Contributors
Poetry
Kharan Badri is an Austin native and a first-generation American with roots in India, Germany, and Syria. His creative influences are an upbringing steeped in Vedanta philosophy, his cats, Freyja and Helios, and the writings of Rumi, Cormac McCarthy, Osho, and Irvine Welsh. He composes poetry, self-reflective prose, and irreverent comedy on his website, badwriter.net. His work has appeared in Bryant Literary Review.
Matthew Burns is the author of Imagine the Glacier (Finishing Line Press, 2021). His poems have won a James Hearst Poetry Prize from North American Review, received multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations, and have appeared or are forthcoming in RHINO, Posit, ellipsis…, Raleigh Review, Camas, Spoon River, Quiddity, and others. He teaches writing and literature in upstate New York.
PW Covington writes in the tradition of the North American highway. Covington travels extensively supporting his written work and facilitating workshops of creative empowerment. A multiple Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, his 2019 collection North Beach and Other Stories was named a Finalist in LGBTQ Fiction by the International Book Awards. PW Covington lives just off Historic Route 66, in Northern New Mexico.
Doug Croft is a community development leader and not-for-profit fundraising director. He has multiple anthology and journal credits. His first full-length poetry collection, Exposed Roots, was published in early 2023. Croft currently lives in Charlotte, NC from where he travels to work projects around the country, and to see as many of his favorite rock ‘n’ roll bands as possible.
Mary Crow has published three chapbooks of poetry and three full length books as well as five works of translation. Her awards include Poetry Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Colorado Council on the Arts as well as three Fulbrights.
Mario Duarte is a Mexican American writer and an Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate. His poems and short stories have appeared in Bones, Native Skin, and Many Nice Donkeys. New work is forthcoming in iō Literary Journal, and Mannequinhaus. In 2024, a short story collection, Monkeys, will be released by the Ice Cube Press.
Originally from San Antonio, Texas, Jonathan Fletcher, a queer, disabled writer of color, currently resides in New York City, where he is pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing in Poetry at Columbia University School of the Arts. He has been published in Arts Alive San Antonio, The BeZine, BigCityLit, Catch the Next: Journal of Ideas and Pedagogy, Colossus Press, Door is a Jar, DoubleSpeak, Emerge Literary Journal, Flora Fiction, and FlowerSong Press.
Violeta Garza (she/they/ella) is a Latinx poet, weaver, and artist from the Historic West Side of San Antonio, Texas. Their poems have appeared in Acentos Review, Boundless Anthology 2023, and elsewhere. She can still feel her deceased mother’s presence while playing cheesy Mexican love ballads from the 1980s. You can peruse her work at violetagarza.com.
Kollin Kennedy is an emerging writer in the Dallas area who has just recently graduated from the University of North Texas with his Bachelor’s in Creative English Writing. He has self-published a few collections of poetry, including his recent Oedipus, and is currently working on a work of prose. He has also published his poems on other magazines/issues, and you can find more of his poems on his Instagram @kollinkennedy_
Susanna Lang’s chapbook, Like This, was recently published by Unsolicited Books. Her translation of My Soul Has No Corners by Souad Labbize is forthcoming from Diálogos Books, and her third full-length collection of poems, Travel Notes from the River Styx, appeared in 2017 (Terrapin). Poems and translations have appeared in such publications as Prairie Schooner, december, Delos, American Life in Poetry, and The Slowdown. Her translations also include poetry by Yves Bonnefoy and Hélène Dorion.
Gume Laurel III is a Texan, native to the Rio Grande Valley on the southernmost border. For the past decade, he has dedicated himself to writing stories that promote inclusion and provoke further introspection into the complexities of culture and intersectional identities. The bulk of Gume’s characters are composed of underrepresented groups, especially those representative of the communities he is a part of: Latinx and LGBT+. His published work includes both young adult fiction and poetry.
Yuge Ma is a writer, storyteller, and theatre artist who makes work in both English and Chinese. She is currently pursuing an M.F.A. in Theatre degree with a specialization in performance as public practice at The University of Texas at Austin. Her research and practice focus on themes recurring in marginalized populations, such as pain, refusal, neglect, phobias, atrocities, death, and unmentionable love.
Ivanov Reyez was an English professor at Odessa College. He is originally from the Lower Rio Grande Valley, born in McAllen. His poetry has appeared in The Cafe Review, BorderSenses, Paris Lit Up, The Galway Review, The Blue Mountain Review, Pinyon, and other journals. He won the 2015 riverSedge Poetry Prize. He is the author of Poems, Not Poetry (Finishing Line Press, 2013). His short fiction has appeared in Texas Short Stories, The Mayo Review, El Locofoco, Sephardic-American Voices: Two Hundred Years of a Literary Legacy, and elsewhere. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee in fiction.
