Magazine Contributors
Issue #11
David McLain
David graduated from Purchase College, where he directed a production of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. His stories have been published in over a dozen magazines, including Harvard’s Dudley Review, The Paumanok Review, The Taj Mahal Review, Soma Literary Review, and Grumble Magazine, where he was a regular contributor. Check out his first novel: The Life of a Thief.
Jenny Forrester
Jenny has been writing a memoir and has been known to write a fiction story or two and sometimes, she melds the two. You can find more of her work on Facebook at Trailer Trash Writing.
Kirby Wright
Kirby is the author of the companion novels Punahou Blues and Moloka’i Nui Ahina, both set in his home state of Hawaii. He was one of the original Streakin’ 500—CU students who streaked the Boulder Campus in 1973. He is helping promote a rock concert in Prague on Halloween Night, 2011.
Get in the car, Helen
Get in the car, Helen began writing shortly after discovering Helen, the woman he loved more than anything, had been secretly fucking a guy named Craig. Since being dumped by Helen, he has published a book of poetry, The Aftermath, etc., and is a frequent contributor to Illiterate Magazine.
Scott Alexander Jones
Scott is the author of a collection of poems: One Day There Will Be Nothing to Show That We Were Ever Here (Bedouin Books, 2009). He holds an MFA from The University of Montana and was Writer-in-Residence at The Montana Artists Refuge during October of 2009. He is co-founder of the literary journal Zero Ducats and releases music as Surgery in the Attic.
Alice Pettway
Alice is a Recovering Peace Corps Volunteer recently returned from Mozambique. She is amazed by electrical outlets and running water, but disappointed by malls and all the things in them. Alice has published her words in her chapbook, Barbed Wire and Bedclothes, as well as in print and online journals and hopes to continue doing so at a faster rate now that she no longer has to hook her laptop to a car battery in order to communicate with the world at large.
Daniel Dissinger
Daniel is an Adjunct in the English Department at SUNY College at Old Westbury in New York, a first-year Doctoral student at Saint John’s University, and the Editor at In Stereo Press. In 2008, he graduated with an MFA from The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. His poetry can be seen in multiple issues of Monkey Puzzle, 580 Split, and the first issue of Trunk of Delirium. Daniel has work forthcoming in and/or V2, as well as a chapbook (his first) from Shadow Mountain Press entitled tracing the shape…
Nicholas B. Morris
Nick has creative writing degrees from Arkansas Tech University and Naropa’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, and is the author of Tapeworm. He’s been an editor for several journals and has appeared in many others. In his spare time he enjoys guitars, beer, hookahs, and football. He lives in Denver, Colorado, with his partner Alyssa Piccinni.
Craig O’Hara
Craig grew up in Southern Indiana. After attending Indiana University, he lived and worked in Vietnam and the Northern Mariana Islands. He later received his MFA from the University of Arizona, and since then his stories have appeared in a number of magazines and journals, including Confrontation, Spork, and The Sonora Review. He currently lives with his lovely wife in Muncie, Indiana and teaches writing at Ball State University.
Jordan Antonucci
Nooch is a poet, artist and performer from NY who gets his kicks from strange jobs that pay for the next plane ticket. In the past five years, Jordan has worked, lived, and studied as a resident in five countries and has been working with Monkey Puzzle since 2010. He received his BA from the University of Maine and his MFA from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics.
His recent works can be found in Foothill: A Journal of Poetry, Breadcrumb Scabs Review, Gambling the Aisle, Play Berlin, Fast Forward Press, Midway Journal, Ninneros: Freaklung Odes, Monkey Puzzle, and Tidal Basin Review among others. For more information and a small taste of his work go to jordanantonucci.com.
Raki
Raki grew up mostly in Chicago and partly in Israel. She is the author of the zine Shut Up and Dance (1-3) and is currently working on a flash fiction collection, also to be her MFA thesis project at Naropa University, done by the spring of 2012 with high hopes and the help of her bff, monkey the cat.
Matthew Cortina
Matthew is both a writer and a person from New Jersey. He recently graduated from Rutgers University and he loves pizza.
Juliana M. Sartor
Juliana is an MFA candidate at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her greatest dream as a child was to either be a wolf biologist or Gloria Estefan. Her greatest recurring nightmare involved acid-spitting rodents. It was triggered by the “If I Never Knew You” song at the end of Disney’s Pocahontas, which she has yet to re-watch.
James O’Brien
James attended Iowa State University’s MFA program in Creative Writing. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming from The Colorado Review, The Collagist, NY Tyrant, and over a dozen other publications. He can be found online at www.thedevilsthroat.com and contacted at jdobrienwrites@gmail.com.
