Eleanor Leonne Bennett is a 15 year old photographer and artist who has won contests with National Geographic, The Woodland Trust, The World Photography Organisation, Winstons Wish, Papworth Trust, Mencap, Big Issue, Wrexham Science, Fennel and Fern and Nature’s Best Photography. She has had her photographs published in exhibitions and magazines across the world including The Guardian, RSPB Birds, RSPB Bird Life, Dot Dot Dash, Alabama Coast, Alabama Seaport and NG Kids Magazine (the most popular kids magazine in the world). She was also the only person from the UK to have her work displayed in the National Geographic and Airbus run “See the Bigger Picture” global exhibition tour with the United Nations International Year of Biodiversity 2010. She was the only visual artist published in the Taj Mahal Review June 2011—and she is also the youngest artist to be displayed in Charnwood Art’s “Vision 09” Exhibition and New Mill’s Artlounge “Dark Colours” Exhibition.
Jennifer Blair—of Yakima, Washington—has published a chapbook (All Things are Ordered) with Finishing Line Press.
Ivan de Monbrison was born in Paris in 1969 from a French Protestant father and an Egyptian Muslim mother, both mixed with Jewish origins. His interest in art can be linked to a very liberal artistic education, where African and Oceanian arts were in the center of his interests. This left him with a desire to pursue the question of what art meant in the old days, and what it can mean in our modern and absurd world of thriving technology. Is art religious? Thus, in which way can it still exist in a non-sacralized world? Chasing the human figure in a distorted way, like Bacon and Giacometti did in the past, has appeared for de Monbrison to be the best way to pursue his non-religious “spiritual” quest. This approach appears even more important as today’s art has tended to become more and more similar to publicity and fashion. His works have been shown in various countries in recent years. http://artmajeur.com/blackowl
Timothy Dyson, a Retired HR professional, took up poetry after a thirty three year break. Many of his poems have been accepted over the last sixteen months with two being nominated for the 2011 Pushcart Prize. He currently resides in SE Pennsylvania. Among his favorite poets are Wright, Bishop and Lowell.
B. D. Fischer returned from China in early 2012 and now lives and writes in Chicago. You can read more of his thoughts at the politics and culture blog Public (dis)Interest and take his horrible advice at The Fischer System. He was educated at Syracuse University and the University of Texas at Austin and has published fiction, poetry, and non-fiction in places like Thrice Fiction Magazine, The Delinquent, Notes, and the New Times.
Oriana Ivy was born in Poland and came to the United States when she was 17. Her poems, essays, book reviews, and translations from modern Polish poetry have been published in Poetry, Ploughshares, Best American Poetry 1992, Nimrod, New Letters, The Iowa Review, American Poetry Review, Black Warrior, Wisconsin Review, Prairie Schooner, Seneca Review, Spoon River Review, Southern Poetry Review, and many other journals and anthologies. She has won the Sow’s Ear Press Chapbook Competition and the 2011 Finishing Line Press New Women’s Voices Chapbook Contest. A former journalist and community college instructor, she leads the San Diego Poetry Salon and writes a poetry blog: http://oriana-poetry.blogspot.com/
Christine Dano Johnson lives in Knoxville, Tennessee. She is the co-editor of Far Away Literary Magazine, and has previously been published in Seeing the Everyday, The Ends of the Earth Anthology (with Heather Lende), The Knoxville Writers Guild 2011 Anthology A Tapestry of Voices, The Friends of the Knox County Library’s Big Read, and in the forthcoming Q3 issue of 2nd and Church.
Lissa Kiernan is poetry editor of Arsenic Lobster Poetry Journal and founder/artistic director of online poetry cooperativeThe Rooster Moans. Her writing can be found or is forthcoming in Albatross, Canary, unSplendid, Whale Sound, Qarrtsiluni, and The Yale Journal for the Humanities in Medicine. She holds an MFA from Stonecoast and an MA from The New School. You can visit her website at: Lissakiernan.com
Eileen Malone lives and writes in the coastal fog of the San Francisco Bay Area. Her poetry has been published in over 500 literary magazines and journals and most recently her book of poetry I Should Have Given Them Water was published by Ragged Sky Press (Princeton). She founded and directs the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition and is a voting member of the Northern California Book Reviewers.
Ryan Mattern is a recent graduate of California State University, San Bernardino, where he earned his B.A. in Creative Writing. His work has appeared in THE2NDHAND, Criminal Class Review, The Pacific Review, Burning Word, as well as others. He is an active member of poetrIE, a reading series dedicated to showcasing the literary voices of California’s Inland Empire. He is the co-founder and fiction editor of The Halfpenny Marvel, a journal for flash fiction and prose poetry. Currently, he is an MFA candidate at various California universities. He lives and writes in southern California.
John McKernan is now a retired comma herder. He lives – mostly – in West Virginia where he edits ABZ Press. His most recent book is a volume of selected poems, Resurrection of the Dust. He specialized in car batteries and punctuation problems.
