project manager. Her work appears in journals such as Crab Orchard Review, Orchards Poetry Journal, The Blue Nib, The Lake, Snakeskin, and The Road Not Taken among many others. She is working on her first poetry collection.
Hannah Hinsch is a Seattle-based writer who graduated summa cum laude from Seattle Pacific University with a degree in English Literature and fiction. She was the editorial intern at Image journal, a leading quarterly that joins art and faith, for two years. Hannah writes across genres, and finds her impetus among Greek mythology, the Old and New Testament, and in the green, salt-soaked Pacific Northwest. Hannah not only sees writing as an exercise in aesthetics and attentiveness, she leans into writing as a way of knowing, a hermeneutic of God.
Ruth Holzer’s poems have appeared in Southern Poetry Review, Connecticut River Review, Slant, Blue Unicornand THEMA, and in other journals and anthologies the U.S. and abroad. A multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, sheis the author of five chapbooks, most recently A Face in the Crowd (Kelsay Books, 2019) and Why We’re Here (Presa Press, 2019)
Jenevieve Carlyn Hughes teaches humanities for university students. Her poetry has recently appeared in Northern New England Review’s Front/Lines: Pandemic Perspectives, Braided Way Magazine, and the Connecticut River Review, among other places. She enjoys birdwatching, rarely with binoculars. Follow her on Instagram @sea_thistle.
Diana Hurlburt is a librarian and weird horse girl whose short work has appeared most recently in Memoir Mixtapes, phoebe, and Luna Station Quarterly. Her mini-chapbook Nothing Natural is forthcoming from Sword & Kettle Press in December 2020.
body politic – a mixed-media prose poem
Nancy Byrne Iannucci is the author of Temptation of Wood (Nixes Mate Review 2018) and Goblin Fruit (Impspired, September 2021). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in a number of publications including Gargoyle, Ghost City Press, Clementine Unbound, Dodging the Rain, Three Drops from a Cauldron, 8 Poems, Glass: A Journal of Poetry (Poets Resist), Hobo Camp Review, and Typehouse Literary Magazine. Nancy is a Long Island, NY native who now resides in Troy, NY where she teaches history at the Emma Willard School. Web: https://www.nancybyrneiannucci.com/
Life itself is a resignation – a poem by Nancy Iannucci
M.J. Iuppa’s fourth poetry collection is This Thirst (Kelsay Books, 2017). For the past 31 years, she has lived on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Check out her blog: mjiuppa.blogspot.com for her musings on writing, sustainability & life’s stew.
Fatima Ijaz is based in Karachi, Pakistan and teaches English Composition and Speech Communication at IBA. She is a contributing editor at a literary publication – Pandemonium Journal. She graduated in English from Hartwick College, NY and York University, TO. She holds an MA in English Linguistics from Eastern Michigan University, MI. She won first prize at the Mclaughlin Poetry Contest in Toronto (2007). She has participated in poetry and art collaborations which were featured at Music Mela 2019, Art Baithak 2019 and Taseer Art Gallery 2020. Her poetry and prose have been published in or are forthcoming in isacoustic, New Asian Writing, Kitaab, Rigorous, Zau, Praxis, The Write Launch, Red Fez, Whirlwind, Naya Daur, Poetica Review, Aerogramme, Bombay Review and Aleph Review amongst others. Website: Fatimaijazz.wordpress.com Insta: Fatima.ijaz6
Christopher M James, a dual British/French national and retired HR professional, lives near Paris. He has published in Aesthetica, Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Journal …. and in numerous anthologies (Live Canon, WoLF, Canterbury Poet of the Year, Verve, Dempsey & Windle …). In the past three years, he has been a prizewinner in numerous competitions (Sentinel, Yeovil, Stroud, Poets meet Politics, Wirral, Hanna Greally, Maria Edgeworth, Earlyworks…). He is also a musician, a translator and, some would say, a failed journalist.
Marc Janssen lives in a house with a wife who likes him and a cat who loathes him. Regardless of that turmoil, his poetry can be found scattered around the world in places like Penumbra, Slant, Cirque Journal, Off the Coast and Poetry Salzburg. Janssen also coordinates the Salem Poetry Project, a weekly reading, the annual Salem Poetry Festival, and was a 2020 nominee for Oregon Poet Laureate.
Willamette August, Sydney Landing
Nancy K. Jentsch’s poetry has appeared recently in Thimble Literary Magazine, Tiferet, Zingara Poetry Review and in numerous anthologies. In 2020, she received an Arts Enrichment Grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women. Her chapbook, Authorized Visitors, was published in 2017 and her writer’s page on Facebook is https://www.facebook.com/NancyJentschPoet/
Judy A. Johnson’s work has been published in journals and anthologized; her poems have been recorded and broadcast on a local radio station. Johnson works in libraries and educational publishing, mining daily life for poems and essays. She has belonged to a writing group for more than two decades.
Marci Rae Johnson works for Legible.com and as a freelance editor. Her poems appear in Image, The Christian Century, Relief, The Other Journal, Main Street Rag, Rhino, Quiddity, The Valparaiso Poetry Review, The Louisville Review, and 32 Poems, among others. Her most recent book was published by Steel Toe Books.
Summer at Poetry Camp of the Lord, with Petroglyphs
Helen Jones gained a degree in English, many years ago from University College London and later an M.Ed. from the University of Liverpool. She is now happily retired and spend a lot of her time writing and making a new garden.
Shelly Jones, PhD (she/her/hers) is an Associate Professor of English at SUNY Delhi, where she teaches classes in mythology, folklore, and writing. Her speculative work has previously appeared in Podcastle, New Myths, The Future Fire, and elsewhere. Find her on Twitter @shellyjansen.
Jacqueline Jules is the author of Manna in the Morning (Kelsay Books, 2021) and Itzhak Perlman’s Broken String, 2016 winner of the Helen Kay Chapbook Prize by Evening Street Press. Her work has appeared in over 100 publications including The Paterson Literary Review, Potomac Review, and Imitation Fruit. She is also the author of 50 books for young readers, including Tag Your Dreams: Poems of Play and Persistence (Albert Whitman, 2020) She lives in Arlington, Virginia. Visit her online at www.jacquelinejules.com
Eve Kagan is a trauma-informed therapist, educator, and theatre-artist. Her poetry is forthcoming in Eunoia Review; her personal essays and short stories have been published in various journals and anthologies, including HuffPost, Role Reboot, Mothering through the Darkness, and Dark City Lights. She lives in Boulder, Colorado.
Sylvia Karman’s work has appeared in Delmarva Review, Blueline, and Writing the Land, among others. She lives in the Adirondack mountains of New York and in central Maryland where she hikes and writes for the love of the journey. You can visit her at www.sylviakarman.com .
Corinna Keefe is a freelance writer currently based in the UK. She has previously published poetry with Broken Sleep Books and Enthusiastic Press.