Raúl Sanchez is the former City of Redmond, WA Poet Laureate. He teaches poetry in Spanish through the WITS and Jack Straw Cultural programs. He volunteered for PONGO Teen Writing at the Juvenile Detention Center. His second collection When There Were No Borders was released by FlowerSong Books, McAllen, Texas, July 2021.
Elizabeth Sylvia is a poet and teacher from Massachusetts whose first book, None But Witches (2022), won the 2021 3 Mile Harbor Press Book Award. She has been a semi- or finalist in competitions sponsored by C&R Press, DIAGRAM, 30 West, and Wolfson Press. Elizabeth keeps Carnolian bees and is a reader for SWWIM Every Day.
Gina Valdés was born in Los Angeles and grew up on both sides of the United States-Mexico border. Her poetry has been widely published in journals and anthologies in the U.S., Mexico, and Europe. Her poetry collection, Border Duende, won the 2022 Américo Paredes Literary Arts Prize and is forthcoming from FlowerSong Press in 2023.
Eduardo Vega (The Taco-Poet of Texas) is a poet, storyteller, and educator. He is the author of Chicharra Chorus (FlowerSong Press, 2019) and recipient of the literary arts grant from the Luminaria Artist Foundation (2021). Most recently, he published a collection of poems written by South Texans entitles Asina is How We Talk (FlowerSong Press, 2023). Vega hosts The Mouth Dakota Poetry Project, a biweekly open mic in San Antonio, TX.
Fiction
Kevin Baggett's stories have appeared in Valley Voices: A Literary Review, Underwood, Amarillo Bay, and Hamilton Stone Review. He lives in Moorhead, Minnesota and teaches at Concordia College.
Jason Boling is a member of the Writers’ League of Texas and dreams of a world where cowards are shamed, art is rewarded, and jobs are optional. He writes short fiction and poetry using the pen name Jon Fotch. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Avalon Literary Review, Avatar Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, BoomerLitMag, Brushfire Literature & Arts Journal, Carbon Culture Review, Caveat Lector, The Conglomerate, Courtship of Winds, Evening Street Review, Euphony Journal, Flights, Green Hills Literary Lantern, The Hungry Chimera, Literally Stories, The Meadow, Menda City Review, moonShine Review, Mudlark, Scoundrel Time, SLAB, Umbrella Factory Magazine, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Waving Hands Review, and Whistling Shade.
John Paul Jaramillo grew up in the “Steel City” Pueblo, Colorado, and his writing explores the Colorado steel industry and southwestern neighborhoods as well as the link between family, trauma, and place. His work has appeared in the Acentos Review, PALABRA A Magazine of Chicano & Latino Literary Art, Copper Nickel Review, and many others. Jaramillo is the author of The House of Order–stories —a 2013 Latino Book Award Finalist– and Little Mocos–a novel from Twelve Winters Press. In 2013 Latino Boom: An Anthology of U.S. Latino Literature listed Jaramillo as one of its Top 10 New Latino Authors to Watch and Read. Currently, Jaramillo works as Professor of English at Lincoln Land Community College in Springfield, Illinois.
Jim Muyres has enjoyed a lifetime of reading and has developed a passion for writing short fiction and poetry. Jim is a recent recipient of an emerging artist grant from the McKnight Foundation and has been published in the Moccasin, Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Poetic Sun, North Dakota Quarterly, The Talking Stick, Humanities North Dakota, The Big Bend Literary Magazine, Poet’s Choice and misc. regional publications. Besides writing Jim is slowly remodeling a house, participating in political activism, photography, and spending time outdoors.
Ran Diego Russell’s fiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Witness, Spillway, The Write Launch, Tar River Poetry, The Ravensperch, 3Elements Review, Oyez Review, Chiron Review, and others. His itinerant childhood ranged throughout the deserts and foothills of the Rocky Mountain region. Prior to his teaching career, he worked as a ranch hand, construction laborer, fruit picker, and forklift driver. During his non-writing free time, it’s all about jazz bass, carpentry, and serving the Border collies’ energy.