Sarah Elizabeth Taz Schantz
Sarah is a visual artist and writer living on the outskirts of Boulder, Colorado with her family in an old farmhouse surrounded by open sky, cattle, coyote, screech owls, and century-old cottonwoods. She is the face and hands behind www.AnangkaArts.Etsy.com: specializing in pen & ink, collage, “pencil painting,” and assemblage art. Currently, she is a prose-focused MFA student at the Jack Kerouac School—and in this field of venture, was recently nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
Pat Nolan
Pat’s poetry and prose have been published in numerous magazines and anthologies in Europe and Asia as well as North America. He was co-editor of Life of Crime: Newsletter of The Black Bart Poetry Society in the 80’s and which were recently collected into one volume as Life of Crime: Documents In The Guerrilla War Against Language Poetry (Poltroon Press, 2009). He has published over a dozen books of poetry including a selection of prose poems, Intellectual Pretentions, from Editions de Jacob (2009). He lives among the redwood wilds along the lower Russian River in Northern California.
Dr. Williamson has published poetry and visual art in over 365 national and international online and print journals. Some of Dr. Williamson’s visual art and/or poetry have been published in journals representing over thirty colleges and universities around the world. Visit Dr. Williamson’s website: www.yessy.com/budicegenius
M. Irby
M. writes short stories and lives in La Jolla, California.
Nicelle Davis
Nicelle lives in Southern California with her son JJ. She teaches at Antelope Valley College. Her first book, Circe (Lowbrow Press), debuted in October 2011 and her next, Becoming Judas (Red Hen Press), is scheduled to be released in 2013. She runs a free online poetry workshop at The Bees’ Knees Blog and is an assistant poetry editor for Connotation Press.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, Cheryl started her career as an illustrator and painter. Her art has graced the walls of galleries and museums throughout the world, including Laforet Harajuku Museum, Japan, The Brooklyn Museum, and The Museum of the City of New York, to name a few. Cheryl is an Adjunct Professor in the Communications Design Department at Pratt Institute, where she teaches illustration and motion graphics. In addition to Pratt, Cheryl is a Visiting Instructor at Bloomfield College in New Jersey.
Troy Golden
Troy was born and raised in Houston, Texas where he now resides with his wife Leah and their two children/maniacs. After receiving his BA in Marketing from the University of Houston he started UOY Advertising, a small creative agency whose works reflects you. He enjoys lots of things, especially queso dip.
Barbara Kussow
Barbara is editor and publisher of Still Crazy, a lit mag that publishes poetry, fiction, and essays by or about people over age 50. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in various publications including Kaleidoscope, Dos Passos Review, Hospital Drive, Danse Macabre, and The Storyteller. A mystery short story is forthcoming in Hard Boiled. Her essays and book columns have appeared online and in local papers.
Brandon Arthur
Raised in the flatlands of central Illinois, Brandon moved to Boulder, Colorado in 1999 and graduated from Colorado University in Boulder. He then received an MFA from the Writing and Poetics Program at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics of Naropa University. He is the author of expired Rx (Monkey Puzzle Press, 2010) and currently resides in Denver, Colorado.
Eleanor Leonne Bennett
Eleanor is a fifteen year-old internationally award winning photographer and artist who has won first places with National Geographic, The World Photography Organisation and Nature’s Best Photography. Her photography has been published in the Telegraph, The Guardian, the BBC News Website and on the cover of books and magazines in the United States and Canada. Her art is globally exhibited, having shown work in London, Paris, Indonesia, Los Angeles, Florida, Washington, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Canada, Spain, Germany, Japan, Australia, and The Environmental Photographer of the Year Exhibition (2011).
Justin Gershwin
Justin is from Davis, California. He’s an art critic and the author of a study of graffiti and modern art. His story “The Mona Lisa Sandwich” is the first chapter of a novel he recently completed.
Drew Hetzel
Drew lives in the San Francisco Bay Area where he writes, teaches, and turns chunks of wood into bowls. He received an MFA in Creative Writing from Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics.
Ian Gronau
Ian is a recent graduate of Columbia College Chicago’s fiction writing program. He has several short fiction pieces published in fledgling lit journals along with reviews and editorial articles. He currently resides in the sleepy town of Elkhorn, Wisconsin, where he reads, writes, and quietly thinks.
B. Olivia Nishkian
B. is a California native; the lesbian daughter of a militant-pacifist father and a blue-collar mom. The scents that remind her of early childhood are body odor, marijuana, and mud. She is determined to drag the world kicking and screaming towards empathy and understanding. Her favorite animals are bears.
Timmy Trabon
Timmy received a BA in English and French from University of Portland. On a persistent hunt for the eccentric, he is often the subject of hilarity. Many of his essays chronicle these personal anecdotes. He doesn’t mind if you laugh at him.
Gladys Justin Carr
Gladys, a former Nicholson Fellow at Smith College and University Fellow at Cornell, left her job as a book publishing executive to write full time. She is the author Augustine’s Brain – The Remix and coauthor of the volume, Edge by Edge (Toadlily Press). Her work has recently appeared in over eighty publications, including The New York Times, North Atlantic Review, and Connecticut Review and she is a winner of a California State Poetry Society Award.