Pratibha Kelapure is an Indian-American poet residing in California. Her poems appear in Choice Words: Writers on Abortion (Anthology, Haymarket Books, 2020), Entropy Magazine, Plath Poetry Project, miller’s pond poetry, The Lake, and many other literary magazines.
J-T Kelly is an innkeeper in Indianapolis, Indiana. He lives in a brick house with his wife and five children, his two parents, and a dog.
Anna Key is married with four children and lives on a small sailboat with her family. Her writing is centrally concerned with themes of spiritual and ecological conversion, and she has published poems and essays at Dappled Things, Convivium, Evangelization & Culture and Catholic Poetry Room.
Vittoria Colonna: Sonnet for Michelangelo
from Vittoria Colonna’s Sonnets for Michelangelo
Andrea Kibel is a new poet and 24-year-old graduate student in biology. A child of immigrants from South Africa and Zimbabwe, she grew up in the redwoods of California’s Santa Cruz mountains before studying in Dallas, TX and South Bend, Indiana. Andrea draws on science and nature, strangeness and isolation, and Jewish experience and imagery to create poems ranging from free verse to blank verse and sonnets.
Paula Kienapple-Summers is a poet from Kitchener, Ontario. Her poems have been published in Existere, The Nashwaak Review, Tower Poetry, and Spadina Literary Review as well as anthologies including Another Dysfunctional Cancer Poetry Anthology (Mansfield Press: 2018) and Voicing Suicide (Ekstasis Editions: 2020).
Blair Kilpatrick is a psychologist and musician in Berkeley, California. She is the author of Accordion Dreams: A Journey into Cajun and Creole Music (U. Press Mississippi, 2009). She was the recipient of the first annual Slovenian Literary Award (2019) and is currently working on a family roots memoir. In her free time, she enjoys baking bread, playing the Cajun accordion with her fiddler husband, and visiting their adult children in Toronto and New York. Her website is www.blairkilpatrick.com
Clint King is an American poet. Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, he graduated from Miami University, with a double major in History and Political Science, and a minor in American Literature. He lives in California, where he is at work on a collection of poems and his debut novel.
Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales from ministry in the Methodist Church, has had over 180 pieces published by on-line poetry sites, including Amethyst Review, printed journals and anthologies. https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com
Belgium based writer Sheila Kinsella’s short stories draw inspiration from her Irish upbringing. An avid watcher of people’s behaviour, and blessed with abundant natural curiosity, Sheila lures the reader into a shrewdly observed world via imagery and comedy. Sheila graduated with an MA in Creative Writing (Distance Learning) from Lancaster University in the United Kingdom in 2017.
Mary Kipps writes poetry for all age groups, in traditional forms as well as in free verse. Internationally published since 2005, Mary is also the author of three humorous paranormal Kindle books: All in Vein, A Sucker for Heels, and Bitten: A Practical Guide to Dating a Vampire.
Annie Kissack is a teacher from the Isle of Man. A fluent speaker of Manx Gaelic, she enjoys singing and writing music for her choir, but only began writing poetry in the last few years, becoming the Fifth Manx Bard in 2018. facebook @anniekissackpoetry
Rose Knapp (she/they) is a poet and electronic producer. She has publications in Lotus-Eater, Bombay Gin, BlazeVOX, Hotel Amerika, Fence Books, Obsidian, Gargoyle, and others. She has poetry collections published with Hesterglock Press, and Dostoyevsky Wannabe. She lives in Minneapolis. Find her on at roseknapp.net and on Twitter @Rose_Siyaniye
Kara Knickerbocker is the author of the chapbooks The Shedding Before the Swell (dancing girl press, 2018) and Next to Everything that is Breakable(Finishing Line Press, 2017). Her poetry and essays have appeared in or are forthcoming from: Poet Lore, Hobart, Levee Magazine, and more. She currently lives in Pennsylvania and writes with the Madwomen in the Attic at Carlow University. Find her online: www.karaknickerbocker.com.
Nancy Knowles teaches English and Writing at Eastern Oregon University in La Grande, OR. Her ghazal “Be Still” earned an honorable mention in the Oregon Poetry Association’s 2019 Spring Contest. She has published poetry in Toyon; Eastern Oregon Anthology: A Sense of Place; Torches n’ Pitchforks; War, Literature, & the Arts; Oregon East; and Willawaw Journal. Her poem “Sixth-Grade Homework” is available at http://wlajournal.com/wlaarchive/29/knowles.pdf and “The Only Eternal” at http://willawawjournal.com/category/journal/willawaw-journal-winter-2018-issue-5/page/5/
Philip Kolin is the Distinguished Professor of English (Emeritus) and Editor Emeritus of the Southern Quarterly at the University of Southern Mississippi. He has published over 40 books, including twelve collections of poetry and chapbooks. Among his most recent titles are Emmett Till in Different States (Third World Press, 2015), Reaching Forever (Poiema Series, Cascade Books, 2019), Delta Tears (Main Street Rag, 2020), Wholly God’s:Poems (Wind and Water Press, 2021), and forthcoming Americorona: Poems about the Pandemic (Negative Capability Press, 2022).
Maria Kornacki graduated from Eastern Michigan University with a BA in Creative Writing. Her work has been featured in Sonder Midwest, Local Wolves, Remington Review, and Genre: Urban Arts No.8 Print. She’s working on the manuscript for her first poetry book.
Janet Krauss, who has two books of poetry published, “Borrowed Scenery,” Yuganta Press, and “Through the Trees of Autumn,” Spartina Press, has recently retired from teaching English at Fairfield University. Her mission is to help and guide Bridgeport’s young children through her teaching creative writing, leading book clubs and reading to and engaging a kindergarten class. As a poet, she co-directs the poetry program of the Black Rock Art Guild.
Ralph La Rosa, retired from professing American Literature, has published critical prose on major American writers and has also placed fiction, poetry, and film scripts. These days, he mostly writes poetry, appearing widely on the Internet, in print journals, and in the chapbook Sonnet Stanzas and the full-length collections Ghost Treesand My Miscellaneous Muse: Poem Pastiches & Whimsical Words.
Judith Adams Lagana‘s poetry has appeared in Atlanta Review,Naugatuck River Review and, the Paterson Literary Review, among others. She is the co-editor of River Heron Review and lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Follow her on Twitter at @lylacmuse. Website: jlagana.com
Even though I will eventually tire
Kyle Laws is based out of Steel City Art Works in Pueblo, CO where she directs Line/Circle: Women Poets in Performance. Her collections include Uncorseted(Kung Fu Treachery Press, 2020) Ride the Pink Horse (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019), Faces of Fishing Creek (Middle Creek Publishing, 2018), This Town: Poems of Correspondence coauthored with Jared Smith (Liquid Light Press, 2017), So Bright to Blind (Five Oaks Press, 2015), and Wildwood (Lummox Press, 2014). With eight nominations for a Pushcart Prize and one for Best of the Net, her poems and essays have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Germany. She is editor and publisher of Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press.
