CONTRIBUTORS FOR fall 2021 ISSUE
Allyn Bernkopf is pursuing her MFA in poetry at Oklahoma State University, where she was the recipient of the Gladys Burris Creative Writing Fellowship (2020-21). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Slippery Elm Literary Journal, Barely South Review, The Greensboro Review, Black Fox Literary Magazine, and others, and has been anthologized in Women’s Voices Anthology (These Fragile Lilacs 2017) and Lost: Reflections (Medusa’s Laugh Press, 2017). She holds a Master of Arts in English from Weber State University.
Doug Bolling’s poetry has appeared in Posit, Slant, Connecticut River Review,
C;eaver, Blueline, and Water-Stone Review among others. He has received Pushcart
And Best of the Net nominations and several awards and lives in the greater
Chicago area.
Ed Davis has immersed himself in writing and contemplative practices since retiring from college teaching. Time of the Light, a poetry collection, was released by Main Street Rag Press in 2013. His latest novel, The Psalms of Israel Jones (West Virginia University Press 2014), won the Hackney Award for an unpublished novel in 2010. Many of his stories, essays and poems have appeared in anthologies and journals such as Leaping Clear, Metafore, Hawaii Pacific Review, and Bacopa Literary Review. He lives with his wife in the bucolic village of Yellow Springs, Ohio, where he bikes, hikes, meditates and reads religiously.
Orman Day’s prose and poetry have been published by such journals as Creative Nonfiction, Bitter Oleander, Portland Review, Los Angeles Review and Potomac Review. His life guided by wanderlust, he thumbed on six continents, hopped freight trains from L.A. to New Orleans, witnessed a sky burial in Tibet, bungee jumped off a New Zealand bridge, and spent two months canoeing the Mississippi.
David James Delaney divides his time between Pompano Beach Florida and a cabin in the Finger Lake hills of Upstate New York. He has taught school, been an UAW autoworker, a corporate writer (General Motors/Delphi) and a variety of other things. He writes poetry (first book is scheduled for next year), short stories, plays and the occasional essay/memoir. He enjoys reading, painting, photography, nature and watching old movies.
Anthony DiMatteo’s recent poems have sprouted in The American Journal of Poetry, Cimarron Review, Clade Song, Ekphrastic Review and UCity Review. His current book of poems, In Defense of Puppets, has been hailed as, ‘a rare collection, establishing a stunningly new poetic and challenging the traditions that DiMatteo (as Renaissance scholar) claims give the poet ‘the last word” (Cider Press Review). A chapbook, Fishing for Family, is out from Kelsay Books.
Omar El Akkad is an author and journalist. He was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, moved to Canada as a teenager and now lives in the United States. The start of his journalism career coincided with the start of the war on terror, and over the following decade he reported from Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and many other locations around the world. His work earned a National Newspaper Award for Investigative Journalism and the Goff Penny Award for young journalists.
His fiction and non-fiction writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Guernica, GQ and many other newspapers and magazines. His debut novel, American War, is an international bestseller and has been translated into thirteen languages. It won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award, the Oregon Book Award for fiction, the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize and has been nominated for more than ten other awards. It was listed as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, Washington Post, GQ, NPR, Esquire and was selected by the BBC as one of 100 novels that changed our world.
His short story “Government Slots” was selected for the Best Canadian Stories 2020 anthology. His new novel, What Strange Paradise, was published by Knopf in 2021.
Jim Fairhall teaches modern literature and environmental studies at DePaul University in Chicago. He has written Perfume River: A Novel in Stories of Love and War. Four other stories in the cycle have won national awards, including the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival Award for Fiction. He’s also won the Swan Scythe Press Poetry Chapbook Award and the John Guyon Award (Crab Orchard Review) for nonfiction.
Laura Foley is the author of seven poetry collections, variously honored with the Foreword Book of the Year Award (Silver), finalist for the NH Writer’s Project’s Outstanding Book of Poetry, and the Bisexual Writer’s Award. Her most recent book, Why I Never Finished My Dissertation, received a starred Kirkus Review and was among their top poetry books of 2019. Her collection It’s This is forthcoming from Salmon Press in 2022. Her poems have won numerous awards, and national recognition—read by Garrison Keillor on Prairie Home Companion and The Writers Almanac. At Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Los Angeles Master Chorale performed composer Dale Trumbore’s “How to Go On,” based on her and two other poets’ work.