Contributors to Previous Issues
Adam Perry
Adam was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and spent the years 2002-2008 playing music in San San Francisco before moving moving to Boulder to lose himself. His book, fotographs of bones, is available from Monkey Puzzle Press. Dig his blog by clicking here: Beautiful Buzz.
Adrienne Dodt
Adrienne writes, “This is my autobiography; this is a true story. This is y autob ograph ; this is true st ry. This i y auto ograp ; this i true s ry. This y aut ogra ; this true ry. Thi y au ogr ; thi tru ry. Th y a og ; th tr ry. T y o ; t t r . ; .”
Aimee Herman
Aimee spends her time counting rats in subway stations, searching for the (in)significance of push-up bras and girdles, and disemboweling the meaning of sexuality. She currently works as a contributing writer for Spectrum Culture and is a managing editor of erotica for Oysters & Chocolate. Her work can be found in Cliterature Journal, Pregnant Moon Review, Origami Condom, and a recent anthology, You Say. Say.. She lives with her partner, Quetzo, and their amazing black lab, Taku.
Akilah Oliver
Akilah wrote and lived in Brooklyn. She was on the faculty of the Naropa Summer Writing Program. Her latest book is A Toast in the House of Friends.
Alex is very well. His intention to become what he never was before is always on the front burner. He claims to have finally reached the corner of his apogee from where the seductive smell of the great beyond is within the olfactory sensitivity of his proboscis.
Alexandra Lukens
Alexandra / lives on I-95 / learns at Columbia University / edits Flaneur Foundry / featured in Fast Forward Vol. II / featured in Beehive Magazine / writes The Husband Manuscripts / marries Bruno S.
Amy Catanzano
Amy is the author of two books: iEpiphany (Erudite Fangs, 2008), published by Anne Waldman, and Multiversal, selected by Michael Palmer for the Poets Out Loud Prize with Fordham University Press. Amy’s poetry has appeared in literary magazines such as Conjunctions, Fence, Volt, Denver Quarterly, American Letters & Commentary, and Colorado Review. She also has poetry included in the forthcoming anthology, A Best of Fence. She has an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and a BA in English from Colorado State University
Ana Maria is a mixed media artist currently living somewhere soaking up the sun and appreciating the lessons of each new day. She was raised by her large, happy, and well-fed New Mexican family in ‘Burque with many a weekend visiting Grandma Kate in Taos. She loves lots of things, mostly dancing and water. In her art she seeks to gracefully unravel the intricacies of what it means to be human.
Andrew Bethke
Andrew is working towards his BA in History from California State University, Fresno. Following that, he intends to pursue the ultimate prize: donning the tweed coat, argyle sweater, and gruff but loveable demeanor of a professor of medieval British history. As much as he loves the melancholy of residing in the city of his birth, he hopes to one day escape to anywhere.
Andrew McEwan
Andrew is from Bright’s Grove, Ontario, Canada, and currently attends the University of Toronto. He is the editor of Acta Victoriana literary journal. His work has appeared in Dandelion, and is forthcoming from Misunderstandings Magazine, Fact-Simile, and an anthology, Gulch, to be published by Tightrope Books. His first chapbook, Input / Output, is due in January from Cactus Press in Toronto.
Andrew Schelling
Andrew is a poet, translator, and essay writer. His work is steeped in natural history, wilderness explorations, ecology, and the literature of Asia. He’s published six volumes of translations from classical India’s poetry and he edited The Wisdom Anthology of North American Buddhist Poetry. Recent titles include Tea Shack Interior: New & Selected Poetry, and a volume of essays, Wild Form, Savage Grammar. In June 2008, Dropping the Bow: Poems from Ancient India was reissued by White Pine Press and a recent book of poems, Old Tale Road (Empty Bowl Press), was released in 2008. He lives in the Southern Rocky Mountain bioregion and teaches poetry and Sanskrit at Naropa University.
April Johnston
April spent nearly a decade writing long-form narrative for newspapers and magazines. Today, she teaches her students in West Virginia University’s P.I. Reed School of Journalism how to write those stories. She has an MFA in creative writing from Carlow University, and her flash fiction appeared in The Mix Tape by Fast Forward Press.
Barbara Price
Born in Boston and raised all over, as a child Barbara saw the spirit of Nathaniel Hawthorne as she walked past the Salem Custom House, which made her very reluctant to walk past Gallows Hill. She was living in Cleveland in 1978 when Dennis Kucinich let the city go bankrupt, which is exactly why she supported him for president in 2008. Barbara is working toward an MFA at California State University in Fresno, where she lives with a very understanding husband and two patient kids. She is a Nice Mommy.
Barry Spacks
Known mainly as a poet/teacher, Barry has brought out various novels, stories, three poetry-reading CDs and ten poetry collections while teaching literature and writing for years at M.I.T. & U C Santa Barbara. His most recent book of poems, Food for the Journey, appeared from Cherry Grove in August 2008.