Nicole Lee was born in Kuala Lumpur and educated at Malvern and Oxford. She has worked as a banker in Hong Kong and London and now lives in Wandsworth, works in Kew and writes poetry. She has been published in various online journals and long-listed in the National Poetry Competition.
Kali Lightfoot lives in Salem, MA. Her poems and reviews of poetry have appeared in journals and anthologies, been nominated twice for Pushcart, and once for Best of the Net. Her debut poetry collection, Pelted by Flowers,is available from CavanKerry Press (https://cavankerrypress.org/product/pelted-by-flowers/ ). Kali earned an MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Find her at kali-lightfoot.com.
William Littlejohn-Oram received a degree in Fiction from the University of Houston and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Poetry from Texas Tech University. He often makes people uncomfortable in social interactions, doesn’t know what to say most of the time, and can currently be found in Lubbock, TX, wearing brightly colored shoes. His work is forthcoming in Inkwell Journal.
Fay L. Loomis lives a particularly quiet life in the woods in upstate New York. A member of the Stone Ridge Library Writers, her poetry and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in The Closed Eye Open, Love Me, Love My Belly, Rat’s Ass Review, Ruminate Magazine, HerStry, Sanctuary Magazine, and Burrow.
Rupert Loydell is a writer, editor and abstract artist. His many books of poetry include Dear Mary (Shearsman, 2017) and The Return of the Man Who Has Everything (Shearsman 2015); and he has edited anthologies such as Yesterday’s Music Today (co-edited with Mike Ferguson, Knives Forks and Spoons Press 2014), and Troubles Swapped for Something Fresh: manifestos and unmanifestos (Salt, 2010)
An Angel is Reaching Out to You
Tony Lucas has lived and worked in inner South London for many years. Hs work has been published both in the UK and America, with the most recent collection of his work, Unsettled Accounts, issued by Stairwell Books in 2015.
Margo McCall‘s short stories have appeared in Pacific Review, Heliotrope, In*tense, Sidewalks, Rockhurst Review, Toasted Cheese, and other journals. Her nonfiction has appeared in Herizons, Lifeboat: A Journal of Memoir, Pilgrimage, the Los Angeles Times, and a variety of other publications. A graduate of the M.A. creative writing program at California State University Northridge, she lives in the port town of Long Beach, California. For more information, visit http://www.margomccall.com.
Journals publishing Janet McCann’s work include Kansas Quarterly, Parnassus, Nimrod, Sou’Wester, America, The Christian Century, Christianity and Literature, New York Quarterly, Tendril, and others. A 1989 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship winner, she taught at Texas A & M University from 1969-2016, is now Professor Emerita. Most recent poetry collection: The Crone at the Casino (Lamar University Press, 2014).
Pat McCutcheon’s been a student on the University of the Seven Seas, first grade teacher in a barrio, and Peace Corps volunteer in Venezuela. Now retired from teaching as a college English professor, she writes in the redwoods of far northern California. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and her chapbook, Slipped Past Words, was published as a winner by Finishing Line Press.
Veronica McDonald is a poet, fiction writer, artist, mom, and editor of Heart of Flesh Literary Journal. Her poetry, fiction, and art have been published in Lost Pen Magazine, Jersey Devil Press, and Five on the Fifth, among several others. Find out more at: VeronicaMcDonald.com.
Gill McEvoy won the 2015 Michael Marks Award for The First Telling(Happenstance Press). She is a Hawthornden Fellow. Her recent collection is Are You Listening? (Hedgehog Press 2020) and a “Selected” is forthcoming from Hedgehog Press in 2022.
My Neighbour’s Sideways Complaint
Susan McLean, professor emerita of English at Southwest Minnesota State University, has published two books of poetry, The Best Disguise and The Whetstone Misses the Knife, and one book of translations of the Latin poet Martial. Her translations of Rilke have appeared in Subtropics, Transference, Presence, and elsewhere.
Kathryn MacDonald’s poetry has been published in literary journals in Canada, the U.S., England, and Ireland. Her poem “Seduction” was short-listed for the 2019 Freefall Poetry Contest. She is the author of A Breeze You Whisper (poems, 2011) and Calla & Édourd (fiction, 2009). Website: https://KathrynMacDonald.com.
Tamiko Mackison studied Latin and French at New College, Oxford. She is raising two young children. When there’s no pandemic, she’s hired as a wedding pianist from time to time.
Christine Makepeace is a weird fiction writer and film essayist living in the Pacifc Northwest. Links to her work can be found at christinemakepeace.com
My Sister’s a Witch, or They’ll Always Find Someone to Come For – a story
Carolyn Martin is a lover of gardening and snorkeling, feral cats and backyard birds, writing and photography. Her poems have appeared in more than 130 journals throughout North America, Australia, and the UK. She is the poetry editor of Kosmos Quarterly: journal for global transformation. Find out more at www.carolynmartinpoet.com.
Louise Mather is a writer from Northern England and founding editor of Acropolis Journal. Her work is published or forthcoming in magazines such as Fly on the Wall Press, Crow & Cross Keys, Nymphs, Streetcake Magazine, Feral and Dust Poetry Magazine. She writes about endometriosis, fatigue and mental health. Twitter @lm2020uk
Libby Maxey is a senior editor at Literary Mama. Her poems have appeared in Emrys, Crannóg, Stoneboat and elsewhere, and her first poetry collection, Kairos, won Finishing Line Press’s 2018 New Women’s Voices Chapbook Competition. Her nonliterary activities include singing classical repertoire, mothering two sons, and administering the Department of Classics at Amherst College.
Elizabeth L. Merrick lives with her husband in Somerville, Massachusetts. Her poetry has appeared in journals including Green Hills Literary Lantern, Muddy River Poetry Review, and Front Porch Review. She has also authored publications in the field of mental health and addiction research, as well as a guidebook on Boston’s historic house museums.
Stephanie K. Merrill has poems recently published in The Rise Up Review, Sage Cigarettes Magazine, Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, and elsewhere. She has work forthcoming in UCity Review and in Moist Poetry Journal. Stephanie K. Merrill is a Pushcart Prize nominee and a retired high school English teacher. She lives in Austin, Texas.
Opa! To The Evermore of The Great Somewhere
Lisa Meserole teaches music and movement to young children in Connecticut. Her poems have appeared in Waking Up to the Earth, and in Oysterville: Poems, as well as in Connecticut River Review, Green Hills Literary Lantern, and Shot Glass Journal. She was also an Edwin Way Teale Writer-In-Residence at Trail Wood.
