Jonel Abellanosa resides in Cebu City, the Philippines. He writes poetry and fiction. He considers the sacred an important element of his personal poetics. He advocates animal rights and living comforts. He has three beloved dogs.
Ali Abid (he/him) is a writer, civil rights attorney, and policy advocate. He has been a featured storyteller at Pour One Out, a monthly storytelling series hosted by Volumes Bookcafe. Ali lives and works in Chicago.
To the Hawk Outside the Brand-New Mosque of Lombard, Illinois
Jannah Yusuf Al-Jamil is a Muslim-American writer and a co-founder of antinarrative zine (@antinarrativeZ). They enjoy stories about vigilantes (please talk to them about The Umbrella Academy or Daredevil). Find their work in Overheard, Pollux Journal, celestite poetry, and at jannahyusufaljamil.carrd.co.
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).
Lifting the Prayers of the Earth
Algo is from Ireland. In self imposed self isolation, Algo only wears black and enjoys studying the school of Austrian Economics, reading comic books and meditating. Algo once thought he was a nihilist but now believes in something higher.
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.
Alan Altany, Ph.D., is a septuagenarian college professor of religious studies. He’s been a factory worker, swineherd on a farm, hotel clerk, lawn maintenance worker, small magazine poetry editor, director of religious education for churches, truck driver, novelist, etc. He published a book of poetry in 2022 entitled A Beautiful Absurdity: Christian Poetry of the Sacred. His website is at https://www.alanaltany.com/.
John Copley Alter is an elderly foreigner.
Jennifer Avignon (she/her) is a queer poet who lives in Seattle with her husband and lots of houseplants. She is currently enrolled in the MFA program at Seattle Pacific University. Her work appears in This Present Former Glory, Stepaway Magazine, and Beaver Magazine. https://www.jenniferavignon.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 usually writes in strict forms.
First sight of a Brimstone Butterfly, Sign of English Spring
Valerie Bacharach’s writing has appeared or will appear in: Vox Viola, Vox Populi, Whale Road Review, The Blue Mountain Review, EcoTheo Review, and Kosmos Quarterly. Her chapbook, Fireweed, was published in August 2018 by Main Street Rag. Her chapbook Ghost-Mother was published by Finishing Line Press in July 2021.
Listening to Elgar’s Enigma Variations While Thinking about My Son’s Soul
Lorelei Bacht is a poetic experiment, a beautifully broken body, and a mother to two young children. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Beir Bua, Dodging the Rain, The Madrigal, Briefly Zine, The Selkie, Green Ink Poetry, streecake, Marble Poetry, and elsewhere. She is also on Instagram: @lorelei.bacht.writer and on Twitter @bachtlorelei
A spiritual director, bigender person, and quasi-hermit, John Backman has had personal essays published in Catapult, Amethyst Review, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Tiferet Journal, and Sufi Journal, among other places. For the past two years John has been named a top 10 creative nonfiction finalist in the Wild Atlantic Writing Awards.
Thérèse and the Friendship Creed
Hummingbird with Monarda Blossom
Tohm Bakelas is a social worker in a psychiatric hospital. He was born in New Jersey, resides there, and will die there. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, zines, and online publications. He has published 13 chapbooks. He runs Between Shadows Press.
thinking of Li Po and Du Fu while staring into a brook
Alexandria Barbera (she/her) lives in Ontario, Canada and is a regular contributor at Women in Theology. She recently completed her MA in Cultural Studies at Trent University, where she studied literary ecology. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tiny Seed Journal, The Other Journal, Ekstasis Magazine, Frogpond, and Modern Haiku. She is currently the editor-at-large at EcoTheo Review.
Stuart Bartow lives in the Taconics region of New York state where he chairs the Battenkill Conservancy, an environmental group working along the New York-Vermont border. His most recent collections of poetry are Green Midnight, published by Dos Madres Press, and Invisible Dictionary(haibun), published by Red Moon Press.
Joan Bauer holds a master’s degree in English and has worked as a trust officer in a bank. She and her husband Paul live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where they have raised three children. Joan’s novel The Bicycle Messengerwas recently longlisted for the 2022 Virginia Prize for Fiction.
Tom Bauer always wanted to write poetry. In the late 1980s, he published his own chapbooks, which he sold door-to-door. Currently, he has work forthcoming in Blue Unicorn.
Small Incidents of Synchronicity
Alicia Beatrice is an autistic poet, writer, folklorist and florist from Melbourne, Australia. She studies Literature and is interested in exploring our experiences of memory through nature, as well as how we (or neurodivergent minds in particular) process grief. She loves prehistory, hiking, old churches, cemeteries and travelling through England and Wales.
Rose Bedrosian received her B.A. in Literature from UC Santa Barbara, where she edited Spectrum and won The Frank W. Coulter Prize. A winner of The Independent poetry competition, her work appears or is forthcoming in Verse-Virtual, San Pedro River Review, Beatnik Cowboy, and Pembroke Magazine, among others.
The Pastor and His Reconciliation
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.
Joe Benevento’s work has appeared in almost three hundred publications, including Bilingual Review, U.S. Catholic, Dappled Things and Poets & Writers. He has had fourteen books of poetry and prose published, including: Expecting Songbirds: Selected Poems, 1983-2015. He teaches creative writing and American literature at Truman State University.
Deborah A. Bennett began writing Haiku as a mindfulness exercise at the beginning of the pandemic; now she writes it as a form of self expression, and as the poet Mary Ruefle said, “in incantation, in spells that must at once invoke and protect, tell the secret and keep it.”
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.
The Lost Final Chapter of Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha
V. A. Bettencourt is a Brazilian-American poet and writer who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She received a B.A. from Brown University, graduate degree from Boston College, and is refining her craft at Philip Schultz’s The Writers’ Studio. Ms. Bettencourt’s work is inspired by our wondrous natural world and variegated human emotions and has appeared in The American Journal of Poetry.
Rana Bickel (she/they) is a queer Jewish poet from Maryland residing in Chicago. She is a recent graduate of Barnard College where she was a member of the slam poetry team. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bourgeon Magazine, Thimble Literary Magazine, and the Jewish Literary Journal. She loves books, community, and rainstorms.
Don Brandis is a retired healthcare worker living quietly outside Seattle writing poems. Some of his work has appeared in Amethyst Review, Leaping Clear, Blue Unicorn, Poetry Quarterly and elsewhere. His most recent book of poems is Paper Birds (Unsolicited Press 2021).
S. T. Brant is a teacher from Las Vegas. Pubs in/coming from EcoTheo, Timber, Door is a Jar, Santa Clara Review, Rain Taxi, New South, Green Mountains Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Ekstasis, 8 Poems, a few others. You can find him on Twitter @terriblebinth or Instagram @shanelemagne.
The Inner Ganesh in Our Soul’s Eden
Natasha Bredle is an emerging writer based in Ohio. She writes about what she thinks about, which is really too much for her poor brain. You can find her work in Aster Lit, Trouvaille Review, and Full House Lit, to name a few.
John J. Brugaletta has eight volumes of his poetry in print, the latest of which is One of the Loaves Was Yours. He is professor emeritus at California State University, Fullerton, where he taught courses in the works of C. S. Lewis, Shakespeare, Dante, and Homer.
Rich Boucher resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Rich’s poems have appeared in Bending Genres, Menacing Hedgeand Stink Eye, among others, and he has work forthcoming in Boats Against The Current. Rich is BOMBFIRE Magazine’s Associate Editor, and he is the author of All Of This Candy Belongs To Me.
What Right Do Meanings Have To Hide Behind the Things We See
Melanie Branton is a spoken word artist and education support worker from Bristol. Her published collections are Can You See Where I’m Coming From? (Burning Eye, 2018) and My Cloth-Eared Heart (Oversteps, 2017).
Leslie Anne Bustard is a writer, poet, and editor who lives in Lancaster City, PA. She writes for Cultivating Project and Black Barn Online. Wild Things and Castles in the Sky: A Guide to Choosing the Best Books for Children, a book of essays she co-edited, will be released this April through Square Halo books. Her website Poetic Underpinnings (https://www.poeticunderpinnings.com) contains her writings, podcasts, and the goodness of other people’s creativity.
Dennis Camire is a professor of writing at Central Maine Community College. His poems have appeared in Poetry East, Spoon River Review, The Mid-American Review and other journals and anthologies. An Intro Journal Award Winner and Pushcart Prize nominee, his most recent book is Combed by Crows, Deerbrook Editions. Of the collection. X. J. Kennedy says: “Dennis Camire is an up and comer… The poems engage us with their promising titles, and deliver with skill and energy.” Of Franco-American and Acadian American origin, he lives in an A-frame in West Paris, Maine.
Upon Learning that Bees Taste with their Feet
Dan Campion‘s poems have appeared previously in Amethyst Review and in Light, Poetry, Rolling Stone, and many other journals. He is the author of Peter De Vries and Surrealism (Bucknell University Press) and coeditor of Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song (Holy Cow! Press). A selection of his poems was issued by the Ice Cube Press in July 2022: https://icecubepress.com/2021/10/01/a-playbill-for-sunset/
Jared Cappel’s work has been featured in Door Is A Jar, Reflex Press, and Slackjaw, among others. A lover of wordplay, he’s one of the top Scrabble players in North America. Follow the latest at www.jaredcappel.com.
Abigail Carroll is author of Habitation of Wonder and A Gathering of Larks: Letters to Saint Francis from a Modern-Day Pilgrim. Her poems have appeared in Sojourners, Christian Century, the Anglican Theological Review, Crab Orchard Review, and the anthologies How to Love the World and Between Midnight and Dawn: A Literary Guide to Prayer for Lent, Holy Week, and Eastertide. She serves as an arts pastor in Burlington, Vermont, and enjoys playing Celtic harp.
To Love the World is to Mother it
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.
Yuan Changming hails with Allen Yuan from poetrypacific.blogspot.ca. Credits include 12 Pushcart nominations & chapbooks (most recently ALL MY CROWS) besides appearances in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17), BestNewPoemsOnline & Poetry Daily, among 1929 others. Yuan both served on the jury and was nominated for Canada’s National Magazine (poetry category).
Partha Chatterjee is a practising poet from India. His first anthology, Flashes of the Lightning, was published from AlienBuddha Press , California, USA. in 2018.
David Chorlton is a European and longtime resident of Phoenix. He loves the desert and avoids complaining about the heat! He paints from time to time and writes consistently, with a short book, The Inner Mountain, about the nearby desert mountain park in poetry and paintings (Cholla Needles Press), with another recent publication, Unmapped Worlds from FutureCycle Press.
