Contributor Biographies

Tipton Poetry Journal – Summer 2021 ContributorBiographies

Gilbert Allen's most recent books are Believing in Two Bodies (a collection of poems) and The Beasts of Belladonna (a collection of linked stories). Since 1977 he has lived in Travelers Rest, South Carolina, with his wife, Barbara.

Jake Bailey is a schiZotypal experientialist with published or forthcoming work in Abstract Magazine, The American Journal of Poetry, Constellations, Diode Poetry Journal, Frontier Poetry, Guesthouse, Mid-American Review, Palette Poetry, PANK Magazine, Passages North, Storm Cellar, TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics, Tar River Poetry, and elsewhere. Jake received his MA from Northwest Missouri State University and his MFA from Antioch University, Los Angeles. He is a former editor for Lunch Ticket, current associate editor for Storm Cellar, and reads for Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts. Jake lives in Illinois with his wife and their three dogs. You can find him on Twitter and Instagram (@SaintJakeowitz) and at saintjakeowitz.xyz.

Bethany Bowman is the author of Swan Bones (Wipf and Stock, 2018). Originally from New York’s Mohawk Valley, she has lived and taught in Indiana for the past decade. Her work has appeared in Nimrod, Apple Valley Review, and The Lascaux Review.

Edward Bynum is a practicing psychologist in Massachusetts with several book publications in psychology and poetry . This is a poem about a doctor in session, listening to his own inner thoughts as his patients speak. He is married and the father of 2 adult sons and a practitioner of yoga.

Charles Cantrell has poems in recent or forthcoming issues of Miramar Poetry Journal, The Café Review, The Hamilton Stone Review, and Stand. A book of poetry, Wild Wreckage, was recently published (2020) by Cervena Barva Press. He’s also been nominated 3 times for a Pushcart Prize, and has received fellowships form Ragdale, Ucross, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

Dan Carpenter is a board member of Brick Street Poetry Inc. and the author of two collections of poetry and two books of non-fiction. He has contributed poems and stories to many journals and anthologies. He blogs at dancarpenterpoet.wordpress.com.

Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The author of Peggy Sue Messed Up (2017), she is a two-time recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, Vita Brevis, Adelaide, Clockwise Cat, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Ariel Chart, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Tuesdays at Curley’s and After the Equinox.

Rosaleen Crowley was in born in Cork, Ireland and graduated from University College Cork. She relocated to Carmel, Indiana, in 1990. Along with images of water, nature and open spaces, themes of home, love, conflict, loss and isolation are explored through her poetry. Her third book in her trilogy, Point of Perception, was published in 2020 and her compilation of rhyming poems, For the Sake of Rhyme, is now available on Amazon.

Patricia Davis-Muffett (she/her) holds an MFA from the University of Minnesota. She was a 2020 Julia Darling Poetry Prize finalist and received First Honorable Mention in the 2021 Joe Gouveia OuterMost Poetry Contest. Her work has appeared in Limestone, Coal City Review, Neologism, The Orchards, One Art, Pretty Owl Poetry, di-verse-city (anthology of the Austin International Poetry Festival), The Blue Nib and Amethyst Review, among others. She lives in Rockville, Maryland, with her husband and three children and makes her living in technology marketing.

Milton P. Ehrlich Ph.D. is an 89-year-old psychologist and a veteran of the Korean War. He has published poems in Poetry Review, The Antigonish Review, London Grip, Arc Poetry Magazine, Descant Literary Magazine, Wisconsin Review, Red Wheelbarrow, and the New York Times. Ehlirch lives in New Jersey.

Kim Garcia is the author of The Brighter House (White Pine Press), DRONE (The Backwaters Press), Madonna Magdalene (Turning Point Books), and a chapbook, Tales of the Sisters. Her poems have most recently appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, New Ohio Review, Sugar House Review, IMAGE, Waxwing, and Tupelo Quarterly (winner of the 2019 Broadside Prize). Garcia teaches creative writing at Boston College.