Matthew Miller teaches social studies, swings tennis rackets, and writes poetry – all hoping to create a home. He lives beside a dilapidating apple orchard in Indiana, and tries to shape the dead trees into playhouses for his four boys. His poetry has been published in Flying Island, Remington Review and is forthcoming in Whale Road Review.
WEBSITE: https://mattleemiller.wixsite.com/poetry
Monica Mills is a Jamaican-American writer and poet. She is from Maplewood, New Jersey and has a bachelor’s degree in political science and English from Rutgers University. Monica’s recent work appears in journals such as West Trade Review, Anthologist, and New Verse News among others. She enjoys rainy days and ginger tea.
Mark J. Mitchell’s latest full-length poetry collection is Roshi, San Francisco (Norfolk Press). A novel, The Magic War is available from Loose Leaves Publishing. He studied at Santa Cruz under Raymond Carver and George Hitchcock. His work appeared in several anthologies and hundreds of periodicals. He lives with his wife, Joan Juster, where he made his living pointing out pretty things in San Francisco. Now, like many others, he’s unemployed.
Holding a BFA from the University of Texas, Lisa Molina has taught high school English and theatre, and served as Associate Publisher of Austin Family Magazine. Molina now works with students with special needs. Her poetry can be found in Trouvaille Review, Beyond Words Magazine, Ancient Paths Literary Magazine, and The Ekphrastic Review with poems soon to be featured in The Peeking Cat and Silver Birch Press. She lives in Austin, Texas.
Diane Lee Moomey is a painter and poet living in Half Moon Bay, California, where she is co-host of Coastside Poetry, a monthly reading series; her work has appeared in PoetryMagazine.com, Mezzo Cammin, Caesura, California Quarterly, The Road Less Taken and others. Please visit her at www.dianeleemoomeyart.com
A Best of the Net and six-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Julie L. Moore is the author of four poetry collections, including, most recently, Full Worm Moon, which won a 2018 Woodrow Hall Top Shelf Award and received honorable mention for the Conference on Christianity and Literature’s 2018 Book of the Year Award. She has also had poetry appear in African American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Image, New Ohio Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Southern Review. Moore is the Writing Center Director at Taylor University in Indiana, where she is the poetry editor for Relief Journal. Learn more about her work at julielmoore.com.
Marjorie Moorhead writes from northern New England. Happy to have found the language and community of poetry, her work addresses environment, survival, relationship. The author of two chapbooks, and a forthcoming collection, included in nine anthologies, and many literary sites, much of Marjorie’s work can be seen here:
https://marjoriewritespoetry.wordpress.com/places-you-can-see-my-work/
Kathryn Muensterman is a native of Indiana and is currently pursuing a BA in English Literature at Washington and Lee University. She is the winner of a 2020 Academy of American Poets University Prize for her poem “Eschatology” (https://poets.org/2020-eschatology), and her poetry also appears in Washington and Lee’s literary magazine, Ampersand.
JBMulligan has published more than 1100 poems and stories in various magazines over the past 45 years, and has had two chapbooks: The Stations of the Cross and THIS WAY TO THE EGRESS, as well as 2 e-books: The City of Now and Then, and A Book of Psalms (a loose translation). He has appeared in more than a dozen anthologies.
A life-long resident of Connecticut, John Muro is a graduate of Trinity College. He has also earned advanced degrees from Wesleyan University and the University of Connecticut. His professional career has been dedicated to environmental stewardship and conservation, and he has held several executive and volunteer positions in those fields. Over the past year, John has had the good fortune to dedicate more time to his life-long passion for poetry. His first volume of poems, In the Lilac Hour, was published by Antrim House in October of 2020 and is available on Amazon. His work has also recently appeared or will soon appear in Amethyst Review, First Literary Review-East, Plum Tree Tavern, Freshwater Clementine Unbound, The Trouvaille Review and elsewhere.
Florence Murry’s poetry has appeared Stoneboat, Mainstreet Rag, Southern California Review, Two Hawks Quarterly, earlier in The Black Buzzard Review (Florence Bohl) and elsewhere. She is currently working on a poetry manuscript called Last Run Before Sunset.
Liz Nakazawa is the editor of Deer Drink the Moon: Poems of Oregon(Ooligan Press), a collection of nature poems by 33 Oregon poets. It was designated one of the Best 100 Books about Oregon in the last 100 Years by the Oregon State Librarian. It was also a Best Picks of Powell’s. She also edited The Knotted Bond: Oregon Poets Speak of Their Sisters (Uttered Chaos Press). Her own poems have appeared in Turn, The Timberline Reviewand The Poeming Pigeon journals and haiku has appeared in ahundredgourds. She has published a chapbook of her poems, entitled Painting the Heart Open.
Bonnie Naradzay‘s poems are in AGNI, New Letters (Pushcart nomination), RHINO, Kenyon Review Online, Tampa Review, Pinch (Pushcart nomination), EPOCH, Anglican Theological Review, American Journal of Poetry; many others. In 2010, the University of New Orleans awarded her a month’s stay with Ezra Pound’s daughter, Mary, in an Italian castle in the Dolomites.
Mary Ford Neal is a writer and academic living and working in the West of Scotland. Her poetry is widely published/forthcoming in magazines including Long Poem Magazine, Atrium, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Madrigal, Capsule Stories, and Marble. Her debut collection ‘Dawning’ was published by Indigo Dreams Publishing in August 2021. Mary is assistant editor of Nine Pens Press and ‘192’ Magazine. Mammina Proves the Existence of God
Megan Neary is a writer and teacher living in Columbus, Ohio. Her work has appeared in Rejection Letters, Near Window, and Flyover Country, which she edits.
The Cold – a story by Megan Neary
Larry Needham lives in Oberlin, Ohio. A retired community college teacher, he has published on Romanticism and poetry. Larry has a keen interest in travel, but, these days, when not busy in the yard, works on writing short verse and fables.
Eric Nicholson is a prize-winning poet (Opossum 2020) and a retired art teacher. He is a Zen practitioner and this may influence some of his poetry.
Jennifer Novotney holds an M.A. in English from Northern Arizona University. Her work is forthcoming in Buddhist Poetry Review and has appeared in English Journal, Poetry Quarterly, Unbroken Journal, and The Vignette Review, the latter for which she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In 2014, she won the Moonbeam Children’s Book Award for her debut novel, Winter in the Soul. She grew up in Los Angeles, CA and lives in North East Pennsylvania with her family where she teaches English and creative writing.
Mallory Nygard lives and writes in East Tennessee. Her poetry has appeared in Relief: A Journal of Art and Faith and Ever Eden Literary Journal. Her poem ‘Song of Sarajevo’ was named Best in Show at the 2021 Rehumanize International Create | Encounter. Her first collection of poetry, Pelican, was released in 2021.
Antoni Ooto is an internationally published poet and flash fiction writer.