Cit Ananda’s poetry is inspired by direct experience, captured in moments between perception when the mind falls quiet and deep silence shares an offering that touches the mystery of life. She will tell you she catches poetry on the winds of the universe. She has work published or forthcoming in Mountain Path, Tiferet Journal, Soul-Lit, and OFFERINGS: A Spiritual Poetry Anthology from Tiferet Journal. Explore more at https://www.vitalrootsherbalism.com/publications.
Patricia Biela is a UVA grad with a BA in Psychology. Biela is a Cave Canem South Fellow and has participated in 19 writing workshops. Her poem “Back Speaks” won The Best of Poetry from Around the World Award from Wild Sound Festival Review. Biela teaches poetry workshops to retirees.
Caitlin Clase is an aspiring storyteller who spends more time reading than writing. She loves the sound of bells, the smell of vanilla, and any color of a jewel toned hue.
Cathleen Cohen was the 2019 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, PA. She founded Artwell’s We the Poets program (www.theartwell.org.) Publications include poems in Apiary, Baltimore Review, Cagibi, One Art Journal, Passager, Philadelphia Stories and three books: Camera Obscura, Etching the Ghost (Atmosphere Press, 2021) and Sparks and Disperses(Cornerstone Press, 2021).
Paula Colangelo’s poems are published in SWWIM Every Day, Lily Poetry Review, Connotation Press: An Online Artifactand forthcoming in Sugar House Review and Canary Literary Magazine. Her book reviews appear in Pleiades and Rain Taxi. She has taught poetry in healing focused rehabilitation programs.
Tristan Cooley lives in Vermont and works on a fruit tree farm.
Margaret Coombs is a poet and retired librarian from Manitowoc, Wisconsin, USA, the city of her birth, located on the western shore of Lake Michigan. Her first chapbook, The Joy of Their Holiness, was published in 2020 by Kelsay Press under the name Peggy Turnbull. She now uses her birth name as her pen name. Recent poems have appeared in Silver Birch Press, Bramble, Three Line Poetry, and Verse-Virtual. She occasionally blogs at https://peggyturnbull.blogspot.com/
Jonathan Cooper‘s poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in various publications including Thin Air, New Plains Review, Poetry Pacific, Tower Journal, and The Charleston Anvil. He lives in Vancouver, Canada.
Good Friday on the Road to Goma
Beth Copeland is the author of Blue Honey, 2017 Dogfish Head Poetry Prize; Transcendental Telemarketer (Blaze VOX 2012); and Traveling through Glass, 1999 Bright Hill Press Poetry Book Award. Her chapbook Selfie with Cherry is forthcoming from Glass Lyre Press. She owns Tiny Cabin, Big Ideas™, a retreat for writers.
Deborrah Corr is a long-time resident of Seattle where she taught kindergarten for twenty-eight years. Currently, she is digging as deeply as she can into the joy and craft of poetry. She also quilts, reads, and enjoys the outdoors where she can be seen watching and sometimes talking with birds. Her work has appeared in Crosswinds Poetry Journal, The Halcyon, and Raven Chronicles and will be included in upcoming issues of The Main Street Rag and Sequoia Speaks.
Charlotte Cosgrove is a poet and teacher from Liverpool, England. She is published in Trouvaille Review, Dreich, The Literary Yard and in various anthologies. She has work forthcoming in Confingo, Beyond Words, The Broadkill Review, Words and Whispers and Sledgehammer Lit. She is Editor of Rough Diamond Poetry Journal.
Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, Vita Brevis, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Tuesdays at Curley’s and After the Equinox.
Barbara Lydecker Crane, twice a Rattle Poetry Prize finalist, has received several awards for her sonnets. Her poems have appeared in Ekphrastic Review, First Things, Light, Measure, THINK, and many others. Her fourth collection, You Will Remember Me, sonnets about artists and portrait paintings, will be published by Able Muse Press.
Scott Cravens is a short story writer from Arkansas, and is based in Oklahoma where he teaches literature at the secondary level. Currently, he is pursuing his Master of Writing at Johns Hopkins University. His work has appeared in Ariel Chart International Literary Journal, CafeLit Magazine, and The Periodical Forlorn.
A two-time Pushcart nominee, Terence Culleton has published three collections of formally crafted narrative and lyric poems, including A Communion of Saints and Eternal Life (both out through Anaphora Literary Press) and, most recently, A Tree and Gone, a collection of formal English sonnets out in 2021 through Future Cycle Press. Sonnets from A Tree and Gone have appeared in Antiphon, Better Than Starbucks (featured poem), Blue Unicorn, Eclectic Muse, Innisfree, Orbis (Readers’ Choice), Raintown Review, Schuylkyll Valley Journal (featured poet), and numerous other anthologies and journals. A Tree and Gone is available at https://amzn.to/3qDrRqN or through his website, terenceculletonpoetry.com.
Raven Cullo is a recent college graduate and aspiring writer. Her inspiration stems from her religious upbringing, travels abroad, and intimate relationships. She considers herself to be quite transient, but is primarily based in Illinois.
German Dario (he/him) resides in Tempe, Arizona with his wife, two sons, three dogs, a guinea pig, many plants, and sometimes a fish. Recently published work in Novus Literary Arts Journal, Five South, Opossum, Gargoyle Magazine, Gyroscope Review, and San Pedro River Review. His poem “sanctuary” was short listed in 2021 for the Five South Poetry Prize.
Nancy L. Davis has published poetry in Cutthroat, The Orchards Poetry Review, Evening Street Review (forthcoming), The Dewdrop, From the Depths, and Best of Philadelphia Stories, among others. Her work has been awarded with a Puschart Prize Nomination, First Place in the Sandy Crimmins National Poetry Contest, Finalist in the Joy Harjo Poetry Contest, and Semi-Finalist in TulipTree Publishing’s Stories That Must Be Told anthology competition. Ghosts, her chapbook, was published July 2019 by Finishing Line Press.
T. S. Davis is the author of Sun + Moon Rendezvous, a book of poems, and is the former producer of the Seattle Poetry Slam. He’s performed his work around the US, including Manhattan, Chicago, and Seattle. Most recent publications include poems and essays in Rattle and other magazines. Mr. Davis is a retired Registered Nurse who lives in rural Arizona and writes creative nonfiction and Shakespearian sonnets.
Metamorphosis at a Stop Sign in Florida
Diane Elayne Dees is the author of the chapbook, Coronary Truth (Kelsay Books), and the chapbook, The Last Time I Saw You. 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.
Dharmavadana lives in London, UK, where he teaches meditation and creative writing. He is poetry editor of the Buddhist arts magazine Urthona: www.urthona.com. His own poems have appeared in the magazines Prole, Under the Radar, Poetry Salzburg Review, Ambit, The North and The Dawntreader. His short stories have been published in Scribble and Litro.
Mary Alice Dixon is a hospice volunteer who finds prayer in reading poetry to the dying. She is a Pushcart nominee whose work appears inGyroscope Review, Kakalak, Main Street Rag, moonShine review, Northern Appalachia Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Pinesong, threePSPP anthologies, and elsewhere. She lives in Charlotte, NC, frequently walking the Stations of the Cross.
The Annunciation of a Dying Woman
Casie Dodd lives in Arkansas with her husband and two children. Her writing has appeared in Fare Forward, Ekstasis, Front Porch Republic, and other journals. She is the Founder and Editor of Belle Point Press, a new small press celebrating the literary culture of the American Mid-South.
Elizabeth Domenech is a writer, naturalist, and advocate for conservation and wildness. Her writing can be found published in Montana Naturalist, the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, and Pivot and Pause: A Poetry Anthology of Resilience, Remembrance and Compassion (2020). She lives in Bozeman, Montana.
Walking Through a Mixed Conifer Forest on a Summer’s Day
Clive Donovan devotes himself full-time to poetry and has published in a wide variety of magazines including Acumen, Agenda, Amethyst Review, Prole, Sentinel and Stand. He lives in Totnes, Devon, UK. He is a Pushcart and Forward Prize nominee for this year’s best individual poems and his first collection, The Taste of Glass, is recently published by Cinnamon Press.
Cassy Dorff lives in Nashville, Tennessee and teaches courses about politics, data science and writing as an assistant professor of Political Science. Cassy’s poetry is published at Terrain.org and Rust + Moth; academic research publications can be found at the Journal of Politics, Journal of Peace Research and other outlets.
Kika Dorsey is a poet and fiction writer in Boulder, Colorado. Her books include the chapbook Beside Herself (Flutter Press, 2010) and three full-length collections: Rust, Coming Up for Air (Word Tech Editions, 2016, 2018), and Occupied: Vienna is a Broken Man and Daughter of Hunger (Pinyon Publishing, 2020), which won the Colorado Authors’ League Award for best poetry collection.
e placed first in KoreanAmericanStory’s 2021 Virtual ROAR Story Slam. She guest blogs for Backbones, promoting disability awareness. e is an attorney with a disability. She started a non-profit housing cooperative. e is writing a poetry collection from the perspective of a woman with a disability living in biblical times.
Scott Elder lives in France. His work has mostly appeared in the UK and Ireland. A debut pamphlet, Breaking Away, was published by Poetry Salzburg in 2015, his first collection, Part of the Dark, by Dempsey&Windle 2017 (UK), and the second, My Hotel, is forthcoming in Salmon Poetry 2023 (Ireland). Website: https://www.scottelder.co.uk/
Liz Enochs is a writer from southeast Missouri — more often than not, you’ll find her in the woods. website: https://www.elizabethenochs.com/.
Kristen Erickson is a sister, mother, daughter, poet and hockey player living in a small Ohio town. She graduated from Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pennsylvania in 2008 with a degree in English and a concentration in Creative Writing. She writes poems and short stories about a variety of personal topics, like her childhood summers spent in Nicaragua, her interesting family and romantic relationships, and the whirlwind that is becoming a mother.
Jeffrey Essmann is an essayist and poet living in New York. His poetry has appeared in numerous magazines and literary journals, among them Dappled Things, the St. Austin Review, America Magazine, U.S. Catholic, Pensive, Grand Little Things, Heart of Flesh Literary Journal, and various venues of the Benedictine monastery with which he is an oblate. He is editor of the Catholic Poetry Room page on the Integrated Catholic Life website.
The Garden of Earthly Delights
Amelia Díaz Ettinger is a ‘Mexi-Rican,’ born in México but raised in Puerto Rico. As a BIPOC poet and writer, she has two full-length poetry books published; Learning to Love a Western Sky by Airlie Press, and a bilingual poetry book, Speaking at a Time /Hablando a la Vez by Redbat Press, and a poetry chapbook, Fossils in a Red Flag by Finishing Line Press. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in literary journals and anthologies.
