The Legendary

The people who make it happen

Authors

Click on the author names to read the work!



Founder Jim Parks is a newsman, deckhand, farm hand, truck driver and ramblin' man. Keep him away from the fire water and don't mess with his food or his woman. Visit his blog here: http://downdirtyword.blogspot.com/ Send him an e-mail at: jim@downdirtyword.com.		General Editor Katie Moore is the mother of ferocious daughters, the wife of a handsome cop, and a willing slave to the written word. She is a founding editor for The Legendary, where words are sexy. Katie is chaotically awkward, ill adjusted to the world, and completely unashamed. For more info, samples, news, and publication credits, visit The Girl Circus. Send her an e-mail at: katie@downdirtyword.com.



Fiction Editor Jon Thrower is a friend and anti-father, husband and doggone drinker of ill repute, director in the land of education and arboreal taxonomy, learned and unknowable, punk, poet, writer, teacher, broadcaster, electrician of the stapler and the bold gel pen, recorder of the odd names people use in intimate spaces, Homo Faber, impossible, city dweller, pataphysical interpreter in the school of wicked dreams, thing your mother warned you about, human. Send him an e-mail at: thrower@downdirtyword.com		Poetry Editor John Hancock is 65% oxygen, 18% carbon, 10% hydrogen, and 100% adorable. He loves to go to work! In his spare time, he likes long drives to and from work. He reads only things from work, and thinks work is the coolest! We're very lucky that, with his love of work, he has time to help The Legendary as a poetry editor and master of random technical odds and ends. Send him an e-mail at: johnhancock@downdirtyword.com



Horoscope Goddess Jane Cassady writes pop-culture horoscopes for the City Paper’s Arts and Culture Blog, Critical Mass as well as The Legendary. She is the Slam Mistress of the Philadelphia Poetry Slam. Her poems have appeared in The November 3rd Club, The Comstock Review, Valley of the Contemporary Poets, and other journals. She's performed at such venues as LouderArts in New York City, Valley Contemporary Poets in Los Angeles, and The Encyclopedia Show in Chicago.



Webmistress Allison Hancock is a graphic artist living in the strange land of Memphis, and the wonder woman behind the graphical elements of The Legendary. She enjoys gardening, world cultures, and fish babies. Most of her time is spent with her brilliant son, Lucas. The rest of her free time is spent with her devilishly charming husband and a few select friends. Find her at : Allison's Creative.

Table of Contents

Current Issue - Issue 34

Click on the Author Name to go to the Author Page, where you will find every work the author has ever published in any issue of The Legendary, and occasionally their lovely smiling faces.

Jackie Anne Morrill is a MFA graduate student of Sarah Lawrence College. She devotes her time thesis writing inspired by tales of sexual fetishism, pseudo-psychology and the feeding habits of forest animals. Hailing from Worcester, Massachusetts, Jackie has become a strong and welcomed voice in the Worcester poetry scene over the past few years. Her work can be seen in New Graffiti: Literature on the Streets , The Ballard Street Poetry Journal , and Amethyst Arsenic .

Joshua Willey is shopping a novel about hitch hiking and preparing a project about small town libraries of America.

John Grey has been published recently in the Georgetown Review, Connecticut Review, South Carolina Review and The Pedestal. with work upcoming in Poetry East and The Pinch, with work upcoming in Alimentum and Big Muddy.

V.V. Saichek writes of mental fantasies and how these passion plays effect and transform our daily practices and our view of the world. As a psychotherapist and writer, she developed the term Fictionation to explain how (internal dialogue,) story telling, sustains or distorts personal reality. The fictionalized tales we tell ourselves reflect our hopes, fears and desires, not necessarily what is, and form our very personalized existence. They help us sustain the “If” within life. This birthing of alternative self-perceptions, or “false”-selves is Fictionation in action. Ms. Saichek explores this up-ended, madly creative, continuous reworking of reality as a model in developing character and crafting stories with strange, dream-bound resonance.

Andy Henion was born the day before man landed on the moon and has felt a bit flighty since. He lives somewhere cold and flat with some people and an animal. His fiction, online and print, has appeared in Word Riot, Spork, Ink Pot, Pindeldyboz, Hobart, Storyglossia, Thieves Jargon, Diddledog and numerous other publications.

Chase Owens is a 24-year-old college student attending Southeastern University, an evangelical Christian college. He spent the four previous years as a foul-mouthed, whiskey-guzzling sailor with a propensity for receiving and handing out black eyes and bloody noses. Both of these worlds are absurd, beautiful, and sincere. Each shapes Chase and by extension his writing.

Jason Gordy Walker lives in Birmingham, Alabama where he writes poetry and fiction. Recently, his work appeared in The Molotov Cocktail and Sleet Magazine. He will soon be interning for Birmingham Poetry Review.

Emily Robison is living in Chicago and working for sexual violence crisis services. She is a queer diva excited about celebrating bodies of difference, sexuality, and pleasure while organizing to get liberated from personal and systemic things that hurt and marginalize. She is interested in working towards responding to and preventing violence within our communities and outside of the legal systems. She feels passionate about her stories being part of these processes. She can be contacted at robison.emily(at) gmail.com .

Fatimah Asghar is almost always in-between two places, experimenting with words to play with traditional storytelling. Currently, her heart is in Cambridge with her sisters while her body is in Sarajevo, Bosnia, where she just graduated from Brown University and is working on writing and research. She is an amateur photographer, spoken word poet, painter, actress, and writer. She majored in Africana Studies and International Relations and worked on a Mellon Mays project studying artistic expression and in conflict regions. She was a part of Brown’s WORD!, and the 2011 CUPSI team which won the “Pushing the Art Forward” award.

Helen Peterson is the managing editor of Chopper Poetry Journal out of New London, Ct, and has previously published in Fell Swoop, Main Channel Voices, Gloom Cupboard, Tonopah Review, Cartier Street Review, Poor Mojo’s, Wilderness House Review, Battered Suitcase, diddledog, Hiss Quarterly, Right Hand
Pointing, Juked, Elimae, Haruah, Zygote in My Coffee, Pedestal Magazine (book review), Literary Fever, Debris Magazine, and Poetrybay, among others.
Currently she has work in Girls With Insurance, Moronic Ox, and will have work in the upcoming spring issue of poeticdiversity. Her work was also featured in
The Work Book, an anthology put out by Poet Plant Press in 2007. She just got an email today that she might be out of work very soon, so appreciates you
reading her work, and would like a dollar now please.

Thomas Sullivan's writing has appeared in *Word Riot, 3AM Magazine*, and *The Legendary*, among others. His memoir about teaching drivers education (titled *Life In The Slow Lane*) is available in February, 2010 from Uncial Press (www.uncialpress.com).

Sarah Gamutan's poems are forthcoming in Poetry Space, Sparkbright Magazine and Subliminal Interiors Magazine. She lives in Philippine where she works as a Customer Support Associate at night and a poet by heart at day.

Dave Reuss is the managing editor of Outside Bozeman Magazine. His work has been featured in Mountain Gazette, DeadPoint Magazine, and Troubadour 21. He enjoys cheap beer, oxford commas, and writing about the weirdest shit he can think of.

Born in 1983 Amit Parmessur is one of the editors of poetry magazine The Rainbow Rose . His poems have appeared in around 100 literary magazines, such as: Ann Arbor Review , Burnt Bridge , Black-Listed Magazine , Calliope Nerve , Damazine , Front Porch Review , Nefarious Ballerina , Poetry Bulawayo , Primalzine , Scythe , The Houston Literary Review , Zouch Magazine and many others. He is nominated for the 2011 Pushcart Award and lives in Quatre-Bornes, Mauritius. In 2007 his poetry collection The Words I Loved was published locally. His book on blog entitled Lord Shiva & Other Poems was published in July 2011 by The Camel Saloon .

Mel Murphy moved to Seattle in 2004. Growing up, she split her time between dirt-poor rural Nevada and posh Monterey, California. Former day jobs include: janitor/maid, USFS wildland firefighter, seasonal postal carrier, newspaper reporter and waitress. She dropped out of a fourth-rate university in 1995 to go to work. In 2009, she self-published a collection of her stories, “Trailer Trash Confessional”. One of her stories was short-listed for the Bridport Prize UK in early 2011 and another was published by Black Matrix Publishing in June 2010. She likes handsome men and margaritas – together, not separately. http://heartseamonkeys.blogspot.com/

Tammy Dietz is an emerging writer working on a full-length memoir about her dysfunctional, hoarding, extremely Mormon parents and how difficult they are to love/help. She is nowhere near done, and therefore often diverst from this weighty project to pursue the occasional short publication. She wrote an essay that appears in Bringing Light to Twilight, an anthology studying the Twilight book series. Her essay is a feminist critical examination. Tammy is the nonfiction editor of Silk Road, a literary magazine published by Pacific University where she earned an MFA in 2009.

Michael Ian Sattler is a monster made of metal. He has been published in Mad Swirl, etc. He currently resides a mile north of The Beltway.

T.L. Sherwood’s work has appeared in Thema, Eclectic Flash and Boston Literary Magazine . You might have come across her work in Girls with Insurance or heard that Midwest Literary Magazine gave one of her poems a "Distinction Award." Perhaps this is the first you’ve heard of her. Likely, it won’t be the last. You can check out her blog here: http://tlsherwood.wordpress.com/

Summer Qabazard is a poet who grew up in Kuwait and now lives in Normal, Illinois where she is a Ph.D student at Illinois State University. Her poem "All Hands Bury the Dead" appears in The University of Missouri - St. Louis's literary magazine, LitMag.

Gary Glauber is a poet, fiction writer, teacher, and music journalist. His works have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, as well as “Best of the Net.” He took part in The Frost Place ’s conference on teaching poetry. Recent poems are published or forthcoming in The Compass Rose, The Fine Line, Front Porch Review, Kitchen, The Single Hound, Manor House Quarterly, The Ghazal Page, The Whistling Fire, Xenith, The Newtowner, Red Poppy Review, Midwest Literary Magazine and StepAway Magazine.

Thomas Broderick is a writer and teacher born in Northern California but raised and currently living in Middle Tennessee. Both of these places are home to him, along with a few neighborhoods in Tokyo where he lived while studying abroad and interning with a passenger railway company. Writing fiction his primary hobby since the age of 14, he is happy to share his work with anyone who wishes to read it.

Clifton Anthony is a self proclaimed musician, artist and poet who has solo projects, Oxford Iceberg , and Whose Army? giving him typewriter jaw. He is the child of a witchling, the son of a daemon, has leaves for hair, and pretends life is fair. He does not understand why he is supposed to make a living, since he already is living and he constantly waves his Memfist to the rest of the world.

Calvero currently resides in Trumbull, CT where he lives in his parent's basement with his two cats, Ralph and Matilda. That sentence is also the pickup line he uses when meeting girls in a bar, but, surprisingly, it never gets him any action whatsoever. When Calvero isn't writing he is more often that not eating Taco Bell, daydreaming about hunting ghosts, daydreaming about Taco Bell when he is not eating, pretending to look for a job, or screaming in frustration at whatever video game he is currently addicted to. http://calveropoetry.tumblr.com/

Table of Contents

Past Issues

Click on the Issue to view a list of wonderful writers published in that volume of The Legendary and their bio info. Click on the Author Name to go to the Author Page, where you will find every work the author has ever published in any issue of The Legendary, and occasionally their lovely smiling faces.

	Issue 33	Issue 32
Issue 31	Issue 30	Issue 29
Issue 28	Issue 27	Issue 26
Issue 25	Issue 24	Issue 23
Issue 22	Issue 21	Issue 20
Issue 19	Issue 18	Issue 17
Issue 16	Issue 15	Issue 14
Issue 13	Issue 12	Issue 11
Issue 10	Issue 9	Issue 8
Issue 7	Issue 6	Issue 5
Issue 4	Issue 3	Issue 2
Issue 1
Blog Published

Issue 33

MaryAnne Kolton is the Interview Editor at THIS Literary Magazine . Most recently her fiction has been chosen to appear in the Lost Children Charity Anthology, the first print Collection of Pure Slush Flash Fiction - Slut , The Toucan Magazine, Wilderness House Literary Review, Anatomy, Larks Fiction Magazine, The Legendary and Connotations among others. You can contact her at Attn: MAK thiszine@gmail.com or via her blog site Echos & Visions She can also be found on Facebook.

Born in Detroit, Steven Gulvezan has worked as a journalist and a library director. He continues to live in the Detroit area with his wife, Karen, and his dog, Yogi. His book, The Dogs of Paris, is forthcoming from March Street Press.

Alex Pruteanu Former day gigs include: newswriter/correspondent for the U.S. Information Agency in Washington, td/director of various political junkfood programs on NBC and its cable cronies, and sporadic freelance writing for insufferable corporations like AOL/Time Warner. Indeed, compromises then…but no longer. In the mid-90s several short junk was published in a few indie rags, but no luck was had with the majors. And so it goes. Sporadically, I contribute op-ed columns to the progressive site The Savvy, The Extreme & The Idealist. Also sporadically, I am working on re-writing and re-tooling a novel called “Resident Alien.” Not sci-fi. And soon putting together a collection of flash stuff tentatively called “Short Lean Cuts.” Looking to independently and environmentally-friendly publish these projects, as well as offer them for free on my fiction site (S)wine (http://swine.wordpress.com), in .pdf form.

Barbara Joan Tiger Bass received her MFA from Mills College (‘03) and her BA from Sarah Lawrence College (‘82). Her poetry is published in various journals including Spillway, The Sand Canyon Review, and Canary On-line Review. She is a private creative writing teacher through her business Enjoy Learning in Oakland, California.

Erin Harper is a writer living and laboring in a small town north of Atlanta, GA. She prefers expensive pens, which she affords by by working as a women's advocate at a domestic violence shelter. Since that pays as well as you might expect, she also moonlights as a mental health assistant at a psychiatric hospital--and that's where she does her writing, in 15 minute intervals between rounds. Before that she had a long and illustrious career as a waitress and fast food worker, making excellent use of her 15 years of costly professional ballet training.

Robert Laughlin lives in Chico, California. He is the creator of the Micro Award, an annual competition for previously published flash fiction. Two of his short stories are MWA Notable Stories, and his first novel, Vow of Silence, is available from Trytium.

Ghalia Shamayleh hails from Jordan in the Middle-East, and is a sophomore in the Wharton School of Business living in Philly. Moreover, she's pursing a Marketing concentration and a Creative Writing minor; She has been writing since 7th grade and has been passionate about poetry.

Dolan Morganlives and writes in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. He is a member of the writers collective, 1441, and is currently cataloging every airplane hijacking in history. www.dolanmorgan.com

Stephanie Lane Sutton is a poet and organizer based out of Chicago. Her work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in The Albion Review, Breadcrumb Scabs, Euphemism, Chicago Weekly, and The Detroit Free Press. Previously she has worked with or appeared alongside many talented artists in her field, including Patti Smith, Gil Scott-Heron and Buddy Wakefield. Currently she is a writer-in-residence at West Side School for the Desperate.

John Grochalski is the author of The Noose Doesn't Get Any Looser After You Punch-Out. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, in the part where you can still get a draft of beer for $3.00.

Angel Johnson I received my B.A. in creative writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago and I am currently seeking certification to be a high school English teacher. My short story “My Mother’s Kitchen” received an honorable mention in Glimmer Train’s Family Matters competition and my work has been published in The Fringe magazine and upcoming in Luna Station Quarterly.

Adrian Mitchell is a writer who works mostly with poetry and long fiction. He hates to write about himself in the third person and has been published in Spiralbridge and Scissors and Spakle.

Steve Prusky is a transplanted native of Detroit who now lives, works and writes in Las Vegas. Yes, beyond all the neon, some real life occurs in Vegas. Steve attended Northern Michigan University and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee a life time ago. Before all that Steve was in the Navy during the Vietnam War and before all that he was a snot nose kid with a big mouth and the scars to proove it.

Kim Farleigh has worked for aid agencies in three conflicts: Kosovo, Palestine, and Iraq. He takes risks to get the experience required for writing. His stories have been accepted by 42 different magazines.

Calvin Fantone only eats cereal out of teacups. He earned a B.A. in Creative Writing from CSULB and enjoys having long conversations with himself. When he isn’t writing, he can be found daydreaming about robots, dinosaurs, time travel, and friendly monsters that hail from foreign lands.

Bernie Deehan was born and lives in London, where he writes short stories in his spare time. This involves frantic scribbling on notepads when on tube trains to and from work, and putting a padlock on the TV when at home. The Dark is the first story he has ever had published, which he is desperately excited about. He may even unlock the TV for a celebratory blast of trashy telly. But will he be able to switch it off again?

Brennan Bestwick reads and writes in a house on a windy hill in Kansas. He’s never met a president, but he’s handled a lot of coins, which is close to meeting a few of them and touching their face a lot more than you should a dignitary (or anyone). He lives with his unemployed cat, Purrcy, who still hasn’t bothered to learn English despite living in this country for the past 9 years.

Table of Contents

Issue 32

Peycho Kanev is the Editor In Chief of Kanev Books. His poems have appeared in more than 5 00 literary magazines, such as: Poetry Quarterly, The Monongahela Review, Steam Ticket, Midwest Literary Review, Third Wednesday, The Cleveland Review , Loch Raven Review, In Posse Review, The Penwood Review, Mascara Literary Review and many others. He is nominated for the Pushcart Award and lives in Chicago. In 2009 his short story collection Walking Through Walls and in April 2010 his poetry collection American Notebooks both were published in Bulgaria. His poetry collection Bone Silenc e was released in September 2010 by Desperanto, NY. A new collection of his poetry, titled Requiem for O ne N ight, will be published by Desperanto in 2012 . http://www.kanevbooks.com

Brooks Kohler was first published in 2001 when his micro-fiction sparked the interest of local publishers in Southern Illinois. During this phase of his writing, he wrote mainly period pieces. Things changed when in 2005 Brooks moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to try his hand at screenwriting. Although he continued to write short stories related to rural life, screenplays required new skills and disciplines. He began to analyze films more critically and started to read writers that inspired him, namely Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) whose snappy style fit nicely with both micro-fiction and screenplay action. His current work continues with this theme but is more satirical and critical of contemporary life. He lives in Illinois. http://www.scribd.com/ivotebothways "At the right time you can catch Brooks on a rant of what you may think is totally insanity but by the end you realize it might have been a moment of brilliance,and yes you missed it." -- Thomas Carlson, photographer, Chicago, IL

Sierra DeMulder is a two-time National Poetry Slam Champion and the author of The Bones Below published in 2010 by Write Bloody Publishing. Her forthcoming book New Shoes on a Dead Horse will be release January 2012. When not writing or performing poetry, she enjoys making full use of public transportation and waxing on and on about feminism.

JP Reese quit writing for six years. Who knows why? She teaches recalcitrant students at a college in a red zone and now writes feverishly to take the edge off. She's been published in many places and writes in various genres, but likes poetic language best. Reese is a poetry editor for THIS Literary Magazine and Connotation Press: An Online Artifact. When not writing, she is reading and rereading anything by Richard Ford and Thomas Wolfe wondering how in god's name they manage to do that and make it seem so effortless. Read her published work at Entropy: A Measure of Uncertainty jpreese.tumblr.com

Brittany Fonte holds an MFA in Creative Writing (fiction). Her work, both fiction and prose poetry, can be found in journals such as Literary Mama , Breadcrumb Scabs , The Wrong Tree Review , and many more. She published a chapbook of prose poetry with Silkworms Ink (UK) recently, and has been working as an assistant editor for Lowbrow Press, a poetry press, when not teaching university Composition or Fiction and Non-Fiction.

Dave Wiseman A librarian by training, a cook by necessity, and a itinerant athlete by coincidence. I have met the devil a couple of times and come away from it with no more than a few bad habits and a prescription. I am fond of whiskey, hound dogs, and pork. I have lived in Virginia for 225 years.

Matthew Brennan is a novelist, flash-fictionist, translator, and freelance editor based in the Pacific Northwest . Having earned his MFA in fiction from Arizona State University , he remains on the editorial staff of the Hayden's Ferry Review. Brennan has received several awards and fellowships for his fiction, which has most recently appeared in Ginger Piglet, The Molotov Cocktail, Fiddleblack, and Pure Slush, and is forthcoming from Trigger.

Henry Kellogg, a lover of Flannel and Nirvana, came bumbling into this world with a mission to overwhelm people with Poetry and other various brain poision. His condition is contagious. Be afraid.

j/j hastain lives in Colorado, USA with xir beloved. j/j is the author of numerous full-length, cross-genre works such as: asymptotic lover // thermodynamic vents (BlazeVox Books), our bodies as beauty inducers (Rebel Satori Press), we in my Trans (JMS Books LLC), autobiography of my gender (Moria), ulterior eden (Otoliths), prurient anarchic omnibus (Spuyten Duyvil), long past the presence of common (Say it with Stones), a womb-shaped wormhole (BlazeVox), vigorous (Eight Ball Press), verges and vivisections (Knives Spoons and Forks) as well as many chapbooks and artist’s books. j/j’s writing has appeared in numerous journals including Sextures, Trickhouse, Vlak, Unlikely Stories, The Offending Adam, Dear Sir, Eccolinguistics, theenk, Queerocracy Art, Plath Profiles, Other Rooms, Counterexample Poetics, and PANK The Queer Issue. j/j is currently in the process of curating an Anthology of Queer Nudes (Knives Spoons and Forks Press, 2013) and has helped curate (and participated in) two major Trans anthologies. j/j is an Elective Affinities participant, a member of Dusie kollektiv and a regular contributor to Sous Les Paves. j/j’s books have been finalists in the Kelsey Street, Grey Book Press, Switchback and Ahsahta book competitions. j/j’s books have been nominated for the following awards: Pushcart, Stonewall, Lambda Literary and Publisher’s Triangle. j/j’s manuscript extant shamanisms won the Pavement Saw poetry award.

Len Joy lives in Evanston, Illinois. Recent work has appeared in Annalemma , Johnny America , Pindeldyboz, LITnIMAGE, Hobart, 3AM Magazine, Righthand Pointing, Dogzplot, Slow Trains, 21Stars Review, The Foundling Review and The Daily Palette (Iowa Review). He has recently completed a novel, “American Jukebox,” about a minor league baseball player whose life unravels after he fails to make it to the major leagues. His blog, “Do Not Go Gentle…” ( http://lenjoy.blogspot.com/ ) chronicles his pursuit of USA Triathlon Age-Group Championships.

Megan Waring started writing poetry at age seven in a book with a horse on the cover. She moved to Beijing on a whim where she discovered she likes meat on a stick but decidedly misses Western toilets. mmwaring@tumblr.com

Abetted by her hibernaculum of imaginary hedgehogs, KJ Hannah Greenberg tramps across literary themes and genres. She devotes her eclectic writing to lovers of slipstream fiction and to oboe players who never got past the second orchestral chair. Currently, she is watching sales on Oblivious to the Obvious: Wishfully Mindful Parenting, at Amazon and is debating whether or not letting her fingernails grow would really interfere with her "artistic endeavors" in ceramics. Whereas Hannah’s preferred method of parenting has remained unwearied analysis, it is not beyond her ken to resort to screaming (a little) or to sitting on the sofa and crying (a lot). A grateful recipient of an assortment of literary honors, Hannah's most happy when her children correctly sort the laundry or when her hedgies wipe all the marshmallow fluff off their feet. Her work can be found in print and on line in European, in North American, in Middle Eastern, in Oceanic, and in Asian venues and under select budgies. Hannah can be found at a local, women's gym, doing bench presses, or at her keyboard, matchmaking words like “twaddle” and “xylophone.”

Roland Goity lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, and edits fiction for the online journal LITnIMAGE (www.litnimage.com). His stories appear in dozens of literary publications, including Fiction International, Underground Voices, Bryant Literary Review, Talking River, decomP, Eclectica, and Scrivener Creative Review.

Ingamar Ramirez is a freelance writer and poet. His words are written with the intention of gracing all surfaces and textures of human emotion. He is one half of the folk music duo Puddlejiver and can be found stretching his shadow under street lamps, or at a shore, hurling rocks sideways.

Ruth Baumann lives in Richmond, Virginia, but is hoping to move South. She writes most of her poems with her large calico cat laying across her left arm, belly up. She can't imagine a better muse, even if it makes typing a little slower.

Miles Walser, convinced that he wanted to become a guard at Buckingham Palace, once spent an entire afternoon practicing his serious faces. Since then, his career goals have remained ridiculous, but now allow for occasional smiling. A student in Minneapolis, MN, he represented the University of Minnesota at the 2010 College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational where he was named Best Male Poet. He has also represented both Minneapolis and Madison, Wisconsin at the National Poetry Slam. He likes kittens more than the average person, and could never stand being land-locked. For more of his work, check out mileswalser.tumblr.com.

Jenny Catlin, Los Angeles CA, Brownie Scout.

Katrina Guarascio lives in New Mexico, where she teaches Language Arts, Poetry, and Journalism. She is also the sponsor and coach of two youth Slam Teams and produces a yearly literary magazine of student poetry. Along with many ezine and literary magazine publications, she is the author of two chapbooks of poetry, and one book length publication entitled A Scattering of Imperfections.

Cardinal Cox has been having his various writings published in the small-press for over twenty five years. He was the Poet-in-Residence of a local cemetery for three years, though his day job is as a minor cog in the Civil Service. Other incidence include being a failed aspirant to a seat in the House of Lords and television appearances that peaked at 10.2 million viewers (there were less channels in those days). One great-grandfather was a policeman in Whitechapel at the time of Jack the Ripper, a great-uncle learnt Muti from a Sangoma in South Africa in the 1890's. Favourite shoes: Zebra winkle-pickers. Favourite hat: knitted chicken. Favourite butchery by-product: black pudding.

Ken Poyner is publishing a fair amount of fiction these days, which, after publishing poetry by the bucket load for 40 years, feels kind of like learning in late middle age that sex does not always have to involve a unicycle: you enjoy the new configuration, but you still look lovingly now and again at the unicycle preserved in the closet. He is married to one of the world’s premier raw power lifters, a woman who is currently USAPL 105 pound class National Push/Pull and Dead Lift Champion. That, and the five rescue cats that expect his attentions, makes for a strange environment in which to live and write. Right now, he is hoping life has him about just where it wants him.

Kevin Ridgeway is a writer from Southern California, where he resides in a bungalow beneath the shade of an avocado tree with his girlfriend and their one-eyed cat. Recent and forthcoming publications include Haggard & Halloo, Red Fez, Gloom Cupboard, Underground Voices and The Orange Room Review.

Table of Contents

Issue 31

Derrick Brown, former paratrooper for the 82nd Airborne, gondolier, magician, and fired weatherman, now travels the world and performs his written work. From Long Beach, CA, he is dedicated to bringing American poetry into rock and roll status. As one of the most original and well-traveled writer/performers in the country, he has gained a cult following for his poetry performances all over the U.S. and Europe. A poetic terrorism group has taken to tagging his metaphors across the globe. About.com called his last collection, Scandalabra , one of the best books of 2009. To date, Brown has performed as a writer at over 1500 venues and universities internationally including The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, La Sorbonne in Paris, CBGB's in NYC, All Tomorrows parties with the Flaming Lips and a small Jewish youth group in Glendale. You can read more from him at brownpoetry.com and buy his books at writebloody.com/store.

Susan Swartwout is Professor of creative writing and publishing at Southeast Missouri State University and is the Publisher of Southeast Missouri State University Press which produces full-length books, four annual writing contests, The Cape Rock poetry journal, and Big Muddy: Journal of the Mississippi River Valley, an interdisciplinary magazine. Her two collections of poetry are entitled Freaks and Uncommon Ground, she co-edited Real Things: Anthology of Popular Culture in American Poetry, Hurricane Blues: Poems about Katrina and Rita, Balancing on a Bootheel, and A Student’s Guide to Getting Published. Her poems and short stories are published in literary journals such as Nebraska Review, The Laurel Review, River Styx, Negative Capability, Mississippi Review, and Spoon River Poetry Review, among others.

Ted Gogoll abandons his native New York City as often as humanly possible, but always seems to find his way back home, if for no other reason than to get a decent slice of thin-crust pizza with anchovies.

J. Bradley is the author of *Dodging Traffic* (Ampersand Books). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in *wtf pwm*, *decomP*, *Dogzplot*, *Writers' Bloc* among other journals. In 1985, he dabbled in journalism when he interviewed Emmanuel Lewis with a Spider-Man PEZ Dispenser. http://www.pankmagazine.com/iheartfailure.net.

Scott Jardany Lewis was born, raised and is currently living in Sydney Australia, getting a B.A in English. He tweets at http://twitter.com/#!/ScottJJLewis
and tumbles at http://goingtroppo.tumblr.com/

Mark Jordan Manner was born in Toronto, Ontario. He is currently a student at York University where he received the 2011 President's Prize for Fiction. His work is forthcoming in "Inkspots," an anthology of new Canadian short stories.

Tyler Bigney lives, and writes in Nova Scotia, Canada. His poems, short stories, and travelogues have appeared in Poetry New Zealand, Pearl, Third Wednesday, The Meadow, and Iodine, among others.

Gus Moreno lives in Chicago, Illinois, where he works a dead-end job to support himself and his soon-to-be bride. He hopes one day he'll never have to do the nine-to-five office gig ever again, preferably before he's dead. He reads and writes and enjoys exercising, which gives him the perfect excuse to eat everything in sight. His family calls him "The Garbage Disposal".

Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory is a kalideoscope of a girl. A hybrid cross between lover, fighter, activist, caffeine-junkie, journalist, hippie, poet, and human, she empties her head by trapping dreams in words and passing them off as poetry. If you are reading this, then chances are, she's proven to be successful in the endeavor. A 2009 member of the NJ Youth Poetry SLAM Team & the Brave New Voices Green Team, founding member of the Spitting Images Poetry Slam team at New Jersey City University, past contributor to the online literary magazine Troubadour 21, and President of WPL (Writing Performance Laboratory), Jennifer (a.k.a. Phoenix) is ready and willing to put her heart on the line if it makes you feel happier in your own skin. www.phoenixpoet.info.

Ryan Werner is a janitor in the Midwest. He runs the music/literature project Our Band Could Be Your Lit. "Always Say the Person's Name" is based on the song "Ode to Billie Joe" by Bobbi Gentry.

Lam Pham was born in Midland, Texas and graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2008. His fiction has or is set to appear in JMWW, apt, Fractured West, The Good Men Project Magazine, NAP Magazine, the Foundling Review and more. He volunteers as a reader for PANK Magazine and can be found at lampham.posterous.com .

Gabrielle Grigoli is an unfortunately proud lifelong resident of Staten Island, New York . She is a returning junior at SUNY New Paltz and enjoys it more than her mother would like. She has been writing and reading for as long as she can remember, and doesn't plan on quitting any time soon.

Valery Petrovsky is a journalist and short story writer from Russia. He studied English at Chuvash State University, Cheboksary and journalism at VKSch Higher School, Moscow. He has been writing prose since 2005. Some of his Prose has been published in The Scrambler, Rusty Typer, BRICKrethoric, NAP Magazine, Literary Burlesque, The Other Room, Curbside Quotidian, DANSE MACABRE, WidowMoon Press in the USA and in Australian “Skive” and “Going Down Swinging” magazines.

Margaret Karmazin's credits include over one hundred stories published in literary and national magazines, including Rosebud, Chrysalis Reader, North
Atlantic Review, Potomac Review, Confrontation, Absent Willow Review, Allegory, Pennsylania Review and Wild Violet. Her stories in The MacGuffin, Eureka Literary Magazine, Licking River Review and Words of Wisdom were nominated for Pushcart awards and Piper’s Ash, Ltd. published a chapbook of her sci-fi, COSMIC WOMEN. She helped write the introduction for and has a story included in STILL GOING STRONG, stories in TEN TWISTED TALES, MOTA 9, ZERO GRAVITY and CIRCLING URANUS, and a novel, REPLACING FIONA, published by etreasurespublishing.com.

Vivian Faith Prescottis a fifth generation Alaskan and she lives in Sitka and Kodiak, Alaska. She holds a PhD in Cross Cultural Studies and an MFA from the University of Alaska, Anchorage. She is the Co-Editor of Flashquake.org and the Co-Director of a non-profit called Raven's Blanket based in Wrangell, Alaska, designed to perpetuate the cultural wellness and traditions of Indigenous peoples through education, media, and the arts. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Cirque, Turtle Quarterly, and Drunken Boat. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and recently won the Jason Wenger Award for Literary Excellence. Her first book of poetry "The Hide of My Tongue" will be published by Plain View Press in the fall of 2011. Her digital chapbook "Slick" appears online at White Knuckle Press.

MaryAnne Kolton is currently working on a collection of short stories. Most recently her work has been chosen to appear in the Fall and Winter editions of The Toucan Magazine and in the Winter edition of Wilderness House Literary Review. She is married to the writer James Lloyd Davis.

BD Feil has credits in New Plains Review , Chaffey Review , and Margie. He lives in Michigan with quite the brood.

Robert Guard attended Ohio University, where he studied poetry writing under Wayne Dodd and Bin Ramke. He was also fortunate to study with the influences of other prominent writers in residence, including Walter Tevis, Daniel Keyes, Stanley Plumly, and Carolyn Kizer. After graduation he became an advertising copywriter and has worked in the marketing field for most of his career. Robert recently completed the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop and has been invited back to attend future workshops. His writing is eclectic both in content and style, from emotional introspection to the phenomena of human consciousness. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Argestes , The Chaffin Journal , Clackamas Literary Review, descant , Eclectica Magazine, Eclipse, The Florida Review, G.W. Review, Harpur Palate, Nimrod , Poem , Off The Coast, Poet Lore , Quercus Review, Quiddity, Reconfigurations, RiverSedge, Studio One, Sycamore Review , Tightrope, and Weave .

Hieu Minh Nguyen is a Saint Paul, Minnesota native. He was a member of Minneapolis' SlamMN! 2011 National Poetry Slam Team. He recently retired from the pizza industry where he specialized in delivery and asking you if you wanted to hear "Today's Specials!". Hieu is also 58% sure that he has been to every Great Lake.

Fred Sievert is the former president of the New York Life Insurance Company, a Fortune 100 corporation. Since his early retirement at the age of 59, he has enrolled in Yale Divinity School to pursue a master’s degree in religion. He serves as the director of six non-profit organizations and one for-profit corporation, teaches a course on leadership at The Dolan Business School of Fairfield University, and mentors four young business executives. His work is forthcoming in ken*again.

Randolph Pfaff is a writer and visual artist. He edits a lit mag called apt. He lives in Boston.

Table of Contents

Issue 30

Stephen Germic is a professor of American literature at Rocky Mountain College in Montana. He is the author of American Green (Lexington Books, 2001). He has written on a wide variety of American literary and cultural topics and taught at several universities, including Michigan State, Wayne State, and James Madison. When not teaching in Montana, he can usually be found writing or fishing in upper Michigan. His work is forthcoming or has appeared in The Cape Rock, Carolina Quarterly, Coe Review, Eclectica, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Verdad, and Westview.

Heath Wilcock is 24 years old. He has a wife named Emily and a seventeen month old daughter named Juniper. He does improv comedy at The National Comedy Theatre on the weekends. He's also a student pursuing a degree in creative writing at Arizona State University. He is also an avid fine cheese connoisseur.

Kate Brady was a success in the college slam poetry scene for about five minutes. She recently graduated and now waitresses full-time at a mediocre Italian restaurant. You can find some of her other written and photographic work at katebrady.tumblr.com .

Neha Kirpal has been working in the Indian media for the past five years – as a television reporter, newspaper correspondent, and web writer. She has a degree in economics and is a qualified broadcast journalist. Her writings have appeared in Asia Writes, Pulp Metal magazine, Muse India, Compass Culture, Wave Journey, Bootsnall, and Real Travel Adventures. She divides her time between work, reading, and exercising.

Corey Mesler has published in numerous journals and anthologies. He has published two novels, Talk: A Novel in Dialogue (2002) and We Are Billion-Year-Old Carbon (2006), a full length poetry collection, Some Identity Problems (2008), and a book of short stories, Listen: 29 Short Conversations (2009). He also has two novels set to be published in the Spring of 2010, The Ballad of the Two Tom Mores (Bronx River Press) and Following Richard Brautigan (Livingston Press). He has also published a dozen chapbooks of both poetry and prose. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize numerous times, and two of his poems have been chosen for Garrison Keillor?s Writer?s Almanac. He also claims to have written, ?In the Year 2525.? With his wife, he runs Burke?s Book Store, one of the country?s oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores. He can be found at www.coreymesler.com.

Josh Stenberg is a Lecturer at Nanjing Normal University. He has translated two volumes of Su Tong's fiction, Madwoman on the Bridge and Other Stories and Tattoo: Three Novellas. His writing has appeared in the Asia Literary Review, Kartika Review and is upcoming in Vancouver Review.

Cynthia Limlives in Los Angeles with her husband. She is currently working on a memoir about her husband's brain injury. In addition to caregiving and writing, she crunches numbers for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

George Keenen lives on a ranch in northern California, where he grows the world's hottest Thai chilies.

Abigail Warrenlives, teaches and writes in Northampton, Massachusetts.Her poetry has appeared in DUCTS, Gemini Magazine, Into The Teeth of the Wind, Monarch Review and poetry anthology 30 Poems In November.

Jason Lee Miller, MFA, has jobs that actually pay him, but writing fiction currently is not one of them. By day he is a curriculum developer and composition instructor at Eastern Kentucky University, and by night he serves as Beck-and-Call Boy for a small human he is at least partially responsible for creating. Weekends and early mornings, he devotes time to his fantasy career by reviewing recently published books for the literary e-zine Gloom Cupboard and kidding himself about his novel, which will be complete sometime in 20__. Shorter endeavors such as stories, poetry, and essays have appeared or will appear in The Bluegrass Accolade, Blood Lotus, The Copperfield Review, Danse Macabre, Dew on the Kudzu, State of Imagination, and Ontologica. In April 2011, he ill-advisedly launched a blog titled Off Topic ( offtopic.typepad.com ) , a blog about the writing life—“in gory detail.”

Jeff Neidt divides his time between teaching creative writing and running his own freelance writing business. His has taught at schools and universities in the Twin Cities and Germany and at the Loft Literary Center. Jeff's own writing has appeared in publications including Forge, Alive, Artist-At-Large, The Reed, The Hill, Manitou, and St. Olaf Review. His first book, a collection of Minnesota trivia, was published by Blue Bike Books. In 2011, he was awarded an Honorable Mention Prize for the Loft’s Mentor Series.

Cassandra Kemperenjoys writing poems and stories. She is aiming to improve her writing ability as well as strengthen her perseverance in this field. It is her dream to write for Pixar.

Jacqueline Pham is a first year student in the MFA Creative Writing program at California State University, Long Beach. She holds two Bachelor of Arts degrees from CSULB, one in Literature and one in Creative Writing with a minor in Psychology. Her poems have been published in RipRap, The Mas Tequila Review, Subliminal Interiors, and the Anthology of International Youth Poetry . Currently, her favorite poets are Frank O’Hara, Allison Benis White, Ron Padgett, and Sylvia Plath.

Ralph Puglisi is an amateur writer just recently sticking his big toe into the literary waters of the publishing world. He is currently attending school to obtain a degree in English. Puglisi has been published in Verbicide, Weirdyear, and soon, in Sein Und Werden.

Rosemary M. Magee makes her living as an administrator at Emory University. She is also a traveler who writes short stories and personal essays. Lately she has been exploring both the inner world and the external terrain of places near and far. She seeks enlightenment.

His name is Joseph Chatham. He was born August 17, 1988 in the small town of Tahlequah, Oklahoma. For the first five years of his life that was where he called home, living on the campus of Northeastern State University. After that they lived in several houses in Arizona until his teenage years. During this time, he sporadically attended school but for the most part was homeschooled either by his parents or through mail correspondence courses taken from home. In January of his fifteenth year, his family relocated to Montana and he began to attend Great Falls High. He attended there for a year and half but left after his junior year in order to work more hours. Following that he got his GED and was accepted for both the 2006 and 2007 fall semesters to Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication but due to personal family issues did not attend and instead worked eighty plus hours a week. At the age of 21 he looked back and realized that he had lived at more residences than there were years in his life and that he had held more than a dozen jobs ranging from retail and food service management to commissions based sales and telemarketing. He decided that this was not a trend that he wanted to continue and so, in January of 2010, he returned to school at Chandler Gilbert Community College and has been actively taking courses at several different Maricopa County colleges since then. Currently he works and attends school full time and is excited about the future.

Mark Conkling —teacher, homebuilder, realtor, finance manager, Methodist pastor (ret) — recently published his first novel, Prairie Dog Blues (Sunstone Press, 2011). Mark lives in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, works with his wife Patricia at Meadowlark Family Healthcare, walks his dog in the Bosque near the Rio Grande, frequents the recovery community (AA), writes fiction, and seeks daily peace of mind. His short fiction appears in the Minnetonka Review, Diverse Voices Quarterly, and The Monarch Review. His stories and excerpts from his novel are available over at his website at www.markconkling.com. Years ago, as a University Professor (Ph.D., Philosophy, Psychology), Mark published several academic articles in existential philosophy and psychology, including "Consciousness and the Unconscious in William James' Principles of Psychology," (Human Inquiries), "Sartre's Refutation of the Freudian Unconscious," (Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry), and "Ryle's Mistake About Consciousness" (Philosophy Today).

Alisa Wolf has worked as a feature writer and editor on the staff of three magazines and, more recently, as a financial services marketing writer. She earned an M.F.A. from Vermont College and has developed and taught adult education classes in fiction, memoir, and essay writing near her home in Medford, Massachusetts. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in AGNI Online, Calyx, Cimarron Review, Concho River Review, Pisgah Review, Red Cedar Review, Sojourner and in the Papier Mache Press anthology, I Am Becoming the Woman I've Wanted.

Katherine Moore lives in Memphis, TN. She is often called Kitty by loved ones. She currently works at an independent bookstore and attends school full time. This is her first publication. She has always had the fever to write and her room is often littered with unfinished stories. She is considering an MFA but knows that real writing is not formulas taught in the classroom, it is power that comes only from the heart.

Alex Koplow is a writer from Virginia. Recently John Waters described him as "cute but dumb".

Don Riesett’s writing is a reflection of the diverse experiences of his life…from the creative corridors of advertising agencies to the locked wards of psychiatric institutions…from High Tea at Claridge’s Hotel in London to homemade vodka shooters in a Ger tent in Mongolia. He has viewed the world from the rooftop ledges of Manhattan and the 6,000-foot Himalayan foothills of Nepal. He writes about growing up in ‘50s Baltimore and mentoring challenged youth in the New Millenium. Don Riesett’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Awakenings Review, Fox Cry Review, Home Planet News, ken*again, North Atlantic Review, Palo Alto Review, Red Wheelbarrow, The South Carolina Review, and The Writers Post Journal. Don currently lives in Baltimore with Sande and their cat, Little Man, who thinks he’s a dog and is treated like a person. Read more of Don’s work at http://donriesett.com/

Graham Tugwell is a PhD student with the School of English, Trinity College Dublin, where he teaches Popular and Modernist Fiction. The recipient of the College Green Literary Prize 2010, he has been published by Write From Wrong, Jersey Devil Press, Red Ochre Lit, The Quotable, Sein und Werden and Thoughtsmith. He has work forthcoming in Kerouac’s Dog Magazine , Anemone Sidecar, Plain Spoke, Pyrta, THIS Literary Magazine, Battered Suitcase, Anobium, Lost Souls, Rotten Leaves, Red Lightbulbs, L’Allure Des Mots and FuseLit. His website is grahamtugwell.com.

Dave Wanczyk lives in Ohio and makes chili. He writes overlong articles about sitcoms and overshort poems about kindergarten. This is something like the latter. His work has been published in Brevity, Defunct, Lake Effect, and New York Quarterly.

Megan Coxe has just returned from a sabbatical year in Almería, Spain as an assistant English teacher, to be suddenly back in her native state (some may say independent republic) of Texas. Now she splits her time pursuing an MA in Hispanic Literature at the University of Texas, coping with the unexpected return to her birthplace, and plotting her next international escape. Her work is forthcoming in Yes, Poetry and Leaf Garden Press.

Table of Contents

Issue 29

Kate Frank is co-host of the Hampshire County Slam Collective poetry show in Western Massachusetts. She can be found reading poems most Tuesday nights, and making waffles most Wednesday mornings. Her work has been previously published in The Reader and performed in various venues across New England and the Midwest.

Todd Easton Mills received his bachelor's degree from Antioch University. As a young man he defined himself as a traveler, working his way around the world and supporting himself as a laborer, cook, and teacher in exotic locales such as the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Now, with his drifter days far behind me, Todd lives comfortably with his Zimbabwean wife in Santa Barbara, California. He cowrote and produced the documentary film Timothy Leary's Dead. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in ONTHEBUS, Voices, The Coe Review, Yellow Silk, AUSB Odyssey, Sage Trail, RiverSedge, Paranoia VHS, Collage, Antiochracy, and in the anthology Poets on 9-11.

Stephanie deLusé is an un-by-the-book by the book person—she appreciates borders, but will risk them to take creativity into unexpected places. A social psychologist, her writing explores navigating the tensions between the influences that exist in and around us. She has work in literary journals such as The MacGuffin and Emrys, and in academic journals including Family Court Review, Issues in Integrative Studies , and Family Processes . On the smart but popular side, she has essays in books of this ilk: The Psychology of Survivor, The Psychology of Joss Whedon , and The Psychology of Superheroes. Her first book, Arizona State University , is forthcoming (Arcadia, 2012). By day, she professes in Barrett, the Honors College at Arizona State University. Her teaching has won her several awards, including “Last Lecture”, and her writing has earned a Pushcart Prize nomination. In life, she finds things to be over-rated, preferring time with loved ones, plants, and non-human animals.

Through what can only be described as a miraculous synergy of determination and luck, Paul Tejada has encyclopedic volumes of wild and crazy memories that he surprisingly lives to tell about. A knucklehead by trade, Paul spends his days rationalizing anything and everything. Paul believes himself to be a brilliant but evil person, though most people close to him describe him as unrelentingly passionate. He's spent all 32 years of his life in a small suburb of Los Angeles. When not working his day job as a pretty face, he spends his time absorbing whatever happens to be around him. He is currently writing a book for his hero, his mother, which fills in the blanks for her during the time he spent in prison, on the streets, and other times he was away from her while generally not being a good son.

Gabrielle Hovendon's writing has appeared in the Writer Advice E-Zine, Newport Review, Eric's Hysterics, and Ampersand.

Ralph Gilbert is a graduate of MIT in mechanical engineering and architecture. A former owner of the Park-Lodge Corporation, he now writes full time. He has studied with poet Jane Katims. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Charles River Mud, The Lincoln Review, and http://commonhealth.wbur.org .

Sonnet Mondal is the author of six books of poetry including a poetry bestseller and is the pioneer of the 21 line fusion sonnet form of poetry. His works have been published in several International literary magazines and have been translated into Macedonian, Italian, Arabic,Hindi,Telugu and Bengali. He was awarded Poet Laureate from Bombadil Publishing in 2009, Doctor of Literature from United Writers' Association in 2010, Azsacra International Poetry award in 2011 and was inducted in the prestigious Significant Achievements Plaque in the museum of Bengal Engineering an Science University, Shibpur. He has also been a featured poet at World Poetry Reading Series, Canada and Asian American Poetry project, U.S.A.At present he is the managing editor of The Enchanting Verses journal of poetry.At present he is the managing editor of the Enchanting Verses Journal of Poetry.

Born in Camden, NJ, Sean Battle is the combination of an ambitious mother and WWE Pay-Per Views. He is an MFA Graduate student for poetry at Rutgers-Newark, and received his BA in English at Rutgers-New Brunswick, where he was President and Open Mic Co-host of the Verbal Mayhem Poetry Collective. Battle has released one chapbook, MID-CARDER (self-published, 2011) and is working on his first poetry CD, The Art in Smoking. Poems have been published or are forthcoming in journals Objet d Art ,Polifax, The College Journal, and Borderline, as well as the anthology Bop, Strut and Dance: a Post-Blues Form for New Generations, and have been written and performed for the Raices Cultural Center production, Spirit of the Drum: History and Evolution of a Caribbean tradition. He lives in Voorhees, NJ.

Sarah Kendall is an MA candidate in the Writing program at Johns Hopkins University. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in a few places. She prefers her coffee cold and her eggs piping hot. Ideally, her world would revolve around stories and breakfast foods.

Agholor Leonard Obiaderi is a High School teacher in Delta State, Nigeria. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in the English Language. An ardent lover of the written word, he considers himself a collector of poetic imagery. He has published a poem in Short Story Library and has poems forth-coming in Barnwood and Mas Tequila Review.

Cyndy Muscatel lives in Palm Springs, California and presently writes a blog for the on-line newspaper mydesert.com. She has written features and humor for the The Desert Sun, Desert Magazine, 92260, LQ Magazine, and Healthy Living. She has also written for many other publications including The Seattle Times, The Mercer Island Reporter, The Desert Post Weekly, Palm Canyon Times, and Westlake Magazine. A former high school English teacher, Cyndy now teaches creative writing in Palm Springs. Her short stories have been published or are forthcoming in Wisconsin Review, descant, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Puget Soundings, Main Street Rag, North Atlantic Review, Quercus Review. RiverSedge, EDGE, Snakeskin, Highlights for Children, Turtle, Phantom Seed, and others.

Suzanne Schnittman has been an educator for forty years, twenty of which have been spent teaching women's history at the college level. She has worked with a number of women's advocacy groups including Feminists Choosing Life of New York, New Yorkers for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, and The Judicial Process Commission of Rochester. She is Catholic but has raised two Jewish sons and has always belonged to a synagogue as well as a church. Her writing has appeared in The North Atlantic Review, Rochester's Democrat and Chronicle, The Finger Lakes Times, Adirondack Express, Justicia, The Adirondack Review, and in two books about 19th-century American social history.

Elizabeth McClellan is a third year law student and Rhysling-nominated poet who lives in a Memphis, Tennessee apartment house sporting a werewolf claw mark on the second-floor landing. In addition to The Legendary, her poetry has appeared in Apex Magazine and Goblin Fruit. Her favorite cheese is Brie, her favorite meal is brunch, and her favorite bloodthirsty mythical girl gang are the Bacchae. Depending on how well she likes you, she may, in fact, give you some sass.

Thom Young is a writer from Texas. His work has appeared in Thieves Jargon, Blowback, Writers' Bloc, Dagger, and other sundry places.

Britt Warner is a published poet, songwriter, singer, novelist, journalist, and artist from Southern California. She currently resides in West Hollywood and performs with her band all over the greater L.A. area. Her first full-length record, "Return To Me," will be released in Summer/Fall 2011.

Rod Peckman lives on the wet, Western side of the Cascade Mountains in Washington State. Surrounded by beauty—he lives on a small lake in the woods—he gets most of his poetic inspiration from the twenty-four hour true-crime cable channel. That, and Project Runway. He’s published in many online journals. If interested, type www.rodpeckman.com

Diana Friedman’s stories, essays and articles have appeared in a range of publications, including the Baltimore Sun, Newsweek, the Whole Earth Review, Bethesda Magazine and Flyway, as well as on National Public Radio. Raised in New York City and corrupted in California, she now splits her time between Washington D.C. and Spain, where she spends two months every summer with her spouse and two feisty teenagers. She loves traveling, but really, really, really, hates flying.

Brett Elizabeth Jenkins lives in Indiana with her brother and her cat, Marie DeSalle. She is currently earning her MFA from Bennington. Look for her poems in Anderbo, GUD, Breadcrumb Scabs, Writers' Bloc, and elsewhere.

Sometimes Bud F.X. Landry gets confused but he manages to muddle through. Bud gets lonely and wonders how much masturbation is considered 'too much'.

Peter Obourn enjoys his three-generation family, community service, and the writing community. He is currently working on a novel, based on a small town—not unlike his own. Peter divides his time between suburban upstate New York, where he was born and raised, and a small town in the Adirondack Park, which is as close to paradise as he and his wife want to be. His work is forthcoming or has appeared in Bombay Gin, CQ (California Quarterly), descant, Gastronomica, Inkwell, Kestrel, Limestone, The Madison Review, New Orleans Review, Oyez Review, Quiddity Literary Journal, Red Wheelbarrow Literary Magazine, Spillway, and The Blueline Anthology 2004.

Rasmenia Massoud has made a living with both blue and white collars. After deciding that collars are not good, she ran away to France, where she has done away with collars completely, choosing instead to spend entire days in pajamas. Rasmenia likes to have conversations with people while secretly holding them under her mental microscope. She currently spends her time confusing the natives of her adopted country by speaking French poorly and writing about what she struggles most to understand - human beings. You can visit her at: http://www.rasmenia.com/

Zach Fishel is an associate editor at Girls with Insurance, hates Ohio's drivers and is currently attending The University of Toledo attempting to write a paper never written, that will also never be read.

Cindy McMullin is a writer-paralegal-teacher-psychic reader and just generally too busy for her own good. She has previously published nonfiction works in the Memphis Flyer and Memphis Magazine . She lives on a lake in Memphis, Tennessee, with her big, black dog Sirius—named after the star, not the fictional character. (I am an adult, after all. Sort of. At least once in a while. Okay, whatever.)

Ann Privateer is a poet, painter, photographer, and retired teacher from Clevelander, Ohio who resides in northern California and spends part of the year in Paris, France where she tries to keep up with her grand daughter, Lilas. Ann's poems have appeared in Ink, Sweat, and Tears: A UK Blog; Sacramento News and Review; Manzanita; Mamazine; Poetry Now; Ophidian; Tapestries; Suisun Valley Review; The Sacramento Anthology:One Hundred Poems; and Tiger's Eye to name a few.

Marilyn Steele has been in practice as a Jungian psychologist for over 25 years and has taught extensively on the psychology of women, the feminine archetype, and the "revisioning” of the self. Her work, be it poetry, prose, or painting, focuses on the wisdom and power of dreams and the transformative power of creativity to heal the soul and the world—both are wounded, both need to heal, and in restoring the sacred bond, we will come alive again.She has published academic articles in Family Therapy Newsletter and a book review and poetry in Psychological Perspectives. Her creative work has appeared or is forthcoming in Lalitamba, Sage Woman, and Zone 3 as well as the Madrone Avenue Press anthologies in 2005 and 2007. Marilyn is currently working on a new book, Life and Leadership in the Round: The Wild Feminine and an Ecology of Self, a revisioning of the self, grounded in both science and spirituality.

Alan Good was once a columnist for Timothy McSweeney's Internet Tendency. He is now an aspiring dirt farmer.

Martin Menefee is a triplet from Montgomery Alabama. He is studying philosophy, contemplative studies, religious studies, and poetry at Brown university. He loves poetry and spoken word. His ideal job would be a prophet- there should be more around don't you think?

Melvin Earl Rice III is a 4th year creative writing student at California State University Long Beach. He currently resides in Huntington Beach, CA where he writes poetry, fiction, and non-fiction essays. To read more of his writing and view his drawings, photos, and other art visit: www.embarrasstheelephant.blogspot.com/

Table of Contents

Issue 28

Meaghan Ford is a Boston-based writer and designer always looking for that next great project. She’s a regular reader at the Cantab Lounge and Poetry Slam and is helping to organize the 2011 National Poetry Slam. She once fought a bear in the New Jersey Pine Barrens but let him win when she saw his cub watching—she firmly believes it’s wrong to shame a father when his kid’s around.

Karen Byrd is a junior at San Diego State University. She hopes to attend an MFA program in the fall of 2012. Pray for her.

Ashley Ann Eubanks When she’s not writing or rectifying the blankness of various-sized canvases, Ashley’s rescuing canoes from the commode and dancing arrhythmically to songs about sandwiches with her 2 angelic daughters in their 1688sqft of paradise on the South end of Fort Smith, AR or washing pocky down with Ramune at the only anime store in the Arkansas River Valley, owned by her husband. At night she tucks the girls in bed and gets lost in cyberspace ‘til slumber-time, visions of book deals dancing in her head. Supplemental to creative pursuits, she’s hard at work obtaining her MA in English at Arkansas Tech University-Russellville.

Tammy Hanna writes when she can outwit her toddler away from the computer. Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen as often as it should. Her work has appeared in The Pygmy Giant , State of Imagination and a recently published poetry anthology.

Nickie Albert is a poet and playwright. She is currently working on a new play, Use No Hooks. She has worked in a number of professions including social work, educational administration and ice cream. She now supplements her literary career doing Software Development. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Shae Newton lives in Idaho. He's climbed many things (trees, ladders), but never a plateau. He wants to climb a plateau.

Barbara Hall bio forthcoming.

Walter Conley got his start in comic books and has since gone on to write for a variety of media. His short fiction and poetry appear in anthologies, the small press and at such online sites as Danse Macabre, Gloom Cupboard and Mad Swirl. His artwork was recently posted at Litsnack and Pulp Metal Magazine. Walter's current focus is writing and recording songs with the group Katharine Hepcat. After bouncing between CT and the SoCal desert for most of his life, he has settled in central VA with his wife and two children. Walter is on facebook (as himself and Katharine Hepcat), twitter and can be reached at pitchbrite@gmail.com.

LT Verrastro was born and raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania, so he hears more than his fair share of references to "The Office." Guitarist and founding member of the band Fat Angel, his first album of original material was released in 2009. He now lives in Philadelphia where he studies writing at the University of Pennsylvania and is currently working on his second manuscript of poetry, entitled The First Two Years .

Meg Pokrass is the author of "Damn Sure Right" (Press 53 ) and serves as Editor-at-Large for BLIP Magazine (formerly Mississippi Review ) and before that, for SmokeLong Quarterly . Her stories, poems, and flash fiction animations have appeared in nearly one hundred online and print publications, including Mississippi Review, Gigantic, Gargoyle, The Nervous Breakdown, HTML Giant, Wigleaf, The Pedestal, Keyhole, Annalemma, Smokelong Quarterly, elimae, Prime Number, Women Writers, and Joyland . Meg creates and runs the popular Fictionaut-Five Author Interview Series for Fictionaut , and consults with Writing MFA programs about online publishing. Meg lives with her small, creative family and seven animals in San Francisco, where she edits and teaches flash fiction privately. Visit Meg's website at www.megpokrass.com .

Kate Hammerich has been published in The Susquehanna Review, ditch, Third Wednesday, Barrier Island Review, Verandah Literary Journal, Grasslimb, Kill Poe t , MiPoesias, The Junk Lot Review and has self-published two books, escape artist and hallucinations, cancer & the purple tree . She mostly spends her time rolling on the floor with her daughter and her Husky. She is currently writing full-time and trying to get more involved in the poetry community.

Peter Clarke's short fiction has appeared in Hobart, Elimae, Locus Novus, Denver Syntax, Orion Headless, Pure Francis, and elsewhere. He is a recent law school graduate, keeping busy writing indelicate novels and trying to not be a lawyer.

Heather Harris was born, raised, and currently lives in Akron, Ohio. She has been other places in between, but this has largely proven to be irrelevant.