Well-known for his abstract expressionist art, Antoni now adds his voice to poetry. Reading and studying the works of many poets has opened another means of self-expression. His recent poems have been published in Amethyst Review, The BeZine, Green Ink Poetry, The Poet Magazine, Brown Bag Online, The Wild Word, and many journals and anthologies.
He lives and works in upstate New York with his wife poet/storyteller, Judy DeCroce.
no matter how much rain may fall
Carolyn Ostrander, a freelance transliterator for the Deaf, lives in central New York. Her poems have appeared in The Comstock Review, (she is currently an editor) and Monday Night Poetry Anthology 2006. With degrees in linguistics and composition/rhetoric, she researches and writes about disability rhetorics, suffrage and nineteenth-century rural women.
Carolyn Oulton has been published in magazines including Acumen, Artemis, Envoi, The Frogmore Papers, from the edge, Ink Sweat & Tears, Nine Muses, Orbis, The Poetry Village, The Moth and Seventh Quarry. Her most recent collection Accidental Fruit is published by Worple Press. Her website is at carolynoulton.co.uk
Barbara Parchim lives on a small farm in southwest Oregon. Retired from social work, she volunteered for several years at a wildlife rehabilitation facility. She enjoys gardening and wilderness hiking. Her poems have appeared (or are forthcoming) in Ariel Chart, Isacoustic, the Jefferson Journal, Turtle Island Quarterly, Windfall and Trouvaille Review. Her first chapbook has been selected by Flowstone Press to appear in 2021.
George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, New York (U.S.). His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, MORIA Poetry Journal, Chronogram Magazine, Allegro Poetry Journal, Kalliope, Ampersand Literary Review, The Angle at St. John Fisher College and 3:16 Journal. George’s blogs, essays and letters have appeared in Nonviolence Magazine, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Pace e Bene, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, the Havana Times, the South China Morning Post, The Buffalo News and more.
Bernard Pearson’s work appears in many publications, including; Aesthetica Magazine, The Edinburgh Review, Crossways, Patchwork, FourxFour, The Gentian. In 2017 a selection of his poetry In Free Fall was published by Leaf by Leaf Press. In 2019 he won second prize in The Aurora Prize for Writing for his poem ‘Manor Farm’.
Andre F. Peltier is a Lecturer III at Eastern Michigan University where teaches literature and freshman composition. He lives in Ypsilanti, MI, with his family. His poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming in numerous journals In his free time, he obsesses about soccer and comic books.
Twitter: @aandrefpeltier
With the Tenderness of the Rain Forest
Alan Perry authored Clerk of the Dead, published by Main Street Rag Publishing in 2020. His poems have appeared in Tahoma Literary Review, Heron Tree, Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, and elsewhere. A Best of the Net nominee, he is a Senior Poetry Editor for Typehouse Literary Magazine.
Lindi Perry has written poems off and on since her college days, where she won some local awards and then got cold feet before she could publish. She’s braver now, and sending these little personal revelations out into the world.
Susan Peters is a New England girl through and through. Born in Massachusetts, she spent much of her youth in Maine in the country of the pointed firs. Her passion is horses, particularly Icelandic horses and she frequently travels to Iceland to ride and learn as much as she can about Icelandic sagas. She began writing poetry after her children were grown and has been trying to catch up ever since.
Linda Vigen Phillips‘ poems have appeared in The Texas Review, The California Quarterly, NC Poetry Society Award Winning Poems 2001, Wellspring, Main Street Rag, Independence Boulevard, and Windhover. She has two published YA novels in verse, Crazy and Behind These Hands. She lives in Charlotte, North Carolina with her husband.
Larry Pike’s poetry has appeared in a variety of publications and is forthcoming in several. His poem “Burned” appeared in Amethyst Review in January 2018, and it will be included in the anthology Without a Doubt: poems illuminating faith to be published by the New York Quarterly Foundation in August. His collection Even in the Slums of Providence will be published by Finishing Line Press in October. He lives in Glasgow, Kentucky.
David E. Poston is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Slow of Study, and a co-editor of Kakalak. His work has appeared recently or is forthcoming in Atlanta Review, North Carolina Literary Review, Pembroke Magazine, and The Windhover. He lives in Gastonia, NC.
To a Church Mouse Nibbling the Remains of the Host
Martin Potter (https://martinpotterpoet.home.blog) is a poet and academic, and his poems have appeared in Acumen, The French Literary Review, Eborakon, Scintilla, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Poetry Village, andother journals. His pamphlet In the Particular was published by Eyewear in December, 2017.
Ann Power is a retired faculty member from The University of Alabama. She enjoys writing historical sketches as well as poems based in the kingdoms of magical realism. Her work has appeared in: Spillway, Gargoyle, The Birmingham Poetry Review, The American Poetry Journal, Dappled Things, Caveat Lector, The Copperfield Review, and other journals.
Yevgeniya Przhebelskaya has held a variety of paid and volunteer jobs in the education field, including teaching introductory college classes and facilitating poetry workshops. Yevgeniya’s poems have been published in Time of Singing, Page and Spine, First Literary Review-East, Ancient Paths, and other print and online publications, and were nominated for the Pushcart Prize two times. Check out more of her poems at ypoetry.weebly.com
Diana Raab is a memoirist, poet, blogger, and author of ten books and over 1000 articles and poems. She blogs for Psychology Today, The Wisdom Daily and Thrive Global. Her latest book is Writing for Bliss: A Seven-Step Program for Telling Your Story and Transforming Your Life. Visit her at: dianaraab.com.
George Rawlins has recent poems in The Common, New Critique (UK), and Nine Mile. He has a BA from Ohio University and an MFA from the University of California, Irvine. His book, Cheapside Afterlife (Longleaf Press at Methodist University, April 2021), reimagines the life of Thomas Chatterton in 57 sonnets.
Wherein Old Tom, Bent with Age, Imagines
Sarah Rehfeldt lives with her family in western Washington where she is a writer, artist, and photographer. Her poems have appeared in Presence; Blueline, Appalachia; and Weber – The Contemporary West. She finds inspiration in the close-up world of macro nature photography. Favorite subjects include her garden; the forest; cloudscapes; and the ever-plentiful raindrops of western Washington. You can view her photography web pages at: www.pbase.com/candanceski
Maeve (aka Jeri) Reilly is a writer from Minnesota who spends part of each year in Co Sligo, Ireland, where she once lived. Her most recent words can be found in Dark Mountain, Utne Reader, and The Lonely Crowd (forthcoming). She is currently learning Irish in solidarity with her ancestors and with the land. Tweets @MaeveWriter
Julia Retkova is a King’s College London graduate student with two degrees in Literature and Digital Studies. When not working on an app that connects foreigners with their family overseas, she’s running a small literary journal called Nymphs. She was born in Ukraine, but grew up in the south of Spain. She loves reading books in the sun and writing when everyone’s asleep 🙂
And what if colour was a body you could split apart?