Jonathan Evens is Associate Vicar for HeartEdge at St Martin-in-the-Fields. Through HeartEdge, a network of churches, he encourages congregations to engage with culture, compassion and commerce. He writes on the Arts for a range of publications including Artlyst, ArtWay and Church Times. He is co-author of ‘The Secret Chord,’ an impassioned study of the role of music in cultural life written through the prism of Christian belief. He blogs at Between: https://joninbetween.blogspot.com/
Maritain, Green, Beckett and Anderson in conversation down through the ages
Louis Faber’s work has previously appeared in Alchemy Spoon, Arena Magazine (Australia), Dreich, Atlanta Review, The Poet, Glimpse, Defenestration, Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Rattle, Cold Mountain Review, Pearl, Midstream, European Judaism, The South Carolina Review and Worcester Review, among many others, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Mary R. Finnegan is a writer and editor from Philadelphia. Her work has appeared in several places including The American Journal of Nursing, Lydwine, Catholic Digest, PILGRIM: A Journal of Catholic Experience. She is currently pursuing her MFA in poetry at The University of St. Thomas, Houston.
Driving Home from Tilghman Island in the Pouring Rain
Moved by words, trees, butterflies, art, music and all forms of truth expression, Christine (C.L.) Fisher is a Christ believer who yearns to create art that glorifies the only One worthy of our praise. You can find her poems and learn more about her faith and love for God’s creations at her blog https://poeticmeanderings.com.
J.V. Foerster has been published in: Eclectica, Agnieszka’s Dowry, Midnight Mind, Premiere Generation Ink, Fickle Muse, Oak Bend Review, Fox Chase Review, Elohi Gaduji to name just a few. She has work forthcoming in The Fiery Scribe,The Bluebird Word and Orchard Lea Anthology. She was nominated in 2011 for a Pushcart for her poem “Apple Girl” and included in Rosemont College Anthology. She is also a published painter and photographer. J.V. lives in Portland, Oregon. Website: J.V. Foerster – Poet, painter, photo taker (jvfoerster.com) also JV Foerster | Poets & Writers (pw.org)
Alfred Fournier is an entomologist, writer and community volunteer living in Phoenix, Arizona. His nonfiction and poetry have appeared in Amethyst Review, Delmarva Review, American Journal of Poetry, Lunch Ticket, Gyroscope Review, The Indianapolis Review and elsewhere. New work is forthcoming at Blue Unicorn and Drunk Monkeys. His Twitter handle is @AlfredFournier4.
If we could only imagine a better arc of flight
George Freek‘s poetry has appeared in numerous Journals and Reviews. His poem “Written At Blue Lake” was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Thinking About What is Useless
Janice L. Freytag currently resides in Souderton, PA. She began writing poetry after working in post-war Bosnia. Her poems have appeared in Radix, Relief, Saint Katherine Review, Windhover and others. In addition to poetry, she has written four children’s musicals. She is an enthusiastic, though not always successful, gardener.
Andrew Frisardi is a Bostonian living in central Italy. His most recent books are Ancient Salt: Essays on Poets, Poetry, and the Modern World (Wipf & Stock) and The Harvest and the Lamp (Franciscan UP). His annotated translation of Dante’s Convivio was recently reissued in paperback by Cambridge UP.
Lucy Frost is an Arabic-American transgender woman poet from Austin, Texas. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Serotonin Magazine, C*nsorship Magazine, Wrongdoing Magazine, Melbourne Culture Corner, and Unpublishable Magazine. She can be found on Twitter @intomymachine
Jenna K Funkhouser is a poet and author living in Portland, Oregon, always trying to cross through the membrane of the sacred surrounding us. Her poetry has recently been published by Geez Magazine, the Saint Katherine Review, Ekphrastic Review, and As It Ought To Be, among others.
Elder Gideon is the author of “Aegis of Waves” (Atmosphere, 2021) and co-author with Tau Malachi of “Gnosis of Guadalupe (EPS Press, 2017). He’s an alumnus of the 2021 Community of Writers, directed by Brenda Hillman and showing sculpture this fall with Verge Gallery’s Open Studio Tour in Sacramento.
D. Walsh Gilbert is the author of Ransom (Grayson Books) and forthcoming, Once the Earth had Two Moons (Cerasus Poetry). Her work has recently appeared in The Lumiere Review, Black Fox Literary Magazine,and the anthology, Waking Up to the Earth, among others. She serves with the non-profit, Riverwood Poetry Series, and as co-editor of Connecticut River Review.
Erika B. Girard is currently pursuing her M.A. in English and Creative Writing with a concentration in Poetry through SNHU. Originally from Rhode Island, she derives creative inspiration from her family, friends, and faith. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Alembic, Sandhill Review, Wild Roof Journal, and more.
Kathleen Goldblatt is a poet and training member of the CG Jung Institute of New England and the IRSJA. Her work appears in four editions of the Wickford Poetry and Art Book; her chapbook, Our Ghosts Wait Patiently, is due in fall 2022. Kathleen lives in Newport, Rhode Island.
Fern Golden (they/them or she/hers) is a Dena’ina Athabaskan artist from Alaska. Their writing navigates the confluences of culture and language, ecology and belonging, chronic illness, and healing.
D.B. Goman is a poet, essayist, photographer, and educator. Poems, essays, and photographs have been published in a variety of print and on-line journals, some of which include Quarry, Orion Magazine, 2River View, Travel Mag (UK), Outside In Literary Travel Magazine, The Literary Bohemian, Eye Magazine, Poetry Montreal, 2 Bridges Review, New Verse News, and Sisyphus Magazine. A collection of poems will be launched this year, and a YA novel (a nature adventure) is forthcoming next year.
Catherine Gonick’s poetry has appeared in publications including Soul-Lit, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Live Encounters, Notre Dame Review, New Verse News, Sukoon, and Forge, and in anthologies including in plein air, Grabbed, and Dead of Winter 2021. She works in a company that combats the effects of global warming.
Soliloquy of the Soul to the Self
Allison Grayhurst is a member of the League of Canadian Poets. Five times nominated for “Best of the Net,” she has over 1300 poems published in over 500 international journals. She has 25 published books of poetry and 6 chapbooks. She lives in Toronto with her family. She also sculpts, working with clay.
Karen Greenbaum-Maya is a retired clinical psychologist, former German major and restaurant reviewer, and, two-time Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee. Her first full sentence was, “Look at the moon!” Her work has appeared in journals including Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, B O D Y, Comstock Poetry Review, Rappahannock Poetry Review, CHEST, and, Spillway. Kattywompus Press publishes Burrowing Song, Eggs Satori, and, Kafka’s Cat. Kelsay Books publishes The Book of Knots and their Untying. She co-curates Fourth Sundays, a poetry series in Claremont, California. She is currently working on a collection about her husband Walter, who died of lung cancer in 2018.
Investigating my Grief Group’s Reports of Communications from their Departed Ones
Carole Greenfield grew up in Colombia and lives in Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in Red Dancefloor, Gulfstream, Women’s Words, Beltway Quarterly Review, and is forthcoming in Eunoia Review and Dodging the Rain.
Sarah Greenwood is a poet and translator of Portuguese to English who uprooted herself to the Algarve 16 years ago. Her writing explores themes of identity, spirituality and the relationship we weave with place and time. She is a mother and a birth rights activist.
Jane Greer founded Plains Poetry Journal, an advance guard of the New Formalism movement, in 1981, and edited it until 1993. She is author of the poetry collection Love like a Conflagration (Lambing Press, 2020), and her next collection, The World as We Know It Is Falling Away, will be published this fall, also by Lambing Press. She lives in North Dakota.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, Leaves On Pages, Memory Outside The Head and Guest Of Myself are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Ellipsis, Blueline and International Poetry Review.
Will Griffith is a theology graduate and former chorister who now teaches philosophy in a secondary school. He has had poems published online and in print, and has work forthcoming in Reach Poetry (Indigo Dreams), andThe Chamber Magazine.
Ben Groner III (Nashville, TN), recipient of a Pushcart Prize nomination and Texas A&M University’s 2014 Gordone Award for undergraduate poetry, has work published in Rust + Moth, Cheat River Review, Whale Road Review, Stirring, Midway Journal, and elsewhere. He’s also a former bookseller at Parnassus Books. You can see more of his work at bengroner.com/creative-writing/
Maija Haavisto has had two poetry collections published in Finland: Raskas vesi (Aviador 2018) and Hopeatee (Oppian 2020). In English her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in e.g. Moist, Capsule Stories, Soul-Lit, ShabdAaweg Review, The North, Streetcake, ANMLY, Eye to the Telescope, Shoreline of Infinity and Kaleidoscope. Follow her on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/DiamonDie
Patrick Cabello Hansel is the author of the poetry collections The Devouring Land (Main Street Rag Publishing) and Quitting Time (Atmosphere Press). He has published work in over 80 journals, and won awards from the Loft Literary Center and MN State Arts Board. You can find him at www.artecabellohansel.com
Jeffrey Hanson received a Ph.D. in English and Creative Writing from Ohio University. He lives with his wife, Marilyn, in Bellingham, Washington. Despite fears, anxieties, and feelings of helplessness, we must remember that the Buddha was correct to say: “All is well.” That knowledge is a gift
Goddfrey Hammit was born and raised in Utah, and lives in Utah still, in a small town outside of Salt Lake City. Hammit has, most recently, contributed work to Neologism Poetry Journal, The Loch Raven Review, and Riddled with Arrows, and is the author of Nimrod, UT. Website:goddfreyhammit.com
Those Times I’ve Taken God Seriously
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 50 magazines, including Rust & Moth, Icefloe Press & Mineral Lit Mag. His first chapbook Spectrum of Flight is available for purchase now at Animal Heart Press. You can follow him on twitter @davidhanlon13 and Instagram @welshpoetd
James Hannon is a psychotherapist in Massachusetts where he accompanies adults and adolescents recovering from disappointments and illusions. His poems have appeared in Cold Mountain Review, Soundings East, Zetetic and other journals, and in Gathered: Contemporary Quaker Poets. His collection, The Year I Learned the Backstroke, was published by Aldrich Press in 2014.
Two Ways of Looking at a Redbird
Patrick Cabello Hansel is the author of the poetry collections The Devouring Land (Main Street Rag Publishing) and Quitting Time (Atmosphere Press). He has published work in over 80 journals, and won awards from the Loft Literary Center and MN State Arts Board. You can find him at www.artecabellohansel.com
Nathaniel Lee Hansen is the author of the short-story collection Measuring Time & Other Stories (Wiseblood Books, 2019) and the poetry collection Your Twenty-First Century Prayer Life (Cascade Books, 2018). His website is plainswriter.com. He is on Twitter @plainswriter.