Tricia Gates Brown’s poems and essays have appeared in various publications including Portland Magazine, Oregon Humanities, Rathalla Review, and The Winnow. Living on a farm in Yamhill, Oregon, she writes and edits, and dotes on a four-legged menagerie. She is author of the debut novel Wren (Frederick Press, 2018).
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Orbis, Dalhousie Review and the Round Table. His latest books, “Leaves On Pages” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Lana Turner and Hollins Critic.
Kari Gunter-Seymour is the mother of a Middle East Combat Veteran. Her poetry collections include Place So Deep Inside America It Can’t Be Seen, (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions) winner of the 2020 Ohio Poet of the Year Award and Serving (Crisis Chronicles Press). Her poems appear in numerous journals and publications including Verse Daily, Rattle, ONE, Poem-a-Day, The NY Times, and on her website: www.karigunterseymourpoet.com. She is the founder/executive director of the Women of Appalachia Project (WOAP) (www.womenofappalachia.com) and editor of the WOAP anthology series, Women Speak. She is a recipient of a 2021 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship and Poet Laureate of Ohio.
A finalist for the 2018 Elyse Wolf Prize, Jane Hart holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and was Poetry Fellow at the Writers’ Room of Boston. Her work has appeared in print and online journals, including: Los Angeles Review, The Southern Poetry Review, The Worcester Review, The Ocean State Review, The Plath Poetry Project, and MER Vox Folio, among others. In a previous life, she was senior editor for a music-industry publication and a features writer for a fiercely independent, small town newspaper, The Carlisle Mosquito.
Rachael Ikins is a 2016/18 Pushcart, 2013/18 CNY Book Award, 2018 Independent Book Award winner, & 2019 Vinnie Ream & Faulkner poetry finalist. She is a Syracuse University graduate and author/illustrator of nine books in multiple genres. Her writing and artwork have appeared in journals world wide from India, UK, Japan, Canada and US. Born in the Fingerlakes she lives by a river with her dogs, cats, salt water fish, a garden that feeds her through winter. Dragons fly by.
John Maurer is a 26-year-old writer from Pittsburgh that writes fiction, poetry, and everything in-between, but his work always strives to portray that what is true is beautiful. He has been previously published in Claudius Speaks, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Thought Catalog, and more than fifty others. @JohnPMaurer (johnpmaurer.com)
Ray Morrison spent most of his childhood in Brooklyn, NY and Washington, DC but headed south after college to earn his degree in veterinary medicine. He has happily settled in Winston-Salem, NC with his wife and three children where, when he is not writing fiction, he ministers to the needs of dogs, cats and rodents. His stories have appeared in Ecotone, Beloit Fiction Journal, StorySouth, Fiction Southeast. Brilliant Flash Fiction, Carve Magazine, Night Train, and others.
Formerly a combat photojournalist and foreign correspondent, writer Karen Petersen has traveled the world extensively, and her poems, short stories, and flash have been published nationally and internationally. Her poems have been translated into Spanish and Persian.
Nominated for various prizes, more information can be found at https://karenpetersenwriter.com
Guy Prevost is a film/TV writer. His background encompasses work as a development executive in the movie business, college professor, fiction writer, and too often, flaneur. His short stories have appeared in numerous journals including The North Atlantic Review, The NonBinary Review, and The London Reader. Last screen credit: Dinoshark on SyFy. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife. For more info, stories, or contact please visit guyprevost.com.
Lindsey Pucci lives with her Husband and Son in Minnesota. She received her B.S. at the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse where she was the recipient of the Carol Quillins Art Scholarship. Her art has been shown at the State Street Gallery and the La Crosse Center for the Arts in Wisconsin. Lindsey’s photography has been on the cover of Nightingale & Sparrow and published in the Parliament Lit Journal. She can be found on Instagram @linney_bee.
Ron Riekki’s books include My Ancestors are Reindeer Herders and I Am Melting in Extinction (Apprentice House Press), Posttraumatic (Hoot ‘n’ Waddle), and U.P. (Ghost Road Press). Riekki co-edited The Many Lives of The Evil Dead and The Many Lives of The Twilight Zone (McFarland) and Undocumented (Michigan State University Press), and edited The Many Lives of Scary Clowns and The Many Lives of It (McFarland), Here and And Here (MSU Press, Independent Publisher Book Award), and The Way North (Wayne State University Press, Michigan Notable Book).
