Contributors Issue One Fall 2019
Jacob M. Appel has published short fiction in many literary journals including Agni, Alaska Quarterly Review, Conjunctions, Colorado Review,Gettysburg Review, Iowa Review, Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Southwest Review, StoryQuarterly, Subtropics, Threepenny Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and West Branch. His essays have appeared in The New York Times, The New York Daily News, The New York Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Detroit Free Press, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Times, The Providence Journal and others. He is Director of Ethics Education in Psychiatry at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. Find out more about Jacob HERE.
Demisty D. Bellinger‘s writing has appeared in many places, including The Rumpus and Necessary Fiction. Her chapbook, Rubbing Elbows, is available from Finishing Line Press. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and for a Pushcart. One of her stories was selected for The Best Small Fictions 2019. She teaches creative writing in Massachusetts.
Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has work which appears in magazines worldwide. He was awarded the 2017 Booranga Centre (Australia) Fiction Prize. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work in a state hospital, is available for Kindle and as a print edition. His poetry collection, THE ARREST OF MR. KISSY FACE, published in March 2019 by Pski’s Porch Publications, is available here. Visit his website to read more of his poetry and flash fiction.
Dave Gregory is a Canadian writer who worked on cruise ships and sailed around the world for nearly two decades. He is an Associate Editor with Exposition Review and a Fiction Reader for journals on both sides of the Atlantic. His work has appeared in numerous literary publications including Exile: The Literary Quarterly, Fictive Dream, and Typehouse Literary Magazine. Please follow him on Twitter @CourtlandAvenue.
Justin Hamm is the founding editor of the museum of americana and the author of American Ephemeral and Lessons in Ruin, as well as two poetry chapbooks. His poems, stories, photos, and reviews have appeared in Nimrod, The Midwest Quarterly, Sugar House Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, and a host of other publications. Recent work has also been selected for New Poetry from the Midwest (2014, New American Press) and the Stanley Hanks Memorial Poetry Prize from the St. Louis Poetry Center.
Mary Hood is the author of The Strangler Fig and Other Tales (2004 Altamira-Rowman & Littlefield), RiverTime: Ecotravels on the World’s Rivers (2008 SUNY Press), and Walking Seasonal Roads (2012 Syracuse University Press.) She has published several collections of poetry, articles on conservation and the environment, and served as poet laureate of Pensacola, Fl.
Laurie Kolp is an avid runner and lover of nature living in Texas with her husband, three children, and two dogs. Her poems have recently appeared in Moria, The Pinch, San Pedro River Review, A-Minor, and more. Laurie’s poetry books include the full-length Upon the Blue Couch and chapbook Hello, It’s Your Mother. Learn more at www.lauriekolp.com, @KolpLaurie on Twitter and https://www.facebook.com/KolpLaurie.
Rebecca L’Bahy lives and writes in north central Massachusetts. She has an MFA in creative writing and currently works full time in the metro Boston area. She’s had work published in Halfway Down the Stairs, Brain, Child Magazine, Modern Haiku, Writers Resist, the Mom Egg Review and elsewhere. She is working on her first chapbook and/or full-length book and looks forward to leading more poetry workshops at schools and local public libraries. Her favorite place to write is the Leominster Public library study rooms on the second floor. They have everything a poet needs: a clutter free table with lamp, self locking door, window with a view, and nearly complete silence. Just thinking about being there fills her with peace.
DS Maolalai has been nominated three times for Best of the Net and twice for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in two collections, “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016) and “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019)
Rafe Martin is the author of over 20 books, including The Rough-Faced Girl and many others. As both an author and a storyteller, Rafe has appeared in thousands of schools, libraries, festivals, and conferences in nearly every state—including Alaska and Hawaii—and as far away as Japan. His work has been featured in Time, Newsweek and USA Today and has appeared in Parabola: The Magazine of Myth and Tradition; The Sun; Enquiring Mind; Storytelling Magazine; Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, The Dragon Lode (International Reading Association) and many others. He was the 2008 recipient of the Empire State Award, given by the Youth Services Section of the New York Library Association since 1998. The Empire State Award is a one-time award presented to a living author or illustrator, currently living in New York State. The award honors a body of work that represents excellence in Children’s or Young Adult Literature and has made a significant contribution to literature for young people.