Lydia Harris lives in the Orkney island of Westray. She held a Scottish Book Trust New Writer’s Award in 2017. Her fourth pamphlet A Small Spaceis due from Paper Swans this year. Her first full collection, Objects for Private Devotion is due from Pindrop Press in 2022.
Shakiba Hashemi is an Iranian-American poet, painter and teacher living in Southern California. She is a bilingual poet, and writes in English and Farsi. She holds a BFA in Drawing and Painting from Laguna College of Art and Design. Her work is forthcoming or has appeared in Atlanta Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, Ibbetson Street Magazine, The Indianapolis Review, I-70 Review, Cream City Review, The Summerset Review, Roanoke Review, Collateral and the New York Quarterly Anthology Without a Doubt: poems illuminating faith.
Gloria Heffernan is the author of the poetry collection, What the Gratitude List Said to the Bucket List (New York Quarterly Books) and Exploring Poetry of Presence: A Companion Guide for Readers, Writers, and Workshop Facilitators (Back Porch Productions). Her work has appeared in over 100 journals including Chautauqua, Presence, Dappled Things, Braided Way, and Magma. She leads workshops on poetry as a spiritual practice.
Bryan Edward Helton is a poet and fiction writer from Georgia, USA. He spent his early years writing songs and studying Theology and Philosophy. His work has been published in various literary journals including South Florida Poetry Journal, The Squawk Back, Heartwood Literary, and the Orchards Poetry Journal. He is the author of The Manic Joy of the Dead from New Voyage Books.
Ten Thoughts on the Necessity of Escape
Jackie Henshall is an established artist working mainly in glass out from an old woollen mill in West Wales www.jackiehenshall.co.uk . She is in the process of writing a book of poems with drawings which she plans to publish early next year, with the working title Shapes I live Inside. She takes her inspiration from natural forms as well as geometric and archetypal forms exploring her own spiritual life and creativity in relation to them.
Kath Higgens originally from UK worked for many years in the field of Bible Translation in Central Africa, before retiring to a contemplative life-style in South Africa. Though poetry has long been a passion, she has come late to writing her own.
St. John of the Cross and the Bird
Hannah Hinsch is a Seattle-based writer who has published essays in Cultural Consent and Ruminate, poems in Ekstasis and Amethyst Review, and has written for Image journal’s ImageUpdate. She was the editorial intern at Image for two years. Hannah finds that writing has always been a conversation—her work emerges in response to the word He has already spoken. She writes to witness, to be caught up in Him over and over again. She writes to be well. Find more of her work at hannahhinsch.com
Originally from Pennsylvania, Alicia Hoffman now lives, writes, and teaches in Rochester, New York. She is the author of three collections, most recently ANIMAL (Futurecycle Press). Her poems can be found in a variety of publications, including The Atticus Review, The Rise Up Review, The Night Heron Barks, SWWIM, The Penn Review, Typishly, and elsewhere. Find her at: www.aliciamariehoffman.com
Angela Hoffman lives in Wisconsin. Her poetry has appeared in Solitary Plover, Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets’ Museletter and Calendar, Agape Review, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Your Daily Poem, and Writing In A Woman’s Voice. Her first chapbook (Resurrection Lily, Kelsay Books) is scheduled for release in 2022.
Ruth Holzer is the author of eight chapbooks, most recently, Living in Laconia (Gyroscope Press) and Among the Missing (Kelsay Books). Her poems have appeared in Blue Unicorn, Faultline, Slant, and Plainsongs, as well as previously in Amethyst Review. She has received several Pushcart Prize nominations.
Yuan Hongri (born 1962) is a renowned Chinese mystic, poet, and philosopher. His work has been published in the UK, USA, India, New Zealand, Canada, and Nigeria; his poems have appeared in Poet’s Espresso Review, Orbis, Tipton Poetry Journal, Harbinger Asylum, The Stray Branch, Pinyon Review, Taj Mahal Review, Madswirl, Shot Glass Journal, Amethyst Review, The Poetry Village, and other e-zines, anthologies, and journals. His best known works are Platinum City and Golden Giant. His works explore themes of prehistoric and future civilization. Yuanbing Zhang (b. 1974), is Mr. Yuan Hongri’s assistant and translator. He himself is a Chinese poet and translator, and works in a Middle School, Yanzhou District, Jining City, Shandong Province China. He can be contacted through his email-3112362909@qq.com.
Taylor Hood writes fantastical stories concerning nature and yearning, as well as essays on topics such as architecture and aesthetics. He graduated with a BSc (Hons) Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, First, and is currently undertaking an MA Res English Lit. His website is: https://thoodauthor.wordpress.com
Nora Howard’s interests include people, language, dreams and the mysterious events of life. In her visual art and in her poetry she focuses on the fleeting moment, the passage of time and human interactions. She was raised in Greenwich Village and has spent most of her life living in NYC.
Judith O’Connell Hoyer’s 2017 chapbook Bits and Pieces Set Aside was nominated for a Massachusetts Book Award by the publisher of Finishing Line Press. Her first full-length book of poetry Imagine That is forthcoming from FutureCycle Press in March 2023. Judith’s poems can be found in publications that include CALYX, Cider Press Review, Southwest Review, The Moth Magazine (Irish), The New York Times Metropolitan Diary, and The Worcester Review among others. She and her husband split their time between Massachusetts and Rhode Island, USA.
Nancy Huggett is a settler descendant who lives, writes, and caregives in Ottawa, Canada on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg people. Thanks to Firefly Creative, Merritt Writers, and not the rodeo poets, she has work out/forthcoming in Reformed Journal, Literary Mama, Prairie Fire, Pangyrus, and Waterwheel Review.
Alison Hurwitz has most recently been featured in Global Poemic, Words and Whispers Journal, Poetry in the Time of Coronavirus Volumes 1 and 2, Tiferet Journal, and Writing in a Woman’s Voice. She was one of six finalists for the grand prize given by Volume 2 of Poetry in the Time of Coronavirus, and recently received an honorable mention Tiferet Journal for its annual poetry prize. On the second Saturday of each month, Alison facilitates a free online poetry reading, Well-Versed Words. Poets interested in appearing on Well-Versed Words may contact her at wellversedwords@gmail.com. She lives with her husband, two sons and rescue dog in North Carolina. Find links to her work at www.alisonhurwitz.com
The Thing About Belonging to the Moon
Elizabeth Hykes lives and writes in southern Missouri. A retired clinical social worker, writing has sustained her through the ups and downs of life.
Jon Inglett is a Professor of English at Oklahoma City Community College. He was inspired by the natural world from his youth, particularly the lakes, small forests, and mountains in Central and Northwest Arkansas. He has self-published his work over the years and is the faculty advisor for the Absolute Literary Journal at Oklahoma City Community College.
John Claiborne Isbell taught French and German for many years in Indiana and Texas after his Ph.D. at Cambridge University. In 1996, he appeared in Who’s Who in the World. He has a new monograph, An Outline of Romanticism in the West, with Open Book Publishers, where it is available to download for free online. His first book of poetry, Allegro, came out in 2018.
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 Pinyon, Slant, Cirque Journal, Off the Coast and Poetry Salzburg. His book, November Reconsideredwas published by Cirque Press. Janssen also coordinates the Salem Poetry Project, a weekly reading, the annual Salem Poetry Festival, and was a 2020 nominee for Oregon Poet Laureate.
Paul Jaskunas is the author of the novel Hidden (The Free Press, 2004), winner of the Friends of American Writers Award, and founding editor of Full Bleed, an annual art journal published by the Maryland Institute College of Art, where he teaches literature and writing. His work has been featured by a variety of publications, including The Cortland Review, Gargoyle, The New York Times, America, and The Museum of Americana.
Alison Jennings is a Seattle-based poet who’s written poetry since her ninth year, but only began to submit her work after retiring from public school teaching. Recently, she has had over forty poems published, and won 3rd place or Honorable Mention in several contests. Please visit her website at https://sites.google.com/view/airandfirepet/home.
Letitia Jiju is an engineer and finance professional who has a penchant for exploring and retelling the divine and the mythological. Her poems have appeared/are forthcoming in Zero Readers, The Daily Drunk, Moist Poetry Journal, Acropolis Journal and Emirates Literature Festival. She serves as Poetry Editor at Mag 20/20. You can find her on Twitter/Instagram @eaturlettuce.
DB Jonas is an orchardist living in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of northern New Mexico. His work has appeared in Neologism, Consilience Journal, PoeticaMagazine and The Jewish Literary Journal, and is forthcoming in Tar River, Innisfree and The Deronda Review.
Our Velocity at 2.73 Degrees Kelvin
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 spends a lot of her time writing and making a new garden.
In the Shrine of Margaret Clitherow
k. rowan jordan-abrams is an over-the-road commercial truck driver as well as an undergraduate religious studies major at the University of Nebraska Omaha. they are originally from California and live with their spouse and their cat. they can be found at http://www.semante.me/ and on Twitter as @where_the_rider.
Beth Kanell lives in northeastern Vermont, with a mountain at her back and a river at her feet. She’s a published poet, novelist, historian, and memoirist, and shares her research and writing process at BethKanell.blogspot.com.
Brian Kates holds a Pulitzer Prize, George Polk Award and Daniel Pearl Award for Investigative Reporting. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Spirit Fire Review, Paterson Literary Review, Broadkill Review, Banyan Review, Third Wednesday, Common Ground and other journals. He lives with his wife in a house in the woods in the lower Hudson Valley.
Ryan Keating is a pastor, writer, winemaker and coffee roaster on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. His work can be found in publications such as Saint Katherine Review (forthcoming), Ekstasis Magazine, Agape Review, and Miras Dergi, where he is a regular contributor in English and Turkish.
Kay Kestner is a screenwriter, poet, and prose writer. She is the founder and former editor of Poetry Breakfast. Kay has led writing workshops through the Ministry of Artistic Intent and The NJ Poetry and Arts Barn. You can find more information about her work at KayKestner.com.
Jessica Khailo (she/her) lives in the state of Washington with her husband, two children, and one very good dog. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys complaining on walks through the woods, knitting, creating dodgy artwork, and singing her heart out like no one is listening. Her work has appeared in The Citron Review.
a a khaliq is a poet and medical student from the midwest. she writes, in the tradition of kafka, to close her eyes.