Ben Olson
Ben was born and raised in north Idaho, in a small mountain town of hillbillies, realtors and hippies. He’s worked as a dishwasher, busboy, bartender, blender salesman, gas station clerk, golf pro, photographer, journalist, reclaimed lumber specialist, researcher, production assistant, producer, boat captain, propane filler, and finally, author. He used to live in a small cabin by the lake, where he wrote Wanderlost in thirty-seven days, but was evicted for non-payment of rent, and is now living in total poverty, roaming around America trying to figure out what the hell to do next.
Benjamin Dancer
Benjamin teaches English at Jefferson County Open School in Lakewood, Colorado. He is currently seeking representation for Fidelity, the novel from which “The Problem with America Today” is excerpted. Other excerpts from Fidelity have been published in Fast Forward Vol. I, G Twenty Two Literary Journal, decomP magazinE, Fast Forward Vol. II, and SFWP.org (the literary journal run by the Santa Fe Writers Project).
Brad McLelland
Brad is an Arkansas native and former crime journalist. He has published stories in Staccato Fiction, The Harrow, and Fear and Trembling. His chapbook/eBook, bruisers, is available from Monkey Puzzle Press. He lives with his girlfriend Amanda, a 70-pound lab, a 20-pound cat, three birds, one tortoise, two snakes, and a 55-gallon tank of fish.
Dr. Bruce Bromley
Bruce has performed his poetry and music at the John Drew Theatre (East Hampton), the Berklee Performance Center (Boston), Shakespeare and Company (Paris), The Village Voice (Paris), and at the 1986 Edinburgh Theatre Festival, where the Oxford Theatre Troupe performed his play Sound for Three Voices. His work has appeared in Fringe Magazine, Pif Magazine, Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Women and Performance, Fogged Clarity, Word Riot, and The Battered Suitcase among others. He is Senior Lecturer in expository writing at NYU, where he won the 2006 Golden Dozen Award for teaching excellence.
Brendan Hamilton
Brendan is a writer. Every day, in every way, he’s getting better and better.
Bryan Jansing
Bryan moved to Italy at an early age, graduated from an American high school in northern Italy then served in the US Navy. Flash Fiction has been his passion for over a decade. He’s been published in journals, magazines and newspapers in both Italy and America. He currently resides in Denver, Colorado.
CG Morelli
CG sometimes misses the city, but never the subway. His work has appeared in Highlights for Children, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Jersey Devil Press, Long Story Short, House of Horror, Ghostlight Magazine, Blood Moon Rising (forthcoming) and Fiction at Work. He is the author of the short story collection In the Pen (2007).
Carlos Ponce-Melendez
Carlos teaches creative writing at schools and community centers. His poems have appeared in The Dreamcatcher, The Poet, Voices Along the River, Desahogate, Small Brushes, The Texas Observer, El Angel, Celebrate, several anthologies and numerous Spanish magazines.
Claire is a painter currently based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She holds a BFA from The San Francisco Art Institute, and has exhibited in the US and abroad. Her work explores archetypes, mythology, and the relationship between the everyday and the divine in contemporary society.
Clarissa Olivarez
Clarissa holds a Master’s Degree in Literature from the University of Colorado in Boulder and currently lives Hyattsville, Maryland. Her writing has been published in Haggard & Halloo, Blood Lotus, and Fogged Clarity and is forthcoming in Midwest Literary Magazine, and CC2K. Clarissa’s photography has appeared in inscape, Juked, and joyful!. She has taught at American University and Northern Virginia Community College.
Carly-Anne Ravnikar
Carly-Anne, aka Theo Dorable, is a professional Drag King at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. She was born and raised in the Midwest, currently living in Racine, Wisconsin. Her poetry has appeared in The Bathroom (It’s a Good Place to Read) and she was the graphic designer for UW-P’s Straylight in the Fall of 2007.
Carolyn is a writer, performer, and social worker who lives in Northampton, Massachusetts. She is the author of the chapbook Ouch, Humans and work has appeared in Fact-Simile, NOÖ Journal, Apothecary, Monkey Puzzle, Meat for Tea, Doom Zine, and Scar Songs: An Anthology Articulating the Terrain of Trauma and Resilience (forthcoming, The Icarus Project).
Christopher Schuman
Chris was born to Martian parents on Planet X. Following Planet X’s unfortunate destruction, Schuman was rocketed to Earth as an infant, where he crashed and was found by a couple kindly farmers, who raised him as their own. He now writes poetry and fiction, and occasionally takes out the trash.
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero (January 3, 106 BC – December 7, 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and philosopher. Cicero is widely considered one of Rome’s greatest orators and prose stylists.
Clarissa received her BA in Art Studio, Communications, and Fashion at IUP and finished school in Italy painting on the hillsides. She’s worked in post production, interior design, an underground music magazine, and currently works for an educational social networking site for teen girls. Her illustrations have been published in Language Magazine Volumes 5 and 6. She jumps on a plane any chance she gets and is fascinated by the human psyche, especially pertaining to addiction.
