Contributor Biographies

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.

Jack J. Chielli is a writer living in Frederick, Maryland. He has an MA in poetry from Wilkes University and a BA in Writing from Roger Williams University. He has been writing since he was very young, in fact wanting to write is his first memory. He was editor of his collegiate literary magazine, Aldebaran. Jack also was a journalist for many years before working in politics. He is currently in higher education where he is vice president of enrollment management, marketing and communications. His poetry is forthcoming or has been published in Plainsongs, the anthology project Keystone: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania, Martin Lake Journal, Schuylkill Valley Journal , EcoTheo, Coal Hill Review, and Hole in the Head Review.

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.

David Dephy is an award-winning poet and novelist. The founder of Poetry Orchestra and an author of poetry collections Eastern Star (Adelaide Books, 2020) and A Double Meaning with co-author Joshua Corwin (Adelaide Books, 2022). He has won awards from Bowery Poetry, Voices of Poetry, Statorec, Headline Poetry & Press and Cultural Daily. He lives and works in New York City.

When not teaching at the Community College of Denver, Brian Dickson avoids driving as much as possible to traipse around the front range region by foot, bike, bus or train with kids in tow. Past publications include two chapbooks, In a Heart’s Rut (HighFive press), Maybe This is How Tides Work (Finishing Line Press), and one book, All Points Radiant (WordTech, Cherry Grove Editions) and various journals, including Tipton Poetry Journal.

Bart Edelman’s poetry collections include Crossing the Hackensack (Prometheus Press), Under Damaris’ Dress (Lightning Publications), The Alphabet of Love (Red Hen Press), The Gentle Man (Red Hen Press), The Last Mojito (Red Hen Press), The Geographer’s Wife (Red Hen Press), and Whistling to Trick the Wind (Meadowlark Press). He has taught at Glendale College, where he edited Eclipse, a literary journal, and, most recently, in the MFA program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. His work has been widely anthologized in textbooks. He lives in Pasadena, California.

Carrie Esposito’s work has been published in The Georgia Review, Ruminate Magazine, Monkey Bicycle, The MacGuffin, King Ludd’s Rag by Malarkey Books, Pif Magazine, Everyday Fiction, Mused, and the 4th edition of the Ms. Aligned anthology. She has a selected short featured on The Short Story Today podcast. Her first personal essay is forthcoming in Litro Magazine, and she has poetry published in Porcupine Literary and Nostalgia Press. Carrie is working on her novels, short stories, and poetry, and she is an Educational Consultant for Teaching Matters in the New York City schools. You can find her on Twitter @CarrieBEsposito and on her website www.carrieesposito.com.

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.

George Fish is a self-described Punk Rock Poet and extensively published prose writer who lives in Indianapolis. His poetry has been previously published in Tipton Poetry Journal, Flying Island, the literary anthology And Then, the socialist website New Politics, Poems 4 Palestine, and elsewhere. He may be reached at georgefish666@yahoo.com.

Karen L. George is a Kentucky author of three poetry collections from Dos Madres Press: Swim Your Way Back (2014), A Map and One Year (2018), and Where Wind Tastes Like Pears (2021). She won Slippery Elm’s 2022 Poetry Contest, and her short story collection, How We Fracture, which won the Rosemary Daniell Fiction Prize, is forthcoming from Minerva Rising Press in Spring 2023. Her work appears in Adirondack Review, Atticus Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Indianapolis Review, and Poet Lore. Her website is: https://karenlgeorge.blogspot.com/.

Mark Goodman lives in Indianapolis.

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 Hamilton has retired from teaching 2nd grade through graduate school in Connecticut, Indiana and Oklahoma, from storytelling and volunteer medical translating. She is a former Poet Laureate of Oklahoma and has published 19 books and chapbooks:children's novels, legends and poetry. She has been nominated ten times for a Pushcart Prize. She has won a Southwest Book Award, Oklahoma Book Award, David Ray Poetry Prize, Byline Magazine literary awards in both short story and poetry, Warren Keith Poetry Award, Pegasus Award and a Chiron Review Chapbook Award.

Elisabeth Harrahy’s work has appeared in Zone 3, Constellations, The Café Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, Passengers Journal, Ghost City Review, I-70 Review and elsewhere, and has been nominated for Best of the Net. She received an Editor’s Choice Award in the Paterson Literary Review’s 2021 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Contest. She is an associate professor of biology at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.

Katherine Hoerth is the author of five poetry collections, including the forthcoming Flare Stacks in Full Bloom (Texas Review Press, 2021). She is an assistant professor at Lamar University and editor of Lamar University Literary Press. Her writing interests include eco-poetry, feminism, and formalism. She is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and lives near Houston.