Bill Richardson lives in Galway, Ireland, where he is Emeritus Professor in Spanish at the National University of Ireland Galway. He has published books and articles on Spanish and Latin American literature. His poems have been published in Irish newspapers, Galway Review, Stony Thursday Book and the Fish Anthology 2020.
Jacob Riyeff (jacobriyeff.com, @riyeff) is a translator, poet, and scholar of medieval English literature. His primary interests lie in the western contemplative tradition and medieval vernacular poetry. He is a Benedictine oblate of Osage Deanery and lives on Milwaukee’s Lower East Side.
Royal Rhodes is a retired professor of global religions, religion and the arts, and death & dying. His poems have appeared online and in a series of poetry/art collaborations with The Catbird [on the Yadkin] Press in North Carolina.
Moná Ó Loideáin Rochelle’s poetry can be found or is forthcoming in The Southern Review, Spiritus, Notre Dame Review, Southword, and Wales Haiku Journal. She volunteers for Médecins Sans Frontières. Visit: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monatheresalydon/
Lindsay Rockwell won first prize in the October Project Poetry Contest in April 2020 and has been published in Iron Horse Literary Review, Perceptions Magazine, TheCenter for New American’s Poetry Anthology and The Courtship of Winds. She is currently the poet-in-residence for the Episcopal Church of Connecticut as well as host for their Poetry and Social Justice Dialogue series. As a medical oncologist she has been published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and coauthored In Defiance of Death: Exposing The Real Costs of End-of-Life Care (Praeger, 2008).
My stone self and the forgotten calves
Ashlyn Roice is a junior at Mountain House High School in California. Her poetry has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and has been published in Defiant Magazine.
When not writing poetry, Emalisa Rose enjoys crafting and birding. She volunteers in animal rescue, helping to tend to a cat colony in the neighborhood. She lives by a beach town, which provides much of the inspiration for her art. Her latest collection of poetry is “On the whims of the crosscurrents,” published by Red Wolf Editions.
Poets Victoria Crawford and George R. Ross became writing partners meeting in Thailand while retired. Their poems are so closely written by two hands that who can tell who wrote which line or word was written by whom. Some of their joint work has been published in Braided Way, Cold Noon, Active Muse, and others. George lives in Boston currently with family while Victoria still calls Chiang Mai home.
Four Poems by Victoria Crawford and George R. Ross
Seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee Russell Rowland writes from New Hampshire’s Lakes Region, where he has judged high-school Poetry Out Loud competitions. Recent work appears in Poem, The Main Street Rag, and U.S. 1 Worksheets. His latest poetry book, Wooden Nutmegs, is available from Encircle Publications.
Julie Sampson’s collections are Tessitura (Shearsman Books, 2014) and It Was When It Was When It Was (Dempsey & Windle, 2018 ). Her poems are published in a variety of magazines, including recently in Molly Bloom, Projectionist’s Playground, Otoliths, Poetry Village and High Window. Her website is Julie Sampson
Roberta “Bobby” Santlofer (1943-2020) was a mother of sons, an avid reader, and a poet. A posthumous collection of her poetry is forthcoming. Santlofer’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Black Coffee Review, Bluepepper, Chiron Review, Eunoia Review, Gargoyle, Philadelphia Stories, Grey Sparrow Review, The Pangolin Review, Remington Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Vita Brevis, Wine Cellar Press and elsewhere.
Ryan Scariano is the author of two poetry chapbooks: Smithereens, published by Imperfect Press, and Not Your Happy Dance, forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. He lives in La Grande, Oregon and works at Eastern Oregon University. www.ryanscariano.com
Jen Schneider is an educator, attorney, and writer. She lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Philadelphia. Recent work appears in The Popular Culture Studies Journal, Toho Journal, The New Verse News, Zingara Poetry Review, Streetlight Magazine, Chaleur Magazine, LSE Review of Books, and other literary and scholarly journals.
Jan Seagrave has been a writer for universities, a storyteller, and a librarian. Her work appears or is forthcoming in San Pedro River Review;Gyroscope Review; Eunoia Review; Reverberations II, ed. Pendergast; Marin Poetry Center Anthology 2016, 2017, 2021; Redwood Writers Poetry Anthology 2018-2021; Amore: Love Poems, ed. Tucker, 2016.
Stephanie V Sears is a French and American ethnologist (Doctorate EHESS, Paris 1993), free-lance journalist, essayist and poet whose poetry recently appeared in The Deronda Review, The Comstock Review, The Mystic Blue Review, The Big Windows Review, Indefinite Space, The Plum Tree Tavern, Literary Yard, Clementine Unbound, Anti Heroin Chic, DASH, The Dawn Treader. The Strange Travels of Svinhilde Wilson published by Adelaide Book 2020.
Sanjeev Sethi is published in over thirty countries. His poems have found a home in more than 350 journals, anthologies, or online literary venues. Bleb a Wee Book from Dreich in Scotland is slated for June 2021 release. Wrappings in Bespoke is joint-winner of Full Fat Collection Competition-Deux organized by The Hedgehog Poetry Press UK. It is his fifth collection. It will be launched in late 2021. He lives in Mumbai, India.
Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA program. His stories, “Soon,” “How To Be A Good Episcopalian,” and “Tales From A Communion Line,” were nominated for Pushcarts. Yash’s work has been published in The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Write City Magazine, and Ariel Chart, among others.
F.C. Shultz‘s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ekstasis Magazine, The Show Bear Family Circus, and The Joplin Toad. He is the poetry editor for the Webb City Sentinel and his debut poetry collection was recently published by Pub Hound Press. His website is fcshultz.com.
Mary Ellen Shaughan lives in Western Massachusetts with her beagle, Zeke, who sleeps through the printing of dozens of poems and short stories. Her first collection of poetry, Home Grown, is available on Amazon.
John Short has a degree in comparative religion from Leeds University and a diploma in creative writing from Liverpool University. He’s published a pamphlet Unknown Territory (Black Light Engine Room) and a full collection Those Ghosts (Beaten Track Publishing) and blogs sporadically at Tsarkoverse.
Jennifer Silvey lives in the St. Louis area with her husband, their two cats, and their dog. She studied digital film for her bachelor’s and creative writing for her master’s. Both degrees were earned at Missouri State University in Springfield, MO. Her book Midnight Galleries is slated to be published through LCk Publishing.
Rose Thorns Received: Step Beyond the Veil
God in the Dew, God in the Adieu
Thomas Simmons is a professor at the University of South Dakota Knudson School of Law and a lifelong South Dakotan. His scholarship focuses on trusts and estates. He teaches courses in estate planning, professional ethics, and the Holocaust. His Tod Browning Loose-Leaf Encyclopedia collection of poems was published by Cyberwit in 2020.