Corey is the author of two novels, Talk: A Novel in Dialogue (2002) and We Are Billion-Year-Old Carbon (2006). He has two more novels due out in the coming year. His book of short stories, Listen, came out in March 2009. He’s been published in numerous journals and anthologies. He has also published numerous chapbooks and one full-length poetry collection, Some Identity Problems. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize numerous times and one of his poems was chosen for Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. With his wife, he runs Burke’s Book Store in Memphis, Tennessee.
Dr. Cornelius
Dr. Cornelius is a chimpanzee archaeologist and historian. He and his simian cohorts were planning a coup d’etat to take over the nation and send G.W. Boosh back to La Planete des Singes until Barack Obama foiled their plans. But they’re still planning to kidnap Boosh from his posh Dallas retirement home and shuttle him to the outer reaches of the Andromeda Galaxy. He’s also a big fan of Pearl Jam. IT’S EVOLUTION BABY!
Dale is a freelance journalist and fiction writer living in Boulder, Colorado. His writing has been published in Barrelhouse, Out of the Gutter, Edit Red, The Crucible, Heads Magazine, Denver Magazine, The Daily Camera and Boulder Weekly, among others. Dale has a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s in literature from the University of Northern Colorado.
Dana Burkhalter
Dana Burkhalter is a crusader for truth and justice in all facets of life and enjoys the journey of searching for every explanation imaginable. Although writing has never been depended on for her livelihood, she spends many hours in research and observation because records of most of her findings have always been an integral part of her existence. Dana is a Chef and is in the process of obtaining a Master’s Degree in Library Science.
Daniela Beuren
Daniela was born in Vienna, where she lives and works as an author, translator and designer of crossword puzzles. She writes English, German and multilingual pieces which she collages and performs alone or with grauenfruppe, a group of four women authors based in Vienna. She got to know Monkey Puzzle at Naropa University, where she participated in the Summer Writing Program as a two-week visitor.
Daniel Staniforth
Daniel is an English writer and musician currently residing in Lafayette, Colorado. He is a member of the English faculty at the Metropolitan State College of Denver. His written and multimedia work has appeared in various small press journals and webzines. Information about his music compositions and recordings (including “sonic poet-scapes”) can be found at www.flowforth.com.
David Stallings
David was born in the South, then raised in Alaska and Colorado before settling in the Pacific Northwest. Once an academic geographer, he has spent many years promoting public transportation in the Puget Sound area. His poems have appeared in several US literary journals and two anthologies.
Dawn Sueoka
Dawn’s work has appeared in fastforward. She is from Hawai’i but is now based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she works in a library and lives with a hamster and a band.
Dennis Caswell
Dennis lives outside Woodinville, Washington and works as a software engineer in the aviation industry. His work has appeared in Floating Bridge Review, Mute Note Earthward, Cascade, Limbs of the Pine, Peaks of the Range, and assorted other journals and anthologies. He was a finalist for the 2009 Floating Bridge Chapbook Award.
Diane Klammer
Diane is a native of California now living in Boulder, Colorado. She used to be a biology teacher before becoming a therapist for the chronically mentally ill. Her first book, Shooting the Moon, was published in 2009 by Monkey Puzzle Press. When she isn’t writing, she works as a naturalist for Boulder County Open Space or singing and playing guitar for seniors. She loves the biosociopolitical emphasis of Monkey Puzzle.
E. Sater
Bit lives in Boulder, Colorado and enjoys painting, traveling, hiking, camping, and anything outdoors. She recently started taking photography classes after receiving her 35MM Nikon camera as a gift. She spends as much time in the dark room as she can.
Elizabeth Robinson
Elizabeth is a recipient of the 2008 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant to Individual Artists. She is the author of Three Novels, among others. Her work was also featured in the Norton Anthology, American Hybrid.
Emily Owens
Emily is the result of two artists who merged during the NY West Village Folk Scene in 1988. She has been twice published, and is working on her next manuscript. Among other things, she is currently learning how to be human.
Erica Varlese
Erica has been writing since she was fourteen. She’s an activist, student, writer, artist, and that which is yet to come. She’s inspired by collective feelings, community, the word “we,” and meditation.
Ethan Brown
Ethan lives and works in the Grand Canyon. He’s an aspiring Navajo.
George Evans
George is the author of five books of poetry published in the US and England, including The New World (Curbstone) and Sudden Dreams (Coffee House Press). A bilingual collection of his poetry, Espejo de la Tierra / Earth’s Mirror, translated by Daisy Zamora, was recently published by Casa de Poesia in Costa Rica. He lives in San Francisco.
