Spring/Summer 2022 Issue

Born in Manatí, PR & raised in Springfield, Mass., María Luisa Arroyo Cruzado earned her undergraduate & graduate degrees in German, her third language. She also earned an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from the Solstice MFA Program. Part of María Luisa’s lifelong learning as a multilingual Boricua poet & intersectional feminist educator is to reclaim her Puerto Rican español by excavating living & buried family stories & oral histories on the island & in the diaspora. Her published collections include Gathering Words: recogiendo palabras (2008); & two chapbooks, Flight (2016), & Destierro Means More than Exile (2018).

Sudha Balagopal‘s work appears in Fractured Lit, Monkeybicycle and Smokelong Quarterly, among other journals. Her novella-in-flash, Things I Can’t Tell Amma, was published by Ad Hoc fiction this year. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions, and has a micro story in Best Microfiction 2021. She is also listed in the Wigleaf Top 50. More at www.sudhabalagopal.com.

Cynthia Bernard is a 68-year-old woman who is finding her voice as a poet after many decades of silence. She lives on a hill overlooking the ocean, about 20 miles south of San Francisco.

V. Bray has been a writer since childhood and still has a box filled with her first “books,” usually illustrated with markers and bound with yarn. She writes in many genres, from speculative and historical fiction to poetry. Her work has been published in About Place Journal, Borrowed Solace, and The Writer magazine. Learn more at authorvbray.com.

Cameron Chiovitti is a nonbinary Canadian writer. They grew up in Montreal and now live in Toronto, where they are studying creative writing at OCAD University. Their poems have been published in Anti Heroin Chic, Lavender Lime Literary, and Big City Lit, among other publications; and one of their poems was exhibited at Queer Spectra’s Art Festival in 2021. Their new collection of poetry, Paint My Skin With Sweetness, is available to order online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Follow them on Instagram @maskofpoetry.

Ed Davis is a cross-genre writer whose fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in many anthologies and literary journals including Main Street Rag, Slippery Elm, and Blue Mountain Review. His novel, The Psalms of Israel Jones, was published by West Virginia University Press in 2014.

Margaret Farrar is a Cleveland-based writer, photographer, and educator. She has a Ph.D. in political science and is the author of the book Building the Body Politic and numerous scholarly articles. She lives with her husband and son and is currently revising her first novel. Find out more at www.margaretefarrar.com.

Self-identifying as a neurodivergent, two-spirit, elder storyteller, and contrarian deeply rooted in the roar and lore that’s become Portlandia of The Left Coast, Lindsey Morrison Grant attributes success and survival (if not salvation) to superlative supports, mindfulness practice, and daily creative expression in words, sounds, and images.

Mary Jumbelic is an author from central New York and former chief medical examiner of Onondaga County, performing thousands of autopsies in her career. Her creative nonfiction explores the imprint the dead have made on her humanity. Published with Rutgers University Press, Vine Leaves, Ground Fresh Thursday, Jelly Bucket, and Grapple Alley, among others, her pieces have ranked in the top ten in national writing contests. She teaches at the Downtown Writer’s Center in Syracuse and is assistant editor at Stone Canoe. Find her on Instagram @maryjumbelic, on Twitter @mjumbelic and on her blog, Final Words, at www.maryjumbelic.com.

Colin Kirkland is a Boston-based creative writer, educator, meditator, and journalist who spends most days vacuuming up cat hair. A third-year MFA candidate at Emerson College, he’s currently writing and rewriting a collection of essays. You can find his work in Atticus Review, The Boston Globe, and The Boston Globe Magazine.

Ann V. Klotz follows the lives and learning of 550 children at Laurel School. Her essays have appeared in Yankee magazine, the Brevity blog, and Literary Mama. Her Tiny Love Story appeared this summer in The New York Times. She is an MFA student in creative nonfiction at Bay Path University.

Jill Lipton was born in Long Island, New York. After a tumbling life in the corporate world and as an entrepreneur, she’s now living her dream as a writer. A lifelong New Yorker, she has landed with her husband in Naples, Florida. Her work has been published in the New York Times “Tiny Love Stories” (newspaper and book), in the Boston Globe Magazine, in Multiplicity Magazine’s “Emerald Blog,” and elsewhere.

Sharon Mast was born and raised in New York City. She did postgraduate work in sociology in England and taught in New Zealand. After 17 years abroad, she returned to New York, retrained as a special education teacher, and taught reading and writing, first to adjudicated teenagers in the South Bronx, and then to adolescents with learning challenges in the suburbs of New York. Her poetry addresses issues of family, aging, illness, and death (the fun stuff); her creative nonfiction is largely autobiographical. She has been published in the Cortland Review, and currently lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Victoria Morsell is a former actor living in Los Angeles and a graduate of Antioch University’s MFA program. She’s the winner of The 2021 Book Pipeline Unpublished Novel Contest and has been published in Santa Monica Review and Shondaland. Find Victoria on Instagram: @toriburd (Victoria Morsell Hemingson) and on twitter: @v_morsell.

Nadine Nakagawa is an organizer, activist, intersectional feminist, creative writer, social justice fairy, and city councillor living in British Columbia. She co-owns a consulting business called Ablaze Services and is the co-founder of the Feminist Campaign School. When not working on community projects, Nadine delights in patches of wildflowers, wears flower crowns and dresses that encourage twirling, and can be found hugging trees. You can follow her on Instagram: @NadineNakagawa and on Twitter: @NadineNakagawa.

Sandra Salinas Newton is a Filipina-American professor emeritus of English currently living in Austin, Texas. Her published work includes texts, essays, fiction, and most recently poetry in a variety of online and print journals. She is also working on a novel. Her website is www.snewton.net.

Sally Simon lives in the Catskills of New York State. She’s the proud mom of two LGBTQ+ children. Her writing has appeared in Hobart, Truffles Literary Magazine, After the Pause, Flash Fiction Magazine, and elsewhere. When not writing, she’s either traveling the world or stabbing people with her epee. Read more at www.sallysimonwriter.com.

Lou Storey is a visual artist, storyteller, and retired psychotherapist living in Savannah, Georgia with his husband of thirty-three years Steve, and a happy bounty of dogs, cats, and chickens. Lou’s fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times’ “Tiny Love Stories,” River Teeth’s “Beautiful Things,” Beyond Queer Words anthology, and various academic journals related to LGBTQ older adult health, creativity, and mental health.

Alice Teeple earned a BA in Integrative Arts at Penn State in 2005 and taught photography there until moving to NYC in 2015. For the next six years, she documented class struggle in NYC, as well as the performing arts scene. Alice currently writes for Post-Punk.com, works as a photographer and music video director, and occasionally volunteers at Penumbra Tintype Studio and Green-Wood Cemetery.

Poet Laureate emerita of Rockport, Massachusetts, Suellen Wedmore has published three chapbooks: Deployed, winner of the Grayson Press annual contest; On Marriage and Other Parallel Universes, with Finishing Line Press; and Mind the Light, first place winner of the “Women on the Edge” contest and published by Quill’s Edge Press. Her work has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize and awarded first place in two Writer’s Digest poetry contests. After 24 years working as a speech and language therapist in the public schools, she entered the MFA Program in Poetry at New England College and graduated in 2004.