Rethabile Masilo was born in 1961 in Lesotho and left his country with his parents and siblings to enter exile in 1981. The co-editor of Canopic Jar, his poems have appeared in various anthologies and magazines, including Canopic Jar, With Our Eyes Wide Open, Seeing the Unseen, and others. In 2014 his poem ‘Swimming’ won the Dalro First Prize. The same poem won the Thomas Pringle Award for Poetry in Periodicals in 2015. In October 2016 he was part of the 20th Poetry Africa Festival, where he also represented The World Poetry Movement. That same year, Waslap was awarded the Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry. In 2018 his fourth book, Qoaling, was published by the Onslaught Press.
Bruce W. Niedt is a retired “beneficent bureaucrat” from southern New Jersey whose poetry has appeared in numerous publicatons including Rattle, Writer’s Digest, Tiferet, Spitball, The Lyric, US 1 Worksheets, and Edison Literary Review. I have been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. My sixth and latest chapbook is Hits and Sacrifices, published by Finishing Line Press.
M.A. Pelletier lives in a somewhat ramshackle farmhouse on 70 acres in Wayne County, NY with her husband and an ever-changing pack of dogs, rescued in a steady stream over the years to come live out the Life of Riley (according to their vet, anyway). Writing is a luxury that life doesn’t leave enough time for, but the passion is reignited each time someone prods her to take up a pen and set it to paper. Reviewing this previously written piece has set the embers glowing, perhaps to fare to flame, or so she can hope.
Marge Piercy has written 17 novels including The New York Times Bestseller Gone To Soldiers; the National Bestsellers Braided Lives and The Longings of Women; the classics Woman on the Edge of Time and He, She and It (winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction novel in 1993) and others. Among her 19 volumes of poetry the most recently published include The Hunger Moon: New & Selected Poems 1980-2010, and Made in Detroit. Her critically acclaimed memoir is Sleeping with Cats. Born in center city Detroit, educated at the University of Michigan and Northwestern, the recipient of four honorary doctorates, she is active in antiwar, feminist and environmental causes. You can check out Marge’s website to learn of what’s next in the works at https://margepiercy.com/ .
Fabrice Poussin teaches French and English at Shorter University. Author of novels and poetry, his work has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, and many other magazines. His photography has been published in The Front Porch Review, the San Pedro River Review as well as other publications.
Fabio Sassi makes photos and acrylics putting a quirky twist to his subjects. Sometimes he employs an unusual perspective that gives a new angle of view using what is hidden, discarded or considered to have no worth by the mainstream. Fabio lives in Bologna, Italy. His work can be viewed at www.fabiosassi.foliohd.com
Celeste Schantz was the runner-up for the 2018 Stephen Dunn Prize in Poetry, judged by Terrance Hayes. Her poems appear in Solstice, Stone Canoe, One Throne Magazine, Poetry International, and other publications. She was a finalist in Fugue journal’s 2018 annual prose writing contest. Her essay “Lake Under the Sea” appears in Fugue’s spring 2019 issue.
Celeste edits Mason Street. She lives with her teenage son here in Rochester, where she supports his differently-abled schooling and inclusion programs and champions autism rights.
Anastasia Vassos was born in Cleveland, Ohio and currently lives, writes and teaches in Boston, Massachusetts. Her work has appeared / is forthcoming in various journals, including Gravel Mag, RHINO, Haibun Today, Literary Bohemian and Comstock Review. Anastasia is a poetry reader for Lily Poetry Review. She was a BreadLoaf General Contributor in Poetry. In 2017, her poem “Tinos, August 2012” was named Poem Of The Moment on MassPoetry.org. She is a long-distance cyclist.
Bart White’s first collection of poems is the Pushcart-nominated The Faces We Had As Children (FootHills Publishing, 2014). Bart grew up in Asheville, North Carolina. He studied art and literature in Spain and France; was a cabdriver in New York City and taught high school there before moving to Rochester with his family. Bart currently teaches at the Harley School.
Christopher Woods is a writer, teacher and photographer who lives in Chappell Hill, Texas. He has published a novel, THE DREAM PATCH, a prose collection, UNDER A RIVERBED SKY, and a book of stage monologues for actors, HEART SPEAK His photographs can be seen in his gallery –http://christopherwoods.zenfolio.com/ . His photography prompt book for writers, FROM VISION TO TEXT, is forthcoming from PROPERTIUS PRESS.
Mason Street 