Gerard Morel Cruz
Gerard Morel Cruz is a professional thinker of thoughts. For example, he routinely plays mental checkers with friends and foes alike. Mr. Morel Cruz is a very cantankerous and shrewd theologian, or clairvoyant who often philosophizes about things that ordinary chumps could never really come up with on their own. The truth is this folks, Mr. Morel Cruz is an ordinary guy like all of us. He is Arturo Bandini: “lover of man and beast alike,” for every day is like a day in Jersey even if he ain’t in Jersey. Mr. Morel Cruz realizes there is a need to replace the neglect that has hitherto been an example of the banal callousness in the entertainment world with a fresh and classy style that is suspicious of mimes, fond of ferrets, and brings the oomph back to the clandestine world of high stakes living.
Get in the Car, Helen
GITCH began writing shortly after discovering Helen, the woman he loved more than anything, had been secretly fucking a guy named Craig. Since being dumped by Helen, he has published a book of poetry, Avenge Me. (Baobob Tree Press), and is a frequent contributor to Illiterate Magazine. His new book, The Aftermath, etc., was published in 2010 by Monkey Puzzle Press.
Gina Caciolo
Gina Caciolo lives in Emmaus, Pennsylvania…for now. After traveling across the country on the documentary trip ALT, she’s realized she’s ready to live anywhere. She enjoys dabbling in prose, poetry, playwriting, sewing, crocheting and cooking. Her fiction has appeared in Ophelia Street.
Born in California, Henry has lived in Colorado since 1991. His first poem was published in Beatitude (SF) in 1960-something. He holds degrees in Music, Creative Writing, and Jewish Studies. He’s a former chef, musician, book acquisitions editor, and bread-pan washer (dead pan too). He currently teaches at University of Denver and Colorado Community Colleges Online. He also writes poetry with first-to-fourth graders at the Boulder Jewish Day School. His poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Kansas Quarterly, Beyond Baroque, Bits, and elsewhere. He likes exploring genre boundaries but not sure why.
Henry David Thoreau
Mr. Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862) was an American author, naturalist, transcendentalist, tax resister, development critic, and philosopher best known for Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.
Hillary Keel
Hillary is a low-residency student at the Jack Kerouac School for Disembodied Poetics and is currently planning on relocating to the USA. Born in New York, she got her BA in German and English at Mary Washington College and has since lived in Austria. She’s participated at the “schule für dichtung” (Vienna Poetry Academy) and at the Paris Poetry Workshop with Cecilia Woloch.
Howard Winn
Howard holds a graduate degree from the Stanford University Writing Program where he studied with Yvor Winters and Wallace Stegner. His poetry has appeared most recently in Southern Humanities Review, Raven Chronicles, and Gander Press Review. He is a SUNY faculty member.
Ian Washburn
Ian’s fiction has appeared in the online magazine Sugar Mule. He lives in Berkeley, California.
Irene Joyce
Irene’s writing experience includes insomniatic jotting of incessant thoughts, transcribing songs from the wind on walks to and from, e-mails that play dress-up as poetry, and creating text for spoken elements in collaborative, multi-media performance.
Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, JA escaped at a young age, and now lives in Denver, Colorado, where she received a Master’s Degree in Forensic Psychology. She is the author of several novels, including Froggy Style: A F***ed Up Fairy Tale and Dopesick: A Love Story.
Jack Collom
Jack is a poet, essayist, and creative writing pedagogue. One of his recent collection of poems is Cold Instant (Monkey Puzzle Press, 2010). His major collection, Red Car Goes By: Selected Poems 1955-2000, was published by Tuumba Press in 2001. Other volumes include Little Grand Island, Arguing with Something Plato Said, 8-Ball and Entering the City. His work has been published in countless magazines and anthologies in the United States and abroad. His essays on teaching and anthologies of children’s poetry appear in Moving Windows and Poetry Everywhere.
James Kerley
James is a noted scholar of thermodynamics, and co-founder of Mixtape of the Month Club. He currently resides in 1988.
James Tyner
James was born and raised in Los Angeles but came to Fresno, California as a teen and still considers both places home. He grew up in neighborhoods filled with violence, but strives for the life of a pacifist, generally failing. Tyner is the recipient of the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize, the Larry Levis Scholarship, the Ernesto Trejo Poetry Prize, and the 2009 Coal Hill Review Chapbook Contest. He thanks his wife, who is his all.
Jasmine Marshall Armstrong
Jasmine completed her MFA at CSU Fresno in 2009. She finds inspiration in the odd moments on life’s byways. She is a teacher and researches American political poetry movements. Her poetry has appeared in Sojourners and Café Solo.
Jed Thomas
Jed is an architect for Pearson Design Group in Bozeman, Montana. When he’s not spending time with his wife Katie, he’s backpacking, hiking, kayaking, skating, and playing with his troop of highly trained orangutans.
Jeffrey Spahr-Summers
Jeffrey is a poet, writer, photographer and digital artist in Colorado. He is the editor and publisher of Poetry Victims, a contributing editor of Sketchbook (a journal for Eastern & Western short forms), the new webmaster of Simply Haiku, and part of the Linchpin Collective. Jeff has published eight books of poetry and photography (Cherry Productions). His poems and photographs have appeared in numerous print and online journals, recently Poetry Super Highway, Kritya, Media Cake, Houston Literary Review and Unlikely 2.0.