James Robert Kibby is an accomplished songwriter and aspiring poet whose love for creative writing began when he authored and illustrated his first comic book at age 11. James has poems published through Calla Pressand The Voices Project and is currently working on his first poetry collection.
Matthew King used to teach philosophy at York University in Toronto, Canada; he now lives in what Al Purdy called “the country north of Belleville”, where he tries to grow things, counts birds, takes pictures of flowers with bugs on them, and walks a rope bridge between the neighbouring mountaintops of philosophy and poetry. He is on the web at birdsandbeesandblooms.com, and on twitter @cincinnatus_c_.
Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including Amethyst Review. His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com/ He is, like so many, a nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net this year.
Sarah Mackey Kirby grew up in Louisville Kentucky. She is the author of the poetry collection, The Taste of Your Music (Impspired, 2021) Her work has been published in Impspired Magazine, Muddy River Poetry Review,Ploughshares, Third Wednesday Magazine, and elsewhere. Sarah loves to cook and feel summer dirt on her hands. She and her husband split their time between Kentucky and Ohio. https://smkirby.com/
Joseph Kleponis lives north of Boston, Massachusetts. His poetry has been appeared in Boston Literary Magazine, Eucalypt, First Literary Review -East, Penmen Review of Southern New Hampshire University, Muddy River Poetry Review, and Wilderness House Literary Review. Truth’s Truth, his first book, was released in 2021 by Kelsay Books.
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 Beir Bua Press, Hesterglock Press, and Dostoyevsky Wannabe. She lives in Minneapolis. Find her at roseknapp.net and on Twitter @Rose_Siyaniye
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 Americorona: Poems about the Pandemic (Wipf and Stock, 2021).
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.
Mary Hills Kuck has retired from teaching English and German in the US and Jamaica and now lives in Massachusetts with her family. She has received a Pushcart Prize nomination and has published in a number of journals, including the Connecticut River Review, SLANT, Tipton Poetry Journal, Burningword Literary Journal, From the Depths, Splash, Poetry Quarterly, Main St. Rag, and others. Her chapbook, Intermittent Sacraments, was published in June, 2021, by Finishing Line Press.
Elizabeth Kuelbs writes at the edge of a Los Angeles canyon. Her work appears in Psalms of Cinder & Silt, Poets Reading the News, The Timberline Review and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is the author of the poetry chapbook Little Victory (2021).
Christopher Kuhl earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and one in
music composition, as well as two masters of music degrees and a PhD in
Interdisciplinary Arts. He taught English at the Illinois Mathematics
and Science Academy. He enjoys reading a wide array of literature, as
well as philosophy and history.
luke kurtis is an interdisciplinary writer, editor, and artist. His books include Angkor Wat: poetry and photography and Springtime in Byzantium. bd-studios.com is his long-term art and publishing-as-practice project where he helms all aspects of the studio while collaborating with a range of artists and writers to realize their projects. He lives and works in New York City.
sutras – poetry by luke kurtis
Gopal Lahiri is a bilingual poet, critic, editor, writer and translator with 24 books published, including five jointly edited books. His poetry is published across various anthologies globally. Recent credits: Ink Pantry, Verse-Virtual, Madrigal, The Best Asian Poetry, and elsewhere. He has been nominated for Pushcart Prize for poetry in 2021.
Katherine Leonard grew up in the US and Italy. She lived in Massachusetts at the time of John F Kennedy’s assassination and experienced segregation and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination as a high school student in rural Texas. She has been a chemist, a geologist and an oncology nurse/nurse practitioner.
Loosening the Bonds – Unhook the IV Drips and Let Me Be Full as the March Moon
Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. She performs tales featuring food, family, and strong women.. She’s a two-time Pushcart nominee, nominee for Best of the Net, and runner up in the 2022 Robert Frost Foundation Competition. Her newest chapbook, Feathers on Stone is from Main Street Rag.
A. Michele Leslie has written more than twenty plays, including one about a bus-ride that won 1st prize in the one-act play contest sponsored by Kalliope Magazine (Jacksonville, FL). This play was nominated for a Pushcart in 1993. Another play she wrote, Location Unknown, which treated schizophrenia during Victorian times, placed as Alternate in the Jerome in 1991. She has had about 7 plays produced in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area and has also published poetry, short stories, and essays and edited an international literary magazine (as a hobby) for about fifteen years. She lives with her husband and two wonderful cats in Minnesota. She deeply enjoys meditation and in her spare time dabbles in reflexology, essential oils, and a variety of mystical issues. She is presently putting the finishing touches on two new full-length plays.
Natalie Lester is a poet currently residing in Ithaca, NY. Her work has appeared in Poetic Sun, Spirit Fire Review, Eucalyptus & Rose, and Sparks of Calliope.
Caroline Liberatore is a former English student and future librarian. She has also been published in Ashbelt Journal, Ekstasis Magazine, Foreshadow Magazine, and Clayjar Review. You can read more of her work at carolinelib.wordpress.com.
Sam Ligeti (She/Her) has always known that she’s a writer, but is only just starting to believe it. Connect with her on Instagram: @samligeti, or at www.samligeti.com.
Jodi Lin is a Queer/Trans Asian Pacific Islander poet and filmmaker based in Manhattan. Their poetry can be experienced in a video diary called “Leaving Beauty” on their YouTube channel of the same name, Olney Magazine, and The Poetry Project Footnotes publication. A graduate of the ART Institute at Harvard, Sarah Lawrence College, and a Brooklyn Poets Fellowship recipient. https://linktr.ee/hellojodiii
Fay L. Loomis lives a quiet life in the woods in Kerhonkson, New York. A member of the Stone Ridge Library Writers and Rat’s Ass Review Workshop, her poetry and prose have appeared most recently in Burrow, Amethyst Review, Bindweed, True Chili, Blue Pepper, Al-Khemica Poetica, Sledgehammer Lit, and Spillwords.
Viv Longley has been writing for her own pleasure since she was a child. Later in life she undertook an MA in Creative Writing at The Open University, specialising in poetry. As well as having one collection (Tally Sheet, Currock Press, 2021) she is undertaking a number of collaborative publications. Notably, Daughters of Thyme. She is also preparing a second collection of her own and a number of essays – the latter to be called I am in a Hurry. ‘Now nearing my 80’s, you just never know how much time you have left!’
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)
Tony Lucas is retired from parish ministry but continues work of editing and spiritual direction. His poetry has appeared widely, on both sides of the Atlantic, and past collections Rufus At Ocean Beach (Stride/Carmelyon) and Unsettled Accounts (Stairwell Books) remain available.
James Scannell McCormick writes and teaches college English in Rochester, Minnesota. His third collection of poems is First of Pisces (Kelsay Press).
St. Francis of Assisi Receives the Stigmata
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.
Ghazal: Remembering Dublin, 1964
Emma McCoy is a poet and essayist with love for the old stories. She is the assistant editor of Whale Road Review, co-editor of Driftwood, and poetry reader for the Minison Project. She is the author of In Case I Live Forever(2022), and she has poems published in places like Flat Ink, Paddler Press, and Jupiter Review. Catch her on Twitter: @poetrybyemma
Amit Majmudar’s work appears widely, including in the Best American Poetry anthologies and New Yorker. www.amitmajmudar.com.
Rachel Mallalieu is an emergency physician and mother of five. She is the author of A History of Resurrection (Alien Buddha Press 2022). Some of her recent work is featured or forthcoming in Nelle, A Gathering of the Tribes, Dialogist, Rattle and elsewhere. More of her poetry can be found at rachel-mallalieu.com
D.S. Martin is Poet-in-Residence at McMaster Divinity College. Angelicus (2021) is now available from Wipf & Stock ― a poetry collection written from the point of view of angels. Visit his blog Kingdom Poets and his website.
On Christmas Day in the Morning
Grace Massey‘s poetry combines careful observation with elements of the spiritual and mystical. She has been published in Vita Brevis, Soul-Lit, Spry, and Ekphrastic Review, among others. When she isn’t writing, she’s dancing, in her garden, or working with shelter cats.
Floral Collar from Tutankhamun’s Embalming Cache
Louise Mather is a writer from Northern England and founding editor of Acropolis Journal. A finalist in the Streetcake Experimental Writing Prize, her work is published in various print and online literary journals. Her debut pamphlet The Dredging of Rituals is out with Alien Buddha Press, 2021. She writes about ancestry, motherhood, endometriosis, fatigue and mental health. Twitter @lm2020uk www.louisematheruk.wixsite.com/louisemather
Devika Mathur resides in India and is a published poet, content writer, Editor. Her works have been published or are upcoming in Madras Courier, Modern Literature, Two Drops Of Ink, Dying Dahlia Review, Pif Magazine, Spillwords, Duane’s Poetree, Piker Press, Mojave heart review, Whisper and the Roar amongst various others. Her works have been included in the US-based Indie Blu(e) Publications- The Kali Project, As the World Burns to name a few. She writes at https://myvaliantsoulsblog.wordpress.com/. She recently published her surreal poetry book Crimson Skins available now worldwide. insta- @my.valiant.soul
Mari Maxwell’s poetry appears in Washing Windows Too, Arlen House 2022; and, the Poetry Jukebox STARS Curation, part of the 2021 Belfast International Arts Festival. She received a 2020/21 Professional Development Award with the Arts Council of Ireland and a 2019/2020 Words Ireland/Mayo County Council Mentorship. TWITTER: @MariMaxwell17
Carl Mayfield does not sigh as much as he thought he would in old age. His poems have found homes at various places on the map.
Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist and psychotherapist, and taught workshops focused on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self. Her poetry has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Prairie Schooner, Slant, Poet Lore, and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia.
During a career practicing and teaching at UCLA’s Department of Psychiatry, William H. Miller published three books: Personal Stress Management for Medical Patients, Systematic Parent Training, and a memoir, Soothing: Lives of a Child Psychologist. He recently rediscovered his love for poetry. Partly retired, he plans to spend his time studying and writing poetry.
Aparna Mitra lives in Melbourne with her husband and two children. Her poetry has twice won the My Brother Jack Awards and been shortlisted for the Fish Poetry Prize 2021. Aparna grew up in Calcutta, has a Masters in Business Management and has worked in banking and in micro finance. Her most recent publication was in the Empty House Press. When not writing, you can find her trying to coax temperamental Indian tropical plants to bloom in her suburban Melbourne garden and tweeting @aparnamitra0.
Juan Pablo Mobili was born in Buenos Aires. His poems appeared in The Worcester Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Impspired (UK), and Otoliths (Australia), among many others. His work has received multiple nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His chapbook, Contraband, was published this year.