Emily-Sue Sloane lives in Huntington Station, NY, where beautiful vistas hide beyond crowded roadways. Writing poetry helps her to frame her personal observations within wider, more universal truths. Her work has appeared in Front Porch Review, The Bards Annual 2019 Poetry Anthology, Avocet, The Weekly Avocet, and other anthologies.
Alec Solomita’s stories and poems have appeared in many publications, including The Adirondack Review, The Southwest Review, The Galway Review, Algebra of Owls, The Blue Nib, Bold+Italic, and The Lake. His poetry chapbook, Do Not Forsake Me, was published in 2017. He lives in Massachusetts.
Kathryn Knight Sonntag is the author of the poetry collection The Tree at the Center (BCC Press, 2019). She has recent and forthcoming poems in Psaltery & Lyre, Abstract Magazine, The Curator, and the anthology Blossom as the Cliffrose (Torrey House Press, 2021). She works as a landscape architect in Salt Lake City, Utah. www.kathrynknightsonntag.com
Cynthia Sowers was a Senior Lecturer at the Residential College of the University of Michigan until retirement in 2019. Five of her poems were published in the inaugural issue of the Solum Journal (Fall 2020). https://cynthiasowers.rc.lsa.umich.edu/
Saints’ Tales: Dialogues in Solitude
Denise Steele lives in Glasgow and writes when the muse cooperates. Her work has been published online, in Obsessed with Pipework poetry magazine, and was shortlisted for the 2020 Wigtown Festival Poetry Prize.
In St Andrew’s Church, Borrowdale
Jennifer Sperry Steinorth’s books include Her Read A Graphic Poem (2021) and A Wake with Nine Shades (2019) from Texas Review Press. A poet, educator, interdisciplinary artist, and licensed builder, her recent work has appeared in Black Warrior, Cincinnati Review, Michigan Quarterly, Missouri Review, Pleiades, Plume, Rhino, TriQuarterly and elsewhere.
Book Review: Jennifer Sperry Steinorth reviews Lauren K. Carlson’s Animals I Have Killed
Paul Stephenson has three pamphlets: Those People (Smith/Doorstop, 2015), The Days that Followed Paris(HappenStance, 2016) and Selfie with Waterlilies (Paper Swans Press, 2017). He co-curates Poetry in Aldeburgh and currently lives between Cambridge and Brussels.
Working from Home (La Dolce Vita)
Annie Powell Stone (she/ her) is a writer, tutor, and fan of peanut butter toast living in Baltimore City with her husband and two kiddos. Read more of her poetry on Instagram: @anniepowellstone.
Jacob Stratman’s first book of poems, What I Have I Offer With Two Hands, is a part of the Poiema Poetry Series (Cascade, 2019). His most recent poems are forthcoming in The Christian Century, Spoon River Poetry Review, Salt Hill, Bearings Online, and Ekstasis. He lives and teaches in Siloam Springs, AR.
(from) the shell of things (II)
Emily Strauss has an M.A. in English, but is self-taught in poetry, which she has written since college. Over 500 of her poems appear in a wide variety of online venues and in anthologies, in the U.S. and abroad. She is a Best of the Net and twice a Pushcart nominee. She is interested in the American West and the narratives of people and places around her. She is a retired teacher living in Oregon.
Mims Sully ‘s publications include Prole, Strix, Trouvaille Review, Pulp Poets Press and Obsessed with Pipework. She’s been long-listed for The London Magazine Poetry prize and is currently working on a pamphlet of poems about dementia based on her experience of looking after her mother.
J.V. Sumpter recently earned her BFA from the University of Evansville. She is an assistant editor for Kelsay Books, Thera Books, and freelance clients. She received 2020 Virginia Grabill Awards in Poetry and Nonfiction, and her most recent publications are in Leading Edge Magazine, Not Deer Magazine,and New Welsh Review. Visit her on Twitter @JVSReads.
Sara Sutler-Cohen is an artist and writer living in the Andalucia region of Spain. She is from the East Bay, CA, and has published memoirs, short stories, poetry, prose, and academic writing over the years. She is the Program Director of Human Services at CSU Global. Find out more at http://www.sarasutlercohen.com
Lanette Sweeney has worked as a waitress, reporter, editor, mother, fund-raiser, and teacher of English and Women’s Studies; she is now a full-time writer thanks to her wife’s support. Her first book, forthcoming in mid 2021 from Finishing Line Press, is a poetry collection about her son’s addiction and overdose death: What I Should Have Said. She has published her short stories, essays, and poetry in newspapers, journals, and anthologies, including the popular textbook Women: Images and Reality. She and her wife live in South Hadley, MA.
For Those Who Need Science Before Faith
Katherine Szpekman’s poetry is forthcoming or has appeared in: Waking up the Earth: Connecticut Poets in a Time of Global Crisis, Aromatica Poetica, Red Eft Review, Sky Island Journal, Chestnut Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, Hiram Poetry Review, Rockvale Review, Connecticut Literary Anthology 2020, and others. She lives in Collinsville, Connecticut with her family, both human and furry.
Timothy Tarkelly‘s work has appeared in Cauldron Anthology, Jupiter Review, Unstamatic, Rhodora Magazine, and others. His third book of poems, On Slip Rigs and Spiritual Growth, was published by OAC Books in July 2021. He is also the founder and EIC of Roaring Junior Press. When he’s not writing and publishing, he teaches in Southeast Kansas.
Larry D. Thacker is a Kentuckian writer, artist, and educator hailing from Johnson City, Tennessee. His poetry is in over 180 publications including Spillway, Still: The Journal, Valparaiso Poetry Review, American Journal of Poetry, Poetry South, The Southern Poetry Anthology, and Appalachian Heritage. His books include Mountain Mysteries: The Mystic Traditions of Appalachia, and the poetry chapbooks Drifting in Awe and Memory Train, as well as the full collections Drifting in Awe, Grave Robber Confessional, Feasts of Evasion, and the forthcoming, Gateless Menagerie. His MFA in poetry and fiction is earned from West Virginia Wesleyan College. Visit his website at: www.larrydthacker.com
Sally Thomas is the author of a poetry collection, Motherland (Able Muse Press 2020), and a forthcoming novel, Works of Mercy (Wiseblood Books 2022). Her work has appeared recently in Autumn Sky Poetry Review, Dappled Things, North American Anglican, Plough Quarterly, and Trinity House Review.
A graduate of Ohio State University, Psyche North Torok is a lover of words, language, and nature. She often visits the Olentangy River and has been known to leave offerings at its banks. Her poems have appeared in Common Ground Review, Plainsongs, Avalon Literary Review,and various anthologies including Forgotten Women and Dead of Winter.