Celeste Schantz is the editor of Mason Street Review. She was the runner-up for the 2018 Stephen Dunn Prize in Poetry, judged by Terrance Hayes. Her essay “Strata” appears on PBS’s Next Avenue’s “Telling Our Stories” podcast. Her essay “Lake Under the Sea” appears in Fugue. She was the recipient of a Katharine Bakeless Nason endowment to attend the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference, where she studied with the author Helen Macdonald. Her poems appear in Solstice, Stone Canoe, and other publications. Celeste lives with her teenage son in Western NY, where she supports his differently-abled schooling and inclusion programs and champions autism rights. Recently, as a fellow finalist, Celeste studied with the author Leslie Jamison, through Lighthouse Writers Workshop. In her spare time, she works on desk at the public library.
Jane Schapiro is the author of three volumes of poetry, Tapping This Stone (Washington Writers’ Publishing House Award, 1995), Let The Wind Push Us Across (Antrim House 2017), and the 2020 Nautilus Book Award Winner Warbler(Kelsay Books, 2020). She is also the author of the nonfiction book Inside a Class Action: The Holocaust and the Swiss Banks (University of Wisconsin, 2003) selected for the Notable Trials Library. Her chapbook Mrs. Cave’s House won the 2012 Sow’s Ear Poetry Chapbook competition. Her poems and essays have appeared in American Scholar, Ars-Medica, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, The Gettysburg Review, Gargoyle, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, Women’s Review of Books. Her website is www.janeschapiro.com
John Schneider lives in Berkeley, California. His work has been included in The Worcester Review, Tampa Review, The Inflectionist Review, The American Journal of Poetry, California Fire and Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology, and elsewhere. His poetry has been a Merit Award winner in the Atlanta Review 2021 International Poetry Competition He is also a Pushcart Prize Nominee.
Edward Shaw is a retiree from academe (University of California-Berkeley, UCLA) and the nonprofit world who has come to writing recently. He’s a published essayist, short story writer and biographer as well as an occasional newspaper columnist.
Katherine Shehadeh is writer, mom and attorney by day, who resides with her family in Miami, Florida. Her recent poems have been published or are forthcoming in the Friends Journal, The Abstract Elephant Magazine and Literary North. She can be found on Instagram at @katherinesarts or on the web at katherinesarts.com.
Sarah Dickenson Snyder has three poetry collections, The Human Contract, Notes from a Nomad (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2018), and With a Polaroid Camera. She has been nominated for Best of Net, was the Poetry Prize winner of Art on the Trails 2020, and a Finalist for Iron Horse National Poetry Month Award. Recent work has appeared in Rattle and RHINO. She lives in the hills of Vermont. sarahdickensonsnyder.com
Brian Turner’s poetry and essays have been published in The New York Times, National Geographic, Poetry Daily, The Georgia Review, Virginia Quarterly Review and other journals. Turner was featured in the documentary film Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, which was nominated for an Academy Award. He received a USA Hillcrest Fellowship in Literature, an NEA Literature Fellowship in Poetry, the Amy Lowell Traveling Fellowship, a US-Japan Friendship Commission Fellowship, the Poets’ Prize, and a Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation.
His book of poetry, Here, Bullet, is a first-person account of the Iraq War by a solider-poet, winner of the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award. Phantom Noise, was short-listed for the T.S. Eliot Prize in England. His work has appeared on National Public Radio, the BBC, News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Here and Now, and on Weekend America, among others.
Turner earned an MFA from the University of Oregon before serving for seven years in the US Army. He was an infantry team leader for a year in Iraq with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. Prior to that, he deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina with the 10th Mountain Division (1999-2000). Learn more about him, HERE.
Bart White teaches at The Harley School and is active in the arts community of Rochester, New York. He is co-editor of Civilization In Crisis: an anthology of poetic response (FootHills Publishing, 2021) and MOVING IMAGES: Poems Inspired by Film (Before Your Quiet Eyes Publishing, 2021).
Mason Street 