Contributor Biographies

Alan Altany, Ph.D., lives in Florida and 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 of poetry editor, director of religious education for churches, truck driver, novelist, etc. He published a book of poetry in 2022 entitled A Beautiful Absurdity. His website is at https://www.alanaltany.com/.

Mea Andrews is a writer from Georgia, who currently resides in China. She has just finished her MFA from Lindenwood University and is only recently back on the publication scene. You can find her in Vermilion, Rappahannock Review, and others. You can also follow her on Instagram at mea_writes or go to her website at meaandrews.com

Matthew Brennan has published six books of poetry, most recently Snow in New York (Lamar U. Literary Press, 2021). He has recently published poems in Amsterdam Quarterly, THINK, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Concho River Review. After teaching at Indiana State University for 32 years, he relocated to Columbus, Ohio.

After 34 years with Eli Lilly and Company, Brendan Crowley set up his own consulting and executive coaching business, Brendan Crowley Advisors LLC. He helps executives grow in their roles and careers. Brendan is originally from Ireland and lives with his wife Rosaleen in Zionsville, Indiana. He has a passion for photography and loves taking photographs of his home country, Ireland, and here in Indiana.

Holly Day’s writing has recently appeared in Analog SF, The Hong Kong Review, and Appalachian Journal, and her recent book publications include Music Composition for Dummies, The Tooth is the Largest Organ in the Human Body, and Bound in Ice. She lives in Minneapolis and teaches creative writing at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and Hugo House in Seattle.

Nettie Farris is the author of four chapbooks of poetry: The Alice Poems (dancing girl press, 2022), The Wendy Bird Poems (dancing girl press, 2022), Fat Crayons (Finishing Line Press, 2015) and Communion (Accents Publishing, 2013). Her reviews have appeared in Blue Lyra Review and North American Review. Her flash lyric essays have appeared in Miracle Monocle. She lives in Floyds Knobs, Indiana.

Oleg Feoktistov is a teacher at a local high school in Odesa, Ukraine. Oleg teaches English language and literature. His class is a special place where thirty kids learn, play, and get ready for life.

Rosemary Freedman is a poet, a painter and an advanced practice nurse. She has 7 children and lives in Carmel, Indiana with her husband Jack. Rosemary enjoys growing peonies and tending her large garden. She is a graduate of Indiana University.

George Freek is a poet/playwright living in Belvidere, Illionois. George Freek's poetry appears in numerous Journals and Reviews. His poem "Written At Blue Lake" was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His collection Melancholia is published by Red Wolf Editions.

Andrew Gent was born in England, grew up in Ohio, and now lives in New Hampshire where he works as an information architect. His first book, [explicit lyrics], won the Miller Williams Poetry prize and is available from the University of Arkansas Press.

William Greenway’s 13th collection, As Long As We’re Here, is from FutureCycle Press. He has won the Helen and Laura Krout Memorial Poetry Award, the Larry Levis Editors’ Prize from Missouri Review, the Open Voice Poetry Award from The Writer's Voice, the State Street Press Chapbook Competition, an Ohio Arts Council Grant, an Academy of American Poets Prize, and was Georgia Author of the Year. Publications include Poetry, American Poetry Review, Southern Review, Missouri Review, Georgia Review, Southern Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, and Shenandoah. Greenway is Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at Youngstown State University, and now lives in Ephrata, Pennsylvania.

Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas lives in the Sierra Foothills of California. She studied at Santa Clara University, where she was an English major. She is an eight-time Pushcart nominee, a five-time Best of the Net nominee and the author of the following collections of poetry: Epistemology of an Odd Girl, Hasty Notes in No Particular Order, Letters Under the Banyan Tree, The Wanderer’s Dominion, Breakfast in Winter, and the winning chapbook in The Red Ochre Chapbook Contest, Before I Go to Sleep. Her work has appeared in: The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine, Poets and Artists, War, Literature and the Arts. She is the Assistant Editor for The Orchards Poetry Journal and a member of the Sacramento group of poets called Writers on Air. According to family lore, she is a direct descendant of Robert Louis Stevenson. www.clgrellaspoetry.com

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident now living in Rhode Island, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, Leaves On Page, Memory Outside The Head and Guest Of Myself are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Ellipsis, Blueline and International Poetry Review.