Trelawney is a food campaigner, environmentalist and new poet living in London, drawing on a past spent as an archaeologist, musician and Cornishman. He has been published in 192 poetry magazine. Twitter: @BenTrelawney
Ken Turner has lived and taught in Asia, Africa, and Latin America as well as the US. His work has appeared in Southern Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, Silk Road, Summerset Review, Asian Cha, and elsewhere, includingin several anthologies, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Liane Tyrrel is a poet and painter. For the past few years she has been writing poems about a haunted childhood home, memory and disappearance, animals both living and dead, and the woods and fields in New Hampshire where she lives. https://www.lianetyrrel.com/
Reagan Upshaw lives in a town on the Hudson River 60 miles north of New York City and makes a living as an art appraiser, while gardening and keeping bees.
Tuur Verheyde is a twenty-four year old Belgian poet. His work endeavours to capture the weirdness of the 21st century; its globalised art, culture, politics and problems. Tuur’s poetry seeks to further cultural, spiritual, political and emotional connectivity on an international level. His work is personal and outward looking. Website: https://www.tuurverheyde.com
Linda Vigen Phillips‘ poems have appeared in The Texas Review, The California Quarterly, NC Poetry Society Award Winning Poems 2001, Wellspring, Main Street Rag, Independence Boulevard, and Windhover. She has two published YA novels in verse, Crazy and Behind These Hands. She lives in Charlotte, North Carolina with her husband.
Cynthia R. Wallace is Associate Professor of literature at St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan, where she works at the intersections of gender, race, politics, ethics, and religion in contemporary women’s writing. She has published in Geez, Relief, Bearings Online, Radical Discipleship, the Ploughshares blog, and Sojourners, as well as scholarly journals. Her book Of Women Borne: A Literary Ethics of Suffering was published in 2016 by Columbia University Press.
Adam Walters is 24 years old and originally from Marple in Greater Manchester. He completed a BA in English literature at the University of Cambridge in 2017, with a dissertation on work of Wallace Stevens. He then completed an MA at Durham University in 2018 with a dissertation on the work of Hart Crane.
Melody Wang currently resides in sunny Southern California with her dear husband. In her free time, she dabbles in piano composition and also enjoys hiking, baking, and playing with her dogs. She can be found on Twitter @MelodyOfMusings.
Women’s Circle on a Friday Evening
Susan C. Waters has an advanced degree from George Mason University. Ms. Waters started out as a journalist covering hard news in upstate New York, and for 13 years was a magazine editor and writer at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, College of William and Mary. She has won 10 prizes in poetry and has been nominated twice for the Push Cart Prize in Poetry. Her chapbook Heat Lightning was published in 2017 by Orchard Street Press. Her publishing credits are extensive, ranging from the Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun, to the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and the U.S. House of Representatives. Currently, she is Professor Emeritus at New Mexico Junior College.
Sue Watling is a writer and poet living on the north bank of the River Humber in the UK where she has an allotment and keeps bees. You can follow Sue on Twitter @suewatling
Alice Watson is a new poet, a priest, and a mother to young children based in Northamptonshire, England. She is inspired by the natural world and her faith. She has had work published in Earth and Altar and Dreich. She chats about faith, ministry, and feminism (amongst other things) on Twitter @alicelydiajoy.
Sunrise from St Michael’s Tower
Charles Weld’s poems have appeared in magazines such as Snakeskin, Southern Poetry Review, The Evansville Review, Worcester Review, CT Review, Friends Journal, Vita Brevis, Better Than Starbucks etc. Pudding House published a chapbook of his poems, Country I Would Settle In, in 2004. Kattywompus Press published another chapbook, Who Cooks For You? in 2012. His poems were included in FootHills Publishing’s anthology Birdsong in 2017. A mental health counselor, he’s worked primarily in a non-profit agency treating youth who face mental health challenges, and lives in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, USA.
Melanie Weldon-Soiset’s poetry has appeared in Geez, Vita Poetica, and Bearings Online. A 2021 New York Encounter poetry contest finalist, Melanie is a contemplative prayer leader, #ChurchToo spiritual abuse survivor, and former pastor for foreigners in Shanghai. Feel free to sign up for her poetry and prayer newsletter at melanieweldonsoiset.com.
Sheila Wellehan‘s poetry is featured in Psaltery & Lyre, Rust + Moth, Thimble Literary Magazine, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and many other journals and anthologies. She lives in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Visit her online at www.sheilawellehan.com .
Anne Whitehouse is the author of six poetry collections. Meteor Shower (2016) is her second collection from Dos Madres Press, following The Refrain in 2012. She is the author of a novel, Fall Love, as well as short stories, essays, features, and reviews. She was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, and lives in New York City. You can listen to her lecture, “Longfellow, Poe, and the Little Longfellow War” here.
Dick Westheimer has – in the company of his wife Debbie – lived, gardened and raised five children on their plot of land in rural southwest Ohio. He has taken up with poets and the writing of poetry to make sense of the world. He is a finalist for 2021 Rattle Poetry Prize. His poems have previously appeared in Rattle, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, Rise Up Review, and Sheila Na-Gig.
Wherein the Trail Runner has 1000 Words for the Wind
Harold Whisman is a retired English and journalism teacher for Norfolk Public Schools in Virginia. In his “golden years” he helps babysit his grandchildren for their working parents and writes poetry. He finds both jobs often frustrating but also very rewarding. His poems have been published in Ancient Paths and Better than Starbucks literary magazines.
Pulling Weeds from the Cracks in my Brick Sidewalk
Kim Whysall-Hammond is an expert in obsolete telecommunications arcane who believes, against all evidence, that she is a good dancer. She has been published by Ink, Sweat and Tears, Amaryllis, London Grip and Crannóg amongst others. You can find her at https://thecheesesellerswife.wordpress.com/
Melody Wilson writes and teaches in Portland, Oregon. Recent work appears in Quartet, Briar Cliff Review, Amsterdam Quarterly, and The Shore. Upcoming work will be in Tar River Poetry, Whale Road Review, Timberline Review, and SWWIM. She has recently been awarded the 2021 Kay Snow Poetry Award and is Honorable Mention for the 2021 Oberon Poetry Award.
Francine Witte’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Smokelong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Mid-American Review, and Passages North. Her latest books are Dressed All Wrong for This (Blue Light Press,) The Way of the Wind (AdHoc fiction,) and The Theory of Flesh (Kelsay Books.) Her chapbook, The Cake, The Smoke, The Moon (flash fiction) will be published by ELJ in Fall 2021. She is flash fiction editor for Flash Boulevard and The South Florida Poetry Journal. She lives in NYC.
Cynthia Yancey was an English major before she became a mother then a
medical doctor. Now after working for over 30 years in the trenches of
public health, from the Himalayas to the Andes to her downtown clinic in
Asheville, NC, she is writing the stories of her life.
Letting Go of Religion – creative nonfiction
John F Zurn has an M.A. in English from Western Illinois University and spent much of his career as a school teacher. Now retired, he continues to write and publish poems and stories. As one of seven children, his experiences growing up help inspire his art and influence his life.
Amethyst Review 