Rita Moe’s poetry has appeared in Water~Stone, Poet Lore, Slipstream, and other literary journals. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Sins & Disciplines and Findley Place; A Street, a Ballpark, a Neighborhood. She has two grown sons and lives with her husband in Roseville, Minnesota.
Linda McCullough Moore is the author of two story collections, a novel, an essay collection and more than 350 shorter published works. She is the winner of the Pushcart Prize, as well as winner and finalist for numerous national awards. Her first story collection was endorsed by Alice Munro, and equally as joyous, she frequently hears from readers who write to say her work makes a difference in their lives. For many years she has mentored award-winning writers of fiction, poetry, and memoir. She is currently completing a novel, Time Out of Mind, and a collection of her poetry. www.lindamcculloughmoore.com
Marjorie Moorhead writes from a river valley at the border of NH/VT. She is grateful to have found poetry as a language and community in which to ponder different facets of existence, such as survival, relationship, responsibility, faith. Much of her work can be accessed at https://marjoriewritespoetry.wordpress.com/places-you-can-see-my-work/
Annie Morris lives in SW London. Her poems have appeared in various online and print publications such as Minute Magazine, Allegro, Red Wolf Journal, Blue Heron Review, The Dawntreader, Shot Glass Journal and the anthology Myth & Metamorphosis (Penteract Press).
Laura Morris is an American writer and producer. A traveler by nature, she has spent many a day on foreign soil, tasting new food, stumbling over a mix of languages and appreciating an expanded view of the world. She currently resides in New Jersey with her husband and a piano that’s too big for the living room. Her work has been published in Hobart (forthcoming), Bombaz Press, ONTHEBUS and other anthologies.
Elizabeth Morse is a writer who lives in New York’s East Village. Her work has been published in literary magazines such as The Raven’s Perch, Visible, and CafeLit, as well as anthologies such as Crimes of the Beats. She has her MFA from Brooklyn College and supports her writing with a job in information technology.
Joel Moskowitz is an artist who lives in Sudbury, Massachusetts. His poems have appeared in The Comstock Review, Ibbetson Street Press, J Journal, Midstream, Naugatuck River Review, The Healing Muse, MuddyRiverPoetryReview.com, BostonPoetryMagazine.com, AmethystMagazine.org and Soul-Lit.com. He is a First Prize winner of the Poetry Society of New Hampshire National Contest.
Victoria Moul is a poet, scholar and translator currently living in Paris. Her poems and verse translations have recently appeared in The Dark Horse, Modern Poetry in Translation, bad lilies and the anthology Outer Space: 100 Poems (Cambridge, 2022).
Leah Mueller‘s latest chapbook, “Land of Eternal Thirst” (Dumpster Fire Press) was released in 2021. Her work appears in Rattle, Midway Journal, Citron Review, The Spectacle, Miracle Monocle, Outlook Springs, Atticus Review, Your Impossible Voice, and elsewhere. Visit her website at www.leahmueller.org.
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, and was recently nominated for the Pushcart Prize anthology.
A resident of Connecticut, John Muro’s first volume of poems, In the Lilac Hour, was published in 2020 by Antrim House. His second volume, Pastoral Suite, will be published this spring by Antrim House, as well, and both are or will soon be available on Amazon. A two-time, 2021 Pushcart Prize nominee, John’s poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Barnstorm, Euphony, Grey Sparrow, Penumbra, River Heron and Sky Island.
Steve Myers has published a full-length collection, Memory’s Dog, and two chapbooks. A Pushcart Prize winner, he has recently published poems in journals such as Callaloo, Hotel America, Paterson Literary Review, The Southern Review,Tar River Poetry and Valley Voices.
Art Nahill is an American-born physician and poet who lives in Auckland New Zealand. He has published on both sides of the equator, in magazines such as Poetry, Harvard Review, Rattle, and Poetry NZ among others, as well as three book-length collections.
Mary Ford Neal is a writer and academic from the West of Scotland. Her poetry is published widely in magazines and she is the author of two poetry collections: Dawning (Indigo Dreams, 2021) and Relativism (Taproot Press, 2022). Mary is assistant editor of 192 magazine and Nine Pens Press.
Kaitlyn Newbery is an adjunct English professor at University of the Cumberlands. She enjoys exploring questions about her faith through metaphors and storytelling. Her works have recently been published by Agape Review.
Daniel Niv (She/ Her) is a student at Tel Aviv University. She is double majoring in Literature and Creative Writing in both Hebrew and English. She won the Bar Sagi Award 2021 for her poetry. You can find more of her published works in Phantom Kangaroo, Anti-Heroin Chic, Caesura, and elsewhere. For more information, you can visit her website: DanielNiv.com.
James Owens‘s newest book is Family Portrait with Scythe (Bottom Dog Press, 2020). His poems and translations appear widely in literary journals, including recent or upcoming publications in Grain, Dalhousie Review, Presence, Queen’s Quarterly, and Honest Ulsterman. He earned an MFA at the University of Alabama and lives in a small town in northern Ontario, Canada.
Chase Padusniak is a PhD candidate in Princeton University’s English department, where he specializes in late medieval mystics like Julian of Norwich, Marguerite Porete, and Jan van Ruusbroec. He is an associate editor at Macrina Magazine; his poetry and prose have appeared in Soft Cartel, Church Life Journal, Comitatus, Augustinian Studies, Athwart, as well as the edited collectionSlavoj Žižek and Christianity (Routledge 2019), among other outlets. Twitter and Instagram: @ChasePadusniak
Danielle Page is a truth-teller, writer, and educator. When she’s not reading up on composition theory, she’s scribbling in her moleskine journal or hiking a mountainous trail. Her work has appeared in the Whale Road Review, Calla Press, Poetry Pacific, and elsewhere.
Dominic Palmer grew up near Oxford and studied at the University of Cambridge, which means he never fails to vicariously win (or lose) the annual Boat Race. He now lives in Manchester with his wife, teaches English in a secondary school, and enjoys cycling, gardening, and playing music.
Rina Palumbo came to writing after a career in college teaching and has published work in Survivor Lit, Beach Reads, and local magazines and journals. She is currently working on a novel and has two other long-form works in progress, and continuing to write short-form fiction, creative non-fiction, and prose poetry.
Mary Paulson’s writing has appeared in multiple publications, most recently in Chronogram, Pine Hills Review, Backchannels, Discretionary Love, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Poetica Review, Orchards Poetry Journal, DASH Literary Journal and The Pomegranate London. Her debut chapbook, Paint the Window Open was published by Kelsay Publishing in 2021. She lives in Naples, FL.
Denise Pendleton is a recipient of The Jinx Walker Poetry Prize of the Academy of the American Poets. Her poems have appeared in the book collection, American Sports Poems, and various journals including Northwest Review, Tar River Poetry,Goose River Anthology and Kerning. Pendleton coordinates the local literacy program, teaches college writing and visits the sanctuary of her backwoods most every day.
On The Prayer Trail in Ordinary Time
Christine Penney lives in New York City. She co-wrote and performed a one- woman show on the life of German activist/artist Kaethe Kollvitz. She acted in theater productions in the Bay Area and NYC. Recently she had several poems published with Hole in the Head Review and in Porter Gulch Journal. Readings include the Poets and Writers intergenerational Program and Goddard Riverside for Women’s Month.
Darrell Petska is a retired university engineering editor and a 2021 Pushcart Prize nominee. His writing has appeared in Amethyst Review, Soul-Lit, 3rd Wednesday Magazine, Buddhist Poetry Review, Verse-Virtual, and widely elsewhere (conservancies.wordpress.com). A father of five and grandfather of six, he lives near Madison, Wisconsin, with his wife of more than 50 years.
Cynthia Pitman has been published in Amethyst Review, Pain and Renewal (Anthology, Vita Brevis), Brought to Sight & Swept Away (Anthology, Vita Brevis ), Ekphrastic Journal, Scarlet Leaf, Third Wednesday (One Sentence Poem Contest finalist), Saw Palm (Pushcart Prize nominee), Adelaide, Right Hand Pointing, Red Fez (Story of the Week), and others. Her book, The White Room, was published in 2020 by Kelsay Books.
Keith Polette has published poems in both print and online journals. His book of haibun, pilgrimage, received the Haiku Society of America’s Merit Book Award in 2021. Sunday Morning Resurrection Hunger
Melaney Poli is an artist, writer, and Episcopalian nun. She is the author of the accidental book of poems You Teach Me Light: Slightly Dangerous Poems and an accidental novel, Playing a Part.
.Wisconsin Barn, Sunday Morning
Martin Potter (https://martinpotterpoet.home.blog) is a British-Colombian poet and academic, based in Manchester, and his poems have appeared in Acumen, The French Literary Review, Eborakon, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Poetry Village, and other 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: Limestone, Spillway, Gargoyle Magazine, The Birmingham Poetry Review, The American Poetry Journal, Dappled Things, Caveat Lector, The Copperfield Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Amethyst Review, The Loch Raven Review, and other journals. In addition, Ann’s poem, “Ice Palace” (The Copperfield Review) was nominated for Best of the Net in Poetry last year.
Grace C. Przywara received an English degree from the University of South Carolina. Her poetry has appeared in Ekstasis Magazine and is forthcoming in Rise Up Review, and has placed multiple years in contests hosted by human rights organization Rehumanize International. Grace currently lives in Aiken, South Carolina.
On Faith, Personal or Otherwise
Donna Pucciani, a Chicago-based writer, has published poetry worldwide in Shi Chao Poetry, Poetry Salzburg, ParisLitUp, Meniscus, Agenda, Gradivaand other journals. Her most recent book of poetry is EDGES.
V.S. Rakenduvadhana is an Indian writer, poet, visual artist, and filmmaker based in Helsinki. Her diurnal energies are also devoted to her work as a neuroscientist. She has had a lifelong nocturnal affair with philosophy, music, and art in its many forms. Her works are now published/emerging in various literary magazines including The Vital Sparks, The Abstract Elephant, In Parentheses, Camas, and Rigorous; while she works on her first novella. Website: www.rakenduvadhana.com
The arenaceous facet of totality/entity
Patrick T. Reardon, a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, has authored eleven books, including the poetry collections Requiem for David (Silver Birch), Darkness on the Face of the Deep (Kelsay) and The Lost Tribes(Grey Book). Forthcoming is his memoir in prose poems Puddin’: The Autobiography of a Baby (Third World). His website is patricktreardon.com. His poem ‘The archangel Michael’ was a finalist for the 2022 Mary Blinn Poetry Prize.