Andre M. Zucker was born in the Bronx, NY (1981). He has lived in Spain , Ukraine and Morocco . His works have been published on Blaze Vox, Danse Macabre , South Jersey Underground, Write This!, K en*Again and the upcoming issue of And/Or and Tributaries. His first novel 'Generation' is seeking publication. Andre now lives in Antwerp, Belgium. www.facebook.com/andre.zucker

BJ Yudelson earned her B.A. in religion from Smith College, M.A. in Old Testament from Emory University, and M.S. in instructional technology from Rochester Institute of Technology. She was a homemaker, full-time mother, and heavy-duty volunteer, taking graduate courses toward a career, when her middle child was killed by an intoxicated driver. That crisis propelled her into the workforce, where she landed in nonprofit development and public relations. Eventually, she left to pursue freelance writing. When not writing, she visits nine grandchildren on two coasts, travels with her husband, tutors first graders in a city school, and she has also recently returned to the study of Hebrew. Her favorite place to be is in her solo canoe, searching for loons on an Adirondack lake. Since retirement, BJ has found her voice in creative nonfiction, studying with Sonja Livingston, Anais Salibian, and Len Messineo. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Colere, Democrat & Chronicle, Eclectica Magazine, The Griffin, The Jewish Georgian, Tiny Lights, Jewish Action , and in the anthologies I Didn't Get Old Being Stupid: Wisdom from Elders and Flashlight Memories . Her entry about her heirloom Sabbath lamp won second place in the National Jewish Outreach Program's "Judaica Across America" contest.

Ariel Wall is a writer from Pennsylvania. She enjoys reading, writing poetry and fiction, and crafting.

Mary Rockwell will graduate from Dartmouth College this June, with degrees Creative Writing and Theatre. Her work can be seen in forthcoming issues of All Things Girl and Blinking Cursor.

Matt Galletta lives with his wife and cats in Troy, NY. He brews his own beer so he never has to leave the house. Find him at www.mattgalletta.com.

Donal Mahoney has had poems published in a variety of publications, including The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, Revival (Ireland), The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey), Public Republic (Bulgaria), Asphodel Madness (R.I.P.), Black-Listed Magazine and The Camroc Press Review. He has never forgotten how to spell ukulele.

Robert E. Petras graduated from West Liberty University, but had also attended Kent State and Marshall University in his lifelong journey to find himself, often hitchhiking in the process. His poetry and fiction has recently appeared in The Second Hump, The Rubber Lemon, Howls and Pushycats and State of Imagination. Often he hangs his poetry on a nail in a tree growing in the alley behind his Toronto, Ohio house. He is a victim of frequent prank phone calls.

Table of Contents

Issue 27

Caroline Harvey's writing has been featured in print and in film, including the national poetry slam anthology High Desert Voices, Harvard's The Charles River Review, and on Season 5 of HBO’s Def Poetry. Currently an Artist in Residence at Berklee College of Music, Caroline is honored to have been featured at schools and organizations nationwide such as YouthSpeaks, The Esalen Institute, Northeastern University, Lesley University, UC Berkeley and UCLA. A past member and coach of multiple award-winning youth and adult poetry slam teams, Caroline also works in conjunction with The Attleboro Arts Museum to facilitate writing projects for teens in foster care. She is especially committed to working with at-risk youth and survivors of trauma. For more information visit www.carolineharvey.com.

Cynthia Larsen lives in southern Vermont. Her historical novel, LOT'S DAUGHTERS, has been cursed by God to forever live in no-man's land. Got hates the novel (he comes out looking like a real asshole), but Cynthia still likes it and hopes one day someone else will, too. Her short story recently won the WOW! Flash Fiction Contest, and her work is forthcoming in Liquid Imagination and SmokeLong. She can often be found lurking in Zoetrope's Flash Fiction Wing.

Tristan Silverman Trained as a documentary filmmaker, screenwriter, and a veteran educator, Tristan's work addresses the humanness of flaw, the fluidity of identity, and the reality of coming of age disabled, queer and American. For the last seven years, Tristan has been facilitating clinics and discussions using aesthetics to improve dialogue around identity, faith, politics and gender diversity on campuses and in organizations across America. Quickly becoming one of the country's foremost emerging live poets, she recently placed 7th overall in the nation at the 2010 Women of the World Poetry Slam, has been on 2 semifinalist National Poetry Slam teams, was the 2009 and 2010 Chicago Female Grand Champion, and 2008 Chicago Poetry Champion and is the winner of the 2010 Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award.

George Keenen lives on a ranch in northern California, where he grows the world's hottest Thai chilies.

Valentina Cano is a student of classical singing who spends whatever free time she has either reading or writing. Her work has appeared in Exercise Bowler, Blinking Cursor, Theory Train, Magnolia's Press, Cartier Street Press, Berg Gasse 19, Precious Metals and will appear in the upcoming editions of A Handful of Dust, The Scarlet Sound, The Adroit Journal, Perceptions Literary Magazine, Welcome to Wherever, The Corner Club Press, Death Rattle, Danse Macabre, Subliminal Interiors and Perhaps I'm Wrong About the World. You can find her here: http://coldbloodedlives.blogspot.com.

Daniel Davis was born and raised in Central Illinois. His work has appeared in "The Ampersand Review," "Bartleby Snopes," "Necessary Fiction," and elsewhere. You can find him at www.dumpsterchickenmusic.blogspot.com.

Elizabeth McClellan is a second-year law student who lives in a probably-haunted apartment house in Memphis, Tennessee. When not making scholarly arguments for the applicability of legal personhood to artificial intelligence, she writes stories and poems, usually exploring the untold tales of not-unsympathetic monsters. Her work has appeared in Apex Magazine and been nominated for the Rhysling Award. Her favorite cheese is Brie, her favorite meal is brunch, and her favorite bloodthirsty mythical girl gang are the Bacchae.

P.H. Madore is an associate at Girls with Insurance, a co-editor at dispatch litareview, a podcaster, and generally of ill-repute. Find him here.

Khalym Kari Burke-Thomas writes what he wants to read, so if you don't like his work he'll think he has poor taste in literature. His writing appears or is forthcoming in New Wave Vomit and DOGZPLOT. He is majoring in Asian Languages and Cultures at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, where he also serves as Assistant to the Director of the Trias Residency for Writers.

Corey Hutchins completed her Master's degree in Renaissance Literature at the University of Edinburgh. Her undergraduate degrees are from the University of Oklahoma in English and Music, and she received awards for her honors theses in both subjects. Upon graduation, she was presented the Mary Gray Thompson award for outstanding contributions to the University of Oklahoma Weitzenhoffer Family College of Fine Arts. Her poetry has been published by Windmill, Shinshi, a handful of stones, and Deep South Magazine and her thesis is published on Dissertation.com. Her service and work are dedicated to her late fiancé, 2nd Lt. Geoff Street, USAF.

Marc Pietrzykowski lives in Lockport, NY, and has published poems, stories, essays, and reviews in various places. His most recent book of poems, Following Ghosts Upriver, waspublished in early 2011 by Main Street Rag Publishing Company. You can visit Marc virtually at www.marcpski.com.

Audrey T. Carroll is a Creative Writing major at Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania. Her work has previously been published in The Blue Route, The Cynic Online Magazine, the Red Fez Review, Outrageous Fortune, andSphere. Her favorite authors are a tie between Billy Collins, Stephen King, and Truman Capote.

After living in Israel, upstate New York and Berkeley, Myra Sherman now lives and writes in Lake County, California. She received a Master’s in Social Welfare from The University of California, Berkeley and is a licensed clinical social worker in California. Her story collection, JAILED, is forthcoming from Desperanto Press. More about her other writing and contact information can be found at myrasherman.com

Laura Grafham is a senior English Literature major at Seattle Pacific University. She has published in her school's student-run arts journal Lingua, of which she now is a staff member. Currently, Laura is writing her twenty-plus page senior thesis on Leslie Silko’s novel Ceremony. Having lived in the lovely Pacific Northwest all her life, and worked as a bartender and waitress on Orcas Island in the San Juans, she dreams of climbing mountains in the Rockies. Laura is currently applying to graduate schools within the Mountain Time Zone.

Dylan Davis hails from the suburban streets of Newport News, Virginia. He is currently packing for a move to Seattle, Washington where he can learn to play in rain puddles again. His fiction has appeared in several publications such as In Media Res, Eunoia Review, Magnolia's Press, and The Camel Saloon. Reading, writing, watching French New Wave films, riding his yellow bicycle, and playing Indian Poker is all he does.

Josh Stone graduated from the University of North Florida. Currently he resides in sunny South Florida and is employed at a public library in which no one reads. Despite this, or because of this, he writes. Josh Stone also thanks your for reading his words.

Ella Walls will soon be relocating to Corvallis, OR with her tribe to begin an MFA program at OSU. In the meantime, she lives with her husband and four cats in Gainesville, FL, where she languishes in the positively ceaseless summer and tries to write when the heat isn't just too much. This is her first formal publication.

Lauren Tivey is an English Literature teacher, currently living and working in Jiangyin, China, where she teaches in the American Program. She is a MFA graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts, and her work has appeared in many places over the years, both online and in print, in such places as Message in a Bottle, Gutter Eloquence, Snakeskin, Word Salad, Red River Review, and others. She lives for poetry, photography, and travel. Her biggest wish is to return to Tibet, the home of her soul.

Andrew McCallum Crawford grew up in Grangemouth, an industrial town in East Central Scotland. His work has appeared in Lines Review, The Athens News, Junk Junction, Ink Sweat and Tears, McStorytellers, Weaponizer, the Midwest Literary Magazine and the 'The'. His first novel, 'Drive!', was published in 2010. He lives in Greece.

Sari Krosinsky's first book, "god-chaser," is forthcoming from CW Books. She edits Fickle Muses, an online journal of mythic poetry and fiction. Her poems appear regularly in literary and genre magazines. She received a B.A. in religious studies and M.A. in creative writing from the University of New Mexico. She lives in Albuquerque, N.M., with her partner and cat.

Chris Dean does not provide biographical information.

Pedro Eler is 23 and live in Petrópolis, which is a small city in the mountain area of the state of Rio de Janeiro. He recently got his BA in Journalism from the University of Rio de Janeiro and is now waiting to see how his writing career will unfold.

Samantha Memiis a housewife who cleans, dusts and cooks. Her windows are sparkling bright. There are no cobwebs lurking in corners, and her bathroom is germ free. Her basement is a bit smelly but, as the only person who goes down there is her husband, she doesn't mind.

Table of Contents

Issue 26. The SLAM & FLASH Issue!

Adrienne Nadeau was born and raised in the South, but migrated to Chicago when the windy city ruffled her feathers. You can find her representing Tampa, Florida at Chi-Town venues such as The Green Mill’s Uptown Poetry Slam, Mental Graffiti, and Weeds Open Mic Night. Currently she is the marketing coordinator for Chicago Slam Works, author of the chapbook “Myths, Tales, Legends, and Other True Stories” (a Guerilla Poet Production), and an MBA candidate at the University of Illinois’ Liautaud Graduate School of Business. www.TheWarriorWoman.org

Geoff Kagan Trenchard’s poems have been published in numerous journals including Word Riot, The Nervous Breakdown, The Worcester Review, SOFTBLOW and November 3rd. He has received endowments from the National Performance Network, Dance Theater Workshop, The Zellerbach Family Foundation and the City of Oakland to produce original theatrical work. As a mentor for Urban Word NYC, he taught weekly poetry workshops in the foster care center at Bellevue as well as in Rikers Island with Columbia University’s “Youth Voices on Lockdown” program. He is a recipient of a fellowship from the Riggio Writing and Democracy program at the New School and the first ever louderARTS Writing Fellowship. He has performed poetry on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, at universities throughout the United States, and in theaters internationally as a member of the performance poetry troupe “The Suicide Kings”. He lives in Brooklyn.

Len Kuntz lives on a lake in rural Washington State where he’s at work on a novel. Len’s short fiction appears, or will soon be appearing in such places as MUD LUSCIOUS, ELIMAE, WORD RIOT, DOGZPLOT, OUTSIDE WRITERS, SHOOTS AND VINES, as well as others.

Rich Boucher has published four chapbooks of poetry and for seven years hosted an open reading and slam in Newark, Delaware. Since moving to Albuquerque in March of 2008, Rich has performed all over Duke City. A past member of five national poetry slam teams, his poems have appeared in Adobe Walls: An Anthology of New Mexico Poetry, The Rag, Clutching at Straws, Shot Glass Journal, and Mutant Root.

Since Tom Doughty started writing, he found instead of having normal conversations he speaks in metaphors and tells rambling stories that eventually come to some sort of obtuse point that might be illustrative, although indirectly, on the topic of conversation. It is an endearing trait.

William James once shot his sister in the back of the head with a BB gun; she retaliated immediately with a rake to the back of his skull. Both of them still bear the markings of this misadventure years later. This has nothing to do with poetry whatsoever, except for perhaps explaining the reason why he tends to speak in poems even when he tries not to. A member of the Steel City Poetry Slam in Pittsburgh PA, as well as the underground music community, William mixes the ferocity and sledgehammer subtlety of punk rock with the refined art of the literary world. Whether it's with a snarl, or a grin, he is dedicated to bringing as much passion, sincerity, and intensity to his craft as a mere mortal can. He is a fan of typewriters, coffee, and all cats.

Laura E. Towne uses her unusual and often hilarious experiences to create believable characters in the drama called real life. Laura is an active member of NC Writers Network, and co-host’s the Cellar 101 Open Mike readings. She is a 2008 winner of the ten minute play festival, her work has appeared in Main Street Rag and Midwest Literary Review. She lives in Fuquay-Varina, NC, with her highly intelligent mixed-breed dog, and her ADHD afflicted cat.

Elizabeth McKennedy's work has been published in journals including McSweeney's, Metazen, and The Story Garden.

Sometimes Bud F.X. Landry gets confused but he manages to muddle through. Bud gets lonely and wonders how much masturbation is considered 'too much'.

Jane Cassady writes pop-culture horoscopes for the City Paper’s Arts and Culture Blog, *Critical Mass*. She is the Slam Mistress of the Philadelphia Poetry Slam.* **Her poems have* appeared in *The November 3rd Club*, *The Comstock Review*, *Valley of the Contemporary Poets, *and other journals. She's performed at such venues as *LouderArts* in New York City, *Valley Contemporary Poets* in Los Angeles, and *The Encyclopedia Show* in Chicago.

Victor D. Infante is the author of City of Insomnia, a poetry collection from Write Bloody Publishing, and his poems and stories have been published in numerous periodicals, including Pearl, Chiron Review, The Nervous Breakdown, Spillway, Word Riot and Dark Horizons. He founded The November 3rd Club, an online literary journal of political writing, and will shortly be launching a new online project, Radius: Poetry From the Center to the Edge. He lives and writes with his wife and pet ferret in a triple-decker apartment in Worcester, Mass., and has serious opinions about reality TV cooking competitions.

Rhen Wilson believes in fairness, equality, and liberty. As such, he also believes Snooki should never get a book deal before he.

Amy Weaver is infamous on the Dallas poetry scene, as much for off-stage antics as for the dynamic nature & intensity with which she delivers her poetry. Her poetry is introspective, her approach fearless, and her stage presence dynamic. She is a survivor of abuse, and uses this medium to reach others who have been victimized. Her work runs a gamut of cultural timelessness from Literacy to feminism, diversity to biting social commentary. She is a slam veteran: 8 teams, 3 NPS final stages, coach of 2 Dallas teams and 2001 Dallas Slam Team champion in Seattle. She also has extensive experience organizing/running/hosting poetry festivals and events. She has a fondness for bourbon and has been known to hump a few legs. Currently, she is at work on her first novel , publication of her work, and writing her poem fingers into bloody stumps. To book her for performance and/or workshops please contact www.madnessofamy@yahoo.com.

Canadian fiction writer, poet, and playwright J.J. Steinfeld lives hidden away on Prince Edward Island, where he is patiently waiting for Godot’s arrival and a phone call from Kafka. While waiting, he has published fourteen books and five chapbooks, the most recent ones being Misshapenness (Poetry, Ekstasis Editions, 2009), A Fanciful Geography (Poetry Chapbook, erbacce-press, 2010), and A Glass Shard and Memory (Stories, Recliner Books, 2010). His short stories and poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and periodicals internationally, and over forty of his one-act plays and a handful of full-length plays have been performed in Canada and the United States.

Josef Lemoine’s work can be found in the Spring 2010 issue of RipRap and the November 2010 issue of Word Riot. His favorite celebratory meal is frozen Costco waffles and Dos Equis Ambar.

Ellen Wise was born and raised in Washington State and has never met and/or seen a single vampire in her life. She lives off of coffee, books, Bon Iver and almond milk while she attends Belhaven liberal arts University in Jackson, MS. She is a music major and fails fantastically in music theory because she believes music should be felt, not read. Her strong feminist views give her freedom to climb trees and spit. Writing is her hobby and her passion since she could hold a Graham cracker.

Brad Rose was raised in southern California, about a mile from where the Apollo space capsules were built, and about 240,000 miles from the moon. He’s worked as a railway worker, a writer, an emergency room clerk, a management consultant, an assistant director of a national association of college presidents, and for the last 15 years, as an applied sociologist. He has obtained irrefutable evidence that the Tea Party is responsible for irreversible climate change. Links to his poetry and fiction, which appear in print and on-line, appear at http://bradrosepoetry.blogspot.com/

Courtney Oliphant is currently completing her undergraduate in English and Creative Writing at Warren Wilson College in the lovely Swannona Valley.

Jaime Martin is a writer, performer, comic artist, and professional nerd. He has been a featured performer at the New York Comic Con and The Bowery Poetry Club. He was the co-host of the infamous Nerd Slam at the 2009 Individual World Poetry Slam. He has studied several martial arts and likes to tell inappropriate jokes in mixed company. He is probably at this moment looking for a better job than the one he currently has (please help him, he is awkward). He like firm hugs and pie, please feel free to give him either or both next time you see him. He currently lives in New York City and wishes they would bring Firefly back. www.myspace.com/ilikemonkeymedia , www.ilikemonkeymedia.com/nerd/nerd.htm

Timothy Gager is fiction editor at Wilderness House Literary Review. A social worker in the Boston area, he is the host of the Dire Literary Series, and a frequent contributor to e-zines and print anthologies. Timothy Gager is the author of seven books of fiction and poetry. He lives on www.timothygager.com His work may be found through Amazon.

Shelby Handler is a Denver-born human who enjoys writing poems and short fiction. She writes both for on the page and the stage. Shelby has performed her poetry at the Chicago Theatre, the Mercury Café, one dive bar, too many high school classrooms to count, many living rooms, numerous coffee houses, the Seattle Art Museum and at least ten bedrooms that were not my own. Currently, she is concentrating in Creative Writing and Women Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Jim Harrington lives in Huntersville, NC, with his wife and two cats. His stories have appeared in Apollo's Lyre, Camroc Press Review, Every Day Fiction, The Houston Literary Review, Long Story Short, MicroHorror, Flashshot and others. He currently serves as a flash fiction editor for Apollo’s Lyre. You can read more of his stories at www.jimharringtononline.net.

Todd Anderson is the leader of the Carleton College Slam Team and his poems have appeared in Muzzle, The Manuscript, and The Carleton Literary Association Press. He’s known for setting up his typewriter next to a flower shop, and writing poems for people to give to their loved ones.

Lois Barr teaches Spanish at Lake Forest College. She likes to bike, paint and write but not at the same time. Her stories and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in East on Central, Ekakshara, 91 Creations, Mochila, and in anthologies---Art in Art and Love After 70.

Chris Castle lives and works outside London and has written short stories and two books. His main influences are the writer Raymond Carver and the films of PT Anderson.

Ed Plunkett is from Columbus, Ohio. He has represented Writers' Block Poetry at the Individual World Poetry Slam in Berkeley in 2009 and has been a featured reader at the Columbus Arts Festival as well as other venues in Central Ohio. His goal is to read in all of Ohio's 88 counties. He has a long way to go.

Born and raised in small-town PA, Hannah McDonald is now happy to call the greater Philadelphia area her home. She's a writer, a geek, a blogger, a wife, a girlfriend, and an awesome secretary who doesn't get enough credit. Her special powers include wearing her pancreas on the outside and knowing the words to more songs than just about anyone she's ever met. She's a fiction editor for online lit mag The Furnace Review, blogs at Dorkabetic.com, and has been a member of two National Poetry Slam teams from Delaware.

Hannah & Matt McDonald have been married for over four years now, and find that what makes an awesome marriage work is open-mindedness and occasionally writing a poem together. This is one such collaboration. Both have been on various National Poetry Slam teams from Delaware, Matt has also been a rep at the Individual World Poetry Slam and was a member of the 2009 Philadelphia National Poetry Slam Team. When they're not writing poetry, Hannah blogs at Dorkabetic.com, and Matt is in the band i, fanblades.

Sarah Silvers is a pathetic old hippie who wishes she still lived in California or at least Vermont.

Originally hailing from the East Coast, Alyssa Appleton is an actress, poet, and improv artist who now roams the sunny streets of Hollywood when she's not scribbling on scraps of paper or trying to get from one catering gig to the next. She is a lover of words and the emotions and ideas that become so tangible and visceral through text and speech. She is also a lover of wine, long walks on the beach and the occasional Parliament Light. Kidding about the beach. Seriously though... www.alyssaappleton.com

Evan Phail is a student at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, majoring in English with a concentration in Creative Writing. During the harsh winters, he grows a beard teetering between poor writer and poor homeless man.

When Marianne Betterlyisn’t hip hop dancing, cooking quiches and soufflés, reading astrology charts or traveling to Rangoon, Kathmandu or Istanbul, she’s writing poetry. Her poetry has been published in “Hot Flashes,” “Hot Flashes 2: More Sexy Little Stories and Poems,” and “The Haight Ashbury Literary Journal.” She has received poetry awards from the Dancing Poetry Festival and Writers Digest. She lives in Kensington CA.

Brian G. Ross is thirty-four and lives in Scotland. He has over ninety publications to his name - from humour (Defenestration) to horror (Murky Depths), mystery (Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine) to mainstream (Southern Ocean Review). He appears in the first three volumes of paperback horror anthology, Read By Dawn, available from Bloody Books, and An Eclectic Slice of Life, by Dark Prints Press. He is married, both to his wife and his words, and runs a blog of his literary wanderings at briangrantross.blogspot.com.

Nate Musser was slapped in the face by poetry and told to wake up when he was 18 years old. Much of his life previous had consisted in darkness and despair. He now melts faces from the Long Beach stages like 80's metal bands and enjoys cherry-flavored everything. Avoid the front row, though. He tends to be a spitter.

Michael Nieling is a writer and literary editor based in Bristol, England, the author of one unpublished novel, several short stories, and hundreds of vitriolic emails and text messages. He currently lives amongst students, an experience not unlike that of Robert Neville in "I Am Legend," only with more terrible music. (www.diagonalproof.com)

Jesse Bradley is the author of *Dodging Traffic* (Ampersand Books). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in *wtf pwm*, *decomP*, *Dogzplot*, *Writers' Bloc* among other journals. In 1985, he dabbled in journalism when he interviewed Emmanuel Lewis with a Spider-Man PEZ Dispenser. http://www.pankmagazine.com/iheartfailure.net.

Mitchell Waldman's fiction, poetry, and essays have previously appeared in many places, most recently in Midwest Literary Magazine, Connotation Press, new aesthetic, Wilderness House Literary Review, Longshores Literary Magazine, Girls With Insurance, The Battered Suitcase, Worldwidehippies, Greatest Lakes Review, Five Fishes Journal, Moronic Ox Literary and Cultural Review, eclectic flash, Ink Monkey Magazine, and eFiction Magazine. His writing has also appeared in the anthologies Beyond Lament: Poets of the World Bearing Witness to the Holocaust(Northwestern University Press, 1998), Messages from the Universe (iUniverse, 2002), and America Remembered (Virgogray Press, 2010). He is also the author of the novel, "A Face in the Moon", was co-editor (with Diana May-Waldman) of the anthology, "Wounds of War: Poets for Peace". and currently serve as Fiction Editor for the new Blue Lake Review. For more information, see his website at: http://mitchwaldman.homestead.com.

Changming Yuan authored several books before emigrating out of China and currently teaches writing in Vancouver. Yuan's poems appear in Barrow Street, Best Canadian Poetry, Exquisite Corpse, London Magazine and over 200 other literary publications worldwide. His debut collection (Chansons of a Chinaman) and monograph (Politics and Poetics) were both released in September 2009. Yuan has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Maude Larke lives in France with the ghost of her last cat. Her credo is 'never wear two things of the same color when hiking'. She has this bad habit of collecting things and getting antsy when people begin to touch the items in the collections. Especially the pebble collection. She thoroughly admits that she teaches as a day job out of sadism.

John Pierce is a high school teacher in Central Texas. Recently, his work has appeared in Defenestration, Feathertale, Rubber Lemon, and The Shinnery Review.

Elliot D. Smith believes in the power of tattoos and reference books. He currently works with people with conviction histories, helping them to reduce barriers to employment and housing. Elliott also conducts research on masculinity, friendships, and identity formation. His writing tackles issues of gender, sexuality, and family, and is greatly influenced by the people and places he loves.

Dean Kisling is a high school dropout who learned to type when he was 47. He has been a soldier, laborer, taxi driver, welder, carpenter, performing musician, acupressurist, fractal artist, mountaineer and trail runner. He lives in America and writes stories because he wants to and it might even matter. He is very happily
married. Find him in Unlikely Stories, Write This, Medulla Review, Switchback and Fiction365.

Mae Ramirez is Mae Ramirez. She runs ¡VAYA! Zine. vayazine.tumblr.com

Jim Eigo is a writer, editor and fledgling bookmaker living in New York City. You can read a selection of his activist medical writing at actup.org, a selection of his writing on art at leslielohman.org/MainPgs/Journalhtml, and snippets from his novel-in-progress at sixsentences.ning/profile/JimEigo.

Paula Sophia Schonauer is a candidate for an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Central Oklahoma with an emphasis in fiction. She has been published in various alternative magazines and newspapers in Central Oklahoma including the Oklahoma Gazette and the Gayly Oklahoman. Currently, she is a regular contributor to the online magazine, Our Big Gayborhood. Presently, she is revising her first novel, "The Closet is Dark," about cops, subcultures and secrets.

Michael McSweeney is a junior-year English student at the University of Massachusetts. He is fond of photos wherein cats are adorable. A blog concerning him/things relating to him can be found at: http://macsubhine.blogspot.com.

Table of Contents

Issue 25

Hamish MacFarlane is the author of one published novel, "Threeplay" and after a thirteen year hiatus is working on his second. He lives in Scotland but is in the process of emigrating to the United States. He blog about both subjects at www.difficultsecondnovel.com

Tyler Bigney is a writer from Nova Scotia, Canada. His poems, prose, and short stories have appeared in Poetry New Zealand, Underground Voices, Nerve Cowboy, among others.

Brandon Amico is a writer from Manchester, NH. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Toucan, Indigo Rising, and Northern New England Review, among others. Everything he has seen or experienced has manifested itself in some form within his writing. When Brandon is not busy writing, working, or attending class at the University of New Hampshire, it is fair to assume he is thinking. He has spent a semester in Osaka, Japan. And he loves you.

John Harrower 24, WM, NS, GSOH, OMG, WLTM interesting individuals that he can shamelessly use as characters in his flash fiction or put in ridiculous and often fantastical situations for embarrassing effect. Find him in Stirling, Scotland scrawling non sequiturs in underpasses.

Vallie Lynn Watson recently guest-edited the inaugural issue of Blip Magazine and has work in or forthcoming in dozens of print and online literary magazines, such as Pank, Pindeldyboz, Staccato, Nano Fiction, Ghoti, and Moon Milk Review.

Ras Mashramani goes to community college and spends a lot of time avoiding her students on the internet. She measures her self-worth via page hits to her blog, motherwap.blogspot.com.

Natasha Cabot has been published in several journals, including Wilderness House Literary Review, Ginosko Literary Journal, and Gone Lawn Literary Journal.

Sem Megson’s work currently explores how people both raise and lower themselves to deal with our ever-changing world. Sem’s fiction has been published in American and Canadian journals and has been produced on stage in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City, and Toronto.

George Keenen lives on a ranch in northern California, where he grows the world's hottest Thai chilies.

Emily Wick lives and writes in Minnesota. She has had work published in Greatest Lakes Review and The Coeval.

Jerry Guarino writes short stories and is working on a novel. His stories have been published by The Legendary, Writing Raw, Leaning House Press, Daily Love, Weirdyear and The Chaffey Review Literary Magazine.

Marcelo Hernandez Castillo is an undergraduate student at Cal State Sacramento and the current poetry section editor for the student run Literary Journal Calaveras Station. He won first place in the undergraduate poetry section of the Bazzannela literary award and is recipient of the Warmdal and Willhelm Memorial Scholarships. His works appear online in Carcinogenic Poetry, Sex and Murder Magazine, Softblow Review and Puffin Circus among others. He lives in Yuba City California and earns his keep as a handyman paying his way through college.

Jeff Bull makes his living as a computer programmer, but is also an actor, musician and author. He lives in Westminster, Colorado, and is currently working on his first novel.

Lou Gaglia lives and teaches in upstate New York. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in JMWW, Rose & Thorn Journal, Stymie, Stirring, The Ear Hustler, Bartleby Snopes, Blueline, FRiGG, and others.

Caitlin Looney, a 19-year-old messy freak-out of a girl, does artistic things, but is not an artist. After quitting art school with only one semester under her belt (even though she does not wear belts), Caitlin decided that if she were to not be anything, she would not be an “artist”. However, her creative endeavors say otherwise. She writes, she draws, she paints, she photographs, she acts, but she does not art.