D. Walsh Gilbert is the author of Ransom (Grayson Books, 2017). A Pushcart nominee, she has received honors from The Farmington River Literary Arts Center and the Artist for Artists Project at the Hartford Art School and was recently named the winner of The Ekphrastic Review’s 2021 “Bird Watching” contest. Her work is forthcoming in Canary and The Dillydoun Review, and has recently appeared in Montana Mouthful, Entropy, Third Wednesday, and the anthology, Waking Up to the Earth: Connecticut Poets in a Time of Global Climate Crisis, among others. She serves on the board of the non-profit, Riverwood Poetry Series, and as co-editor of the Connecticut River Review.

Morgan Hamill is a disabled poet and a first-year MA/PhD student in English Literature, with a focus in Critical Disability Studies, at Penn State-University Park, where she has been awarded a McCourtney Family Distinguished Graduate Fellowship. In 2019, she was a poetry semi-finalist in Nimrod's Francine Ringold Awards for Emerging Writers. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Cimarron Review, Copper Nickel, The Journal, and The Southern Review.

Lois Marie Harrod’s Spat was published in June 2021. Her 17th collection Woman won the 2020 Blue Lyra Prize. Nightmares of the Minor Poet appeared in June 2016 (Five Oaks); her chapbook And She Took the Heart, in January 2016; Fragments from the Biography of Nemeis and How Marlene Mae Longs for Truth (Dancing Girl Press) appeared in 2013. A Dodge poet living in New Jersey, she is published in literary journals and online ezines from American Poetry Review to Zone 3. Online link: www.loismarieharrod.org

Lisa Hase-Jackson lives in Charleston, South Carolina and is the author of Flint and Fire (The Word Works), winner of the 2019 Hilary Tham Capital Collection Series as selected by Jericho Brown. She is Editor in Chief at South 85 Journal and founding editor of Zingara Poetry Review.

John Haugh’s writing has been published in Main Street Rag, Notre Dame Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, The Tipton Poetry Review, The Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. He won the Nancy J. Heggem Poetry Award, and was selected for Winston-Salem’s Poetry in Plain Sight. Mr. Haugh lives in North Carolina, was a NCAA national champion in fencing and spent untold hours browsing Powell’s City of Books in Oregon when young. With help, he is working on a chapbook that might be titled Six Conversation, a mixtape and repurposed ghosts.

M. A. Istvan Jr., poet and philosopher, teaches at Austin Community College and is the current editor of Safe Space Press. Visit pw.org/directory/writers/m_a_istvan_jr_phd

D. R. James’s latest of nine collections are Flip Requiem (Dos Madres Press, 2020), Surreal Expulsion (The Poetry Box, 2019), and If god were gentle (Dos Madres Press, 2017), and his micro-chapbook All Her Jazz is free, fun, and printable-for-folding at the Origami Poems Project. He lives in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan.

Nancy K. Jentsch lives and writes from Kentucky.

Tim Kahl [http://www.timkahl.com] is the author of Possessing Yourself (CW Books, 2009), The Century of Travel (CW Books, 2012) and The String of Islands (Dink, 2015). His work has been published in Prairie Schooner, Drunken Boat, Mad Hatters' Review, Indiana Review, Metazen, Ninth Letter, Sein und Werden, Notre Dame Review, The Really System, Konundrum Engine Literary Magazine, The Journal, The Volta, Parthenon West Review, Caliban and many other journals in the U.S. He is also editor of Clade Song. Tim is the vice president and events coordinator of The Sacramento Poetry Alliance. He also has a public installation in Sacramento {In Scarcity We Bare The Teeth}. He plays flutes, guitars, ukuleles, charangos and cavaquinhos. He currently teaches at California State University, Sacramento, where he sings lieder while walking on campus between classes.