Caroline Reddy’s accepted and published work include poems in Bethlehem Writers Roundtable, Clinch, Cacti-Fur, Star*line, Braided Way, Active Muse.org and Soul Lit. In the fall of 2021, her poem A Sacred Dance was nominated for Best of The Net prize by Active Muse.
Ashley Robles is your average chronically ill Hispanic bisexual and the only person you know that still wears fingerless gloves. She studied English and Creative Writing at the University of Texas at Austin and has been catching up on sleep and video games at her home in San Antonio ever since. Her work has been published in The South Carolina Review, The Poet’s Billow, Unstamatic, Grim & Gilded, and is forthcoming in the Alebrijes Review. She is a recipient of The Bermuda Triangle Prize and a part of Lighthouse Writers Workshop’s Poetry Collective. She can be found online everywhere @mzashleypie
Jennifer Rodrigues currently lives on the sacred Powhatan land of Fairfax, VA. She works as a certified yoga therapist, is a Reiki healer, military spouse, mother to a creative daughter and a black cat named Miss Yvonne. She has been published in The Muleskinner Journal, tiny frights.
A 2017 NJ Council on the Arts poetry fellow, Nicole Rollender is the author of the poetry collection, Louder Than Everything You Love (Five Oaks Press), and four poetry chapbooks. She has won poetry prizes from Palette Poetry, Gigantic Sequins, CALYX Journal and Ruminate Magazine. Her work appears in Alaska Quarterly Review, Best New Poets, Ninth Letter, Puerto del Sol, Salt Hill Journal and West Branch, among many other journals. She’s managing editor at THRUSH Poetry Journal. Nicole holds an MFA from the Pennsylvania State University. She’s also co-founder and CEO of Strand Writing Services. Visit her online: www.nicolemrollender.com.
Locution I: We are more wretched than the animals
Russell Rowland writes from New Hampshire’s Lakes Region, where he has judged high-school Poetry Out Loud competitions. His work appears in Except for Love: New England Poets Inspired by Donald Hall (Encircle Publications), and “Covid Spring, Vol. 2” (Hobblebush Books). His latest poetry book, Wooden Nutmegs, is available from Encircle Publications.
Julie Sampson’s poetry is widely published. She edited Mary Lady Chudleigh; Selected Poems, 2009 (Shearsman Books); her collectionsare Tessitura(Shearsman Books, 2014) and It Was When It Was When It Was (Dempsey & Windle, 2018 ). She received an ‘honourable mention’ in the Survision James Tate Memorial Prize, in 2021. Her main website is at JulieSampson.
Madonna in the mid-Devon Meadows
Cheryl Slover-Linett (she/her) is a poet based in Santa Fe, NM. Her poetry is featured or forthcoming in Eunoia Review, River Mouth Review and Haiku Journaland she serves on the editorial team at High Desert Journal. In addition to writing, she leads wilderness retreats through Lead Feather, the nature non-profit she founded in 2008, and spends as much time as she can in the high desert mountains of northern New Mexico.
Kristy Snedden’s life work is as a trauma psychotherapist. After a long love affair with words, she began writing poetry in June, 2020 and her poem, “Dementia,” was awarded an Honorable Mention in the 90th Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition (August, 2021). She has been taking classes at The Writer’s Studio since September, 2021.
Sakina Qazi is from Long Island, NY. She is currently a junior at the University of Miami, where she is Editor of Mangrove Literary Journal.
Daniel A. Rabuzzi has had two novels, five short stories and ten poems published since 2006 (see www.danielarabuzzi.com). He lived eight years in Norway, Germany and France. He has degrees in the study of folklore and mythology, international relations, and early modern European history. He lives in New York City with his artistic partner & spouse, the woodcarver Deborah A. Mills (http://www.deborahmillswoodcarving.com), and the requisite cat.
Jessamyn Rains is a writer, musician, and mother of four. She loves old books and new poetry. She lives with her family in East Tennessee.
Lisa Rhoades is the author of The Long Grass (Saint Julian Press, 2020) and Strange Gravity (Bright Hill Press, 2004). Recently poems have appeared at Thin Air, American Journal of Poetry, Psaltry&Lyre, Saranac Review, and SWWIM. A pediatric nurse, she lives on Staten Island.
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/
Alison Rose: Twenty years ago, having struggled to engage with traditional psychotherapy, Alison Rose began a spiritual journey towards recovery from childhood trauma. Now advocating a ‘road less travelled’ approach to healing, her first online course and accompanying book will be published later this year. www.yourmostpowerfulself.com
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.
Seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee Russell Rowland writes from New Hampshire’s Lakes Region, where he has judged high-school Poetry Out Loud competitions. His work appears in Except for Love: New England Poets Inspired by Donald Hall (Encircle Publications), and “Covid Spring, Vol. 2” (Hobblebush Books). His latest poetry book, Wooden Nutmegs, is available from Encircle Publications.
Tejaswinee Roychowdhury lives in West Bengal, India, and writes fiction, CNF, and the occasional poetry. Her work has appeared in Ongoing, Alphabet Box, Kitaab, Roi Fainéant Press, Third Lane, and Borderless Journal, among others. She is a lawyer and currently, also a Fiction/Stage Editor for The Storyteller’s Refrain. Twitter: @TejaswineeRC
Anne Ryland’s third collection of poetry, Unruled Journal, was recently published by Valley Press. Her previous books are Autumnologist, shortlisted for The Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2006, and The Unmothering Class, a New Writing North Read Regional choice. She leads community-based writing workshops in Northumberland and the Scottish Borders. https://anneryland.co.uk/
Kathryn Sadakierski’s writing has appeared in Agape Review, Critical Read, Halfway Down the Stairs, Literature Today, NewPages Blog, Silkworm, Songs of Eretz, and elsewhere. Her micro-chapbook “Travels through New York” was published by Origami Poems Project (2020). She holds a B.A. and M.S. from Bay Path University.
Catharsis & Kenosis: The Sacred Art of Writing
Michael Sandler is the author of a poetry collection, The Lamps of History (FutureCycle Press 2021) that Kirkus Reviews described as a “complex, electric work of erudite poems.” His work has appeared in scores of journals, including recently in Arts & Letters, Literary Imagination, and Smartish Pace. Michael lives near Seattle; his website is www.sandlerpoetry.com.
Adrian Schnall is a retired physician and Professor of Medicine (Case Western Reserve U.) whose poetry has been published in Pathogens and Immunity, Poetica, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. His poems have been selected for public readings by Choral Arts Cleveland, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Lit Youngstown, Lit Cleveland, and the Island Writers’ Network at Hilton Head. He lives in Beachwood, Ohio.
Shane Schick is the founder of a publication about customer experience design called 360 Magazine. His poetry has recently appeared in Ekstasis, Macrina Magazine and other publications. He lives in Whitby, Ont. with his wife, an Anglican priest and their three children. More: ShaneSchick.com/Poetry. Twitter: @ShaneSchick.
Kiriti Sengupta, the 2018 Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize recipient, is a poet, editor, translator, and publisher. He has authored eleven books of poetry and prose, two books of translation, and edited eight anthologies. Sengupta’s poems have been published in The Common, The Florida Review Online (Aquifer), Otoliths, Headway Quarterly, Moria Online, Amethyst Review, Madras Courier, Ink Sweat and Tears, The Lake, Mad Swirl, Outlook Magazine, among other places. He is the founder and chief editor of the Ethos Literary Journal. Sengupta lives in New Delhi. More at www.kiritisengupta.com
Oindri Sengupta is a published poet based out of Kolkata, India. Her works have appeared in a few online and print journals like Muse India, Kritya, Ethos Literary Journal, Istanbul Literary Review, Poetry Quarterly, USA, Contemporary Literary Review, India, Penwood Review, USA, Usawa Literary Review etc. and also in a couple of poetry anthologies. Apart from writing poetry, she also teaches English in a Govt. Higher Secondary School in Kolkata. Her maiden book of poetry After the Fall of a Cloud was released by Hawakal Publishers in February 2022.
Sanjeev Sethi has authored five books of poetry. He is published in over thirty countries. His poems have found a home in more than 390 journals, anthologies, and online literary venues. Recent credits: Stand Magazine, Litter Magazine, The Recusant, The Lake, Roi Fainéant Press, and The Dillydown Review. He is the joint-winner of Full Fat Collection Competition-Deux, organized by The Hedgehog Poetry Press UK. He is in the top ten of the erbacce prize 2021 UK. It has over twelve thousand and five hundred entries. He lives in Mumbai, India.
Dr. Manisha Sharma is a poet, fiction writer, and interdisciplinary collaborator in the United States of America. Her work is about social issues and about simplifying complex social issues and concepts. A yoga practitioner and an internationally-certified teacher for more than 20 years, her latest poetry project is about shedding myths about yoga. Her work is widely published and awarded. Details are on her webpage, manisha-sharma.com
Pauline Shen is an emerging writer in London, Ontario. Her writing aims to showcase beauty and courage rooted in unexpected and challenging places. Her work is published or forthcoming with Blank Spaces, CommuterLit, and Dreamers Creative Writing. Pauline completed her B.A. in psychology at The University of Western Ontario. More: paulineshen.ca
Brent Short lives in Kansas City, Missouri. He’s worked as Library Director for both Park University and Saint Leo University. His poetry chapbook, The Properties of Light was published in 2015 by Green Rabbit Press. His poetry has appeared in Eads Bridge Literary Review, Sandhill Review, Tar River Poetry, Saint Katherine Review and The Windhover.
Maryrose Smyth lists her passions as: art, family and preserving a one woman artist’s preserve in the tiny canyon where she and her family live in Los Angeles where she says humor and a working blue Bic pen are her basically her only policies.
Winter Desert Sky, Joshua Tree
Kimbol Soques has been writing since before she got her first typewriter at age 3. Her work has been included in a variety of publications, including Non-Binary Review and Windhover, and has been nominated for Best of the Net. She lives and writes in Austin, Texas. Visit kimbol.soques.net for links to her published poetry online.
Katherine Spadaro was born in Scotland but has spent most of her life in Australia. She is married with two adult children. Her poems are typically short and focus on some everyday event or feeling; sometimes they have narrowly survived having all the life edited out of them. She is interested in the symbolism and impact of regular experience and how it is connected with spiritual truth.
Ethan Ashkin Stanton is a husband, father, teacher, and poet in San Jose, California. He is a Jewish pantheist with a side of skepticism. His work often explores the interpenetration of the sacred and the mundane. Every answer brings a new question, and that is how it should be.