Vincent Scarpa is pursuing his BFA in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College. His original play, “Hostage,” was put on by Quiet Hours Theater in Boston in the Spring of 2010. He has also participated in the Young Writers Workshop at Bard College and as a reader in the Literary Firsts reading series based in Cambridge, MA. His fiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Monkeybicycle, The Battered Suitcase, The Emerson Review, apt, Girls With Insurance, and other journals. His debut collection of short stories is available at www.vincentscarpa.com.

Margaret F. Chen's stories have appeared or will be forthcoming in The Shine Journal, Monkeybicycle, A Long Story Short, Yesteryear Fiction, and Metazen. She received an Honorable Mention in the February 2010 Glimmer Train Contest for New Writers and was named a Semi-Finalist for the 2010 Kirkwood Prize.

Cynthia L. Marcolina is a licensed professional counselor who works from home. She has been writing poetry since age 19. Some of her poems have appeared in newsletters, online and in other small publications. Cynthia does readings on the radio and at small café appearances for her friend and poetry mentor Ruth Deming!

T.R. Healy was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, and his stories have appeared in such publications as Efiction, Freight Train, Rusty Truck, and Stymie.

Dennis Mahagin is a writer from Washington state who enjoys Frisbee, and barking at the moon. His poetry collection, “Grand Mal,” is coming soon.

Laura Bender graduated from the University of California, San Diego while studying writing and neuroscience. Her work has been published in Eclectica, The Medulla Review, Prick of the Spindle, and elsewhere.

Jerry Budinski is a retired engineer now free to engage in his dream pastime, writing fiction. His short stories have been published in Eclectica, Quantum Muse, Paumanok Review, Writers’ Post Journal, Danse Macabre, and many other publications. Two works were nominated for Story South’s best on-line stories of 2005. Inspirations may come from history, travel, weird science or just things that warp out from the daily news. He lives high on a hill in Western New York with his wife of forty years, in the home of a West Highland Terrier named Hildy.

Table of Contents

Issue 24

K Ruckus is a spoken word artist from Austin, Texas and has been performing in poetry competitions for almost a decade. K Ruckus first caught a sliver of notoriety when national news medium “The Examiner” wrote a story and promoted his 2010 tour across the country reaching from Mesa, Arizona all the way to Indianapolis, Indiana. He has been sailing on that sliver ever since. K Ruckus hosted the first ever “Green Awareness Slam” at the 2010 National Poetry Slam. He is a weekly participant in the Austin Poetry Slam and a bi-monthly contributor to the Red Dirt Poetry Slam. K Ruckus enjoys Burritos, Science Fiction and the collected works of Andrew Dice Clay. www.kruckus.com.

Frank Hinton lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia and edits Metazen, a daily fiction site. Frank has been published in Lamination Colony, Kill Author, Necessary Fiction and is a nominee for Dnzac's Best of The Web.

Andrew Cothren is a recent graduate of Binghamton University, where he received his Bachelor’s Degree in Creative Writing. He has so far had stories published in The Battered Suitcase, The Susquehanna Review, and Quintessential Zine.

Paulie Lipman is a writer/poet/performer out of Denver, CO. He has been a part of 7 Denver Mercury National Slam Teams(including '04's second place and '06's national champions). In addition to extensively touring the U.S. and Canada, he has self published several chap books and CD's, and was recently included in the Write Bloody Publishing Anthology: The Good Things About America.

Dain Michael Down is a traveling story teller and has been since he was first able to make sounds. He collects experiences like fireflies, and uses them like grenades. His poetry has been called Jersey Confessionalist Humor. He's spent time working, writing, and performing in New Jersey, New York, Seattle, Columbus, and now resides in Red Dirt Country (Oklahoma City) all in the last 3 years. He is also a world renown hugger.

Anna Peerbolt worked as a copywriter and journalist before turning her hand to fiction. Her work has appeared in Drunken Boat, Aoife's Kiss, Prick of the Spindle, Apollo's Lyre, Luna Station Quarterly, and Ink-Filled Page. She lives in Oregon with her husband, a cat and a dog, and works as a web designer and bookkeeper in order to keep the left and right brains functioning.

Susie Swanton's poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the cream city review and The North Central Review. She performed in the entry of The Encyclopedia Show Chicago which featured slices of John Wayne Gacy's brain.

Alexandra N. Kontes lives in Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in kill author, and is forthcoming in Foundling Review and in Fractured West.

Jennifer Geist is a creative writing major at Southeast Missouri State University and has been published in Down in the Dirt Magazine. Though her second love is photography, her passion for writing is as fiery red as her hair.

Truth Thomas is the author of three collections of poetry (Party of Black, A Day of Presence, and Bottle of Life). He serves on the editorial boards of both the Tidal Basin Review, and the Little Patuxent Review. Some of his work has appeared in: Alehouse, Quiddity Literary Journal, Houston Literary Review, and The 100 Best African American Poems (edited by Nikki Giovanni).

G.K. Adams lives on the Texas Gulf Coast with her husband and two cats. She writes short stories, essays and nonfiction of general interest, has served on the editorial staff of an allied health journal in the District of Columbia and as a technical editor for industry.

Celena Cipriaso has written for a soap opera -- the one with the chick that got nominated 19 times. She also writes a lot about beer. Oh, and she's Asian so she writes about that too. Her work has been in Seal Press's P.S. What I Didn't Say, HarperCollins' Yell-Oh Girls,Word Riot, AsianAvenue.com, and The Beer Sessions.

Annie Rovzar (pronounced "rouser", like "trousers") lives and writes in San Francisco. She is currently applying to MFA programs when she's not working with high school students as a tutor and poetry workshop facilitator. She is excited that this is her first publication.

A graduate of Ryerson Journalism, Mike Sauve has written non-fiction for The National Post, The Toronto International Film Festival Group, Exclaim Magazine and other publications. His fiction has appeared online in Rivets Literary Magazine, Forge Journal, Candlelight Stories, Straitjackets Magazine, Eastown Fiction, the humour journal Feathertale and elsewhere. Upcoming stories will appear in print in Palimpsest and Infinity’s Kitchen.

John Sheirer lives in Northampton, MA, and teaches at Asnuntuck Community College in Enfield, CT. His most recent book is the memoir Loop Year: 365 Days on the Trail, winner of the Connecticut Green Circle Award. Forthcoming are a collection of flash fiction (Start Small) and a creative writing guidebook (What's the Story?). He can be found here: www.johnsheirer.com

SJ Fowler (1983) has had poetry published in over 70 journals & magazines, and is the author of two collections, Fights (Veer books 2011) and Red Museum (Knives Forks & Spoons press 2011). He is a member of the Writers forum poetry group, and an employee of the British Museum. He edits the Maintenant interview series for 3am magazine introducing contemporary European poets. www.sjfowlerpoetry.com www.maintenant.co.uk.

Joshua Berida is a man of few words. He doesn't like to talk about himself too much because...just because. He thinks he's funny. He thinks. And he doesn't like to talk too much. He has appeared and will appear in Static Movement, Houston Literary Review, Foliate Oak Review, Aurora Wolf, and Grey Sparrow Journal.

Phil Ginsburg is a writer/actor/and musical performer. His work is discovered in IIlya's Honey, Reuben Rose Poetry Collection in Israel, Indiefeed:performance poetry pod cast, The Camel Saloon, and in the forthcoming issues of Breadcrumb Scabs, Toucan and Disingenuous Twaddle. His spoken word CD "Obstructed Views" is available at CD Baby. A new spoken word CD "Scratch" is scheduled to be released in March 2011. He can be found on Facebook.

Christopher Allen is obsessed with seeing every inch of the planet. When he's not travelling, he writes. Fiction, creative non-fiction, humor--anything but shopping lists and poetry. He blogs about his travels at www.imustbeoff.blogspot.com, where you can find links to his published works.

Katrina K. Guarascio lives in New Mexico, where she teaches Language Arts, Poetry, and Journalism. She is also the sponsor and coach of two youth Slam Teams and produces a yearly literary magazine of student poetry. Along with many ezine and literary magazine publications, she is the author of two chapbooks of poetry, and one book length publication entitled A Scattering of Imperfections.

Adam Armstrong is a creative writing minor student at Southeast Missouri State University. When not in college, he lives in Fenton, Missouri. He is writing a four part series called Ascended Summit and has had the honor of being published in a book of short works called Celebrate! Young Poets Speak Out. He hopes to make feature films in the future.

Dresden de Vera is a student at Cal State Long Beach. He’s an unrelenting nitpicker - some would say he’s almost relentless. He hustles smoothies on the side. Find his novel excerpt titled Crayons, Play Dough, and the Efficacy of Bear Mace in the January 2011 issue of Word Riot.

Brian Weinert is an English undergraduate in his junior year. This is his first publication.

Table of Contents

Issue 23

Anis Mojgani has won the National Poetry Slam's Individual Championship twice as well as the Worldcup Poetry Slam. His book "Over the Anvil We Stretch" was put out by Write Bloody Publishing, and He has a second collection coming out from them in the approaching spring, "The Feather Room".

E.A. Neeves has a BA in English from Duke University and is currently working on her MFA in Fiction at Emerson College. She lives in Boston, MA. This is her first publication.

Jim Fuess works with liquid acrylic paint on canvas. Most of his paintings are abstract, but there are recognizable forms and faces in a number of the abstract paintings. He is striving for grace and fluidity, movement and balance. He likes color and believes that beauty can be an artistic goal. There is whimsy, fear, energy, movement, fun and dread in his abstract paintings. A lot of his abstract paintings are anthropomorphic. The shapes seem familiar. The faces are real. The gestures and movements are recognizable. More of his abstract paintings, both in color and black and white, may be seen at www.jimfuessart.com.

Steve De France MFA has traveled widely in the United States. On more than one occasion he hitch-hiked across America. He rode rails on freight trains, worked as a laborer with pick up gangs in Arizona, dug swimming pools in Texas, did 33 days in the Pecos city jail as a vagarant, fought bulls in Mexico, and dove for salvage off a small island on the coast of Mazatlan. His poetry has been published in most of the English speaking countries of the world. Recently his work can be seen in The Evergreen Review, The Wallace Stevens Journal, The Sun, Rattle, Why Vandalism, as well as others. He has won writing awards in England and in the United States. And recently was nominated for the 2009 Pushcart Prize. He continues to write poetry, plays, essays & short stories.

Rusty Barnes lives in Revere, MA with his family. He maintains webspace at http://www.rustybarnes.com.

Alex Bernstein is a freelance writer in New Jersey. His work has appeared at The Rumpus, Yankee Pot Roast, WordRiot, Swink (pending), and PopImage, among others. Please visit him at www.promonmars.com.

Kenneth Clark has lived in southeast Asia and most of the southeastern United States. He writes poetry and microfiction. His poetry has appeard in Night Train, Poor Mojo's Almanac(k), abd GUD Magazine.

Tom Mahony is a biological consultant in California with an M.S. degree from Humboldt State University. His fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in dozens of online and print publications, including Surfer Magazine, Flashquake, The Rose & Thorn, Pindeldyboz, In Posse Review,
Diddledog, LITnIMAGE, Boston Literary Magazine, 34th Parallel, and Decomp. His short fiction collection, Slow Entropy, was published by Thumbscrews Press in 2009. His first novel, Imperfect Solitude, is forthcoming from Casperian Books in 2011. Visit him at http://www.tommahony.net.

Tyler Bigney is a writer from Nova Scotia, Canada. His poems, prose, and short stories have appeared in Poetry New Zealand, Underground Voices, Nerve Cowboy, among others.

Amanda England has poetry appearing or soon to appear in The New Plains Review, The Houston Literary Review, Joyful, Foundling Review, and The Hedge Apple.

Nathanial Kostar is a graduate of Rutgers University and currently pursuing his MFA at The University of New Orleans Low-Residency program. He spent the past summer studying Ezra Pound in Italy with UNO, and training Muay Thai (Thai boxing) in Phuket, Thailand. He enjoys doing random things not only because he thinks it makes him more intriguing when he meets a pretty girl at a bar, but because he believes variety is the spice of life. He is also not afraid to write in cliches. Nathaniel currently resides in Seoul, South Korea where he teaches English to elementary and middle school students. He is originally from New Jersey. More of his work can be found at: http://therenaissancemanproject.wordpress.com/.

Michael Gurnow has been published domestically, as well as abroad, translated, and anthologized. His work may be found in Big Toe Review, Dissident Voice, The Externalist, Literary Kicks, Missouri Life, The Modern Word, The Smoking Poet, and Word Riot, among others.

William Cass has had a dozen short stories accepted for publication in mostly smaller literary magazines. He lives and works as an educator in San Diego, CA.

AJ Pearson-VanderBroek is currently a student who is terrified of being released from college with a B.S. in language arts, with a minor in psychology, in May of 2011. She wants to work in print journalism, much to the dismay of her newspaper-editing mother. Her work has appeared in Short, Fast and Deadly as well as The Fertile Source, Cliterature, and Breath and Shadow Magazine. She has a blog at http://ajpvb.blogspot.com/.

Annie Edge lives and writes close to a nuclear power station on the east coast of England. She finds this gives her a sense of urgency to her writing. The county is Suffolk and it is stuck in a 1950s time-warp in lots of ways. Apart from having nuclear power, of course. She has been writing in her head for twenty years and has now, finally, put pen to paper.

Derek M. Avila is a poet out of New Hampshire. Avila has featured multiple times at open poetry readings and is currently working his way towards a spot on the NH national poetry team. He runs a weekly poetry workshop for high school students focused around creative writing and performance. Avila will soon be releasing a chapbook "Letters to New England", dated for early March.

Matthew Richards is a 19-year-old aspiring badass from the Granite State. He’s been hitting up open mics throughout New England for the past two years, and has published two chapbooks. He really likes the movie Hairspray, and his superpower is the ability to order vegan food at the push of a few buttons. He was ordained in Manchester as Minister of the Holy Order of the Koalapus. He once stole Chuck Norris’s lunch money and lived. You can send him an email at MJPhoenix711@comcast.net if you want to buy his newest chapbook or challenge him to a raspberry pie eating contest.

MMV Hamilton is a long-time writer but new author. All the journal scribbling and forum babbling and workshop enabling is beginning to pay off. When she's not editing her fantasy series, she can be found playing around with other writers.

Sara Sather is a creative writing student at Concordia University, St. Paul. Her work can be seen in All Things Girl and Down in the Dirt Magazine. She is also fluent in piglatin.

Matthew Ritger was born and raised in Portland, Maine and studied creative writing at Dartmouth College.

G.O.D. Anderson lives in a transitory state of being, somewhere between the pavement below him and the stars in his eyes. His latest chapbook will be out shortly through Interior Noise Press. He blogs at BOLD MONKEY.

Bruce Boynton is a late blooming poet who has lived a life of adventure and intrigue in exotic locales around the world. He now resides in the strangest and most challenging place in his career, Washington, DC.

Thom Young is a writer from Texas. His work has appeared in Thieves Jargon, Blowback, Writers' Bloc, Dagger, and other sundry places.

Michael Schulman You can see everything you ever wanted to know about Michael and maybe more, including links to his published work, at his website: http://www.manforallseasonings.com.

Table of Contents

Issue 22

Laura Yes Yes is a Cave Canem fellow, and associate editor of Muzzle Magazine. She is the founder and co-curator of Real Talk Live, and the fourth-ranked woman slam poet in the world.

Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé has recent or forthcoming work in Fence, FuseLit, Gone Lawn, Gulper Eel, Pure Francis, REM Magazine, and Wag’s Revue. Trained in publishing at Stanford, with a theology masters in world religions from Harvard and fine arts masters in creative writing from Notre Dame, he has edited more than 10 books and co-produced 3 audio books, several pro bono for non-profit organizations. A recipient of the Singapore Internationale Grant and Dr Hiew Siew Nam Academic Award, Desmond also works in clay, his commemorative pieces housed in museums and private collections in India, the Netherlands, the UK and the US.

Ian Khadan was born in Georgetown, Guyana on August 21st, 1986 and moved to the United States when he was 9 years old. He is a graduate of Rutgers University with a degree in English. In 2008 he represented Loserslam New Jersey and in 2010 he coached the New York City Urbana at the National Poetry Slam. Ian's work has been featured in a few literary magazines, among them, SUSS, The Foundling Review, and The Meadowland Review. He spends his time working for Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières), hosting poetry workshops for children, primarily, ages 9 through 18, and touring his own writing throughout the northeast. Find out more about him at www.iankhadan.com.

Ryan Kelly earned a B.A. in Literature in 2009 from John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio. While there, he was published six times in the university’s biannual literary magazine, The Carroll Review. Ryan is the only student to ever receive both the university’s writing awards in the same year (2009): The Joseph Cotter Poetry Award and The David LaGuardia Fiction Award. He is currently working on his M.A. at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.

Josef Lemoine’s work can be found in the Spring 2010 issue of RipRap and the November 2010 issue of Word Riot. His favorite celebratory meal is frozen Costco waffles and Dos Equis Ambar.

Isabel Kestner is a poet and writer who spent half her life in New Jersey and half in Virginia, making her an odd blend of Southern Woman and Jersey Girl. Her poems have appeared in numerous publications since the age of seventeen. Her first collection of poetry, Strange Things She Heard, was released in December 2009. In addition to poetry she also writes for film.

Mark Sumioka resides near the beach in San Diego. He has been writing prose since the late eighties and his work can be found in ken*again, as well as Online Cynic Literary Magazine. A bartender of twenty years, Mark can hold his liquor better than most people you know.

F. Michael LaRosa is perhaps the only registered Democrat in South Carolina. According to the US Census, that's one in 4,561,242 people. He's really that special. His work has appeared in a smattering of print and online publications over the years, including Evergreen Chronicles, Blue Collar Review, The Nocturnal Lyric, JUGGs & Leg Show (during his glory days), Underground Voices, and Yellow Mama. His short stories will soon appear in Yellow Mama and The Battered Suitcase. Watch for 'em.

Emma Eden Ramos is a writer and student in New York City. Her fiction has appeared in BlazeVOX and The StoryTeller Tymes, and she has a piece forthcoming in Yellow Mama.

Kate Brown is a British film-maker and writer, living in Berlin. Her films 'Julie & Herman' and 'Absolutely Positive' have been show at festivals and on television in Europe and the USA. Her short stories are published in The Linnet's Wings, Blue Print Review, Eclectic Flash, Staccato Fiction, BLIP, Cinnamon Press and the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology 2010.

Tina Broderick is a writer living and working in Massachusetts. Her work has been published in Re-thinking Everything Magazine, Long Story Short E-zine
and Goddard College's literary journal, The Pitkin Review.

Mark Koltko-Rivera has lived and worked for significant periods of time in Hiroshima, Japan, Haverford, Pennsylvania, and Winter Park, Florida, but the village that raised him was Greenwich Village. His fiction has recently been published in Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, and is forthcoming in The Fear of Monkeys. His nonfiction book, 666: The Biography of a Beastly Number, should appear late in 2011 from Tarcher/Penguin.

Scott Beal's poems have appeared in journals such as *Indiana Review* and *Cream City Review*. His chapbook, *Two Shakespearean Madwomen Vs. the Detroit Red Wings*, was published in 1999 by White Eagle Coffee Store Press. He leads various writing workshops for kids in Ann Arbor in conjunction with the Neutral Zone, 826michigan, and Dzanc Books.

Margot Wood thinks that all horse art should be burned.

Jeffrey McDonald writes poetry and short stories from his home in Brooklyn, New York. His Rumble and Rise was featured in Mine Falls Press 2010 Print Anthology, Best Stories On the Shelf. He has also been featured at the New Verse News.

Shannon Barber is a 32 year old author who loves coffee flavored coffee and pie. She can often be seen running feral in her natural habitat somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, cup of coffee in one hand and armed with a scowl.

Mark Hage is a writer based in New York City. His fiction has recently appeared in LITnIMAGE, Contrary Magazine, Metazen, and other indomitable publications. He recently contributed to a "Cadavre Exquis" story for Electric Literature.

Robert S. King lives in the countryside near Cave Spring, Georgia. His poems have appeared in hundreds of magazines, including The Kenyon Review, Southern Poetry Review, Lullwater Review, Chariton Review, Main Street Rag, and others. His latest books are The Hunted River and The Gravedigger’s Roots, both from Shared Roads Press, 2009. He is currently Director of FutureCycle Press, www.futurecycle.org.

Stephen Barry is a dad and fly fisherman living in the Hudson Valley. He subsidizes these vocations by working as a trial lawyer.

Table of Contents

Issue 21

Doc Luben is a writer and performer in L.A and AZ since way back in the ancient 90‘s. His stage plays have been featured productions at the Arizona Classical Theater, and he was the Tucson Poetry Slam Champion in 2009. He recently completed an extended multi-state poetry tour with the officially brilliant Lindsay Miller. Doc was a panelist and performer at the 2010 Phoenix Comic-Con Nerd Slam, and has taught subversive youth workshops in writing and performance for two decades. Doc trained at the freakishly progressive California Institute of the Arts, where they absolutely do NOT have Walt Disney’s head frozen in the basement.

Stevie Edwards spent her formative years in Michigan and now lives and works in Chicago. She is the Editor in Chief/Founder of MUZZLE Magazine, and she has poems published in several literary magazines, including *PANK*, *Word Riot*, and *Monkeybicycle*. She is a part of the Real Talk writing collective in Chicago, and she regularly attends the Vox Ferus After Dark workshop series.

Laura Garrison grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania, and currently lives in Maryland with her husband Justin. Some of her other work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in _Jersey Devil Press_, _Pig in a Poke_, _5923 Quarterly_, _Niteblade_, and _Puffin Circus_, among others. She likes ladybugs, the smell of rain, and reading by candlelight. Her greatest ambition is to someday have her own cheese cave.

Terry Pearce writes fiction in the evenings and educational materials in the daytime. He lives in London. His work has been published in The Legendary, The Foundling Review, Poor Mojo’s Almanac and Grey Sparrow Journal. He is a moderator, regular participant and occasional winner in a weekly flash fiction competition at showmeyourlits.com.

Tyler Bigney is a writer from Nova Scotia, Canada. His poems, prose, and short stories have appeared in Poetry New Zealand, Underground Voices, Nerve Cowboy, among others.

David Kowalczyk lives in the small gypsum mining town of Oakfield, New York, some thirty miles east of Buffalo. His poetry has appeared in seven anthologies and over seventy magazines, including Munyori Literary Journal , Taj Mahal Review, and Istanbul Literary Review. He has taught English in Changwon, South Korea and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. He is fond of, in no particular order: most Canadian ales, Thai food, Maggie Mae Ryan, sunrises, and waterfalls.

John Grochalski is the author of The Noose Doesn't Get Any Looser After You Punch-Out. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, in the part where you can still get a draft of beer for $3.00.

Philip Venzke grew up on a dairy farm near Colby, Wisconsin (where Colby Cheese was invented). A fervent zymurgist, his fermentations take many forms. His most recent poems are in The Litterbox Magazine, Verse Wisconsin, Echoes, The Wisconsin Poets Calendar, Sheepshead Review, Illumen, Thunderclap! Magazine, and Right Hand Pointing.

Denis Joe has lived in many parts of Britain over the years, but is now on Merseyside for the past ten years. He is active in the poetry scene there and is a member of the North Liverpool Writer's Group. He has been writing poetry for a couple of decades and is self taught. He would say that his biggest influeneces are 20th Century Americanm poets, particularly Louise Zukofsky, William Carlos Williams and Lorraine Niedecker.

Audrey Walls currently lives in Richmond, Virginia, where she is a current MFA student in poetry at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is constantly
homesick for places she has never lived, including Toronto, Canada, La Paz, Mexico, and Carrboro, North Carolina.

Nathan Ingham studies writing at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. His work has appeared in Right Hand Pointing and Breadcrumb Scabs. He has been writing poetry and short fiction since third grade, when his first poetic metaphor portrayed the brisk winds of fall as velociraptors.

Daniel Gallik has mulitple short stories and poems all over the internet, and in college journals. Yes, The Hiram Poetry Review, Parabola, The Hawaii Review and many other publications include his work. His first novel, A Story Of Dumb Fate, an insane story of a child with disabilities can be purchased at local
bookstores and publishamerica.com .

Bl Pawelek has been to a million places in life and forgotten most of them. But he is here now and trying.

Michael Berger is a San Francisco-based writer, blogger and fiction editor for www.splintergeneration.com. He is a regular contributor to The Rumpus and The Nervous Breakdown. A former civil rights law clerk, he now works at a bookstore, volunteers at a post-industrial fruit farm and is working on various unfinished novels about love and the apocalypse.

John Minichillo's work has appeared in Mississippi Review, Third Coast, Smokelong Quarterly, Necessary Fiction, Wigleaf, decomP, and lots of other very cool places. He has work forthcoming at FRiGG, Emprise Review, Triple-Quick Fiction, and Hint Fiction: an Anthology of Stories in Twenty-Five Words or Fewer. He lives in Nashville with his wife and son where they promote the writing of fiction whether there's time or not.

Maggie Eismeier is a freshman at Whitman College. She enjoys math, writing, coffee, and has 16 books above her that aren't for school.

Connley (Lee) Landers suffered a skeet shooting head injury and lost his cerebellum. Afterward, he wrote and won an award for his novel, Catethics, which proves he’d overthought previous work. Using only his medulla oblongata, had stories published in Rope and Wire Magazine, Darkest Before the Dawn, The Horror-Zine, Houston Literary Review, Metazen, Static Movement, Perceptions, Nexus, and Slushpile. Lee is looking for representation for his story collection, novel and his new memoir, Gray Matter, Don’t Matter. Can be reached with simple, large print words at connleylanders@yahoo.com.

Table of Contents

Issue 20

April Michelle Bratten is a writer currently locked away in the Badlands of North Dakota. She co-edits the online literary journal Up the Staircase.

Steve Subrizi is a co-host of the poetry mic at Cantab Lounge in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has performed his work in such other venues as Mercury
Cafe in Denver and The Green Mill in Chicago, and his work has appeared in *PANK Magazine* and *Mad Swirl*. He blogs drafts and the occasional vegan recipe at http://ThePrettiestGirlInSchool.blogspot.com/.

Kim Loomis-Bennett was born and educated in the Pacific Northwest where she still resides with her husband and two children. She earned her MA in Creative Writing at Wilkes University and is working toward her MFA with a concentration in poetry. She works as an adjunct writing instructor at Centralia College East in Morton, Washington. Her poems have appeared in **The November 3rd Club Journal** and **The Legendary**. She is currently seeking publication for her first collection of poems, SOILED DOVES, a historical sequence centered on a 1910 Seattle brothel. You can reach her at kim.loomisbennett@gmail.com For more of her writing visit her blog at kimloomisbennett.tumblr.com.

Danielle Blasko, a Detroit native currently enjoying a freelance writing life on an east coast beach, is a low-residency MFA student at the University of New Orleans. Her poetry has appeared in AIM Magazine, Qarrtsiluni, Ellipsis 2009, and Moose & Pussy Magazine. Lately, she's been reviewing poetry books and writing a monthly fashion blog for Eidia Lush shoe company.

Tyler Bigney is a writer from Nova Scotia, Canada. His poems, prose, and short stories have appeared in Poetry New Zealand, Underground Voices, Nerve Cowboy, among others.

Nathan Zackroff is a young writer from Denver Colorado. He is currently attending school at the University of Clorado in Boulder. His work has yet to be published outside of local publications but hopes that his writing career will soon take off. His work is unique and challenging. He is simple in form, yet digs deeply into the subconscious. His writing is meant to evoke emotion as if it were knowledge itself. You can reach him by email at nathanzackroff@yahoo.com or look him up on facebook.

Robert James Russell co-founded the indie comic book publisher Saint James Comics in 2009 (www.WhoisSaintJames.com). He has had work featured by *Year Zero Writers*, *Like Birds Lit* and *Leaves & Flowers*, and is currently working on his debut novel, excerpts of which appear on his website (www.robertjamesrussell.com). Robert lives in Detroit with his dog, Chewie.

William D. Hicks is a writer who lives in Chicago, Illinois by himself (any offers?). Contrary to popular belief, he is not related to the famous comedian Bill Hicks (though he’s just as funny in his own right). Hicks will someday publish his memoirs, but most likely they will be about Bill Hicks’ life. His poetry has appeared in Horizon Magazine, Breadcrumb Sins, Inwood Indiana Literary Magazine, The Short Humour Site (UK), The Four Cornered Universe, Save the Last Stall for Me and Mosaic. His cover art will appear on Anti-Poetry and Sketch.

Nathan Patton keeps it real, but also fictionalizes it. He lives in the Boston Mountains with his wife and guitar. His work has been published by Arcana, Speakeasy, and Young American Comics, and has been hung on many refrigerators.

Matthew Zanoni Müller was born in Bochum, Germany and grew up in Eugene, Oregon and upstate New York. He received his BA in Creative Writing and Literature from Emerson college and holds an MFA from Warren Wilson's MFA Program for Writers.

Jeffrey S. Callico hails from Atlanta. Someday he plans to live somewhere in Maine but until then keeps driving around town looking for a place to park. His most recent poetry chapbook, Rough Travel, was published by Graffiti Kolkata Press in July 2010.

Thomas Kearnes is a 34-year-old author from East Texas. His fiction has appeared in Eclectica, Night Train, Pindeldyboz, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Pedestal, Thieves Jargon, wigleaf, JMWW Journal and numerous other publications. Born on America's bicentennial, he is an atheist and an Eagle Scout.