Aaron Harris graduated from Grinnell College and works as a software engineer in Minneapolis.

Elizabeth Hill’s poetry has been/is soon to be published in 34th Parallel Magazine, Blue Lake Review, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, and I-70 Review, among other journals. She is a retired Administrative Law Judge who decided suits between learning disabled children and their school systems. She lives in Harlem, New York City, with her husband and two irascible cats.

Rebecca Hill lives in Bloomington, Indiana. She has been published twice in Flying Island Journal, and in the Midwest Poetry Review.

Vicki Iorio is the author of the poetry collections Poems from the Dirty Couch (Local Gems Press), Not Sorry (Alien Buddha Press) and the chapbooks Send Me a Letter (dancinggirlpress) and Something Fishy (Finishing Line Press). Her poetry has appeared in numerous print and on-line journals including The Painted Bride Quarterly, Rattle, poets respond on line, The Fem Lit Magazine, and The American Journal of Poetry. Vicki is currently living in Florida but her heart is in New York.

Karen Luke Jackson, author of The View Ever Changing, 2021, and GRIT, 2020, draws inspiration from contemplative practices, nature, family stories, and clowning. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Ruminate, Broad River Review (Ron Rash Poetry Award), Atlanta Review, One, Redheaded Stepchild, and Kestrel. Karen resides in a cottage on a goat pasture in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. www.karenlukejackson.com

Stephanie Keep is a writer living in Montana. Her poetry practice has come as a welcome surprise borne of long walks, first along the streets of San Francisco and now on the trails of her native Mountain West. In every creative venture, she's looking for interesting, not perfect.

Michael Keshigian had his fourteenth poetry collection, What To Do With Intangibles, recently released in January, 2020 by Cyberwit.net. He has been published in numerous national and international journals and has appeared as feature writer in twenty publications with 7 Pushcart Prize and 2 Best Of The Net nominations. He lives in New Hampshire. (michaelkeshigian.com)

Charlene Langfur lives in Palm Springs, California, and is a southern Californian, an organic gardener, a Syracuse University Graduate Writing Fellow. Her most recent publications include poems in Emrys, Inlandia, North Dakota Quarterly, and a series of poems forthcoming in Weber – The Contemporary West.

Bruce Levine has spent his life as a writer of fiction and poetry and as a music and theatre professional. A 2019 Pushcart Prize Poetry nominee, a 2021 Spillwords Press Awards winner, the Featured Writer in WestWard Quarterly Summer 2021 and his bio is featured in “Who’s Who of Emerging Writers 2020.” Bruce has over three hundred works published on over twenty-five on-line journals including Ariel Chart, Spillwords, The Drabble; in over seventy print books including Poetry Quarterly, Haiku Journal, Tipton Poetry Journal; Halcyon Days Founder’s Favourites (on-line and print) and his shows have been produced in New York and around the country. His work is dedicated to the loving memory of his late wife, Lydia Franklin. A native Manhattanite, Bruce now lives and writes in Maine. Visit him at www.brucelevine.com

Jack e Lorts, a retired educator, lives in rural eastern Oregon, where he continues to publish widely, if only occassionally, online and such places as Windfall, Phantom Drift, Chiron Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, Verse Virtual & Verse Daily. His most recent book is The Love Songs of Ephram Pratt, many of which appear widely online.

Richard Luftig is a former professor of educational psychology and special education at Miami University in Ohio now residing in California. He is a recipient of the Cincinnati Post-Corbett Foundation Award for Literature. His poems have appeared in numerous literary journals in the United States and internationally in Canada, Australia, Europe, and Asia. His latest book of poems, A Grammar for Snow, has been published by Unsolicited Press.

Jill Michelle's latest poems appear/are forthcoming in DMQ Review, Eclectica Magazine, Gyroscope Review, Bacopa Literary Review and Drunk Monkeys. Recent anthology credits include The Book of Bad Betties (Bad Betty Press, UK) and Words from the Brink (Arachne Press Limited, UK). She teaches at Valencia College in Orlando, Florida. Find more of her work at byjillmichelle.com.