Linda Duede Starbuck left her life in Iowa behind and retired to the beautiful Black Hills of South Dakota in 2017. In addition to writing, she loves to draw, is a historic interpreter, and volunteers at various art and history venues. Her poems have been published in both traditional and online journals. Her first book, Willing Pioneer, was published in 2020. http://www.lindastarbuck.com.
Mark D. Stucky has degrees in religious studies, pastoral ministry, and communications. After being a pastor, he moved into communications and has been a technical and freelance writer. During his day job, he has documented diverse technical products. In free time, he has written articles, stories, and poems on a variety of topics. He has received over three dozen writing and publication awards. For more information, see linkedin.com/in/markstucky and cinemaspirit.info.
Sarah Tate is a writer, a poet, and a life-long student of literature. Her work has previously appeared in Calla Press, Heart of Flesh Literary Journal, and LAMP. She lives in rural Virginia where she especially enjoys long walks and contemplating things she doesn’t understand.
Peter Taylor attends to inner landscapes in people and in words. Deeply rooted in New York City and woodland, he and his husband now make their home on a Nova Scotia bluff overlooking the North Atlantic.
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.
Yushima Tenjin Shrine in Spring Rain
Allison Thorpe‘s latest book is Restless Pilgrims (Broadstone Books). Her work has been published in such journals as Pleiades, Tipton Poetry Journal, So To Speak, and Hamilton Stone Review and has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize. She lives in Lexington, Kentucky.
Terry Tierney is the author of The Poet’s Garage and the novels Lucky Ride (December 2021) and The Bridge on Beer River(July 2023), all published by Unsolicited Press. His poems have recently appeared in Rust + Moth, Typishly, Valparaiso Poetry Review, The Lake and other publications. His website is http://terrytierney.com.
Anthony Tomkins is a PhD researcher with the University of York’s English and Related Literature Department, working on athletic memoirs. He writes about ethereal nature and the sublime landscape of his Brecon Beacons home.
The former poet laureate of Grand Rapids, Michigan, Rodney Torreson is a retired parochial schoolteacher who taught in the Lutheran Church Missouri-Synod for thirty-six years. He won the Seattle Review’s Bentley Prize, and Storyline Press named him runner-up for the national Roerich Prize for first books. In 2015, the Dyer-Ives Foundation honored him “for his longstanding commitment as a poet, teacher, patron, and advocate for poetry in West Michigan.
His third full-length collection of poetry, THE JUKEBOX WAS THE JURY OF THEIR LOVE, was issued by Finishing Line Press in 2019. Torreson has published in many journals, most recently AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POETRY, MAIN STREET RAG, NORTH DAKOTA QUARTERLY, PATERSON LITERARY REVIEW, AND TAR RIVER POETRY.
As If God Will Dress Me Down to Dust
Martin Towers recently moved from Northern Ireland to Wales where he works as a support worker. Moths are a big thing for him, his favourite being the Angle Shades.
Nur Turkmani is a Lebanese-Syrian researcher and writer in Beirut. Her poetry has been published in The Adroit Journal, London Poetry, ECLECTICA, and others. Her poem “Body Parts” was selected as a runner-up for the Barjeel Poetry Prize. She is the Managing Editor of Rusted Radishes: Beirut’s Art and Literary Journal and is currently completing an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford.
Robin Turner has recent work in The Fourth River, Bracken Magazine, One Art, and Ethel, and in the Haunted anthology (Porkbelly Press). A longtime community teaching artist in Dallas, she is now living in the Pineywoods of rural East Texas for a spell. She works with teen writers online.
Victoria Twomey is a poet and an artist. She has appeared as a featured poet at venues around NY, including the Hecksher Museum of Art, The Poetry Barn, Barnes & Noble, and Borders Books. Her poems have been published in several anthologies, in newspapers and on the web, including Sanctuary Magazine, BigCityLit, PoetryBay, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, The Tipton Poetry Journal and the Agape Review. Her poem “Pieta” was 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/
Megan Ulrich lives with her husband and three sons in a charming little town in East Tennessee. She has recently found inspiration in writing about grief and the healing that comes from sharing our brokenness with others. You can find out more about Megan at her website www.Megan-Ulrich.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.
John Valentine lives in Savannah, GA, where he teaches philosophy at a local college.
A third-generation artist, John Van Dreal began painting and writing at age seven. He earned his formal education in Fine Arts at Humboldt State University and Brigham Young University and educational psychology at Brigham Young University, maintaining careers in both fields while writing. A musician and award-winning artist with work featured in collections throughout the Pacific Northwest, Van Dreal uses his creative vision and accessible writing style to explore both the darker and quirkier sides of human behavior. He resides in Salem, Oregon and is currently preparing his poetry book, titled Sand to Glass, for publication with WordTech Communications’ Cherry Grove Collections imprint (January of 2023).
I’m religious only when I speak Spanish
Dr. Kayden Vargas (they/them) is a nonbinary psychologist by day and poet by moonlight. They enjoy utilizing psychological, religious, and spiritual themes. They are originally from Brewster WA, and their longest lasting love is the Columbia River. They currently reside as an activist, scholar, and therapist on Yakama Nation land.
Peter Venable has written sacred and secular verse for many decades. He has been published in Ancient Paths, Prairie Messenger, Time of Singing, American Vendantist, The Anglican Theological Review, The Christian Century, The Merton Seasonal, The Penwood Review, Ekstasis, Poems for Ephesians, The Windhover and forthcoming in Spiritus. His Jesus Through A Poet’s Lens is an eBook available at petervenable.com.
Prasanta Verma‘s poetry has been published in Relief Journal, Barren Magazine, Bramble Lit Mag, and is upcoming in Without a Doubt, a New York Quarterly anthology. Verma tweets @VermaPrasanta, and feel free to stay connected with her by signing up for her newsletter at www.prasantaverma.com.
Lubna Haddad Walford is a stay-at-home mother and former Latin literature teacher. Her work has appeared in The Catholic Poetry Room. She resides in Southern California.
In the Refectory of the Blessed
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.
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.
J.T. Whitehead earned a law degree from Indiana University, Bloomington. He received a Master’s degree in Philosophy from Purdue, where he studied Existentialism, social and political philosophy, and Eastern Philosophy. He spent time between, during, and after schools on a grounds crew, as a pub cook, a writing tutor, a teacher’s assistant, a delivery man, and book shop clerk, inspiring four years as a labor lawyer on the workers’ side. Whitehead has published poems in a number of other literary journals, including Home Planet News, The Iconoclast, Poetry Hotel, Evening Street Review, Book XI, and Gargoyle. His one book of poetry, The Table of the Elements, was published by The Broadkill River Press in 2015. Whitehead lives in Indianapolis with his two sons, Daniel and Joseph, where he practices law by day and poetry by night.
An apprentice at the bottom of the long stairs
Anne Whitehouse’s most recent poetry collection is Outside from the Inside (Dos Madres Press, 2020), and her most recent chapbook is Escaping Lee Miller (Ethel Zine and Micro Press, 2021). She is the author of a novel, Fall Love. She is currently writing about Edgar Allan Poe. You can listen to her lecture, “Longfellow, Poe, and the Little Longfellow War” here.
Beth Oast Williams’ poetry has appeared in West Texas Literary Review, Wisconsin Review, Glass Mountain, GASHER Journal, Poetry South, Fjords Review, and Rattle’s Poets Respond, among others. Her poems have been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. Her first chapbook, Riding Horses in the Harbor, was published in 2020.
In Search of a Container for Jesus
Martin Willitts Jr is a Quaker poet. He has over 20 full-length collections including How to Be Silent (FutureCycle Press, 2016); Unfolding of Love (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2020); and forthcoming Leaving Nothing Behind(Fernwood Press, 2022). He is an editor for The Comstock Review.
Dylan Willoughby is a permanently disabled LGBTQIA+ poet and composer, born in London, England and currently living in Long Beach, CA. Chester Creek Press has published 3 limited-edition letterpress poetry chapbooks, with illustrations by the hyper-realist painter Anthony Mastromatteo. His poems have appeared widely in literary magazines including Agenda (UK), Stand (UK), The Interpreter’s House (UK), Shenandoah, Salmagundi, Denver Quarterly, CutBank, Southern Humanities Review, and Green Mountains Review.
Susan Wilson lives in East London and began writing poetry following the death of her mother in 2017. Her poems have been published by Lucy Writers, Snakeskin, The Runcible Spoon, Dreich and Areopagus. Prior to the pandemic she was a regular performer at “Spineless Authors”, a local open mic event. Her debut chapbook is ‘I Couldn’t Write to Save Her Life’ (Dreich, 2021).
Phil Wood was born in Wales. He studied English Literature at Aberystwyth University. He has worked in statistics, education, shipping, and a biscuit factory. He enjoys watercolour painting, bird watching, and chess. His writing can be found in various places, including: Ink Sweat and Tears,The Dirigible Balloon, The Wild Word.
Anne Yarbrough‘s debut collection, Refinery, was chosen by Hayden Saunier for the 2021 Dogfish Head Poetry Prize and published by Broadkill River Press. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poet Lore, Delmarva Review, Philadelphia Stories, Gargoyle Magazine, CALYX Journal, and elsewhere. She lives in an observation post along the lower Delaware River with a husband and a dog.
Via Negativa in the Town Park, Late February
Yuan Hongri (born 1962) is a renowned Chinese mystic, poet, and philosopher. His work has been published in the UK, USA, India, New Zealand, Canada, and Nigeria; his poems have appeared in Poet’s Espresso Review, Orbis, Tipton Poetry Journal, Harbinger Asylum, The Stray Branch, Pinyon Review, Taj Mahal Review, Madswirl, Shot Glass Journal, Amethyst Review, The Poetry Village, and other e-zines, anthologies, and journals. His best known works are Platinum City and Golden Giant. His works explore themes of prehistoric and future civilization. Yuanbing Zhang (b. 1974), is Mr. Yuan Hongri’s assistant and translator. He himself is a Chinese poet and translator, and works in a Middle School, Yanzhou District, Jining City, Shandong Province China. He can be contacted through his email-3112362909@qq.com.
Marly Youmans is the author of fifteen books of poetry and fiction. Her latest poetry collection is The Book of the Red King, from Phoenicia Publishing in Montreal, 2019, and her latest novel is Charis in the World of Wonders, published by Ignatius Press of San Francisco in 2020.
Michael T. Young’s third full-length collection is The Infinite Doctrine of Water. He received a Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals including Breakwater, FRiGG, The Inflectionist Review, and Talking River Review.
Kevin Zepper teaches at a small midwest university. He writes, photographs, and acts.
Amethyst Review 