William Huhn has published dozens of poems in magazines and journals, including The Carolina Quarterly and BlazeVOX. Two of his essays have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Another, “The Seed of the Fruit” is forthcoming in Rosebud. He lives in Piermont, New York.

Patricia Joslin is a retired educator, an avid (but not athletic) golfer and an active volunteer in the Charlotte, North Carolina community. She recently completed a chapbook collection, I’ll Buy Flowers Again Tomorrow: Poems of Loss and Healing which will be published by Charlotte Lit Press this spring. Two of her poems have appeared in Kakalak 2021 and 2022.

Michael Keshigian is the author of 14 poetry collections, his latest, What To Do With Intangibles, published by Cyberwit.net . Most recent poems have appeared in Muddy River Review, Sierra Nevada Review, Blue Pepper, San Pedro River Review, Comstock Review. Published in numerous national and international journals, he has 7 Pushcart Prize and 3 Best Of The Net nominations. He lives in New Hampshire.

Philip C. Kolin is the Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus and Editor Emeritus of the Southern Quarterly at the University of Southern Mississippi. He has published over 40 books on Tennessee Wiliams, Shakespeare, and contemporary African American women playwrights and including fifteen collections of poetry, among the most recent being Delta Tears: Poems (Main Street Mag, 2020), Americorona: Poems about the Pandemic (Wipf and Stock, 2021), and Mapping Trauma: Poems about Black History (Third World Press, 2023).

Ted Kooser is Presidential Professor Emeritus at The University of Nebraska, where he taught the writing of poetry. He worked for many years as a life insurance executive; now retired and teaching half time at the University of Nebraska, Ted lives in Garland, Nebraska. His most recent book is Cotton Candy: Poems Dipped Out of the Air (University of Nebraska Press, 2022).

Richard Krohn has spent most of his life up and down the East Coast, but he has also spent many years in the Midwest and in Central America. He currently teaches Economics and Spanish at Moravian University in Pennsylvania. In addition to TPJ, his poetry is most commonly found in Tar River, Poet Lore, I-70, Rio Grande, Concho River and Paterson.

Lynette Lamp is a practicing family physician and recent graduate of the Spalding University MFA program. She has had previous poems published in JAMA (Journal of American Medical Association), The Pharos, and Annals of Internal Medicine. Lynette lives in Winona, Minnesota.

DS Maolalai is a graduate of English Literature from Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland and, after some years abroad, currently lives in Dublin and and has been several times nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in three collections, Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden (Encircle Press, 2016) Sad Havoc Among the Birds (Turas Press, 2019), and Noble Rot (Turas Press, 2022).

Robert M. O’Brien’s career was spent mostly in radio and television, starting with CBS News in New York City, where he walked in off the street with a degree in communications one day and went to work that day. He is now a full-time writer and occasional photographer living in Meeker, Colorado.

Karen O’Leary is a writer and editor from West Fargo, North Dakota. She has published poetry, short stories, and articles in a variety of venues including, Frogpond, Setu, Fine Lines, Atlas Poetica and NeverEnding Story. Karen edited an international online journal called Whispers http://whispersinthewind333.blogspot.com/ for 5 ½ years. She enjoys sharing the gift of words.

Kurt Olsson has published two poetry collections. His second, Burning Down Disneyland (Gunpowder Press), won the Barry Spacks Prize. Of the book, contest judge Thomas Lux wrote, “I love the title of this book . . . and I love the innovative mischief of its poems. Let it be known: a true poetic intelligence and imagination live between its covers.” Olsson’s first collection, What Kills What Kills Us (Silverfish Review Press), won the Gerald Cable Book and was subsequently awarded the Towson University Prize for Literature, given to the best book published the previous year by a Maryland writer. Olsson’s poems have appeared in many journals, including Poetry, The New Republic, Southern Review, and The Threepenny Review.

Timothy Robbins 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.

Recent work by Bruce Robinson appears or is forthcoming in Tar River Poetry, Spoon River, Rattle, Mantis, Two Hawks Quarterly, Berkeley Poetry Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Last Stanza, and Aji. He has raced whippets in the midwest, and is part of that stubborn undercurrent in Brooklyn that continues to root for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Mykyta Ryzhykh lives in Ukraine and was a finalist of the Crimean fig competition and 2022 Pushcart Nominee (Tipton Poetry Journal). Mykyta has been published in the journals White Mammoth, Soloneba, Littsentr, Plumbum Press, Ukrainian Literary Gazette, Bukovynskyi Journal, Stone Poetry Journal, Tipton Poetry Journal, Alternate route, dyst journal, Better than Starbucks poetry & Fiction Journal, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Littoral Press, Asorn haiku Journal, Book of Matches, Ice Floe Press.and Literary Chernihiv.