Todd Cantrell lives in Lithia Springs, GA outside Atlanta. His short fiction has appeared in Pif Magazine and The Collagist, where he won the 2009 Flash Fiction contest. His work is forthcoming in Twelve Stories.

Andrew Post was born in Erie, PA in 1984. He lives in Minnesota with his wife and two dogs. He is currently seeking representation for his first novel. Besides writing, he enjoys wandering aimlessly around department stores and frequenting the local movie theater as much as his bank account can withstand. You can read his exhaustively dorky blog at: http://andrewpost.blogspot.com/ He also offers a free, serialized novel at http://issuu.com/andrewpost/docs/onebyone_001.

Elizabeth Zale is a stewardess from the woods outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She has pieces currently appearing in *The Iconoclast*. Her
hand-made chapbook, *nest of teens*, is available out of her bedroom closet. Her chapbook, *did i find you or you find me, *is forthcoming one
winter.

Leo Lichy lives in the US. His work has appeared in numerous magazines.

Suany Cañarte is an aspiring Speech-Language Pathologist. Her work has been previously published in the 2010 Prism Literary Journal and in Yesteryear Fiction. She also writes and draws a webcomic named Pyraliss, found at **www.Pyraliss.com**.

James Valvis lives in Washington State with his wife and daughter. His poems or stories have appeared in 5 AM, Cider Press Review, Confrontation, Eclipse, Midwest Quarterly, Rattle, Slipstream, Southern Indiana Review, and are forthcoming in ART TIMES, Arts & Letters, Clackamas, Cloudbank, Crab Creek Review, Gargoyle, Hanging Loose, New York Quarterly, Nimrod, Potomac Review, Red Rock Review, South Carolina Review, and elsewhere. He will be the featured poet in Re)verb 7. In addition to being a multiple Pushcart nominee, a novelette was a Million Writers Notable Story in 2005.

K. Keith sometimes stands on her head for a different perspective. She studies creative writing (and what her professors tell her to) at Arizona State University.

Table of Contents

Issue 19

Hugh Fox, Professor Emeritus, Michigan State University, was a founding member of the Pushcart Prize and was also on the founding board of COSMEP. In the 60s, 70s, and 80s, he edited the avant garde litmag Ghost Dance. He is one of the most widely published poets in America. Hugh was born in Chicago in 1932. He spent his childhood studying violin, piano, composition and opera with his Viennese teacher Zerlina Muhlman Metzger. He received a M.A. degree in English from Loyola University in Chicago and his Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign). He met his first wife, a Peruvian woman named Lucia Ungaro de Zevallos, while at Urbana-Campaign and was a Professor of American Literature from 1958-1968 at Loyola University in Los Angeles. He became a Professor in the Department of American Thought and Language at Michigan State University in 1968 and remained there until he retired in 1999. It was at MSU that he met his second wife Nona Grimes. They were married in 1970. He received Fulbright Professsorships at the University of Hermosillo in Mexico in 1961, the Instituto Pedagogico and Universidad Catlica in Caracas from 1964 to 1966, and at the University of Santa Catarina in Brazil from 1978-1980. He met his third wife Maria Bernadete Costa in Brazil in 1978. They've been married for 28 years. He studied Latin American literature at the University of Buenos Aires on and OAS grant and spent a year as an archaeologist in the Atacama Desert in Chile in 1986.

John C. Mannone is a widely published award-winning poet nominated for the 2009 Pushcart Prize and for the 2010 Rhysling Poetry Award. His poetry and short fiction appear in numerous literary and speculative fiction journals such as Pirene’s Fountain, Aethlon, Lobster Cult, Eclectic Flash, Iodine Poetry Journal, The Linnet’s Wings, Enchanted Conversation, and Astropoetica. Professor Mannone is a nuclear consultant and teaches college physics in east Tennessee.

Pushcart Prize nominee Ash Krafton's work has appeared in several journals, including Niteblade, Ghostlight, and Silver Blade. Ms. Krafton resides in the heart of the Pennsylvania coal region and is an active member of Pennwriters, a national writers group. She's co-editor of the Pennwriters Area 6 blog at http://pennwritersarea6.wordpress.com) and also maintains her own (http://ash-krafton.livejournal.com).

Ron Evans Once in a while, there is a man for our times. Ron Evans is not that man. In fact, Ron does not even own a watch, preferring to borrow other peoples’ time when they’re ahead of schedule. These days, Ron does surface once per week to bestow music and spoken word upon an unsuspecting public through his radio show Needles & Threads (Mondays @ 9 pm, www.canoefm.com), and pens the occasional poetry collection every five years or so, depending on how sober the Muse is…

Norton Loomer is a high school English teacher. He has written many nonfiction pieces based on surprising encounters in the classroom. These pieces are gathering virtual dust until he puts them into a book. His short fiction has been published in many places.

Eric G. Müller is a musician, teacher and writer. He has written two novels, Rites of Rock (Adonis Press 2005) and Meet Me at the Met (Plain View Press, 2010), as well as a collection of poetry, Coffee on the Piano for You (Adonis Press, 2008), and numerous short stories that have been published here and there. www.ericgmuller.com

Annam Manthiram is the author of two novels, The Goju Story and After the Tsunami, and a short story collection (Dysfunction), which received Honorable
Mention in Leapfrog Press’ 2010 fiction contest. Her work has recently appeared in the Chicago Quarterly Review, the Cream City Review, the Concho River Review, Straylight, Blink | Ink, and the Grey Sparrow Journal and is forthcoming in Pank, Smokelong Quarterly, the Camroc Press Review, and the anthologies, Daily Flash: 365 Days of Flash Fiction (Pill Hill Press) and Caught by Darkness (Static Movement). Annam’s fiction has also been nominated for the PEN/O’Henry Prize and inclusion in the Best American Short Stories anthology. A graduate of the M.A. Writing program at the University of Southern California, Ms. Manthiram resides in New Mexico with her husband, Alex, and son, Sathya. Her website is AnnamManthiram.com.

YumYum Reed gets drunk in closets and pees in the glass afterwords while waiting for her mother to leave the house of her secret lover.

Wayne Scheer has locked himself in a room with his computer and turtle since his retirement. (Wayne's, not the turtle's.) To keep from going back to work, he's published hundreds of short stories, essays and poems, including, Revealing Moments, a collection of twenty-four flash stories, available at
http://www.pearnoir.com/thumbscrews.htm. He's been nominated for four Pushcart Prizes and a Best of the Net. Wayne lives in Atlanta with his wife and can be contacted at wvscheer@aol.com.

Alexandra Seidel likes writing scary stories and poems. Incidentally, she also likes writing funny stories and poems; in the grander concept of things, that surely makes sense (she was born and grew up in a city that is home to a museum exploring sepulchral art and culture; surely that will do to explain something). Alexandra’s scary and/or funny writing has appeared or is forthcoming in 'Enchanted Conversation', 'Sybil's Garage', 'Star*Line' and other places
that don't do mainstream; her mainstream stuff can be found in 'decomP', 'Word Riot', 'Monkeybicycle', yes, and others. Feel free to check out Alexandra’s blog at: *http://tigerinthematchstickbox.blogspot.com/*

Tara Nicole Tara Nicole is a 23 year old student living in Lansdale, PA. Lately, she has been writing poetry and performing it around Philadelphia. Her work is forthcoming in *Word Riot*.

Jamie Hershing lives and writes in Vienna, Austria. Apart from working on a second volume of minifiction with James Stanson, Hershing dabbles in journalism. He claims to have produced the first European academic study on Latin American 'minificción' – a probable fallacy that he will nevertheless repeat until proven otherwise. He is currently conducting doctoral research on the same topic. Visit his website here: www.mini-fiction.com.

James Stanson lives and writes in Vienna, Austria. He is currently working on his first novel, as well as a second volume of minifiction with Jamie Hershing. He has worked in the boreal forests of the Canadian north, served in a foreign army, and claims to have a rudimentary knowledge of things past – as evidenced by a piece of a paper from an accredited university. Visit his website here: www.mini-fiction.com.

Mike Perkins is a 52 year old father of four, two still at home, residing in Columbia, Missouri, with his wife. He teaches at a local liberal arts college.

Brett Fogarty went to Emerson College and soon afterward disappeared into Asia for a year and a half of his life. He can found during the normal persons living week taking naps in the employee restroom and drinking ludicrous amounts of coffee. The best way to reach him though, is through here- brettfogarty@gmail.com.

Maggie Lawson is a 42 year old serial breeder with more baggage than offspring. In between birthin' and breakdowns she writes, primarily to vent her dark side and prevent a reoccurance of 'the incident'. Maggie is from Christchurch, New Zealand and started writing in March 2009. She would like to thank the folks at Scrawl for introducing her to organic writing. It is only due to their help and support that she is able to take her shit and recycle it into something useful.

Liz Haigh lives in Cheshire in the UK. She works at a university library which is her dream job because she loves books. Most of her published work thus far has been in the form of book reviews which have appeared in Red Magazine, Woman and Home and Prima. She recently had a very interesting article published in Gardener’s Weekly all about Garden Sheds.

Sasha Geffen is a rising fourth year at the University of Chicago, where she studies English lit and creative writing. She is originally from Boston but is currently discovering Washington, DC, which has the most statues of any city she's ever known. She blogs sometimes at sylmatil.tumblr.com.

Allen Mendenhall is a writer and an attorney. He lives in Marietta, Georgia, with his wife, Giuliana. Visit his website at AllenMendenhall.com.

Sergio Ortiz is a retired educator, poet, and photographer. He has a B.A. in English literature, and aM.A. in philosophy. Flutter Pressreleased his debut chapbook, At the Tail End of Dusk, in October of 2009. Ronin Press released his second chapbook,topography of a desire, in May of 2010. Avantacular Press released his first photographic chapbook: TheSugarcane Harvest, May 2010. His thirdchapbook: Wet Stones and Bedbugs in my Mattress, will be released by FlutterPress in November of 2010. He was recently published, or is forthcoming in: Carcinogenic Poetry,Perceptions Magazine of the Arts 2010, BorderSenses, Offcourse Literary Journal,Cavalier Literary Couture, and Touch: The Journal of Healing.

Arielle Lindstrom has performed a handful of times before a handful of people, normally in kitchenettes or corner cafes, once in New York City. Her work has been published by Haggard & Halloo Publications, Wild Leaf Press and Chronogram. Though originally from a white house in Cornwall-on-Hudson, Arielle Lindstrom is presently living and studying in New Paltz, NY. She wants your letters.

Kaitlin Monier is a creative writing major at Seton Hill University in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. She likes when it rains and the worms wiggle onto the sidewalk because she enjoys holding and naming them.

Ricky Garni is a graphic designer and musician who gave up his instruments a long time ago and then sadly decided to look at pictures of the sorts of instruments that he used to own on the Web and wept inside with longing. Now he writes poetry for various publications and tries not to weep with longing so much.

Dennis Mahagin is a writer from Washington state who enjoys Frisbee, and barking at the moon. His poetry collection, “Grand Mal,” is coming soon.

Jeremy Grace grew up in Dublin, California. He now lives, writes, and studies in San Francisco. He has had three previous publications with the
University of San Francisco, including two in their literary magazine *The Ignatian.*

Table of Contents

Issue 18

Megan Falley is a member of the Intangible Collective and is currently holding yard sales in an effort to move to the city with her Chihuahua named Taco. She has competed on the collegiate level with the SUNY New Paltz Slam Team (2006-2010) and the adult level with the Intangible Team (2010). She has written two chapbooks, Cricket Fuel (2008) and Autobiographical, Erotic Non-fiction (2010). Her writing has appeared in Static and Other Lungless Things, published by Penmanship books, and The Stones Throw Review. She is a professional blogger for the SUNY study abroad program, and really enjoys the movie Harold & Maude. www.meganfalley.tumblr.com

Lynn Alexander produces Full Of Crow, Fashion For Collapse, Blink Ink Online, and some other stuff that all starts to run together after awhile. She produces and distributes zines and chapbooks and recently began hosting Crow Hour, with featured poets and sporadic open mic sessions. Her audio cd "Rage Against Suburbia" is in the works. She lives on a lonely mountain but honestly misses the sounds of traffic, and is most definitely becoming her mother.

Wonder Dave is a writer and performer from Minneapolis. Dave is a big fan of comic books and laughing at himself. In 2007 he was a recipient of the Jerome Foundation's Verve grant for spoken word artists. He also has a 17 year old cat named Jack. This September he will be embarking on a poetry tour taking him from Minnesota to San Francisco CA. Dave is stoked to be featured in The Legendary. Find out more about him online at www.wonderdave.net

Stacy Lynn Mar is a confessional poet who also enjoys collage art, tasty coffee drinks and chick lit novels. She has been published widely in small press, some litarary magazines including All Things Girl, LIT UP Magazine, and The Beat. Stacy is also the author of five collections of poetry and is founder of a small publishing press, Muse Cafe Publications. Despite what her mother says, Stacy thinks it's perfectly fine to talk to strangers so you can find her at www.stacylynnmar.com

Paul Tuthill lives in Portland, OR, where he partakes in the traditional Portland activities of drinking beer and harshly judging people's attire. He has a cat, Janie, who does not judge. He can be found playing guitar and singing his bawdry songs in the band Camaro Island, who will rock you in your pants when you aren’t looking.

Michael C. Keith is the author of numerous books, articles, and stories. He teaches communication at Boston College. http://www.michaelckeith.com/

Armel Dagorn was born and grew up in France, and has been living in Cork, Ireland for the past few years. He reads and writes in is adopted language, English, whenever he gets a break from whatever activity brings bread, butter and chocolate to his table.

Rajat Chaudhuri is a free thinker born in middle India, now practising in Calcutta, India’s cultural Mecca. Highbrow print journals like Indian Literature, online SF mags like The Scientific Indian and popular dailies -- The Statesman, Telegraph and Times of India have helped put his writer’s act together. He has published one novel, Amber Dusk and is now playing ping pong with his editor with the MS of another.

Nathalie Molina has decided the word that she most enjoys of late is futurist. She's a linguaphile and an avid traveler, a consummate modernist, admirer of Kali, motorcycles, clean lines and Sufi Dancemeditation.

Amy Burns is originally from Birmingham, Alabama but makes her home in Scotland where she is a PhD student at the University of Glasgow. Her poetry
and prose has been published in print in *Biscuit Short Story Winners' Anthology 2009: The Possibility of Bears*, *Let’s Pretend (InFidelity) Anthology*,* Green Muse*, *QWF*, *unbound press* and online at *971 Menu*, *Clapboard House*, *From Glasgow to Saturn, Brown Williams Journal*. She has worked as an editor/publisher of the literary journal *unbound press* and is now the editor of *Spilling Ink Review*.

Olly Bryan I am in the fucking poem!

Aldo Amparan studies English and American Literature in the University of Texas at El Paso. His work has appeared in Rio Grande Review, Breadcrumb Scabs, and Haggard and Halloo, among other publications. More on him can be found at: http://amparan.weebly.com

Tyler Bigney is a writer from Nova Scotia, Canada. His poems, prose, and short stories have appeared in Poetry New Zealand, Underground Voices, Nerve Cowboy, among others.

Norah Piehl is a freelance writer, editor, and book reviewer. Her essays and reviews have been published in Skirt! Magazine, on National Public Radio, in Brain, Child Magazine, and in print anthologies. Norah's short fiction has appeared in Shaking Like a Mountain and is forthcoming in Literary Mama.

Michael Spring is an occasional poet who lives and works in London, for a small corporate design and marketing company. He has some fiction coming up
later in the year in the Fast Forward anthology, and when he has time, he reviews drama and the arts for London's Fringe Report.

Stephen N. Dethrage is a rising sophomore at the University of Alabama. His major is Journalism, and his minor is Creative Writing. This is his first submission to a literary publication. On campus, his work has been nominated for the Thomas Wolfe Award for overall best Undergraduate Creative Writing, and the Don Hendrie, Jr Award for Fiction. As is often the case, without the love and encouragement of family, friends, professors and a lover, he would be nothing.

Ben Smith is a bit of a filthy cunt. During the day he is a working-class chump and at night he drinks beer, annoys his missus with dreams of being a genius and blogs sleaze on the Internet. It's a shame really, cause i think without all the faux pas and extremities he would probably be a fairly nice guy. If he could just get over himself long enough to relax and stop pushing it all so hard. He lives in Melbourne, Australia, and is working on a new book of poetry called "Horror Sleaze and Trash."

Melanie Rasch is a student, a writer, and an athlete. She goes to Gustavus Adolphus College in the middle of nowhere Minnesota, where she is acquiring her BA in English and a funny accent where her o’s seem to be longer and everything ends in ‘eh’? She has been previously published in the on-campus feminist literary magazine, Heterodoxy, and she has worked as an art and poetry editor assistant in the Gustavus literary magazine, Firethorne. Born in Korea and raised in a bunch of different Midwest cities, Melanie resides in Cincinnati with her parents and little brother when she’s not in school.

Table of Contents

Issue 17

Amy David is a poet and performer in Chicago, IL. She is terrified of topiary and Shannen Doherty.

Emily Sean is a Chicago based writer and artist whose work has appeared in a variety of publications and small journals.

Elizabeth Ashe received an MFA in Creative Writing from Chatham University. When not writing poetry, Ashe is a visual artist. She was an Assistant Editor for *Fourth River. *Her work has been previously published by the *Synergy Project,* *Poetry on Buses* organized by 4Culture, *Insert <Content>*, *Open
Wide *and *No Teeth. She is moving to Baltimore this summer, after hyper-artistic detours in Italy and France.

Khary Jackson is a performance poet and playwright. A Detroit native, he has competed nationally for three years, making individual finals each year, as well as winning the 2009 National Poetry Slam with the St Paul team. But few of us really care about that. He's a little weird, but rest assured, there's a method to the way he stares into your house.

Elliot Andreopoulos likes to write short stories and listen to Franz Ferdinand, but not in that order. He recently chipped his front tooth.

Daniel Romo teaches high school Creative Writing, and lives in Long Beach, CA. He has recently been published in Forge, Monkeybicycle, Underground Voices Magazine, and Poetic Diversity. He is an MFA candidate in poetry at Antioch University, and thinks gray sky the utmost inspiration. More of his writing can be found at Peyote Soliloquies.

Kirsty Logan is sorry to say that this poem is a true story. Find her online at kirstylogan.com.

Thom Young is a writer from Texas. His work has appeared in Thieves Jargon, Blowback, Writers' Bloc, Dagger, and other sundry places.

Abby Rotstein went to UC Davis' writing program several years ago and now lives an absurdly normal life in Las Vegas, NV. She has work published or forthcoming in Word Riot, Fresh Yarn, The Battered Suitcase, and Foliate Oak.

Erica Settino holds a Bachelor's degree in Psychology, and is currently completing her MFA in Creative Writing at National University. Presently, she works in animal welfare, rescue, and advocacy, and has been teaching yoga for over ten years. Her work and practice fuel her writing and creative process with passion and determination.

Sivakami Velliangiri lives in Chennai, with her son, daughter, husband and Jade,a parakeet. She enjoys going to poetry readings, poets’ meets and cultural evenings,and is always on the lookout for a new voice. She is the moderator of a yahoo group, soulflash@yahoogroups.com

Sean Ulman works in the summers in Alaska as a technician for a shorebird study. In the winter he lives in Delaware where he writes about Alaska. He has a new poem up at Willows Wept Review. He is a Stonecoast MFA graduate.

Garrett Socol's fiction has been published in The Barcelona Review, 3:AM Magazine, Pequin, Perigee, Paradigm, PANK, Hobart, Ghoti, Ducts, Ascent Aspirations, Underground Voices, JMWW Journal, Foundling Review, kill author, Bartleby Snopes, Emprise Review, nth Position and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. His plays have been produced at the Berkshire Theatre Festival and the Pasadena Playhouse. For 15 years, he created and produced television shows for the E! Network including “Talk Soup” and “The Gossip Show.”

Greta Bolger is a dedicated epistolarian, who still maintains postal correspondence with old friends, along with a lifetime archive of letters. Her poems and prose have appeared in The Chimaera, Thema, Third Coast, The Mom Egg, Juice Box, and other print and online journals.

Ryan Burden is a computer security analyst in Charleston, South Carolina. He spends most of his time at work surreptitiously writing, and is annoyed when people ask him what his hobbies are. He has work currently online at the Quills Quarterly, Wilde Oats, and Writers' Bloc Magazine.

Danny Johnson bio coming soon!

Catherine Batac Walder’s writing has recently appeared in Demons of the New Year, Philippines Graphic, Ruin and Resolve Anthology, Eyeshot, and Expanded Horizons. She blogs at http://deckshoes.wordpress.com.

Judy Swann's work has been published in Lilliput, Thema, Apparatus, Tilt Poetry Magazine, and other venues, both print and online. She is an Iowan living in upstate New York, a tap dancer, a soccer mom, etc.

PD Lyons newest book Caribu&Sister Stones published by Lapwing Press Belfast click for preview:
http://books.google.ie/books?id=m4v3dIprgUIC&printsec=frontcover&client=firefox-a&source=gbs_navlinks_s#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Patrick Trotti has previously been published in Glass Cases, Six Sentences, Eskimo Pie and Down in the Dirt.

Tricia Friedman has lived in China, Thailand, and has recently returned to the wonderful world of New Jersey after a stint volunteering with Peace Corps in Morocco. She tries not too eat an embarrassing amount of cheese, loves running, and would like to one Sunday be able to read the entire *NY Times* before noon.

J.J. Steinfeld Canadian fiction writer, poet, and playwright J. J. Steinfeld lives hidden away on Prince Edward Island, where he is patiently waiting for Godot's arrival and a phone call from Kafka. While waiting, he has published two novels, Our Hero in the Cradle of Confederation (Pottersfield Press) and Word Burials (Crossing Chaos Enigmatic Ink), nine short story collections, the previous three by Gaspereau Press - Should the Word Hell Be Capitalized?, Anton Chekhov Was Never in Charlottetown, and Would You Hide Me? - and two poetry collections, An Affection for Precipices (Serengeti Press) and Misshapenness (Ekstasis Editions). His short stories and poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and periodicals internationally, and over forty of his one-act plays and a handful of his full-length plays have been performed in Canada and the United States.

Lindsay Marrianna Walker is a Ph.D. candidate at the Center for Writers in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. A finalist for the 2009 Walt Whitman Award for her
manuscript, *the Josephine letters*, she has served as Poetry Editor for the literary journal, *Juked*, since 2005. Her poems are recent or forthcoming, in: *The African American Review, Valley Voices, West Branch, *and other journals. She has published several stories, essays, and plays, and in 2009 she won the Center for Writers Joan Johnson Award for Fiction.

Table of Contents

Issue 16

Jennifer Lawson Zepeda has been a content writer for over twelve years, writing corporate success stories, speeches, marketing collateral, direct response scripts for 60-second radio ads, and press releases. Her focus revolves around cross-border relations, and socio-political stories of Hispanics. While living in Tijuana she published several short stories, poetry, flash fiction and essays until her husband became the focus of a group of organized criminals. The couple was forced to flee Mexico and request asylum for her husband in the U.S. Since then, she has been marketing her personal story in her book, Save Me Salvador. Her work has been published in: Moondance, Boom! For real - Better Non Sequitur, SoMA Literary Review, Events Quarterly, Excess Compassion and Eclectica Magazine.

Jess Dunn has been writing since she was a wee thing, who had still not quite mastered how to end an "s." She received her undergraduate education at Goucher College and her M.A. in Clinical Psychology from Towson University. She is currently a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University. Although she went to school for psychology and got a “real job,” she continues to write compulsively. Besides writing and subversively influencing the still malleable minds of undergraduates, her interests include radical mental health, outsider art, cephalopods, and zombie hordes. She currently lives in Baltimore, MD with her partner and her cat.

Zachary Whalen is a watcher of ceiling fans. He has a blog (zacharywhalen.blogspot.com).

Jay Coral currently lives in Los Angeles and occasionally blogs at http://bluejayeye.blogspot.com/. He likes to stare on an empty fish tank.

Lena Judith Drake is the editor-in-chief of *Breadcrumb* *Scabs*magazine (http://www.breadcrumbscabs.com). More information and previous publications
can be found at her personal website (http://lenajudith.sedentarygecko.com).

John Logan is a writer living in North Carolina. His stories have appeared on The Moonlit Path, The Horror Garage, and in the print anthologies The Horror Library Vol. 1and Dark Distortions Vol.1.

I.G. Rehorek lives in South Australia, married 2 kids 1 wife 1 tenor sax 1 alto 2 sopranos 1 trumpet lots of recorders 1 small dog teaches printmaking/art
history/mural painting at Aboriginal college performance poet stage name avalanche shoe size 8 planet of origin Earth, apparently, specifically the
Northern Hemisphere, Central Europe, City of Prague.

David Rasey is a writer living in the beautiful forested hills of upstate New York, but many of his stories are set in his birthplace amid the endless corn fields of northeastern Ohio. He has been writing for most of his life and currently facilitates a writers critique group. He has published in other web publications, including Clockwise Cat, The Monsters Next Door, Liquid Imagination, Literary Fever, and Black Lantern Publishing.

Hobie Anthony is a current MFA student in Queens University of Charlotte's low-residency program. He lives in Portland, OR, where he waits for rain. He can be found in a number of print and online journals. He blogs about flash fiction and other stuff at redneckzen.blogspot.com

Lindsay Miller won the Denver Citywide Spelling Bee in seventh grade, kicking off an illustrious life of being a total word nerd. She studied creative writing at the Denver School of the Arts and the University of Arizona, is a Founding Mama of the Tucson Poetry Slam, and has never really mastered the art of the indoor voice.

Tom Fillion is a graduate of the University of South Florida. He teaches mathematics and coaches golf and tennis at a Tampa public high school. His short stories have appeared in many online publications. For a complete list please visit: http://dreammechanic.blogspot.com/ He has stories forthcoming at Eskimo Pie, Danse Macabre, Writers’ Bloc (Rutgers University-Camden), SubtleTea, Houston Literary Review, Cantaraville, and Rose & Thorn.

David Backer was born in 1984 in Danbury, Connecticut. He edits fictiondaily.org, an aggregator site for online fiction.

Kenneth Pobo is reading a book of stories he likes called Tunneling to the Center of the Earth by Kevin Wilson. He does a radio show each Saturday called Obscure Oldies at WDNR.com from 6-8pm EST. He was born in the 1950s, reborn in the 1960s. Words he likes include: Etruscan and origami. Sometimes he wants to be as over the top as Richard Harris singing "MacArthur Park."

Michael Andreoni. After several decades of being referred to as a sarcastic nit, Michael Andreoni decided to revel in it. Dogs bitten, children frightened. He's available for parties if you're not particular about keeping your friends. His stories and essays have appeared in several publications, including Iconoclast, the Rambler, Allegory, Dana Literary Revue

Steve Frederick bio coming soon!

Seamus Watson is black, but he was adopted by redheads. One woman would not be able to keep him sane, so he has two. He looks great in a kilt.

Paul Rehac is a writer of fiction: flash, short, and longer forms. He once wrote a poem but stopped shortly after receiving the restraining order. His flash
fiction piece _the chance_ is set to appear in the upcoming "Voices from the Herd" Buffalo Anthology and he has read this and other works at literary gatherings around WNY, including: Empire State College Literary Cafe, The Screening Room, and for the 2009 Infringement Festival. He writes horror/fantasy fiction about ghastly monsters and alien landscapes that reflect the realities of the absurd world in which we all live.

Maike Braun was born in Germany, studied in US and England, married an American, and is now living in Hamburg, Germany. Writing short stories in German and in English.

Nik Houser's work has previously appeared in Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, Best American Fantasy, Gargoyle, Greatest Uncommon Denominator, and Inkwater Ink. He grew up in the south, fled east for school as soon as he was able, migrated west soon thereafter, and is currently plotting his escape from Silicon Valley. His website, nikhouser.com, has plenty of cartoons, free fiction, and handlebar mustaches for every occasion.

Kristi Peterson Schoonover ’s fiction appears in *The Adirondack Review, Barbaric Yawp, Morpheus Tales, Crimson Highway, Citizen Culture, New Witch
Magazine, Spilt Milk, Toasted Cheese, *and a host of others*.* Her collection of ghost stories—*Admit One: Tales from Haunted Disney World*—is due from Pandora Ink books later in 2010. She also hosts the paranormal fiction segment on *The Ghostman & Demon Hunter Show* broadcast,
www.ghostanddemon.com, and lives with a paranormal investigator who recently practiced a voodoo ritual on national television.

Table of Contents

Issue 15

Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz worked as a writer for porn for one year, after it became the only job she could land after she graduated from NYU. Her family's annual Holiday Newsletter had to be very carefully worded that year, but at least she got a book out of it: HOT TEEN SLUT, which is being re-issued by Write Bloody Publishing in Spring / Summer 2010. For more information on Cristin and the non-porn related writing she has since published, please visit her website at: www.aptowicz.com.

xTx has only recently allowed herself to feel comfortable being called a writer even thought she has been doing it for over half her life. She is pleased and thankful to have been published in places like Thieves Jargon, Cherry Bleeds, decomP, Dogzplot, Zygote, Rumble and others. She is going to switch from third to first person now. If you have read this far, you must really be committed to finding out more about me so you should Google me…I have a really neat blog.

Anna Reed is an architect and writer who lives in Berkeley, California. Reed’s writing has appeared, or is forthcoming, in journals such as Alimentum, BluePrintReview, CleanSheets, The East Bay Express, Exquisite Corpse, monkeybicycle, Pindeldyboz, Rivets, The SoMa Literary Review, Verbicide and Waccamaw Journal. Her feature story, "Sleeping Around Craigslist" was #4 on AlterNet for 2009 and drew over half a million hits (the same year the nation was introduced to Sarah Palin). Reed is the road grunt, curator, creative director and CEO of Speckled Egg Studios which designs and publishes poetry broadsheets and produces literary readings throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Lately she has been designing animated poetry broadsheets. You can find both Anna and Speckled Egg Studios on Facebook.