Stewart Mintzer lives in the Los Angeles area and his poems have appeared in several online and print journals. He is presently working on ‘The Permission Slip Project,” exploring ways to encourage and invite, image, sound, and ‘medicine’ in this sweet bruising Mystery of a Life.

Sharon Lopez Mooney, began writing in ’76, a few years later, she was given a CAC Grant for rural poetry series. Soon after, she co-published a local anthology; co-owned an alternative literature service; produced poetry readings. She has retired from Interfaith Chaplaincy in the ‘death & dying’ field, now lives in Sonora, Mexico, visits Northern California family. Mooney’s poems are in many publications such as: Glassworks, Avalon Literary Review, Galway Review, Ginosko Literary Journal, California Quarterly, Chicago Memory House, Ricochet Review, Roundtable Literary Journal, and various anthologies: CALYX; Cold Lake; Smoke & Myrrors (UK), nationally & internationally. More poems at: www.sharonlopezmooney.com

George Moore’s recent collections include Children’s Drawings of the Universe (Salmon Poetry 2015) and Saint Agnes Outside the Walls (FutureCycle 2016). His work has been published in The Atlantic, Poetry, North American Review, Orion, and The Colorado Review. After a career in literature and writing with the University of Colorado, Boulder, he lives on the south shore of Nova Scotia.

A Best of the Net and seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Julie L. Moore is the author of four poetry collections, including, most recently, Full Worm Moon, which won a 2018 Woodrow Hall Top Shelf Award and received honorable mention for the Conference on Christianity and Literature's 2018 Book of the Year Award. A previous contributor to Tipton Poetry Journal, Moore has also published poetry in African American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Image, New Ohio Review, Poetry Daily, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, and Verse Daily. She is the Writing Center Director at Taylor University in Upland, Indiana, where she is also the poetry editor for Relief Journal. Learn more about her work at julielmoore.com.

Cecil Morris, retired after 37 years of teaching high school English, now tries writing himself what he spent so many years teaching others to understand and (maybe) enjoy. He likes ice cream too much and cruciferous vegetables too little for his own good. He has had a handful of poems published in 2River View, Cobalt Review, English Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Evening Street Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Poem, and other literary magazines. He lives in Roseville, California.

James Mulhern’s writing has appeared in literary journals over two hundred times and has been recognized with many awards. In 2015, Mr. Mulhern was granted a writing fellowship to Oxford University. That same year, a story was longlisted for the Fish Short Story Prize. In 2017, he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Two of his novels were Finalists for the United Kingdom’s Wishing Shelf Book Awards. His novel, Give Them Unquiet Dreams, is a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year. He was shortlisted for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award 2021 for his poetry. Mulhern now lives in Florida.

Benjamin Nash lives in Austin, Texas. His poems have been published in Louisiana Literature, 2River, Pembroke Magazine, Concho River Review, and other publications.

Gloria Parker is a retired primary school teacher living in Pennsylvania. Her poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Margie, Slipstream, Paterson Literary Review, Gyroscope, Rattle, North Dakota Quarterly, Nimrod, Black Coffee Review, Loch Raven Review and elsewhere.

A retired teacher of English and photography, Roger Pfingston is the recipient of a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His poems have appeared in American Journal of Poetry, Poet Lore, Spoon River Poetry Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, and Ted Kooser’s column, American Life in Poetry. His latest chapbook, What's Given, is available from Kattywompus Press.

Lizzy Ke Polishan lives in Pennsylvania and holds a BA in English and philosophy from The University of Scranton. Her work has appeared in Esprit, The Rectangle, and Mangrove. In 2017 she won the Eleanor B North Poetry Award and in 2020 she published her first collection of poetry, A Little Book of Blooms. In theory she is working on her second poetry collection, though in reality she is likely sewing an obsessive amount of dresses in trippy medieval fabrics.