Beate Sigriddaughter, www.sigriddaughter.net, grew up in Nürnberg, Germany. Her playgrounds were a nearby castle and World War II bomb ruins. She lives in Silver City, New Mexico (Land of Enchantment), where she was poet laureate from 2017 to 2019. Her latest collections are short stories Dona Nobis Pacem (Unsolicited Press, 2021) and poetry Wild Flowers (FutureCycle Press, 2022). In her blog Writing in a Woman's Voice, she publishes other women's voices.
Nonfiction
Leslie Armstrong, known as Lale, is an architect, interior designer and the author of The Little House, Space for Dance: An Architectural Design Guide, both books about design, and Girl Intrepid – a New York Story of Privilege and Perseverance, a memoir, published in 2020. Leslie is married to John Bowers, also a writer. She lives in New York City and continues to work as both an architect and writer.
Kevin Lanahan is a writer living in northern New York. His prior work has appeared in various publications including Merdian, TheWater~Stone Review, The Saranac Review and The Red Rock Literary Review. He holds a degree in creative writing from the State University of New York at Oneonta and has attended the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference.
Krista A. Olivarez is an American Latina poet, born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley. She has been published in UTRGV’s Gallery Magazine, Had I Known Before: A collection compiled by Unfolded: Poetry Project, and is in the process of being published in an anthology by contemporary poet Neil Hilborn. She loves poetry, her cats, horror, comedy, and her family.
Mary Zelinka lives in Oregon's Willamette Valley and has worked at the Center Against Rape and Domestic Violence for almost thirty-five years. Her writing has appeared in The Sun Magazine, Brevity, Multiplicity, and others.
Dramatic Scripts
Jediah Craig was born in Detroit, learned to write in Chicago, and now dithers and wanders around the San Francisco Bay Area trying to make something out of nothing. He is part of the Playground SF writer's pool and is a member of the Playwright Center of San Francisco.
Serena Norr is a writer, playwright, and founder of Let’s Make a Play, a playwriting program for kids and adults. Her plays have been performed at the Omaha Fringe Festival, White Plains Performing Arts Center, the New Deal Creative Arts Center, Westchester Collaborative Theater, The Players Theater with the Rogue Theater Festival and the NYC Short Play Festival, The Tank, The Flea, the University of Alabama as well as various productions over Zoom. She is a second-rounder at the Austin Film Festival for her play, “Agency for the Lost.” Her plays have been published in the “Bittersweet Monologue Collection,” “ellipsis... literature & art Drama,” and the “Stonecoast Review.”
A playwright, director, dramaturg and actor, Steve Shade’s plays have been produced nationally and published in five “Best of” Smith & Krause anthologies. He has authored over a dozen production study guides for theatres such as the Mark Taper Forum, Ahmanson Theatre, and Las Vegas Shakespeare. As Associate Professor of Theatre, he produced a successful, grant-funded outreach program and has directed over 90 productions with an emphasis on classical texts. For eight years, he has produced The Blank Slate Project, creating performance work with/for youth in Juvenile Corrections. He is a graduate of Villanova University, The Playwrights Workshop at the University of Iowa, completed post-graduate study in Shakespeare & Classical Performance with LAMDA (London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art) and is a member of both the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDS) and the Dramatists Guild (DG).
Art and Graphic Lit.
José Alaniz, professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Department of Cinema and Media Studies (adjunct) at the University of Washington, Seattle, has published academic books on Russian/Eastern European comics, as well as disability representation in comics. He also makes comics, including for the collections The Phantom Zone and Other Stories (Amatl Comix, 2020), The Compleat Moscow Calling (Amatl, 2023) and Puro Pinche True Fictions (2023, FlowerSong Press).
Ruben Carlos Lozano was born in Houston, Texas. He was raised in two towns in the Rio Grande Valley, Harlingen with his parents, and Raymondville with his aunt and uncle. He is a graduate student at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and currently working as a graduate assistant to pursue a career as an art instructor. His main works consist of landscapes of the Rio Grande Valley with oil on canvas, and he is aiming to make more of historical and iconic landmarks of every Rio Grande Valley area to express and connect with his hispanic cultural heritages."
Caite McNeil is a writer and illustrator. Her work is place-based and often humorous, pulling inspiration from a childhood spent in rural Maine. Caite is a former Middle and High School English teacher and is currently the Editor Emerita of Stonecoast Review. She has a Masters in Fine Arts from Stonecoast MFA. She lives in Mid-Coast Maine with her husband, daughter, and little dog. Her work has been published in The Tahoma Review, Carte Blanche, Mutha Magazine, Flyway Literary Journal, Speculative Nonfiction, and elsewhere.