Megan Thoma is a writer and a teacher living in Providence, RI. She has work published in The Little White Poetry Journal and McSweeney's Internet Tendency. She is also the current Providence and NorthBeast Individual Grand Slam Champion. Her students don't believe teachers are real people who "drive cars and have solo dance parties in their basement." She does both these things. She is very, very real.

Nicole Homer’s work can found in Not a Muse: The Inner Lives of Women (New Haven Press, 2009) and His Rib: Poems, Stories & Essays By Her (Penmanship Books, 2007), and featured on the IndieFeed Performance Poetry Podcast (performancepoetry.indiefeed.com). She currently lives in New Jersey where she makes wallets out of duct tape and counts deer corpses on her way to work.

Shannon Quinn's work has appeared in numerous literary magazines. She has also written for one of Canada's national newspapers and produced radio features for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. She hangs out with a lot of cats. Literally.

Greg Gerke lives in Brooklyn. His work has or will appear in Mississippi Review, Gargoyle, Rosebud, Fourteen Hills, Night Train and others. There’s Something Wrong With Sven, a book of short fiction has been published by Blaze Vox Books. His website is www.greggerke.com

Ethan Swage dares hurricanes to show him their "real stuff", even if just in his imagination. Recently, he has taken to late-night rooftop lounging, peering down on humanity in its most vulnerable state—drunk and staggering home from local bars—and taking toll of the things people would refrain from doing if only they knew they were being watched. His work has appeared in Flashshot and The Legendary.

Jon Borcherding has been published by Oak Bend Review, Weave Magazine, and Ouroboros Review. He lives in Tacoma Washington with his wife, his dogs,
and a ridiculous number of acoustic guitars and small watercraft.

Josh Goller sprouted in Wisconsin soil, but the winds carried him to the gloom and damp of the Pacific Northwest. He now resides in Oregon where he enjoys driving through fog and listening to raccoons fight on his roof. His favorite color is not visible to the human eye.

S.P. Flannery was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and now resides in Madison. His poetry has appeared in Random Acts of Writing, The Alembic, Calliope Nerve, The Blotter and Leaf Garden.

Griswold Frye is the pseudonym of a Philadelphia poet who would rather that her children and fellow members of Congress not be aware of her erotic writing.

Sarah Frank Reichard lives in Chicago with her husband, Patrick, and an ever-growing collection of pizza stones in lieu of pets. Her poetry, fiction, and interviews have appeared in Chopper Journal, Otium<http://otium.uchicago.edu>, and Prick of the Spindle <http://www.prickofthespindle.com>. She also writes regularly for nerve.com. You can read more of her work at www.sarahreichard.com.

Michael Cuglietta is a writer living in Orlando, FL. He works as a salesman and looks foward to three day weekends, paid vacations, sick days, hurricane days and any natural disasters and/or diseases that allow him to take a day off. Most recently his work has appeared in The Chiron Review, Word Riot and Gloom Cupboard.

Antonia Clark works for a medical software company in Burlington, Vermont. A former creative writing instructor, she is currently co-administrator of an online poetry forum, The Waters. Her poems have appeared in The Chimaera, The 2River View, The Orange Room Review, The Pedestal Magazine, Rattle, and elsewhere. She loves French food and wine, and plays French café music on a sparkly purple accordion.

Mary Cassidy lives and writes in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, where it snows nine months of the year.

Matthew B. Dexter is a board-certified American anomaly living in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. When Matthew is not writing he is most likely drinking cerveza by the ocean. This lunatic gringo enjoys beautiful beaches, breathtaking views, reading, and being inspired. But never candlelit dinners on the beach. He’s afraid of Pirates.

Shokry Eldaly is a U.S. born, Dominican-Egyptian poet, a Hunter College graduate and a Goddard College M.F.A. recipient. He is an Aquellos Fellow, a recipient of the Blanche Colton Williams Fellowship, a 2010 Pushcart Nominee and was awarded the AALC's Naguib Mahfouz award. He has been published internationally in publications including Forge Journal, Acentos Review, Neon, Quay, Domino, Sixers Review and Fut'uro.

Stephen Jarrell Williams loves to write, listen to his music, and dance late into the night. He was born in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. His parents are native Texans. He has lived most of his life in California. His poetry has appeared in Aoife's Kiss, Aphelion, Blue Collar Review, The Broome Review, Camroc Press Review, Censored Poets, Chronogram Magazine, Deuce Coupe, Fissure Magazine, Freefall, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Hawaii Review, Heroin Love Songs, Hungur, Is This Reality, Kalkion, Liquid Imagination, Mad Swirl, Metazen, Mirror Dance, Neonbeam, Nerve Cowboy, Nomad's Choir, POEM, Poesia, Posey, protestpoems.org, Purpose, REAL, Rusty Truck, Scifaikuest, Sex And Murder, Shoots And Vines, Tales from the Moonlit Path, The Legendary, Thieves Jargon, Zygote In My Coffee, and others

Jessica Cripps enjoys cavorting, merrymaking, procrastinating, daydreaming, and carousing. She is an expert at making questionable decisions, accumulating unsavory bedfellows, and locking her keys in the car. She collects bad habits, useless skills, and fake red flowers. She likes big words and playing make believe; She dislikes spiders and douchebaggery. Her favorite color is indigo.

Ally Malinenko’s first book of poems, entitled The Wanting Bone, was recently published by Six Gallery Press. You can read her poetry at
http://shipwreckedpoetry.blogspot.com and her fiction at http://gypsycampfire.blogspot.com. She is currently working on a novel for children and lives in the part of Brooklyn that the tour buses don’t come to.

Paul Luikart's fiction has appeared in Boston Literary Magazine, 322 Review and Coach's Midnight Diner. He received his degree in creative writing from
Miami University and is currently a second year student in the University of Chicago's Graham School, where he studies short fiction writing.

GD Anderson lives in North Wollongong, Australia. His chapbook ‘Dancing On Thin Ice’ is available though erbacce-press. He blogs at:
http://georgedanderson.blogspot.com.

Ashley Vemuri is currently a college student in Washington, DC, where she enjoys staying up until sunrise while being unproductive (to further mess up
her circadian rhythm), being incredibly distractible, and participating in hilarious shenaniganry.In her spare time, she reads obsessively about serial killers, psychology, and Tudor England, though not necessarily at the same time.

Edward "Lefty" Lee is a bartender by trade, where his good looks and quick wit have saved him more than once from an ass beating. Edward enjoys wood working, bad science fiction movies and reading comic books. He lives in Maryland with a large book collection and a lazy guard dog. He’s been published
previously by the Happy Magazine.

Jason Henry McCormick regularly visits The Legendary's Web site. He enjoys reading the fiction and submissions page at The Legendary. Jason says The Legendary's submissions page offers the best advice on writing that he has ever received. The submissions page can be found at http://www.downdirtyword.com/submissionspage.html. Jason's blog can be found at http://www.jasonhenrymccormick.wordpress.com.

Alexander Lang is a young 20-something college student "writer" that doesn't quite feel comfortable with being called such. Slightly misanthropic but wholly Pittsburgh at heart, he was born and raised in the Steel City. In his spare time he enjoys 4 a.m. Dunkin Donuts coffee, longboarding, Bukowski poems, and cheap whiskey. He also enjoys some street slumming and general exploration. His friends describe him as an honest asshole, but what do they know. This is his first time being published, so please forgive him.

Table of Contents

Issue 14

Sonya Lea has written for film, television, magazines and anthologies, and she has received three screenwriting awards, including the Nicholl fellowship. She received an Artist Trust award for her collection of essays based on her family's transformation during her husband’s brain injury. Sonya has also written a film about something we do not often have a window into -- what happens in a relationship after a brain injury. Her upcoming fiction collection, "Pure of Heart: Beatitude Stories at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century" is a ring of eight stories about three sisters and their lovers, and the ways we think of purity, wholeness, mercy, grief, peacemaking, righteousness and courage. She lives in Seattle, Washington. See her Wild Work blog at http://workingwild.blogspot.com.

Rusty Barnes lives in Revere, MA with his family. He maintains webspace at http://www.rustybarnes.com.

J.M Cinq-Mars lives in Massachusetts and uses a made-up name for her email. Her publishing history is sporadic. She has seen Pink Floyd twice and wanted to marry David Gilmour for over a decade. She has a very funny boss. She also wears scarves, which is why her neck is never cold.

Omar Holmon Socially random with +33 charm points Omar "Ion" Holmon lives life like Doug Funnie and believes he'd be the only Jedi whose lightsaber would match his chuck taylors. When not imagining himself in anime fight scenes or working to make the world more abnormal he spends his time in slam poetry competitions and talking about his love for otters/pandas.

Connor Caddigan, a native of Achill Island, Ireland, currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio where he teaches composition, mythology and literature to indolent college students. His stories and essays have appeared in a number of publications, including The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Whiskey Island, Slow Trains, Exquisite Corpse, and many other journals both big and small. You can usually find him every Friday night at Great Lakes Brewery, arguing politics and enjoying a pint of stout.

Suzanne White is a late-blooming American poet living in Southern Spain. She enjoys raising her young daughter, helping people learn English, and walking the cobblestone streets.

Autumn Humphrey has flash fiction pieces appearing, or scheduled to appear, in Blink/Ink, FlashShot, All Things Girl, Golden Visions, Still Crazy, and the Stray Branch. In her spare time she plays the horses, or as someone once said, the horses are playing her.

Melanie Browne's work has been published at Word Riot, Writer's Bloc (Rutgers) Bartleby Snopes, Glossolalia, Madswirl, and Ink, Sweat and Tears. She lives in Texas with her husband and three children.

Francis Raven is a graduate student in philosophy at Temple University. His books include Provisions (Interbirth, 2009), 5-Haifun: Of Being Divisible (Blue Lion Books, 2008), Shifting the Question More Complicated (Otoliths, 2007), Taste: Gastronomic Poems (Blazevox 2005) and the novel, Inverted Curvatures (Spuyten Duyvil, 2005). Francis lives in Washington DC; you can check out more of his work at his website: http://www.ravensaesthetica.com/.

Serena Tome launched an international reading series for African children to connect, learn, and participate in literary activity with students from around the world via video conferencing. She has literary work published and/or forthcoming in The Litchfield Review, Foundling Review, The Legendary, Breadcrumb Scabs, Word Riot, Calliope Nerve, Counterexample Poetics, Full of Crow, Boston Literary Magazine, The Stray Branch, and other publications. She is currently working on her first chapbook. You can find out more about Serena at www.serenatome.blogspot.com.

Jared Singer is a poet and audio engineer who lives in nyc. While he may have physically grown up with his peers, he has never forgotten the imagination, magic, and nerdiness that were corner stones of his childhood. He hopes to remind others of these more creative times. He has also appeared on the Indiefeed Peformance Poetry Podcast.

J de Salvo is the editor of the Bicycle Review, a bi-monthly electronic journal of literature and art. His fiction, poetry, and articles have been published or are forthcoming in numerous online and print publications, including *Art/Life, Askew, Beatie’s Journal, Danse Macabre, Leaf Garden Press, New Angeles Monthly, New fiction Journal, and the Poetry Super Highway.* He lives in Los Angeles.

Eric Bennett lives in New York with his wife and four children. He loves trees without leaves and the silence between songs on vinyl records. His work appears in numerous literary and art journals including Fiction at Work, Bartleby Snopes, Ghoti Magazine, LITnIMAGE, and PANK.

Aristotle Sinclair is a poet of neoteric contemplation. He reads Duane Locke and Constance Stadler to ascertain excellent poetry. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming at Writer’s Bloc, The Catalonian Review, Writing Raw, The Legendary, and several other kind places. He has a mini-chapbook published “Within the Open Eyes” (Gold Wake Press, 2009). In the rarity of spare time, he reads various texts and quotations from philosophers, and thinks Thelonious Monk is the epitome of a jazz genius. He records occurrences at http://aristotlesinclair.blogspot.com/.

Tim Tomlinson is a co-founder of New York Writers Workshop, and co- author of its popular text, The Portable MFA in Creative Writing. He is the fiction editor of the webzine Ducts. Recent stories and poems appear or are forthcoming in Perigee, Pif, Del Sol Review, Dogzplot, Medullla Review, Lunarosity, 3:AM, Hanging Moss Journal, The Toronto Quarterly, The Smoking Poet, and Tongues of the Ocean.

Christina Murphy lives and writes in a 100 year-old house along the Ohio River. The River and she share much in common as they both keeping moving from east to west. Christina's work has been published or will appear in *Acappella Zoo*, *Modern Short Stories*, *ABJECTIVE, Blue Fifth Review*, *Counterexample Poetics*,* Greensboro Review, Storyscape*, and *Descant,* among others, and has received an Editor’s Choice Award and "Special Mention" for a Pushcart Prize. She always appreciates hearing from readers and can be reached at 446river3@gmail.com.

Neil Richter is a part-time tutor, part-time nursing home orderly, part-time baker, part-time writer. Neil Richter likes good food and good scotch. He also likes pasta, preferably served in a punch bowl with a comically large spoon. Do not taunt Neil Richter, his temper is well known. Neil Richter has two uvulas (the bongy thing in the back of the throat). He also has an alphabetic knowledge of film trivia. Neil Richter is not to be trifled with.

Gary D. Compton lives in the eastern most region of Kentucky. He has earned paychecks as fast food worker, coal lab technician, martial arts teacher, exterminator, carpenter, store clerk, child care worker, parole officer and musician.

Christopher Kugler Christopher Kugler lives in Central Pennsylvania. Writing is his passion but he does other stuff too. Check out his blog at
www.klockworkkugler.com.

Matt Van Buren grew up in upstate NY, spent time in Los Angeles during and after college, and then returned to the East Coast to get his MFA from the New School. Cats, dogs, and children tend to like him, in spite of his best efforts.

Table of Contents

Issue 13

Jason Carney has been a mainstay on the national performance poetry scene for the past ten years. Hailing from Dallas, Texas this fiery performer brings unique insights on issues of race class and gender. Using the lessons of his past he weaves together images that transform the audience. Breaking down barriers and biases so that all can have an honest conversation involving some of our nation's critical issues. Mr. Carney has performed all across our country mesmerizing audiences with his wit and conviction. Whether telling an illuminating antidote about his children or stirring the ghost of our societies past present and future his effect is riveting.

Mr. Carney has appeared on several seasons of the HBO television show RUSSELL SIMMONS DEF POETS. He is a four time national poetry slam finalist. honored as a legend of slam poetry in 2006 and 2007. Jason has done six NACA conferences including two national conventions. Been seen on national geographic channel as well as local television channels across the united states. He has spoken and done workshops at high schools juvenile detention centers corporate diversity engagements as well has colleges and universities extensively in the fifty states.

In a rehabilitation center in his youth Jason's life was changed forever by a gay man who was dying from AIDS. Using poetry to redefine his world, he transformed the hate and racist ignorance of his southern upbringing. His life mission is to educate and participate in an honest conversation of race class and gender.

Jeanann Verlee is a poet, activist, and polka-dot wearer who collects tattoos and winks at boys. Her work has appeared in various journals and anthologies, including The New York Quarterly, PANK, decomP, Lung, and “Not A Muse,” among others. Her first book of poetry will be published by Write Bloody Press in March 2010.

Jeanne Holtzman is an aging hippie, writer and women’s health care practitioner. Her work has appeared in Night Train, The Los Angeles Review, Dogzplot, Hobart (web), Foundling Review, The Best of Every Day Fiction and flashquake. You may reach Jeanne at J.holtzman@comcast.net

Lisa Zaran is an American poet, essayist and the author of six collections including The Blondes Lay Content and the sometimes girl, the latter of which was recently the focus of a year long translation course in Germany, since translated to German under the title: das manchmal mädchen. Selections from her other books have been translated to Bangla, Hindi, Arabic, Chinese and Greek. She is the founder and editor of Contemporary American Voices, an online journal of poetry. Besides writing, Lisa considers her other bold passions : painting, outsider art, folk and blues music, Bob Dylan and her two brilliant children, Zed and Kirsten. She lives and writes in Arizona.

Patricia Tatum spent half a century completely unaware that she wanted to be a writer when she grew up. Having the attention span of a cantaloupe, she
has numerous partially finished stories, a rare few completed and polished, and no plans to write a novel.

Alison Boyd is a writer living in the Southern Highlands of NSW, Australia. She writes a regular blog and has had poetry, short stories and a radio play published. Currently writing a novel in an office overlooking the vegie garden, most of her day consists of a series of mad blasts at the keyboard punctuated with the distraction of plant growth, feline antics and a herbal tea habit bordering on compulsive.

Paula Ray is a musician from Wilmington, North Carolina with a crazy rhythm in her veins and twisted thoughts stuck to her tongue. She's a woodwind
specialist and poet/fiction writer. Her work has appeared in elimae, decomP, DOGZPLOT, Word Riot, and other small press zines. For more information
about Paula, visit: http//:musicalpencil.blogspot.com.

Tristan Foster is a writer from Sydney, Australia. His work has been published in print and online, and he contributes regularly to http://leadigloo.com. Oh, and he says he isn't writing a novel, but he is.

Eloise Chagrin is a writer of erotic and explicit fiction. Her first story, "Playing Doctor," first published on ThreePillows.com, appeared in Best of Best American Erotica 2008. Eloise Chagrin's second work, a novella entitled, "The Prince," can be found in the STARbooks press anthology, "Pretty Boys and Roughnecks" edited by Mickey Erlach. She can only blame herself, scolding that she spends too much of her life fixated on emotional masochism. She currently lives in St. Louis.

Jennifer Jackson Whitley graduated from the University of Georgia with a Bachelor of Arts in English. Though media and creative writing are her passions, they did not pay the bills. She went back to school for her Master of Arts in Teaching at North Georgia College and State University and currently teaches high school English, where she has found a new passion: enlightening young minds to think outside-the-box. She acts as an editor for *Spilt Milk* online literary journal and *Warm Milk Printing Press*. Her work has been featured in various online publications, including *Titular*and *Blue Print Review. *

Farida Samerkhanova lives in Toronto, Ontario. "My native language is Tatarian, my second language is Russian and English is my third, which has become my passion. I am the head of a big family; four generations reside under one roof in South West of Toronto. I fight with every day routine, play chess, collect coins and skate. My letters to the editor appeared in the magazines Elle Canada, Canadian Stories and Canadian Immigrant. During the years 2007-2009 my
poems, short stories and essays were published by Canadian Stories; Inscribed~A Magazine for Writers; The Maynard; Ygdrasil, A Journal of the Poetic Arts; blueskiespoetry.ca, Danse Macabre (including Totentanze, All Saints’ Evening and Weihnachtsmarkt issues), Seeding the Snow (The illustration is also my credit), The Write Place at the Write Time, Calliope (Issue #125 – Fall 2009), Word Salad Poetry Magazine, Tower Poetry and Of(f)Course – A Literary Journal. Some of my poems were included in The Maynard Anthology 2008 (Canada), the collection of poetry “Immortal Verses” (USA) and in “Favourite Memories” book of poetry (UK).

After performing both music and poetry around the Boston area for twenty years, Derek Richards shed his fear of rejection and began submitting his work this past August. So far his poetry has appeared in over fifty publications, including; Lung, Word Riot, Cantaraville, Soundzine, The Centrifugal Eye, Opium 2.0, MediaVirus, Calliope Nerve, Right Hand Pointing, Breadcrumb Scabs, Tinfoildresses, Poets Ink, The Legendary, Sex and Murder and Dew on the Kudzu. He has also been told to keep his day job by Quills and Parchment. His dog, cat and two ferrets admire his attempts to be honest, direct, brilliant and lucrative. Also, he wants you to know that he has compiled over 50 fantasy sports championships. Happily engaged, he resides in Gloucester, MA, cleaning windows for a living.

Kyle Hemmings lives and works in New Jersey where he wishes he could play surf guitar like Dick Dale and sing like Brian Wilson. He sings in the shower, sometimes.

Randall Brown teaches at and directs Rosemont College¹s MFA in Writing Program. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cream City Review, Quick Fiction, Gargoyle, Connecticut Review, Saint Ann's Review, Evansville Review, Laurel Review, Dalhousie Review, Night Train, upstreet, and others. He is the author of the award-winning collection Mad to Live (Flume Press, 2008) and his essay on (very) short fiction appears in The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction: Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field (Rose Metal Press, 2009).

DLW Pesavento was raised in Chicago, instilled with mysticism, nurturing an innate sense of the wondrous. The poetry reveals a predilection for the surreal, embellished with lush lyricism, emboldened by sensual symbolism. Recent poems reside in Danse Macabre, Troubadour 21, The Literary Bohemian, Whispers From The Unseen, Underground Voices, Full of Crow, and Think Journal.

Wes Prussing is a transplanted New Yorker living in South Florida. He's worked almost exclusively as a sales and marketing manager in the construction industry for the past twenty years or so. Wes holds degrees in Liberal Arts and Business Marketing. His work has appeared in a number of small literary magazines and e-zines; Ken-Again, The Fairfield Review and Wild Violets to name a few.

Gethin M. Jones is 34 years old, living in North Wales, UK, now a single dad of the children mentioned in the poem. Currently studying a degree in Writing and English, and just beggining to get my claws into the form of the novel. Most notable thing ever done: sang to the queen at the age of ten in a cathedral choir!

Eric J. Brinovec is a 28 year old man from Grants, NM. He's enjoyed writing Surrealist poetry for about 3 years. He's got two small poetry books for which he is seeking publication consideration: "Wednesday Squared(To the Fifth Power), Free-Form and Melodized Verbalizations...", and "Disenfranchised Screams Floating on Clouds of Severed Monkey Hands in the Parallel Spheres (Bathing in a Tub of Glass Shards)"... He does some collage art, loves the The meat puppets, and he just wants to finally do something with his life and maybe succeed enough to get away from this intellectually dead, western town of zombies...

Anthony R. Pezzula is a retired former employee of New York State taking up writing in his retirement years. He has had stories published in The Writers Post Journal, Midnight Times, Aphelion, Fictionville, River Poets Journal, Pens On Fire and forthcoming in Battered Suitcase. He lives in upstate New York with his wife of thirty-four years and their misbehaving cat.

Justin Pietropaolo lives in Goshen, New York (famous for horses and Noah Webster) and is a junior at Alfred University (famous for being close to the town Bill Pullman grew up in (oh, c'mon, you know him-- had that awesome speech in Independence Day.)) He loves the page, the stage, and the fancy new pipe he just bought.

Table of Contents

Issue 12

Shappy Seasholtz has been the surly barkeep at the BOWERY POETRY CLUB since it opened in 2002 and currently is co-slammaster and host of their weekly poetry slam, NYC-URBANA. He has toured with Lollapalooza, has been featured on season three of HBO'S DEF POETRY and has been running the National Nerd Slam for the past 8 years. He has complete run of H.R. Puffnstuff comics, a vintage Charlie Tuna lamp and a robot that plays 8-tracks.

Deanna Rittinger has decided at 41 that what she wants to be when she grows up is an author. In this way, her imagination can invite others to play with her. After all, writing is such a lonely sport. Deanna founded the online peer-review, writer's community, NoteBored. You can find her other stories on the web at Haruah, Long Story Short and Ultraverse. Currently, she's working on a paranormal thriller, her first novel.

Colin Gilbert is the current Editor of Lamplighter Review. In addition to winning the 2006 Chicago State University Hughes, Diop, Knight Literary Award he has poems appearing in recent or upcoming editions of Minglewood, Plain Spoke, Danse Macabre, CC & D, Oak Bend Review, Calliope Nerve, and Yellow Mama. He welcomes you to add him on facebook and ridicule him for his cheesy photographs.

Roy Scarbrough writes stuff and drives a forklift in Oregon.

Bl Pawelek has been to a million places in life and forgotten most of them. But he is here now and trying.

Aditya Shankar (b.1981, Thrissur, Kerala, India) is a bi-lingual writer and short film-maker. He writes in English and Malayalam, and publishes poetry and articles in leading journals, including the The Little Magazine, The Word Plus, Indian Literature, The Literary X Magazine, Munyori, The Pyramid, Poetry Chain, Mastodon Dentist, The Wild Goose Poetry Review, Bayou Review, Words-Myth, Chandrabhaga, Miler’s poetry, Message in a bottle, Aireings among others. His poetry is forthcoming in Hudson View, Snakeskin and fiction in The Caledonia Review. His First Book 'After Seeing', a series of poems based on cinema (2006, IFFT), is currently being translated into a couple of regional Indian languages. His short films have participated at International Film Festivals and gained nomination for Animation Awards. Currently, he lives and works in Cochin as the Creative Director of D3V Games, a game and animation development studio, after completing his B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering.

Kia Storm lives in England. She graduated from Middlesex University with a degree in Writing and Media and English Literature. You will find her Twittering words of inspiration, blogging on MSN or networking with her friends on Bebo and MySpace. Kia loves life and admires creativity. Occasionally, Kia daydreams about sky diving over the Pacific Ocean, climbing Mount Everest and having a mini party on Virgin Air Balloon. She is currently learning how to kickbox and dreams of that magical day when she can sleep for two weeks straight, without her thoughts intervening and waking her up in the middle of the night to jot down ideas.

Alex J. Martin lives in Northern England and writes on a laptop made of compacted cigarette ash. You can visit him at: http://alxjmartin.wordpress.com/

N. God Savage is a writer and philosopher from Belfast in Northern Ireland. He has written fiction for over ten years, but only recently decided to let anyone other than his wife read it. More here:http://www.ngodsavage.blogspot.com

Felino Soriano is a case manager working with developmentally and physically disabled adults. He is the editor of the online experimental poetry journal Counterexample Poetics, www.counterexamplepoetics.com. He is the author of three chapbooks Exhibits Require Understanding Open Eyes (Trainwreck Press, 2008), Feeling Through Mirages (Shadow Archer Press, 2008), Abstract Appearance Reaching Toward the Absolute (Trainwreck Press, 2009) and an e-book Among the Interrogated (BlazeVOX [books], 2008). The juxtaposition of his philosophical studies with his love of classic and avant-garde jazz explains his poetic motivation. Website: www.felinosoriano.com

Alex J. Martin lives in Northern England and writes on a laptop made of compacted cigarette ash. You can visit him at: http://alxjmartin.wordpress.com/

Jon Van Horn was born on the ledge of one of New York City's innumerable concrete canyons and, seeing that he had feathers, naturally assumed he could fly. Leaping off resulted not so much in a graceful arc of glory through the clouds and reaching for the sun, as a steep plummeting toward the unforgiving asphalt below. Having just enough time to think, "feathers are fine, but wings would have been helpful", he was snatched scant inches from oblivion and thrown like a dog's chew toy through the far reaches of agitated quiescence to land with a quiet thump in North Carolina. Tufted-eared cat curling languidly about her legs, an emerald-eyed woman emerged from a small yellow house murmuring slyly in a French accent, "It's about time".

Brian Long lives in San Francisco, CA, where he works with young adults with special needs.

John Kuligowski currently is swimming in a sea of signs. He fell in six months ago and still hasn't figured out how to get out. If anybody has a rope of sand, please toss it to him immediately. He's willing to loan you Albert Hoffman's filched bicycle.

Raynette Eitel lived in the southwestern part of the United States most of her life, accustomed to the sun always on her face and the sky always to be a deep blue. As soon as she could spell, she discovered she was a poet. She lived most of her adult life in the shadow of Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs where she was a wife, mother, teacher, but always a poet. She has been published in literary magazines and newspapers and recently published Harsh
Country, a book of Southwest poems, and Earthen Jar, an eclectic collection. Both books are published by XLibris. Raynette is retired and presently lives and writes in Las Vegas, NV and spends much of her time traveling with her husband, Jim.

Drew De Gennaro lives in Minneapolis where he enjoys the cold weather. His work has appeared in Word Riot, Boston Literary Magazine, unFold and more.
He is one mean speller.

Glenn Lyvers is winner of Midwest Literary Magazine's Best Poet Award (2009) - and a Wolfson Award winner in short fiction by Indiana University. His most recent publication is "Glenn Lyvers - Midwest Collection" isbn:978-0-557-13318-5 http://lyvers.com - Glenn requires a hand written note from your great great grandmother prior to being consulted.

Thom Young is a writer from Texas. His work has appeared in Thieves Jargon, Blowback, Writers' Bloc, Dagger, and other sundry places.

Barbara McCarthy is a native New Yorker living in the crowded and always complicated borough of Brooklyn. She has worked as a nurse for 25 years, mostly in traditional settings but she also spent six of those years as a nurse and health educator on a ship on the East River serving the homeless families of New York City. Barbara attended Pratt Institute’s writing program for two years. She writes because she cannot sing. Her writing allows her to hit the high notes and the low notes cranked up at full volume without annoying her neighbors.

Holly Day is a travel writing instructor living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her husband and two children. Her most recent nonfiction books are Music Theory for Dummies, Music Composition for Dummies, and Walking Twin Cities.

John Grochalski is the author of The Noose Doesn't Get Any Looser After You Punch-Out. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, in the part where you can still get a draft of beer for $3.00.

Susan Dale writes regularly for print magazines Shadow Poetry and WestWard Quarterly. She won the grand prize in Oneswan for her poem Where Go Our Dreams. She writes too for online publications Jerry Jazz Musician and languageandculture.net. Throughout the winter she will have poems and short stories on various websites and in print.