Patrick T. Reardon, a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee living in Chicago, is the author of ten books, including the poetry collection Darkness on the Face of the Deep (Kelsay Books). Forthcoming in 2022 are his memoir in prose poems Puddin’: The Autobiography of a Baby (Third World) and his chapbook The Lost Tribes (Gray Book).

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 25 years.

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.

Nolo Segundo, pen name of L. J. Carber, became a published poet in his 70's in 99 literary journals in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Romania, India, and in 2 trade book collections: The Enormity of Existence [2020] and Of Ether and Earth [2021]. Both titles reflect the awareness he's had for over 50 years since having an NDE whilst almost drowning in a Vermont river: that he has--is--a consciousness that predates birth and survives death, what poets once called a soul. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2022, he's a retired teacher [America, Japan, Taiwan, Cambodia] now living in New Jersey who's been married 42 years to a smart and beautiful Taiwanese woman.

Mary Sexson lives in Indianapolis and is author of the award-winning book, 103 in the Light, Selected Poems 1996-2000 (Restoration Press), and co-author of Company of Women, New and Selected Poems (Chatter House Press). Her poetry has appeared in Tipton Poetry Journal, Laureate, Hoosier Lit, Flying Island, New Verse News, Grasslands Review, and Last Stanza Poetry Journal, among others. She has recent work in Reflections on Little Eagle Creek, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Last Stanza Poetry Journal Issue #8. Finishing Line Press will publish her manuscript, Her Addiction, An Empty Place at the Table, in 2023. Sexson’s poetry is part of the INverse Poetry Archives for Hoosier Poets.

Canadian poet, fiction writer, and playwright J. J. Steinfeld lives on Prince Edward Island, where he is patiently waiting for Godot’s arrival and a phone call from Kafka. While waiting, he has published 23 books, including Identity Dreams and Memory Sounds (Poetry, Ekstasis Editions, 2014), Madhouses in Heaven, Castles in Hell (Stories, Ekstasis Editions, 2015), An Unauthorized Biography of Being (Stories, Ekstasis Editions, 2016), Absurdity, Woe Is Me, Glory Be (Poetry, Guernica Editions, 2017), A Visit to the Kafka Café (Poetry, Ekstasis Editions, 2018), and Gregor Samsa Was Never in The Beatles (Stories, Ekstasis Editions, 2019), Morning Bafflement and Timeless Puzzlement (Poetry, Ekstasis Editions, 2020), Somewhat Absurd, Somehow Existential (Poetry, Guernica Editions, 2021), and Acting on the Island (Stories, Pottersfield Press, 2022).His short stories and poems have appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies internationally, and over 50 of his one-act plays and a handful of full-length plays have been performed in Canada and the United States

Christopher Stolle’s writing has appeared most recently in Tipton Poetry Journal, Flying Island, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, The New Southern Fugitives, The Alembic, Gravel, The Light Ekphrastic, Sheepshead Review, and Plath Poetry Project. He’s an editor for DK Publishing and he lives in Richmond, Indiana.

Jessica D. Thompson’s poems have appeared in numerous journals including The Southern Review, Ruminate, and The Midwest Quarterly, as well as in many anthologies such as the Women of Appalachia Project's Women Speak, Vol. 7, (Sheila-Na-Gig). Her first full-length poetry collection, Daybreak and Deep, will be available from Kelsay Books in the Fall of 2022. Jessica lives in Evansville, Indiana.

David Vancil is retired from the faculty of Indiana State University. His work has appeared in small periodicals, critical reviews, and a few anthologies. As well, he is the author of four poetry collections. War and Its Discontents, a collection of military poems centered on family service and his own time in the U.S. Army, will be published by Angelina River Press sometime in 2022. He is at work on a collection of new and selected poems, which he hopes to publish no later than 2023. David lives in Terre Haute, Indiana, with his wife, three cats, and a dog.

Anne Whitehouse’s recent poetry collection is Outside from the Inside (Dos Madres Press, 2020), and her recent chapbook is Escaping Lee Miller (Ethel Zine and Micro Press, 2021).. Anne is also the author of a novel, Fall Love, and she has been publishing a series of essays about Edgar Allan Poe. She lives in New York City and Columbia County, New York. www.annewhitehouse.com