Jennifer Hamilton
Jennifer is a liver of life, a manifesting goddess who creates with the divine while passionately dancing through life, soaking up the beauty all around her. She expresses herself creatively by sharing gifts and love with others while capturing the ever-changing scenes in photographs, paintings, and words. Jennifer is a free spirit who makes the most of the moment creating happiness and following her true nature.
Jennifer Phelps
Jennifer is a poet and writer who refined her craft at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. In her spare time she writes. When she is not writing, she thinks about writing. Recently, her dreams have told her to write.
Jeremiah Johnson
Jeremiah lives on Oahu where he surfs with his growing tribe. He’s currently in Africa, and may never come back to the US. He lives more than you.
Jessey Nickells
Jessey received an MFA from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado. She also received a BA at Knox College in Creative Writing with a minor in Painting and was first published in 751 Magazine’s premier issue.
Joel Parker
Joel is currently writing this bio. Finding time in between to wander around his side of the globe, taking occasional jaunts into photography, food, sun, sound, love and the unreasonable. . . . Virgo, loves to cook and the outdoors, currently single and auspiciously poor, so all interested women need apply!
Singer/songwriter, musician and author John is the son of Neal Cassady, a writer and well known figure in the Beat and Psychedelic movements. With Beat Museum owner Jerry Cimino, John travels in the Beat Museum on Wheels, with a multimedia show that incorporates video, slides, poetry readings, music and storytelling to share the story of the Beats with colleges and universities. John is currently writing a book about his father.
John Staudt
John is from South Texas, where many of his stories are based. He teaches English at a high school just south of San Antonio.
Jon was born in England and grew up among rednecks in Northern California. He travels the world and makes films with inexpensive camcorders.
Jonathan Montgomery
Jonathan is the author of Taxis and Shit, published by Monkey Puzzle Press in 2009. He is also the author of The MeTOO Poems Volumes I & II (Baobob Tree Press, 2008). He was born in 1980 and raised in Akron, Ohio. He is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and Naropa University and lives in Boulder, Colorado.
Julie Berner
Originally from Michigan, Julie now resides in Boulder, Colorado with her wife and dog. She has an AAS in interpreting, a BA in Sociolinguistics and a MA in Environmental Leadership. When she’s not writing, she is earning her way in the world as a certified sign language interpreter and an interpreter educator teaching at Front Range Community College and forthcoming at Regis University. Julie loves marching bands, hanging laundry, and the change of seasons.
Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar (July 13, 100 BC – March 15, 44 BC) was a Roman military and political leader. He played a singular role in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. His conquest of Gaul extended the Roman Empire to the Atlantic Ocean.
Junior Burke
A lifelong musician, Junior has seen his songs performed and recorded by a range of musicians on the national scene, including Bob Dylan, Richie Havens, The Boston Pops and the Rochester Philharmonic. Junior is also a successful prose writer and dramatist. His highly original novel, Something Gorgeous, which explores the historical background of the era that spawned The Great Gatsby, was published in 2005 by Farfalla/McMillan & Parrish. In 1999, Junior won an Essay Award from New Millennium Writing, one of six writers cited nationally. He is currently teaches fiction, dramatic writing, and literary studies at the Jack Kerouac School of Naropa University.
Kade Alexander Jensen
Originally from Iowa, Kade received an MFA in Writing & Poetics from the Jack Kerouac School. He holds two Bachelor’s degrees, in English and History, from Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. He’s currently working on a collection of experimental translations of Matsuo Basho’s Haiku as well as a collection of poetic essays.
Kai Forrest Brown
Kai is a vivacious five year-old who loves to explore the natural world. He’s working on his first garden, and has an ever changing collection of pet bugs. Kai has always enjoyed having poetry read to him. One day he scribbled a drawing and asked his grandma to write down his poem.
Kasey Perkins
Kasey is an English Masters student at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri where she hosts poetry slams. Her poems have been published in Lumina, SLAB, and Windfall. She is currently teaching freshman composition at Truman and writing a chapbook based on the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Katharyn Grant
Katharyn’s writing has appeared in Fast Forward, Foothills Magazine, and Orange Coast Review. She’s toured internationally performing comedy/improv theater for U.S. military in Asia and Europe. Short films she wrote, directed, and acted in screened at BHFF in L.A. and Rome, Italy, Starz film Center, and on IFC (Independent Film Channel). “God Hates Liars” is part of a larger creative non-fiction memoir she hopes to complete this year. Her chapbook/eBook Interior Life is available from Monkey Puzzle Press.
Kathy Conde
Kathy’s work has appeared in Calapooya, CutThroat, Pearl, Underground Voices, Word Riot, and others. She won the Hemingway Festival Short Story Contest in 2008 and her short story collection was a semifinalist for the Iowa Short Fiction Award. She holds an MFA from Naropa University and is past fiction editor of Bombay Gin.