Jennifer Bower is a North Carolina based emerging writer who dabbles daily in fitful bouts of paradoxical persiflage while penning under the name of Johnsienoel. Her works range from the sublime to the silly and always with an undertone attuned to social commentary; she works to capture minute moments in time and nail them like Jell-O to the wall. A middle-aged youngster to the literary scene her poetry has been published in Flash Fire 500 and in personal moleskine repositories, awaiting reincarnation. Other random musings and self-less acts of self-promotion can be found on her newly anointed Blog “A Normal Nobody!” at http://johnsienoel.blogspot.com.

Kevin Wilson is the author of the story collection Tunneling to the Center of the Earth (Ecco/Harper Perennial, 2009). His fiction has appeared in Tin House, Ploughshares, One Story, and elsewhere.

Laurie X writes real and surreal flash out of a churning mixture of present and former lives and takes only men with the taste of blood on their tongues as lovers.

Joanna Hall is a 24 year old student at an up and coming art school in Manchester, New Hampshire. Art is her entire life and she makes sure to do it everyday. She loves getting her hands dirty in all medias and popping her eardrums with all genres of music. She lives in Lowell, MA and can't wait to move far far away from it.

Table of Contents

Issue 11

Wess Mongo Jolley is a poet and poetry promoter living in Vermont. He produces and hosts the IndieFeed Performance Poetry Channel podcast (http://performancepoetry.indiefeed.com). His work has appeared in Pank, Off The Coast, and in the Write Bloody Press book The Good Things About America. Audio versions of his poetry have been featured on the IndieFeed Performance Poetry Channel, and Cloudy Day Art. He can be found on the internet at http://mongopoet.com, and at mongo@indiefeed.com

Harvey Goldner: When I was a child, my lesbian aunt, Suzanne, would spend a week or so every summer at my family's vacation home on Lake Wenatchee, here in Washington State. This was before the era of motorcycle helmets, and Suzanne would arrive on her blue Bugatti, her red hair streaming, flaming. While tossing back straight shots of my father's precious scotch, she would mesmerize my twin brother Phil and me by reading aloud her favorite poets, chiefly Elizabeth Bishop. Eventually, my brother Phil became an alcoholic & was killed in a motorcycle accident, and I began writing poems.

Harvey's final book of poetry, The Resurrection of Bert Ringold, was published by Cinco Puntos Press in January, 2008. (http://www.cincopuntos.com/products_detail.sstg?id=130)

Otis Black spent 20 years in the Army, ten of which were in Southeast Asia, 6 years in Thailand, 2 in Laos and 2 in Vietnam. When he retired from active military service, he went right back to work for the Army as a civilian which he continues to do today. He will finally retire from the Army in a couple of years giving him 45 years of working for them.

Richard Merrill is a poet. Or not. A cheesaholic to the point of wondering why it wasn't used in Close Encounters. Loves alternative music. That which is made with anything other than a standard instrument. Was caught once attempting to play Young Americans on a set of fireplace tongs. Was voted least likely to use brakes in any instance and was fired for inappropriate use of mittens. Ruling planet is Jupiter, which can't seem to break free from its' moons.

Tammy R. Kitchen is a sometimes writer whose work has been published in GUD Magazine, Juked, Pindeldyboz, and The Summerset Review. She may be contacted at tammyr.k@gmail.com.

Jo Swingler lives in Edinburgh for now but hasn't always. Her work has appeared in Aesthetica, Flashquake, QWF, GoldDust as well as several anthologies.

Julie Innis has always struggled to best determine right from wrong. Her stories have recently appeared in Slush Pile Magazine and The Moose and Pussy and are forthcoming in Pindeldyboz. In May 2009, she was selected by Glimmer Train magazine as a finalist in their Short Story Award Contest. She happily lives and works in Brooklyn, New York though sometimes she dreams of grifting her way around the world.

Phil Lane spends his days working for a private tutoring company, and thus becoming disillusioned about the future of humankind. However this does afford him the inspiration to write, which he does not necessarily on a daily basis at his home in New Jersey.

Phil Richardson is retired from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. He publishes genre fiction, flash fiction, and literary fiction. His short story, "The Joker is Wild," was nominated for the 2005 Pushcart Prize In Fiction by Storyteller Magazine. His work has appeared in Elf: Eclectic Literary Forum, Fantasy, Folklore and Fairytales, Northwoods Review, The Storyteller, Danse Macabre, Cafe Irreal, Digitalis Obscura, Big Pulp, Word Catalyst, Bending Spoon, Sonar4, Short Story Library, Love After 70 Anthology, Writing On Walls Anthology, Outa Side of LIfe Anthology, and The Love of Monsters Anthology.

Lewis Dalton is a poet from Yorkshire, UK. His work is the result of talking to the homeless, alcoholics and the unfortunates about their life to that point, as well as his hope for new, unique writers to appear. Until recently, all his work was offered to the individuals he wrote about, though now he has begun to keep copies of what he writes. In Sept' 2010 he will begin university in Manchester or Oxford. Find him at: http://thoughtismadeinthefingers.blogspot.com/

Lori Bedell has feared rejection for decades—sitting on yellow notepads, computer files, and journals loaded with unfinished treadings. She’s always been one of those people who wants to do so much that a commitment in one direction seemed like a rejection of the other, and so she was paralyzed by the idea of making the wrong choice and did nothing. At 41, this had to stop. Lori has been teaching communication at the college level with an unfinished Ph.D. for 15 years. In addition to writing things that she’s generally afraid to let anyone read, she loves helping people—especially her two daughters—see how they fit in a large, complex, deeply flawed world. She is saddened by hatred and poverty, encouraged by flashes of goodness in the most unlikely of people, and in love with her husband. She hopes that she has the guts to continue to share her work, and thanks the editors for the encouragement here.

Jaimie Eubanks lives in Sycamore, Illinois. She studied Creative Writing and Dance at Knox College, and now works in Marketing and PR. She makes really good coffee.

Chloe Zola is a broken-legged college sophomore torn between an art and a writing major. Her home is in Minnesota where she spends her time playing soccer, hiding from the cold, and contemplating exotic vacations.

Ian Whatley was a magnificent athlete for the US track team. He invented some magic shoes and sold the patents so he could live on a nut farm in the Carolina Colonies. His kids loved him but used to tell their friends that their father, "makes stuff up all the time." He occasionally talks of himself in the third person and past tense.

Stewart Grant In 1982, Time hailed The Computer as its Man of the Year. Not to be outdone, this same year Stewart Grant was born of two gallivanting socialites. Growing up in the Washington D.C suburbs, Stewart was an academic prodigy through high school who pretended in athletics. He graduated Penn State University and remains in the State College area, composing poetry and bar-crawling with his wife, Penelope Sawyer. His work can be read in Sam’s Dot Publishing Drabbler #14, Shoots and Vines, and MediaVirus.

Sheldon Lee Compton lives in Kentucky. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Keyhole, JMWW, Thieves Jargon, PANK, >kill author, Eviscerator Heaven, DOGZPLOT and elsewhere.

Angel Zapata was born in NYC, but currently resides just outside of Augusta, Georgia. His flash fiction and poetry has appeared or is forthcoming on Apollo’s Lyre, Every Day Poets, Gloom Cupboard, Short Story Library, Full of Crow, The Absent Willow Review, and Flashshot. He is husband to his blond goddess and father of four boys obsessed with all things ninja. Visit his blog: http://arageofangel.blogspot.com

Tom Larsen has been a freelance writer for ten years and my work has appeared in Newsday, Puerto del Sol, New Millennium Writers and Antietam Review. His short story “Lids” was included in Best American Mystery Stories - 2004. His first novel FLAWED will be published by Bewrite Books in October.

Jeff Chon writes exclusively for the internet because he's awesome and was most recently published in the Chickasaw Plum. He turned to writing after losing in the prelims of the All Valley Karate Tournament and his so-called "friends" in the Cobra Kai deserted him. He is currently mocking your clever little quirky bio.

Christian Chmielewski is, as far he knows, an unpublished ink glutton hailing out Philadelphia, PA. He would like to whore out his writing, if there are any takers.

Adam Miller is a graduate of the University of Kansas and is currently writing a collection of essays and short stories. You may have recently had a chance encounter with him in Madrid or Seville, Sardinia or Rome, Hvar or Dubrovnik, or various boroughs in London. Soon he will be in the Bahamas to write, to imbibe, and to search for Sean Connery.

Peggy McCarthy has lived in/hitch-hiked through Italy, England, Belgium and France; had babies in New Jersey, moved back to the Midwest where she (finally) earned an English Degree and won literary prizes. Her incarnations include teacher, librarian, writing consultant, editor.

K.A. Coldwell was diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy when he was eighteen months old. Told that he wouldn’t live past the age of four, he has defied all prognoses and is nearing his second decade of life. Utilizing a power wheelchair to navigate the halls of academia, K. A. Coldwell writes poetry, short stories, is currently working on his first novel, and aspires to become a music journalist.

Dietrich Kalteis is a writer living in West Vancouver, Canada. His short stories have appeared at The Short Humour Site UK, the Clockwise Cat, Cantaraville, the Cynic, Defenestration, Dew on the Kudzu, and One Cool Word. The screenplay 'Between Jobs', that he co- authored with his wife, Andrea, is a past finalist in the Screenplay Contest, and he is currently completing his first novel.

Carol Lynn Grellas is a two-time Pushcart nominee and the author of two chapbooks: Litany of Finger Prayers, from Pudding House Press and Object of Desire newly released from Finishing Line Press. She is widely published in magazines and online journals including most recently, The Centrifugal Eye, Oak Bend Review and deComp, with work upcoming in Breadcrumb Scabs, Past Simple and Best of Boston Literary Magazine. She lives with her husband, five children and a blind dog named Ginger.

Shay Lessman is a senior English major at Florida Southern College. His work has been published in Cantilevers: Journal of the Arts, Freeport Focus and Village Voices. He has participated in both fiction and poetry workshops taught by Daniele Pantano and Erica Bernheim.

Dave Damianakes lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. He does a lot of writing, mostly technical, but is getting back into fiction after a four year dry spell.

Table of Contents

Issue 10

Ann Howells is a longtime member of Dallas Poets Community, a 501-(c )-3 literary non-profit. She currently serves on its board and edits its semi-annual poetry journal, Illya's Honey. Her work appears in various small press and university journals, most recently: Avocet, Barbaric Yawp, Third Wednesday and Main Channel Voices. Her chapbook, Black Crow in Flight, is available from Main Street Rag Press.

KJ wants everyone to get along even if it means using hugs. He keeps a blog here:http://illegalfunk.blogspot.com. It wants followers. Sometimes he appreciates the occasional note: khays45@gmail.com.

Adele Mendelson is a California poet and fiction writer. She reads her work at venues around the Bay Area. At present she is concentrating on experimental fiction, which means she can go to any disorganized imaginative lengths and put a respectable name on her efforts. Her main concern in writing is not to bore herself or others. She believes that writing should be sexy, there should be something at stake, and the dark side should be lurking just beneath the cover.

Hal Sirowitz is the former poet laureate of queens, new york. Bukowski was one of his early influences that got him writing.

Father Luke lives in Portland, Oregon, and waits with the woman he loves for a perfect world. He has a website at http://FatherLuke.com

Nora Offen started out in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and attends Bard College as a fledgling creative writing major. Her work has appeared in Lux, To The Bone Literary Journal, The Ampersand Review, and Everyday Fiction. Her writing (generally a sort of abortive poetic prose?) has been described by The Ampersand as “pretty cute, with a fetching way of tossing its hair.” She enjoys constructive criticism, linguistic distinctions, crying outside at night, terrible puns, and conversations about the space between people.

Harry Calhoun’s articles, literary essays, book reviews and poems have been published in magazines including Writer’s Digest and The National Enquirer. Recently, his online chapbook Dogwalking Poems and his trade paperback, I knew Bukowski like you knew a rare leaf, were published. The latter is now available from Trace Publications and on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other online booksellers. He has had recent publications in Chiron Review, Still Crazy, SNReview, Orange Room Review, Bird’s Eye review, Abbey, Monongahela Review and many others. Recently, he was one of 12 poets invited to LiteraryMary’s anthology, Outstanding Men of the Small Press.

S A Tranter lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, and has had stories published in print and online magazines in both the UK and US including: Smokelong Quarterly, GUD, Staple, Cadenza, Buzzwords, Midnight Street and Radgepacket. He's had too many jobs, all of which he hated, but the night shift taxi driver paid the most.

klipschutz's work appears in The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry and periodicals ranging from zines to Poetry (of Chicago), as well as three full-length collections: Twilight of the Male Ego; The Good Neighbor Policy; and The Erection Of Scaffolding for the RePainting of Heaven by the Lowest Bidder. Of his latest book, Barry Hannah says, “I have not seen such language and hyperconscious life since the work of the great Charles Simic.” A part time scrivener in a law office, klipschutz has been called a satirist, and worse.

Bl Pawelek has been to a million places in life and forgotten most of them. But he is here now and trying.

Ryan Sharp teaches Language Arts at a charter high school in Clackamas, OR. In June 2009, he became a graduate student in Pacific University’s Masters in Fine Arts in Creative Writing program. He also recently welcomed his first child into this world.

Andrew Bowen would tell you where he lives, but that seems to have changed about once a year for the past seven years. So far, his fiction and reviews can be found in Prick of the Spindle. He recently founded Divine Dirt Quarterly, a new journal slatted to debut in late December that deals with the gritty, true to life underbelly of theology.

Gil A. Waters lives in the vicinity of Washington, DC, and likes to write.

Helen Sedgwick is a writer, editor and creative writing tutor living in Glasgow. She writes novels, short stories, flash fiction, prose poetry, book reviews and non-fiction. Helen graduated from the University of Glasgow’s MLitt in Creative Writing in 2008 and is represented by Kevin Pocklington of Jenny Brown Associates. Helen is the review editor of Gutter (www.guttermag.co.uk) and one of the founding editors of Fractured West (www.fracturedwest.com), and has also worked as a research scientist and musician. Find her at www.helensedgwick.com.

Jesse A. Gall is currently a professional student and a new writer (The Legendary has his first publication!). Completing his Bachelor's in Journalism at The University of Texas at Austin, he now continues his coursework at Western Kentucky University, where he is pursuing his Master's Degree in Creative Writing. Most of his time is spent worrying about his thesis, writing short stories he shouldn't be writing because he needs to finish his thesis, dabbling in poetry, eating (he loves food), and expanding his knowledge of film (AKA...he watches a lot of movies).

Rev. Will Elliot is an ordained Baptist minister with an M.Div from the Divinity School at Wake Forest University (2006), but he runs with Buddhists and Quakers and any such who are curious about life. Will has had a poem published in Thieve's Jargon. He loves his wife, his dog, reading, and writing. He works now as a hospital chaplain in central Kentucky (home of bluegrass and bourbon).

Joseph Murphy lives in Pennsylvania. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Prick of the Spindle, Everyday Genius, and The Northville Review. Letters to the Famous and Dead Composed at Work is an ongoing project that can be found at letterstofamousdead.blogspot.com.

Tyke Johnson is a writer living in Los Angeles, California where the dry Santa Ana winds cease to blow even when he’s told they're not, and no matter his frequency of sweeping the floors, the desert dust follows him to bed. He's currently fighting a cold, which oddly is making his hair follicles sensitive. He's been featured in Opium, Unlikely Stories, Ducts and others.

Tom Sanchez Prunier lives in Richmond, Virginia and entered poetry through the side door of slam. He founded the SlamRichmond poetry venue and was a competitor in the 2007 National Poetry Slam, where he was a quarterfinalist in the National Head-to-Head Haiku competition. Tom supports his local community of poets by leading workshops and hosting events throughout the city. Raised in New Jersey, Tom is still fascinated by the culture of the South – specifically the obsessions with college football, the Civil War and Waffle House. Outside the lines, Tom is a journalist and screenwriter and credits most of his recent success to his writing partner, a retired racing greyhound named Betty who sleeps next to his desk all day long.

Deborah Rosenblum prefers to write fiction. She likes that fiction offers the writer places to hide. This is her first published work of non-fiction, unless you count her bridge blog which can be found at Badmonsters.blogspot.com

Eric Beeny’s work has recently or will soon appear in 3:AM, Abjective, elimae, LITnIMAGE, Matchbook, Pear Noir!, Spilt Milk, Willows Wept Review, and others. His small novel, The Dying Bloom, was published as an e-book by Pangur Ban Party. He’s a contributing editor for Gold Wake Press. His blog is Dead End on Progressive Ave.(http://www.ericbeeny.blogspot.com).

John Kay has been publishing poetry and photography in the small presses for more than forty years. He is a regular poetry contributor to the New York Quarterly, Bellevue Lit Review, Pearl, Chiron Review and other magazines. His photos have been on the covers of Pearl and the Cortland review. He has three chapbooks, and a a full length book, "Phantom of the Apple" is due out this fall from Beginner's Mind press. He lives and works in Heidelberg, Germany, where he has had three photo exhibitions in the past year. He started life on the beach in Malibu.

Kaye Branch lives in Oregon and Massachusetts.

John Pistelli was born in Pittsburgh, PA, but now lives in Minneapolis, MN, where he is a writer, teacher and Ph.D. candidate.

Catherine Zickgraf is indebted to myspace for helping her find her long-lost son whom she placed for adoption two decades ago—thus you can find her blog there: myspace.com/czickgraf Her poetry has appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association and in BirdsEye Review. She also has work forthcoming in GUD Magazine and decomP.

Margaret Karmazin's credits include stories published in over seventy-five magazines, Rosebud, The Iconoclast, North American Review, Potomac Review, Confrontation, Mobius, Taproot and Aim Magazine. My stories in The MacGuffin, Eureka Literary Magazine and Words of Wisdom were nominated for Pushcart awards and Piper’s Ash, Ltd. published a chapbook of my sci-fi stories, Cosmic Women. I helped write the introduction for and have a short story included in Still Going Strong, (Haworth Press) and my novel, Replacing Fiona, was published by eTreasures Publishing. My story in Virginia Adversaria is included in an anthology by the editor, Ten Twisted Tales.

GD Anderson lives in North Wollongong, Australia. His chapbook ‘Dancing On Thin Ice’ is available though erbacce-press. He blogs at:
http://georgedanderson.blogspot.com.

Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director and worked as an art dealer when he couldn't earn a living in the theater. He has also been a tennis pro, a ditch digger and a salvage diver. His chapbook 'Remembrance' was published by Origami Condom Press and 'The Conquest of Somalia' was published by Cervena Barva Press. A collection of his poetry 'Days of Destruction' has been published in 2009 by Skive Press. Another collection 'Expectations' is being published by Rogue Scholars Press. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway and toured colleges and outdoor performance venues. He currently lives in New York City, where he's busy writing. His poetry and short stories have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines. Songs of a Clerk, an unpublished collection of poetry, expresses the frustration of a young man trapped in a menial clerks job, while dreaming of a meaningful life.

Michael Constantine McConnell is a writer, editor, performer, palindromist, and resident of Denton, Texas.

Pete Sipchen is a poet living just outside of St. Louis, Missouri. His poems have appeared in Hidden Oak, The Main Street Rag, and Poem magazine, and are upcoming in The Hurricane Review and Atlanta Review. He's also published numerous short stories, one of which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He's looking forward to Winter.

Table of Contents

Issue 9

Shanna Germain loves to write about things that go bump in the night. Not surprisingly, her favorite genres are erotica and horror. She ran on an ambulance and fire crew for four years. You can read more of her award-winning writing in places like Absinthe Literary Review; Best American Erotica; Best Gay Romance; Best Lesbian Erotica; Bitten: Gothic Erotica; Blood Fruit: Queer Horror and many more. Visit her online at www.shannagermain.com.

Michael J. Solender lives in Charlotte, North Carolina with his wife Harriet where they obsess over their garden. He hails originally from the sometimes frozen tundra of Minneapolis, MN. There he ignored (only once) his mother’s advice to pursue a career in medicine and became a Corporate Klingon. A recent Corporate Refugee, Solender is a freelance writer whose opinion and satire has been featured in The Richmond Times Dispatch, The Winston-Salem Journal, and Richmond Style Weekly. He writes a weekly Neighborhoods column for The Charlotte Observer and is a contributor to Charlotte ViewPoint. His micro-fiction and poetry has been featured online at Dogzplot, Gloom Cupboard, Full of Crow, A Twist of Noir, Thrillers Killers ‘N’ Chillers, 6 Sentences, Powder Burn Flash, and Flashshot. He blogs here: http://notfromhereareyou.blogspot.com/

Bryan Christopher Murray poet, musician, graduate of Bucknell University, student of Virginia Tech’s MFA program, born and raised in the Bronx, New York, has recently published in Floyd County Moonshine, and is forthcoming in The Northville Review, A cappella Zoo, Greatest Uncommon Denominator and Blue Fifth Review.

Sarah Ahmad lives in Pakistan. She likes to call herself a struggling poet and artist as in her world where life is so fragile,not knowing if you will return alive every time you step out of the house, getting someone to acknowledge your art is a real struggle.

Anna Donovan is originally from Nicaragua, Central America. Her family suffered many losses during the Sandinista revolution in the late seventies. As a result, they relocated to Costa Rica and later to the US. Though she spent years working in the field of computer technical support, She has always had an affinity and love for words and language. She is currently an MS Office and developmental English instructor at a county community college in Dallas, TX.

Dennis Mahagin is a writer from Washington state who enjoys Frisbee, and barking at the moon. His poetry collection, “Grand Mal,” is coming soon.

Tracy Lucas is a professional writer and editor near Nashville, Tennessee. She has written for the Westview Newspaper, published a local poetry anthology, composed poems that appeared in print a handful of times, and edited countless books. Her latest project has been trying to convince her one-year-old that sleep is a good thing. She may be reached at tlucas.freelance@gmail.com, usually at four in the morning.

Allen Kopp is a technical writer and lives in St. Louis. He has been published in Foliate Oak Literary Journal and Temenos, and he has upcoming work in Hoi-Polloi, Sunken Lines, The Storyteller, Conceit Magazine, Bartleby-Snopes, Danse Macabre, and The Bracelet Charm.

Timothy Raymond grew up in southeastern Wyoming. Currently he studies contemporary American literature at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he also teaches writing. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Necessary Fiction, The Owen Wister Review, The Battered Suitcase, Word Riot, and LeafGarden.

Joseph Goosey is fearful for his future. He has one chapbook available via Poptritus Press and one forthcoming via Shadow Archer Press. He thanks you for reading.

Thom Young is a writer from Texas. His work has appeared in Thieves Jargon, Blowback, Writers' Bloc, Dagger, and other sundry places.

J. Boyer teaches in the Creative Writing Program of Arizona State University.

Marc Elias Keller received his undergraduate degree in Anthropology and a graduate degree in Urban Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to his journalistic work in Philadelphia and San Diego, his short fiction has been published in the Bucks County Writer, Spork, The Philadelphia Independent, Enigma, Pindeldyboz, Antipodean SF, and Taikonetic. He lives in Philadelphia.

Quincey P. Morris might be who you think he's not.

Robert Kaye's stories have appeared in Green Mountains Review, Cicada, Snake Nation Review, Pindeldyboz, The Palo Alto Review, Descant, Bryant Literary Review, Kimera, Artisan and Carve. The Rose and Thorn nominated him for both the Pushcart and Story South Million Writers prizes in 2006. He has been on a break from short stories for a couple of years while writing a novel called Taking Candy from the Devil, which is (for the moment) completed and sent out into the wild.

Kevin Brown recently won the Permafrost Literary Journal's Midnight Sun Fiction Contest, the Touchstone Fiction Competition, and placed third in the Cadenza Fiction Contest. I was nominated for the 2007 Best American Short Stories, and have published in Alligator Juniper, sub-TERRAIN, Rosebud, New Delta Review, Underground Voices, Conclave, Crannog, Mississippi Crow, Vulcan, and NANO Fiction.

Jacqueline Young is a working writer living in Orange County, CA, having just graduated from San Francisco State University with a Bachelors in Creative Writing.

Mary Ellen Letarte writes poetry and stories in Lunenburg, Massachusetts. She also grows iris and daffodils, but she never learned how to ride a motorcycle.

Carolyn Kegel's work has recently appeared in Night Train, Emrys Journal, Wilderness House Literary Review and Bartleby Snopes, where she lost the Story-of-the-Month contest by two votes. She is extremely competitive; at cooking, pinp-pong (she was camp champ!) and especially, contests. It's becoming a problem, but her husband doesn't mind at all because the meals are improving.

Table of Contents

Issue 8

P.A. Levy hides in the heart of Suffolk countryside learning the lost arts of hedge mumbling and clod watching. He is an original member of the Clueless Collective and has been in many publications.

Errid Farland lives in Southern California and writes at a cluttered table where a candle burns to create an aura of serenity. Sometimes she accidentally catches things on fire which turns the aura into angry yellows and reds and sort of wrecks the whole serenity thing. Her stories have appeared in Barrelhouse, Thieves Jargon, Word Riot, storySouth, Pindledyboz, GUD, and other places. She owns www.ShowMeYourLits.com, a website which sponsors a weekly flash contest.

Brent Powers Brento Lives!

Bill Frank Robinson just an old desert rat living near the California Nevada border. They call me a hermit and I won't deny it. One time a Paiute man tracked me down to tell me some tourists saw me walking in the middle of the desert and wanted to know who I was and where I was going. He told 'em I was only Bill and I wasn't going anywhere. So simple and sooo true. We both had a laugh about that 'un.

Steve Glines is the founder and Editor of the Wilderness House Literary Review. He is the author of a number of text books, a literary travelogue and a poetry chapbook. His works have appeared in WHLReview, Ibbetson Street, and all four Bagel Bard Anthologies. He is the editor-in-chief at ISCS Press, a publisher’s service bureau.

Jill Weinberger is an award-winning but as-yet-unpaid television writer (Austin Film Festival 2006 Drama Teleplay Winner), a semi-profressional and often-beleaguered-by-the-usage-of-others freelance editor and proofreader, and a for-real online journalist whose work for NewTeeVee.com has been syndicated to places like Salon.com and the New York Times online, as well as cited on Wikipedia by some grateful Mormons who liked her review of their webseries. She would like to earn more of her rent money with creative endeavors that have her name on them. She would also like to know how to undo this very annoying text-centering formatting issue that imported over when she copy-pasted this short story from Word, but apparently that's not going to happen. But at least she gets to talk about herself in the third person for an extra line if she keeps bitching about it.

Brandi Wells has a BA in Creative Writing and her fiction appears in or is forthcoming in Pear Noir, Monkey Bicycle, Decomp, and Vulcan. She has a chapbook forthcoming as part the chapbook collective Fox Force 5, which is being released by Paper Hero Press. She blogs at http://brandiwells.blogspot.com/

Fay Franklin divides her time between Northamptonshire in England and Picardie in France. She is a freelance travel book editor and occasional writer but this is her first 'creative' publication.

Edmond Caldwell awoke one afternoon from uneasy daydreams to find himself transformed at his desk into a writer. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in 3:AM Magazine, SmokeLong Quarterly, Word Riot, DIAGRAM, and Sein und Werden. He was last seen in Boston.

Alan Britt ABC Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) in July, 2007 broadcasted a straight read, plus live stream on their Web site of Alan Britt’s poem, "After Spending All Day at the National Museum of Art," as part of their Poets on Painters series. ABC credited New Letters as original publisher…..The Poetry Library (www.poetrymagazines.org.uk) providing free access digital library of 20th & 21st century English poetry magazines with the aim of reaching new audiences and preserving the magazines for the future included Alan Britt’s work published in Fire (UK) in their project. The Poetry Project’s sole patronage by Her Majesty The Queen, Elizabeth II…..PCA/ACA Conference 2007 (Boston) Panel Chair for Poetry Studies & Creative Poetry. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2008.

Ryan McBride graduated from the writing program at UC Santa Barbara in 2006, and has published short stories in journals and university magazines including Spectrum, The Dirty Napkin, Eskimopie and The Drill Press. He currently lives in Los Angeles, where he is working on a novel and spending too much time at coffee shops.

Michael Lee Johnson is a poet and freelance writer from Itasca, Illinois. His brand new poetry chapbook with pictures From Which Place the Morning Rises and his new photo version of The Lost American: From Exile to Freedom are available at: http://stores.lulu.com/promomanusa. The original version of The Lost American: from Exile to Freedom, can be found at: http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=0-595-46091-7. He has been published in over 22 countries. Email: promomanusa@gmail.com. The author is also editor/publisher of four poetry sites, all open for submission, which can be found at his website: http://poetryman.mysite.com/. All of his books are now available on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=michael+lee+johnson. E-mail: promomanusa@gmail.com.

Teresa Houle lives, writes and fights evil in Victoria BC with her husband and daughter. Her work can be read online at Flash Fire 500 and Bartleby Snopes. She drinks more tea than you. Trust me.

Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of eight poetry chapbooks, including Tomorrowland (2008) from Achilles Chapbooks and Love Is a UFO (2009) from Pudding House.

ME Purfield is a writer from Jersey City, NJ. He has fiction on the web and in print.

Chris Castle lives and works outside London and has written short stories and two books. His main influences are the writer Raymond Carver and the films of PT Anderson.

Nulty Lynch is a husband, father, poet and fly-fisherman. Not usually all at once, or in that order. He lives in Laurel, Maryland with his wife, two daughters and two dogs. He's taking up watercolor, because he needs a new "thing" like a hole in the head. He works in Washington D.C. and found.that the train commute goes much quicker while writing. He has most recently been published in Shoots and Vines and Modern English Tanka, and will be published in upcoming issues of The Stray Branch, Yellow Mama and The Houston Literary Review.

Rodrigo Torres is a full-time student in Florida. When he is not eagerly attending literature classes, he can be found amassing books upon books for his personal library.