Michael Keshigian from New Hampshire, is the author of 14 poetry collections, his latest, What To Do With Intangibles, released in 2020, by Cyberwit.net. He has been published in numerous national and international journals and has appeared as feature writer in twenty poetry publications with 7 Pushcart Prize and 2 Best Of The Net nominations. His poetry cycle, Lunar Images, set for Clarinet, Piano, Narrator, was premiered at Del Mar College in Texas. Subsequent performances occurred in Boston (Berklee College) and Moleto, Italy. Winter Moon, a poem set for Soprano and Piano, premiered in Boston. (michaelkeshigian.com)

W.F. Lantry spends time roaming the Eastern Forests from Maryland to Vermont and gardening near Washington, DC’s Anacostia River. His poetry collections are The Terraced Mountain (Little Red Tree 2015), The Structure of Desire (Little Red Tree 2012), winner of a 2013 Nautilus Award in Poetry, and The Language of Birds (2011). He received his PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston. Honors include the National Hackney Literary Award in Poetry, CutBank Patricia Goedicke Prize, Crucible Editors' Poetry Prize, Lindberg Foundation International Poetry for Peace Prize (Israel), Comment Magazine Poetry Award (Canada), Paris/Atlantic Young Writers Award (France), Old Red Kimono Paris Lake Poetry Prize and Potomac Review Prize. His work has appeared widely online and in print. He is the editor of Peacock Journal.

Doris Lynch lives in Bloomington, Indiana and has recent work in Flying Island, Frogpond, Modern Haiku, Contemporary Haibun Online, Drifting Sands Haibun and in the anthologies: Cowboys & Cocktails: Poetry from the True Grit Saloon (Brick Street Poetry, 2019), Red River book of Haibun (Red River, New Delhi, India, 2019) and Another Trip Around the Sun: 365 Days of Haiku for Children Young and Old, (Brooks Books, 2019).

John Maurer is a 26-year-old writer from Pittsburgh who 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.

David Melville lives in Portland, Oregon. Water~Stone Review has featured his poetry, as will the next issue of Rhino. His poems have been anthologized in the college textbook, Listening to Poetry: An Introduction for Readers and Writers (2019); and published in journals such as Pilgrimage, Buddhist Poetry Review, and The Timberline Review.

Lorne Mook teaches at Taylor University in Upland, Indiana. Some of his poems are gathered in his book Travelers without Maps. His translations of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poems have appeared in journals and in his book Dream-Crowned, the first English translation of a collection that Rilke published in 1897 when he was 21.

Douglas Nordfors, a native of Seattle, now lives in Virginia. He has a BA from Columbia University and an MFA in poetry from The University of Virginia. Poems have been published in journals as The Iowa Review, Quarterly West, Poetry Northwest, and Poet Lore, and recent work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Burnside Review, The Louisville Review, Poetry South, Chariton Review, The Hollins Critic, Potomac Review, California Quarterly, 2River, BODY Literature, The Broad River Review, JuxtaProse Literary Magazine, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and others. His three books of poetry are Auras (2008), The Fate Motif (2013), and Half-Dreaming (2020), all published by Plain View Press.

Robert Okaji is a displaced Texan seeking work in Indianapolis. He once owned a bookstore, served without distinction in the U.S. Navy, and most recently bagged groceries for a living. He is the author of multiple chapbooks, including My Mother's Ghost Scrubs the Floor at 2 a.m. (winner of the 2021 Etchings Press Poetry Prize). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in North Dakota Quarterly, Vox Populi, Buddhist Poetry Review, Book of Matches and elsewhere.

Lynn Pattison lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Her work has appeared in Ruminate, Moon City Review, The Mom Egg Review, Glassworks Magazine and Notre Dame Review, among others, and has been anthologized widely. Her published collections include the book, Light That Sounds Like Breaking (Mayapple Press), and three chapbooks: tesla's daughter (March St. Press), Walking Back the Cat (Bright Hill Press), and Matryoshka Houses, released last summer from Kelsay Press. Her book mss, Milky Way Stardust Aquarium is in search of a loving home.

Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collection is The Osiris Poems published by boxofchalk, 2017. For more information including free e-books and his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com. To view one of his interviews please follow this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSK774rtfx8

Roger Pfingston is the recipient of two PEN Syndicated Fiction Awards and a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Bloomington, Indiana has new poems in recent issues of Hamilton Stone Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, and Sheila-Na-Gig. His chapbook, What’s Given, is available from Kattywompus Press. In 2020 he was nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize.

Matt Prater is a writer and visual artist from Saltville, Virginia. Currently a PhD student in Comparative Studies at Florida Atlantic University, his work has appeared in Forklift, Ohio; The Moth; Little Patuxent Review, and Appalachian Review, among other publications.

Donna Pucciani, a Chicago-based writer, has published poetry worldwide in such diverse publications as Shi Chao Poetry Meniscus, Gradiva, Acumen, Voice and Verse and other journals. Her most recent book of poems is Edges.

Patrick T. Reardon, a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee living in Chicago, is the author of nine books, including the poetry collection Requiem for David and Faith Stripped to Its Essence, a literary-religious analysis of Shusaku Endo's novel Silence. His poetry has appeared in America, Rhino, Main Street Rag, The Write Launch, Meat for Tea, Under a Warm Green Linden and many others. He has two poetry collections forthcoming in 2021: Puddin: The Autobiography of a Baby, a Memoir in Prose-poems (Third World Press) and Darkness on the Face of the Deep (Kelsay Books).

Janet Reed is the author of Blue Exhaust (FLP, 2019), and a multi-year Pushcart Prize and Best of the Web nominee. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Sow’s Ear Review, Emry’s, Tipton Poetry Journal, and others. She began writing knock-off Nancy Drew stories on wide-lined notebook paper at age 11. Now, she teaches creative writing, literature and composition at Crowder College in Missouri and thinks about how to write her own stories while walking her dogs.

Sarah Rehfeldt lives with her family in western Washington where she is a writer, artist, and photographer. Her poems have appeared in Blueline, Appalachia; and Weber – The Contemporary West. Sarah has published two collections of image poems – most recently From the Quiet Edges of the Forest in 2018. It can be purchased through her photography web pages at: www.pbase.com/candanceski

Timothy Robbins has been teaching English as a Second Language for 30 years. His poems have appeared in many literary journals and has published five volumes of poetry: Three New Poets (Hanging Loose Press), Denny’s Arbor Vitae (Adelaide Books), Carrying Bodies (Main Street Rag Press) Mother Wheel (Cholla Needles Press) and This Night I Sup in Your House (Cyberwit.net). He lives in Wisconsin with his husband of 23 years.

Russell Rowland lives and writes from New Hampshire.

Leslie Schultz (Northfield, Minnesota) has three collections of poetry, Still Life with Poppies: Elegies; Cloud Song; and Concertina (Kelsay Books, 2016, 2017, 2019) and a chapbook, Larks at Sunrise: Light-hearted Poems for Dark Times (Green Gingko Press, 2021). Her poetry is in many journals, including Able Muse, Blue Unicorn, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Light, Mezzo Cammin, North Dakota Quarterly, Poet Lore, Third Wednesday, The Madison Review, The Midwest Quarterly, The Orchards, Tipton Poetry Journal, and The Wayfarer. Her work was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2017. In 2020 she served as guest associate editor for Third Wednesday’s Winter Issue. In 2021, she will serve as a judge for the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest.). Schultz posts poems at www.winonamedia.net.

Claire Scott is an award winning poet in Oakland, California who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has been accepted by the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review, Enizagam and Healing Muse among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and Until I Couldn’t. She is the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.