Amit Shankar Saha is the author of three highly-acclaimed collections of poems titled Balconies of Time, Fugitive Words, and Illicit Poems. He lives in Kolkata, India, edits EKL Review and works as an Assistant Professor in the English Department of Seacom Skills University. His most recent publication is A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Essayist.

Leslie Schultz (Northfield, Minnesota) is the author of three collections of poetry, Still Life with Poppies: Elegies (Kelsay Books, 2016), Cloud Song (Kelsay Books, 2018)., and Concertina (Kelsay Books, 2019) Her poetry has appeared most recently in Poet Lore, North Dakota Quarterly, Able Muse, Blue Unicorn Journal, Light, Mezzo Cammin, Swamp Lily Review, Third Wednesday, The Madison Review, The Midwest Quarterly, The Orchards Poetry Journal, and The Wayfarer; in the sidewalks of Northfield; and in a chapbook, Living Room (Midwestern Writers’ Publishing House). She received a Pushcart Prize nomination in 2017 and has had three winning poems in the Maria W. Faust sonnet contest (2013, 2016, 2019). Schultz posts poems, photographs, and essays on her website: 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.

Phillipa Scott is a writer, painter and native New Yorker. She has worked many corporate jobs to pay the rent. Her poetry has appeared in SLANT, Ragazine, Paterson Literary Review and is forthcoming in Exit 13 Magazine and Soul-Lit. Phillipa is the recipient of an Allen Ginsberg Award in Poetry. Her paintings are displayed in galleries in New York and New Jersey.

Michael J. Shepley is a writer who lives and works, still, in Sacramento, California. His poems have in the past appeared in Vallum, Common Ground, CQ, The Kerf, Blue Unicorn, Plainsongs, Salt & others.

Jeanine Stevens is the author of No Lunch Among the Day Stars (Cold River Press, 2022), and chapbooks, Ornate Persona (Clair Songbirds Press, 2022) and Tea in the Nun’s Liibrary, (Eyewear Publishing, UK, 2022). She is winner of the MacGuffin Poet Hunt and The Ekphrasis Prize. She is winner of the MacGuffin Poet Hunt, WOMR Cape Cod Community Radio National Award, and The William Stafford Award. Jeanine has been published in Evansville Review, North Dakota Review, Chiron Review, Poets’ Espresso Review, and others. Jeanine is Professor Emerita at American River College in Sacramento.

Pablo Piñero Stillmann’s work has appeared in Blackbird, Mississippi Review, Notre Dame Review, Washington Square Review, and other journals. He has published a novella, Temblador (Tierra Adentro, 2014), & a collection of short stories, Our Brains and the Brains of Miniature Sharks (Moon City Press, 2020). Last summer he attended the Sewanee Writers' Conference as a Tennessee Williams Scholar. Pablo lives in Mexico City.

Wally Swist’s books include Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love (Southern Illinois University Press, 2012), selected by Yusef Komunyakaa as co-winner in the 2011 Crab Orchard Series Open Poetry Contest, and A Bird Who Seems to Know Me: Poems Regarding Birds & Nature (Ex Ophidia Press, 2019), the winner of the 2018 Ex Ophidia Press Poetry Prize. His recent poems have appeared in Asymptote, Chicago Quarterly Review, Hunger Mountain: Vermont College of Fine Arts Journal, The Montreal Review, Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality and the Arts, Poetry London, Scoundrel Time, and The Seventh Quarry Poetry Magazine. Wally lives in Massachusetts.

Gene Twaronite is the author of four collections of poetry as well as the rhyming picture book How to Eat Breakfast. His first poetry book Trash Picker on Mars, published by Kelsay Books, was the winner of the 2017 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for Arizona poetry. Gene has an MA in education, and leads a poetry workshop for the University of Arizona OLLI program. A former New Englander, Gene now lives in Tucson. Follow more of his poetry at genetwaronite.poet.com

Mark Vogel lives at the back of a Blue Ridge holler with his wife, Susan Weinberg, an accomplished fiction and creative non-fiction writer, and two foster sons. He currently is an Emeritus Professor of English at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. Poems and short stories have appeared in several dozen literary journals.

Christian Ward is a UK-based writer who has recently appeared in Open Minds Quarterly, Double Speak, Obsessed with Pipework, Primeval Monster, Clade Song, Uppagus and BlueHouse Journal.