Rachel Cann is in love with Ferlinghetti.

Table of Contents

Issue 7

Mel Bosworth lives and breathes in Western Massachusetts. Read more at his website, http://eddiesocko.blogspot.com.

KJ wants everyone to get along even if it means using hugs. He keeps a blog here:http://illegalfunk.blogspot.com. It wants followers. Sometimes he appreciates the occasional note: khays45@gmail.com.

Gavin Broom lives in the Scottish countryside with his wife and his cat. As at time of writing, he doesn't own a house at the beach. Further evidence can be gathered at http://gavinbroom.co.uk.

Elizabeth Wylder's poetry, fiction, and audio have appeared in various literary journals including 2River View, SLAB, and California Quarterly. She is the editor of Pure Francis (www.purefrancis.org) and an instructor at Triton and Malcolm X Colleges. When she grows up, she wants to play in the NBA.

Tia Prouhet lives in the armpit of Texas where she spends her time sniffing books, slinging coffee, and wiping children's noses-- for money. She has been recently published in Slurve, Flash Fire 500, and mud luscious.

Johnny Fontaine is a writer from Louisville, KY whose short fiction has appeared in decomP, LEO, and Thieves Jargon. You can find him serial blogging at www.hisgraceamazing.blogspot.com and www.fontaine4christ.wordpress.com while he finishes his first novel, Chasing After the Wind.

Tye Doudy is a veteran of the streets, jails, detoxes, gutters, and libraries of Portland Oregon. His stories reflect his experiences as an addict and denizen of the underworld. He is thirty four years old and continues to struggle with the demons that fuel his prolific output of short stories, poetry, photography, multimedia art, and music projects. He can be contacted at wurmstar@gmail.com.

Roberta Lawson is one of those girls who is probably slightly too otherworldly for her own good. You have probably met a few girls like her before. Possibly you have sworn at them for their lack of road-crossing skills. When she's not playing in traffic, Roberta can be found at http://mermaids-singing.blogspot.com, and more of her writing is scattered about various zines, on the internet and in print. She is contactable at almost.certainly.a.bad.idea@gmail.com

Paul D. Brazil was born in England and is on the lam in Poland. He has had stories in A Twist Of Noir, Powder Burn Flash, Beat To A Pulp, Thrillers Killers n Chillers, The Flash Fiction Offensive, Shoots & Vines, Six Sentences and Flashshots. His print published work is in the book Six Sentences Volume Two and the Finnish magazine Ässä.(ACE). He can be found stalking ‘you would say that, wouldn’t you?’ http://pauldbrazill.blogspot.com/

Diane Payne teaches creative writing at University of Arkansas-Monticello,where is is also faculty advisor of Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, http://www.foliateoak.uamont.edu. She is the author of two novels: Burning Tulips and A New Kind of Music. She has been published in hundreds of literary magazines, which most recently include: Fiction International, The Rambler, Tea Party, and Arkansas Literary Forum. More info can be found at: http://home.earthlink.net/~dianepayne/

Victoria Clayton Munn is a poet/writer with a very long and ostentatious name - but don't worry, you can call her "Tori". She's been published in such illustrious 'zines as Poor Mojo's Almanac(k), Boston Literary Magazine, Mad Swirl and Right Hand Pointing, among others. Tori lives in upstate New York with her husband, daughter and dog. You can find her at http://www.writinggirl.com.

Ivan Brkaric About a year ago, Ivan never wrote a single poem or even read any poetry. Now he uses poetry as an outlet and does his best to edit an e-zine called Callused Hands. Callused Hands is located at http://callusedhands.blogspot.com/ and it is a place were ordinary people can share ordinary literature. His poetry has appeared in Why Vandalism?, Blowback Magazine, Gloom Cupboard, Lit Up Magazine and The.

Marina Richards is a former advertising writer from Boston. Her fiction, poetry and essays have been published or are forthcoming from Blood Lotus, Greatest Uncommon Denominator Magazine, The Hawaii Pacific Review, Writer's Digest, The Humor Press, Pear Noir!, Up The Staircase, and Six Sentences among others. She lives with her husband and four cats, and is considering getting some goats for her lawn.

Buxton Wells was born in Iowa, raised in Virginia, and is a longtime resident of Memphis, TN. Appearances online with Winning Writers [2004, 2006], Umbrella, and Wandering Army [2007] constitute his publication history to date. He has his expectations.

Adam Moorad's writing has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Underground Voices, Thieves Jargon, Storyglossia, and Pear Noir. He lives in Brooklyn and works in publishing. Visit him here: http://adamadamadamadamadam.blogspot.com/

Matt Finney lives and writes in Millbrook, Alabama. His blog may be found at http://mattfinneypoems.blogspot.com/.

Glanda Widger is a freelance humorist and a granny from the foothills of North Carolina, USA. She writes for fun and poverty. For Glanda, writing about the funny side of life is an addiction. She is a member of Writers with Humor (WWH)--everybody in the group has learned that writing is her way of staving off running barefoot through cow pastures. She has a couple of stotries in recent Anthologies and a few "atta girl" from other contests. It's not the accolades that keep her writing. It's the danged fun of telling bodacious lies.

Table of Contents

Issue 6

Roxane Gay's writing appears or is forthcoming in DIAGRAM, elimae, Storyglossia, mud luscious, Monkeybicycle, Necessary Fiction and others. She is the associate editor of PANK. She can be found online at www.roxanegay.com where she keeps a boring blog.

John Martin is a New Jersey–based writer/photographer/artist, whose work is forthcoming in Flashshot. When the neighbor's dog is quiet, he writes. When it barks, he punches the wall.

Mary J. Breen is a writer and editor living in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. She has published two books about women's health as well as essays, articles and short fiction. She currently teaches memoir writing.

Ben White graduated with a BA in neurobiology from Harvard College and enjoyed his creative writing workshops immensely. His recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Dirty Napkin, Dogzplot, SUB-LIT, and others. He now studies medicine in Texas and thinks out-loud at benwhite.com.

Ryan Dilbert isn’t creepy at all. Whenever possible he is a teacher, writer, rapper and comedian. His work can be seen in FRiGG, Bartleby-Snopes, White Whale Review, and decomP.

Grant Loveys is a writer/columnist living in St. John's, Newfoundland - a little town perched on Canada's eastern edge. His work has recently appeared in Paragon and Foundling Review.

Jenny Poore is a former archaeologist and coffeeshop owner who currently works for a company that imports/exports antique globes. Other works can be found at Word Riot, Hobart's and MonkeyBicycle. She lives and writes and chases her children in Lynchburg Virginia.

Rosanne Griffeth lives on the verge of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and spends her time writing, raising goats and documenting Appalachian culture. She holds an MFA from the University of South Carolina. Her work has been published or accepted by MsLexia, The Potomac, Now and Then, Pank, Night Train, Keyhole Magazine, Smokelong Quarterly, Thieves Jargon and Six Little Things among other places. She is the blogger behind The Smokey Mountain Breakdown.

Cortney McLellan writes from Anchorage, Alaska. Her stories have appeared, or are forthcoming, in cream city review, Storyglossia, Monkeybicycle, and Dogzplot. She studied writing at the University of Michigan.

GD Anderson lives in North Wollongong, Australia. His chapbook ‘Dancing On Thin Ice’ is available though erbacce-press. He blogs at:
http://georgedanderson.blogspot.com.

Justin Scott Heifetz is a 22-year-old residing in Boston. He dropped out of his graduate studies in Classical Philology at Columbia to pursue a - well, very - different means of self expression.

Kimberly E. Ruth is a recent graduate from SUNY New Paltz where she received a BFA in photography and a BA in journalism. She plans to attend graduate school in the fall, where she will work towards an MFA in fine art. She is the author of the forthcoming chapbook, Said the Oyster to the Fly (Pudding House Press) and an e-chapbook, Between Cardboard Mountains (Gold Wake Press), which is available for free at http://goldwakepress.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/cardboard.pdf. You can view samples of her art at http://kimberlyruth.blogspot.com.

Colin Pope’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as Underground Voices, The Houston Literary Review, Oak Bend Review, Night Train, and Red Rock Review. In 2008, he won the Rose Fellowship from Texas State University and the Santa Barbara Poetry Conference Scholarship. He is an editor at Front Porch Literary Journal and currently resides in Texas.

Rhonda Parrish loves to write. That is, she loves to write anything but bio blurbs. You can find out more about her at her website
http://www.rhondaparrish.com.

Jennifer VanBuren was born and raised in Northeast PA and has found herself transported to the Austin TX area. Before baby #3 she had work published on the internet and print, and is excited to get back in the game.

Kristin Fouquet writes from New Orleans, a vibrant real estate market. Easy to Show is a piece of fiction. She doesn’t personally know any realtor-prostitutes, but she doesn’t doubt their existence. You are welcome to mingle with more of Kristin’s work at Le Salon: http://kristin.fouquet.cc

Olly Bryan I am in the fucking poem!

Ajay Vishwanathan works with bugs he cannot see. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in the elimae, Times of India, Bartleby Snopes, The Houston Literary Review, The Cynic, Boston Literary Magazine, Breadcrumb Scabs, Cantaraville, Mid-Day, Counterexample Poetics, Bewildering Stories, Khabar, The Afternoon Despatch & Courier, Six Sentences, Static Movement, Short Humour Site, and Little India.

Jeff Lair lives in the Seattle megalopolis where he writes and performs poetry up and down the Puget Sound. Jeff Lair turns out poetry’s pockets for the spare change of consciousness that clinks against the keys of life’s dissonant chords where he discovers the sweeter harmonies hidden. If Jeff Lair could write a bio, he wouldn’t need to write poetry. Self reference in the third person makes Jeff Lair sound like Bob Dole. Jeff Lair finds this disturbing. Better you should just buy his books: TALL GRASS (210 pages 22 illustrations 55 poems 20 bucks--includes postage in the lower 48 U.S.) and BUCKING AND BRAYING AT THE DARK EDGE (166 pages illustrations poems 20 bucks--includes postage in the lower 48 U.S.) contact: JayLair@gmail.com

Jim Hamilton makes money flying airplanes, and is tolerable at that. He is intolerable at almost everything else, however, including writing stories which he insists upon doing despite repeated pleadings from family and friends for him to stop. He is untalented, unpublished, and unbearable, and if you find any of the stories included herein to be interesting or entertaining, please keep it to yourself or there will be no living with him. Why these good and talented people have chosen him to share ranks is an impenetrable mystery, but we must trust in their judgment and respect them for their merciful suffering of this apparent fool.

Table of Contents

Issue 5

Ramon Sender Barayon was literally born within earshot of machine gun fire during the Spanish Revolution. His mother was taken from a jail cell and executed by a fascist firing squad in the middle of the night in retaliation for articles published by his father, a noted Spanish novelist and correspondent for newspapers sympathetic to the cause of the P.O.U.M. - Partido Obrera Unificada Marxista - a Trotskyist organization scorned and vilified by Stalinist units. They were deprived of supplies and arms and hounded during and after the revolution by death squads. Because of this, Sr. Sender sent his children to New York to be raised in a foster home. Ramon moved to San Francisco in the late fifties where he attended the San Francisco Art Institute, sat in on a day of Allen Ginsberg's obscenity trial following City Lights Books' publishing the epic poem "Howl," and made many friends in the hip community, people who pioneered light shows, mass entertainment in the extensive park system of San Francisco. Among them they numbered Lou Gottlieb, a noted composer and arranger who fronted "The Limelighters" of the television show, "Hootenany," where Woody Allen was the house comic, Bill Graham, business manager of "The San Francisco Mime Troupe, who later went on to manage and serve as the impresario of the Fillmore East and West Auditoriums, and Stewart Brand, editor of "The Whole Earth Catalog. Ramon and Gottlieb founded the open land commune, Morningstar Ranch and Stewart Brand and Bill Graham joined he and Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters in organizing the San Francisco Trips Festival in 1966, an event where plastic trash cans full of electric Koo-Aid, The Grateful Dead, the Jefferson Airplane, and Big Brother and the Holding Company entertained for a weekend of psychedelic ecstasy. Among many close friends, Ramon counts Lawrence Ferlinghetti, publisher of City Lights Books and proprietor of the store by the same name. He's one groovy dude.

Brad Green hates skunks. This isn't a hatred similar to one high school girl hating that another high school girl's ass is closer to the Platonic form of an ass. No, this hatred isn't like that. For one thing, Brad Green isn't a high school girl, so it'd be hard to really have that sort of hatred. No, his hatred of skunks would be legendary if such hatreds were actually cataloged and revered. If a movie were ever to be made about his hatred of skunks, he thinks Nicolas Cage would portray his hatred rather well. He may occasionally blog about this at http://elevatetheordinary.blogspot.com

Colin James works in Energy Conservation and has had poems rejected recently by "Rat's Ass" and other magazines.

Dawn Allison lives and writes in North Carolina. She has no adorable adjectives or catchphrases with which to describe herself or her writing. You can browse her list of publication credits at http://huntingthemidnightmuse.wordpress.com/

Brent Powers Brento Lives!

Jim Coppoc is an award-winning writer, teacher and performer; author of two books and three chapbooks of poetry, a blended-genre lyric memoir, and several plays; editor of Second Run Magazine (www.secondrun.org); Owner/Director of Ames Artspace; and a Lecturer both in the English Department at Iowa State University and in the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Chatham University. Coppoc lives in Ames, Iowa and wherever he happens to be on tour.

Jordan Prince When I was a kid, my father said to me, "Toys you have to pay for yourself, but books, they are always free." So instead of playing with toys, I read books. I got into science fiction and read every single science textbook they had in the elementary school library, and all through middle and high school I delved into the deeper, harder SF out there. Once in college, I became a Physics major with an intention to become a theoretical physicist. I still read SF, except now I make attempts at writing it, too. I'm currently a third year enrolled in the University of Virginia.

Gavin Broom lives in the Scottish countryside with his wife and his cat. As at time of writing, he doesn't own a house at the beach. Further evidence can be gathered at http://gavinbroom.co.uk.

JD Stockinger has done nothing noteworthy. He lives near Chicago. Contact him at horsethiefemail@gmail.com.

Barry Graham is the author of the national virginity pledge (another sky press). look for him most recently in: frigg, ghoti, hobart, elimae, and smokelong quarterly.

In 1983, Lawrence Gladeview was born to two proud and semi-doting parents. After two middle schools and losing his faith in catholic high school, he graduated from James Madison University, majoring in English and having spent only one night in jail. He is a Washington D.C. poet cohabiting with his fiance Rebecca Barkley. His poems have been featured in Word Catalyst Magazine, Gloom Cupboard Literary Magazine, and The Poet’s Haven Poetry Magazine. He blogs at http://beatnikprose.blogspot.com.

Welshman Alun Williams has had limited and muted success in short story writing although several publications that published his work have sadly departed this mortal coil. (Bonfire, Cambrensis and Write Side up, to name but a few.) Writes under Maxie Slim on Crittersbar and is an esteemed member of Zoetrope and Scrawl the writers asylum where his third alter ego Maxwell Allen resides. Alun is really an uber-schizophrenic with identity issues.

Michelle Reale is an academic librarian working in a university library in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Her fiction has been published in Verbsap, elimae, Dogzplot, Laura Hird, Word Riot, Dogmatika, Robot Melon, The Battered Suitcase Ken*Again, Pequin, Apt, Gloom Cupboard, Blood Orange Review, JMWW, Underground Voices, Monkeybicycle, Up the Staircase, and others.

Dennis Mahagin is a writer from Washington state who enjoys Frisbee, and barking at the moon. His poetry collection, “Grand Mal,” is coming soon.

D. Luke Johnson is a recent graduate of The University of Mississippi who likes his whiskey cold and his women hot.

RC Miller was born 1974 in Parkersburg, WV. He currently lives in New York City. Recent work appears at Thieves Jargon, Flash Fire 500, and The Recusant. He may be found at http://visionblues.blogspot.com/

Frank O'Connor. Despite this, or perhaps because of it Frank is. If he wasn't, then that would be different. Frank's work has appeared in Flashquake, Pequin and Monkeybicycle, among other pages.

Tim Jones-Yelvington lives and writes in Chicago. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Keyhole, Annalemma, Smokelong Quarterly, Pank, Ampersand Review, elimae, Wigleaf, Monkeybicycle, Mud Luscious and others.

Table of Contents

Issue 4

Ray Succre currently lives on the southern Oregon coast with his wife and son. He has been published in Aesthetica, Dogzplot, and Raunchland, as well as in numerous others across as many countries. His novel Tatterdemalion (Cauliay) was recently released in print and is available most places. A second novel, Amphisbaena, is forthcoming in Summer 2009. He tries hard. For inquiry, publication history, and information, visit me online: http://raysuccre.blogspot.com

Kaolin Fire is a conglomeration of ideas, side projects, and experiments. Web development is his primary occupation, but he also develops computer games, edits Greatest Uncommon Denominator Magazine, and occasionally teaches computer science. He has had short fiction published in Strange Horizons, Tuesday Shorts, Escape Velocity, and Alienskin Magazine, among others.

Dennis Mahagin is a writer from Washington state who enjoys Frisbee, and barking at the moon. His poetry collection, “Grand Mal,” is coming soon.

Sarah Silvers is a pathetic old hippie who wishes she still lived in California or at least Vermont.

Larry Goldman bio coming soon.

Richard Fein Bio coming soon.

ME Purfield is a writer from Jersey City, NJ. He has fiction on the web and in print.

John Zanath has a license to drink and an urge to smoke. He puts a pen to paper and tries to make words work right. In his free time he fights sobriety, plots crimes, and studies perversion.

Christian Ward is a poet from across the pond who has been known to do unusual things in his sleep. No more should be said about this.

Barry Basden is coauthor of Crack! and Thump: With a Combat Infantry Officer in World War II, about a hero. He never was a good soldier himself.

Jeff Lacy is a graduate of the University of Nebraska MFA program. His stories have appeared in Timber Creek Review, Conte, in the April 2009 issue of Wrong Tree Review, and forthcoming in Green Silk Journal. Additionally, He has been practicing law in Nebraska and Georgia since 1991. Much of his practice has been in the Atlanta metropolitan area and the coast of Georgia where he has worked as a public defender and most recently as a prosecutor for a short time.

George Keenen lives on a ranch in northern California, where he grows the world's hottest Thai chilies.

Nicole Kuwik is freezing. She wears vanilla extract on her wrists and recently sold her kitchen table.

Michael Wildman, according to rumor, grew up candling eggs in a Trappist monastery, but the truth is more like he gave up his career as a serial killer to go candle eggs in a Trappist monastery. In between, he worked for years as a magazine journalist, gave that up to do social work for a while, and now he's experimenting with fiction. Efforts are currently underway to prevent him experimenting with anything else that might be considered dangerous.

Table of Contents

Issue 3

Jon Thrower lives in St. Louis, MO and teaches English at various St. Louis area colleges. He received an MA from SoutheastMissouriStateUniversity. He was a founding member of the Prescription Strength Poetry collective. While not copy-editing translations of French Philosophy, recording punk music, cooking with a wok, traveling back and forth to San Francisco, and listening to his girlfriend espouse the beauty of Brownian Motion, he drinks gin and considers sleep only an afterthought. He is an author of, Balancing on a Bootheel, from Southeast Missouri State University Press. Other work has appeared in Big Muddy, Knock, Story South, Blaze Vox, and other fine publications and websites.

Kyle Hemmings lives and works in New Jersey where he wishes he could play surf guitar like Dick Dale and sing like Brian Wilson. He sings in the shower, sometimes.

Thom Young is a writer from Texas. His work has appeared in Thieves Jargon, Blowback, Writers' Bloc, Dagger, and other sundry places.

Misti Rainwater-Lites Misti Rainwater-Lites hopes you will Google her and buy her books. She has the perfect tattoo in mind for her upper left arm. It's a pop art pineapple, which will probably cost approximately $175.

Jarrid Deaton lives and writes in eastern Kentucky. He received his MFA in Writing from Spalding University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Zygote in my Coffee, Pear Noir!, Six Sentences, The Cut-Thru Review, and elsewhere.

Teresa Houle lives, writes and fights evil in Victoria BC with her husband and daughter. Her work can be read online at Flash Fire 500 and Bartleby Snopes. She drinks more tea than you. Trust me.

Joseph Goosey is fearful for his future. He has one chapbook available via Poptritus Press and one forthcoming via Shadow Archer Press. He thanks you for reading.

Ward Abel Poet, composer of music (Max Able / Abel, Rawls & Hayes), lawyer and spoken-word performer (Scapeweavel), L. Ward Abel lives in rural Georgia, and has been published at The Reader (UK), Versal, The Pedestal, Texas Poetry Journal, Kritya, OpenWide, and many others. He is the author of Peach Box and Verge (Little Poem Press, 2003), Jonesing For Byzantium (UK Authors Press, 2006) and the newly released The Heat of Blooming (Pudding House Press, 2008).

Ben Nardolilli I am a twenty three year old writer currently living in New York City. My work has appeared in Houston Literary Review, Perigee Magazine, Canopic Jar, and Lachryma: Modern Songs of Lament, Baker’s Dozen, Thieves Jargon, Farmhouse Magazine, Elimae, Poems Niederngasse, The Delmarva Review, Underground Voices Magazine, Heroin Love Songs, Shakespeare’s Monkey Revue, Literary Fever, and Perspectives Magazine. In addition I was the poetry editor for West 10th Magazine at NYU and maintain a blog at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com.

Robert Aquino Dollesin was still a kid when he left the Philippines. He now lives in Sacramento, where he sometimes finds time to jot a few words on paper. He sometimes blogs here: http://robertaquinodollesin.blogspot.com.

S.P. Flannery was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and now resides in Madison. His poetry has appeared in Random Acts of Writing, The Alembic, Calliope Nerve, The Blotter and Leaf Garden.

Karen Beatty I think of life as a river, coming and going, surging and flowing. Born in Eastern Kentucky near the temperamental Lickin’ River and reared in Bound Brook, New Jersey on the banks of the Raritan River, I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the 1960s, immersing myself in the cultures along the mighty Mekong River, bordering Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. I finally settled in Greenwich Village, between the Hudson River and the East River, on the isle of Manhattan. I like my music gritty and soulful (Melissa Etheridge, Neil Young) and there is always a song in my head, whether I’m delivering medical supplies to Cuba or trekking the mountain jungles of Laos to converse with Buddhist monks in training.

Sandy Hiss likes to spend her free time drinking fancy coffee, eating chips, and watching shows about the paranormal....all at the same time.

Jon Olseth teaches English and Creative Writing at Riverland Community College in Southern Minnesota, and (as long as I'm speaking of myself in third person) he is pleased to be the recent winner of The Blue Earth Review's Flash Fiction Contest.

William Doreski survived the Great new Hampshire Ice Storm of 2008 but may never be comfortable around trees again. He has also become photophobic and lives in perpetuate darkness, misspelling his nouns and getting his verbs into impossible tenses. Whenever his poems appear in the light they are applauded as implausible forgeries.

Joseph Carfagno was born in Brooklyn but lives in Connecticut.

Table of Contents

Issue 2

Mel Bosworth lives and breathes in Western Massachusetts. Read more at his website, http://eddiesocko.blogspot.com.

Brent Powers Brento Lives!

Ernest Williamson III is a 32 year old polymath who has published poetry and visual art in 200 online and print journals. He is a self-taught pianist and painter. He poetry has been nominated twice for the Best of the Net Anthology He holds the B.A. and the M.A. in English/Creative Writing/Literature from the University of Memphis. Ernest is an Adjunct Professor at New Jersey City University and an English Professor at Essex County College. Professor Williamson is also a Ph.D. Candidate at Seton Hall University in the field of Higher Education, and a member of The International High IQ Society based in New York City. Professor Williamson is also a chess expert with an internet rating in the 2000-2200 range. Currently he is rated 2010. View Professor Williamson's listing in Poets & Writers Directory. http://www.pw.org/content/ernest_williamson_iii

Ty Bluesmith blogs at http://igaveitacourtesyflush.blogspot.com.

Matt S. DeBenedictis lives in Atlanta, GA., and hates his neighbors. All of them. Even their round babies. Matt comes up with I Love Lucy like schemes to get them evicted. Matt is the author of the chapbook A Perfect Disgrace (174 Publishing) and has fiction featured in Lamination Colony, The Ampersand Review, and Shine.

David Erlewine can be read in The Pedestal, Keyhole, Hobart, Word Riot, Rumble, Elimae, Titular, and a number of other journals. He edits fiction for Dogzplot.

J.A. Tyler is the author of the forthcoming novellas SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE (ghost road press) and IN LOVE WITH A GHOST (willows wept press) as well as the chapbooks THE GIRL IN THE BLACK SWEATER (Trainwreck Press) and EVERYONE IN THIS IS EITHER DYING OR WILL DIE OR IS THINKING OF DEATH (Achilles Chapbook Series). He is also founding editor of mud luscious / ml press. Visit: http://www.aboutjatyler.com.

Robb Todd knows that a grizzly bear would whip a gorilla in a fight. Easily. No doubt about it. His typing has been or will be published in 3:AM, flashquake, Laura Hird Showcase, The Beat, Two With Water, Six Sentences, and Very Bad Poetry. Visit his Web site, http://www.robbtodd.com.

Nicolette Westfall currently passes the time photographing garbage and tracks left in the snow. Most recently, she has published greasy poetry in Binnacle.

Jeff Crouch is an internet artist in Grand Prairie, Texas. Google him.

Ken Weene is a New Englander by birth and both a psychologist and minister by training, He has worked as an educator and psychotherapist. His poetry has appeared in numerous publications - most recently being featured in Sol, and an anthology of his writings, Songs for my Father, was published by Inkwell Productions. Now in semi-retirement, Ken and his wife live in Arizona. There Ken has been able to indulge his passion for writing. He has served as treasurer of The Arizona State Poetry Society and has studied with Ron Rash at The Wildacres Writing Workshop. He is a featured poet in the Autumn 2008 edition of Sol Magazine.

Ethel Rohan was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland. She now lives in San Francisco. She received her MFA in fiction from Mills College, CA. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from over twenty online and print journals including Cantaraville; Word Riot; Identity Theory; mud luscious; and Prick Of The Spindle. She is a brazen chocoholic. Her blog is http://www.straightfromtheheartinmyhip.blogspot.com.

Robert Jadah is a greying voice actor who works in Silver Surfer jammies from a home studio well within drunk driving distance of Montreal. He has stumbled back to the world of fiction after raising two batches of kids. He completed his 80,000-word novel two months ago, and is now busy not reading, editing, or peddling it. He can be heard but not read at http://www.robertjadah.com/.

Jared Ward has had work accepted at Word Riot, Storyglossia, Underground Voices, HOBART, Barrelhouse... others.

Kylie Martin is a Sophomore college student.

Table of Contents

Issue 1

Nathan Tyree is a scruffy looking primate living in the absurd corner of Kansas. He can't play the Oboe, and sometimes his arms bend back. It is his deepest desire to be reincarnated as a zombie version of Charles Bukowski. His fiction and poetry has appeared (or is forthcoming) in Dogzplot; Dogmatika; Diddledog (what is up with the dog names, huh?); Poor Mojo’s Almanac(k); Word Riot; decomP; The Beat; Flesh and Blood; Bare Bone; Heroin Love Songs; Gutter Eloquence and about 100 other wonderful places. Sometimes he reviews books for BookMunch (www.bookmunch.co.uk). He keeps a lifetime supply of single malt Scotch and a big box of crayons handy at all times. Find him at http://nathantyree.wordpress.com/

Crystal Folz lives in rural Indiana with her husband and two children. Her work can be found on Lit Up Magazine, Outsider Writers Collective, and SixSentences. Upcoming publications include Dogzplot, Yellow Mama Issue #14, andGlossolalia. She is the editor of Shoots and Vines. When she's not mothering her children, Crystal works as a bookkeeper for a small Carnegie library and plots secret takedowns of chain stores and mainstream publishing companies that have turned away from the spirit of literature.

D.C. Porder is pursuing his BA in creative writing at The New School. He has no plans for the future. Read more at http://www.dcporder.blogspot.com

K. Lynne Murphy lives and writes among the mountains of West Virginia, where she makes short stories, attempts to make novels, and is working through the kindergarten phase of learning to share her writing with other people. She helps with animal rescue and occasionally rescues stray humans. She doesn’t care for coffee, Thanksgiving turkey and dressing, or syrup on her pancakes, but still believes in the American dream and hopes it believes in her right back.

Table of Contents

Blog Published

Tom Sanders grew up in the Mississippi Delta down Highway 61 to become a rolling stone and a journalist. His work as a television producer and reporter allowed him the opportunity to travel a considerable amount of the planet and live in such diverse places as Miami, Guam, London, New York and Tokyo. He made his pilgrimage to Graceland, toured Imelda Marcos’ closet and Lenin’s tomb, and drank rum with the deceased Hemingway while watching the sunrise over the writer’s grave in Idaho. He reacted to his crisis by dropping out and buying a historic and dilapidated old hotel on a remote Florida barrier island in the Gulf of Mexico. The experience provided him with plenty of colourful characters and background for his writing endeavours. He lives now on the South Coast of England where he is houseboy for his Yorkshire wife when he is not hanging out with his friend The Real Kramer in Manhattan. He spends his days with his faithful basset hound Barnaby, cruising the back roads of the Sussex Downs in his Austin Healey, seeking inspiration, and trying to write something worthwhile before he gets sucked into the cosmic hereafter. Ceck out his website PARADISE UNLIMITED at http://www.tksanders.com/

Anonymous is showing, not telling.

Maxwell Allen is a rather prolific writer who lives and works somewhere across the pond.

Table of Contents