Allen Shadow is a poet and fiction writer from Catskill, New York. His poetry has been published widely in the small press, including two chapbooks. In 2018, he was selected as a finalist in The Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. Poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Twyckenham Notes, I-70 Review, Broadkill Review and White Hall Review.

Jeanine Stevens is the author of Inheritor and Limberlost (Future Cycle Press), and Sailing on Milkweed (Cherry Grove Collections). She is winner of the MacGuffin Poet Hunt and The Ekphrasis Prize. Gertrude Sitting: Portraits of Women, won the 2020 Chapbook Prize from Heartland Review Press. Jeanine recently received her seventh Pushcart Nomination. She studied poetry at U.C. Davis and Community of Writers, Olympic Valley and is Faculty Emerita at American River College.

R.S. Stewart, who lives in western Oregon, has published in many journals in both the U.S. and Europe, most recently in The Dark Horse (Scotland). Two poems are forthcoming in The Wallace Stevens Journal.

Vincent J. Tomeo was born and raised in Corona, Queens, New York City, and has lived in the most diversified urban area on the planet his entire life. He has recited his poetry everywhere across the United States, throughout Queens, and internationally; South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Turkey, Italy, Tanzania, Kenya, Spain, Morocco, Portugal, Germany, and France. His book, My Cemetery Friends: A Garden of Encounters at Mount Saint Mary in Queens, New York was published in 2020. His poem, “A View from a Tower in Calabria, Italy,” won Honorable Mention in the Rainer Maria Rilke International Poetry Competation.

Robert Tremmel lives and writes in Ankeny, Iowa. Recently, he’s published in Stoneboat, The Sun, Comstock Review, Poet Lore, Chariton Review, Pinyon, and others. He’s also published three collections and a Chapbook titled There is a Naked Man. His most recent collection is The Records of Kosho the Toad, from Bottom Dog Press. His newest book, The Return of the Naked Man, is forthcoming from Brick Road Poetry Press and is the winner of the Brick Road Poetry Press Book Contest.

Melanie Weldon-Soiset’s poetry has appeared in Geez, Vita Poetica, and Bearings Online. A finalist in the 2021 New York Encounter poetry contest, Melanie is a #ChurchToo spiritual abuse survivor, and former pastor for foreigners in Shanghai. Find her in real life biking on Washington D.C. greenways. Find her online at melanieweldonsoiset.com.

Anne Whitehouse’s recent poetry collection is Outside from the Inside (Dos Madres Press, 2020), and her recent chapbook is Surrealist Muse, about Leonora Carrington (Ethelzine, 2020). A new chapbook, Escaping Lee Miller, is forthcoming from Ethelzine. Anne is also the author of a novel, Fall Love. She lives in New York City and Columbia County, New York. www.annewhitehouse.com

A.D. Winans is an award-winning native San Francisco poet and writer. He edited and published Second Coming from 1972-1989. Awards include a PEN National Josephine Miles Award for literary excellence, a PEN Oakland Lifetime Achievement Award, and a Kathy Acker Award in poetry and publishing.

Edytta Anna Wojnar, born and raised in Poland, now lives with her husband in northern New Jersey, where she teaches at William Paterson University. She is the author of chapbooks: Stories Her Hands Tell (2013) and Here and There (2014). Her work has been published in The American Journal of Poetry, Calyx, Lumina, and Paterson Literary Review, among others.

Kenton K. Yee has recently placed poetry in Plume Poetry, Matter, Ligeia Magazine and Sommerset Review, among others. An Iowa Summer Poetry Workshop alumnus, PhD physicist, and former Columbia University faculty member, Kenton makes his home near Berkeley, California.

Alessio Zanelli is an Italian poet who writes in English and whose work has appeared in over 180 literary journals from 16 countries. His fifth original collection, titled The Secret Of Archery, was published in 2019 by Greenwich Exchange Publishing (London). For more information please visit www.alessiozanelli.it.