Noah Milligan‘s work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous online and print journals including Santa Clara Review, Birmingham Arts Journal, and Minnetonka Review, among others. He lives in Oklahoma City with his wife and daughter and is the managing editor of Arcadia Magazine.
Alexandra Pajak is a finalist for the North American Review‘s 2012 James Hearst Poetry Prize. Her poem “An African American Step Show” will be published in the Spring 2012 issue of North American Review. Other work has been published in Alderson-Broaddus College’s Grab-A-Nickel, the Agnes Scott College Writers Festival Magazine (2001 and 2002), Chicken Soup for the Recovering Soul: Daily Inspirations, Letters to My Teacher (Adams Media, Inc.) and Letters to My Mother (Adams Media, Inc,). The University of Georgia National Public Radio Station featured three of her original essays on air between 2002-2004. Pajak was a first place winner in the 2010 Marie Claire Gloss Up, Speak Out essay contest on personal and community empowerment. She lives with her husband in Atlanta, GA, and works as a mental health counselor at a county jail
Christine Reilly lives in New York City, is getting her MFA at Sarah Lawrence College, and has been published in 41 journals. Her website is www.christinejessicamargaretreilly.com. Somebody once told her that she had a face from the 1970’s.
Ron Riekki‘s novel U.P. was nominated for the Great Michigan Read Series and Sewanee Writers Series. His play All Saints’ Day opened Ruckus Theatre’s recent theater season.
Abdel Shakur received his M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Indiana University and served as Editor-in-Chief of Indiana Review. His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in 2 Bridges Literary Review, The Other Journal, and Scissors and Spackle. He now teaches 9th grade English and lives in Chicago with his wife Candice, his daughter Lucy, and his cat Sally. He blogs at http://misstraknowitall.blogspot.com.
Francine Sterle is the author of Nude in Winter (Tupelo Press, 2006), Every Bird is One Bird (Tupelo Press, 2001), and The White Bridge (Poetry Harbor, 1999). Her poems have appeared in such journals as Ploughshares, The North American Review, and Nimrod and have been anthologized in Letters to the World, To Sing Along the Way: Minnesota Women Poets From Pre-territorial Days to the Present, The Cancer Poetry Project and 33 Minnesota Poets.
The Floating Order, Erin Pringle-Toungate’s first book, was published by Scotland’s Two Ravens Press (2009). Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart, named Best American Notable Non-Required Reading, and published widely. Her most recent publications include War, Literature & the Arts, Penn State’s Lake Effect, and a horror/fantasy/sci-fi anthology out of Dublin, entitled, Box of Delights. She has work forthcoming in Emrys, Sand Journal, and Big Pulp. Erin grew up in Illinois, received her graduate degree in Texas, and presently lives in Washington state.
Jessica Tyner is originally from Oregon, USA, a member of the Cherokee Nation, and has been a writer and editor for ten years. Currently, she is a copy writer for Word Jones, a travel writer with Mucha Costa Rica, a writer for TripFab, a copy editor at the London-based Flaneur Arts Journal, and a contributing editor at New York’s Thalo Magazine. She has recently published short fiction in Out of Print Magazine in India and poetry in Slow Trains Literary Journal, Straylight Magazine, and Solo Press. She lives in San José, Costa Rica.
James Valvis is the author of How to Say Goodbye (Aortic Books, 2011). He has published hundreds of poems in places like Anderbo, Arts & Letters, Glint, New York Quarterly, Poetry East, Rattle, River Styx, and Verse Daily. His fiction is also widely published in places like Daily Science Fiction, Los Angeles Review, Pedestal Magazine, Potomac Review, storySouth, and Washington Pastime. His fiction has twice been a Notable Story in the Million Writers Award. He lives in Issaquah, Washington.
David Vardeman is a graduate of the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His one-act play Road Beyond Desire was staged by New England Academy of Theatre in 2002 in New Haven, Connecticut as part of the city-wide Festival of Arts and Ideas. His full-length play Because It is Bitter, and Because It is My Heart was one of six finalists at the Palm Springs International Playwriting Festival in 2004 and received a staged reading. His play Venice was staged in March 2012 as part of the “Madthematics,” Bellarmine College’s 2nd Bi-annual International Festival of New 10-minute plays in Louisville, Kentucky. His one-act play A Depressed Childhood will be staged in April 2012 as part of Acorn Theatre’s Maine Playwrights’ Festival in Portland, Maine; and his one-act play Based on Real Events will be staged in May 2012 by Mad Lab Theatre in Columbus, Ohio; in August 2012 his ten-minute play Weird Saga will be performed by Theater Company of Lafayette, Colorado in a production titled, Comic Con con Comedy.
Bill Wolak is a poet who has just published his fourth book of poetry entitled Warming the Mirror with The Feral Press. He is currently working on a translation of the Italian poet Annelisa Addolorato with Maria Bennett. Mr. Wolak teaches Creative Writing at William Paterson University in New Jersey.
The Public Domain Review.
Glint Literary Journal 