Keith Kumasen Abbott
Keith is the author of several novels, including Downstream from Trout Fishing in America, A Memoir of Richard Brautigan.
Kelly Sexton
Kelly, better known as “Mouse,” happens to be Charles Bukowski’s love child.
Kimberly Castanon
Raised by the waves of Corpus Christi, Texas, Kimberly received her MFA in Writing & Poetics from Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School. She enjoys yoga, snowboarding, and painting into the dark hours of the morning. She and her husband, David, live in Colorado.
Kona is currently working on her first fiction novel, is on the editorial board of Fast Forward Press, and was co-founder of the Write Trash writing group in Fairbanks, Alaska. She received the Redwood Empire Mensa Award for Creative Non-Fiction in 2006 and has most recently been published in Toyon, Be Brave Bold Robot, The Bathroom, Fast Forward, and Bombay Gin.
Kristi Yorks
Kristi considers herself to be a gypsy of sorts. She wanders. She writes. Which makes her, by some definitions, a poet. She seeks open spaces, snow, the color blue. She is the author of in the desert (Monkey Puzzle Press, 2012). She hopes to write herself deep into the mountains.
Kristofer Whited
Kristofer was born and raised in Wheatfield, Indiana. He lived nearly a decade as a union carpenter and bar-band guitarist, got his BA at Purdue University, and an MFA Program at California State University, Fresno. Last summer he was lucky enough to ride 8,400 miles on his motorcycle across this incredibly gorgeous country.
L. Draaghtel
L. Draaghtel was born in Russia and holds a PhD from Minsk Linguistic University in Byelorussia. Since 1997 she has resided in Canada. She has been teaching linguistics and writing classes as well as ESL for over twenty years in Russia, the United Kingdom, and Taiwan. She is presently and Associate Professor in the Department of Applied English in Ming Chuan University, Taiwan.
Laura Garrison
Laura grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania, and currently lives in Maryland with her husband Justin. She attends graduate school in Washington, DC, where she studies American Literature and Nature Writing.
Laura Musselman
Laura received MFA in Creative Writing at California State University, Fresno, where she taught creative nonfiction and worked as an editorial assistant for The Normal School. When she isn’t busy staring at blank pages, she enjoys eating, breathing, and losing herself in the narratives of others.
Lauren Andrews
Lauren is a writer and editor living in New York City. Upon receiving her undergraduate degree in Biology from UC Berkeley, Lauren spent extensive time out in the wild studying ducks and observing bears. Though she currently works at a literary agency, the occasional duck, bear, or monkey has been known to make an appearance in her works of short fiction and poetry.
Leah Rogin-Roper
Leah thinks a monkey puzzle is something that only a monkey can solve. She currently works at Red Rocks Community College and Metropolitan State College. She co-founded Fast Forward Press. She thinks it’s funny to write about herself in the third person.
Lindsey Anderson
Lindsey loves 19th century literature and poetry. She misses you. She’s abnormally attracted to the American West and lives in Boulder, Colorado, with her new puppy Mojo M’Gill Morrison.
Lisa Birman
Lisa’s chapbooks include deportation poems and o-a conversation. She is co-editor of Civil Disobediences: Poetics and Politics in Action, and her work has appeared in 26, admit2, Square One, not enough night, and Thuggery & Grace. She is the author of for that return passage: A Valentine for the United States of America.
Lois Leveen
Lois is a recovering academic who writes and makes art in Portland, Oregon. Her work has appeared most recently in the magazines/journals Bitch, Bridges, and Oregon Literary Review, the book Portland Queer, onstage at Performance Works Northwest and the Richard Foreman Festival, on the National Public Radio program LiveWire, and on the weekly-ish humor blog macaronimaniac.blogspot.com. She’s currently finishing a novel based on the true story of a former slave who became a spy for the Union army.
M. D’Alessandro
M. D’Alessandro currently lives in Kauai where he can balance the ph in 15,000 gallons of water. When he’s not there he can be found at Patty Warren’s in San Francisco. He has degrees in Architecture, Art History, and Creative Writing, has worked in varying interests from cattle rustling to inn keeping and edits the semiannual literary journal swap/concessions for Bedouin Books.
Margaret is a feminist poet, writer, photographer and social activist. Born in New York City in 1936, she has lived for extended periods in Albuquerque, New York, Seville, Mexico City, Havana, and Managua. She is the author of To Change the World: My Years in Cuba and First Laugh.
Mark Lamoureux
Mark is the author of Astrometry Orgonon and the forthcoming Spectre. He is editor of Cy Gist Press, a micropress focusing on ekphrastic poetry. He teaches Composition in the CUNY system in New York.
Mark is the author of ten or twelve books, including Season of the Gar, CHODE!, Age of the Demon Tools, The Pigs Drink from Infinity, Chum, Bottom Feeder, Riding the Unit, From Absinthe to Abyssinia, The Collected Poems of Georges Bataille, Divine Filth, The Church, After the Orange Glow, and Writer in Residence. He has published hundreds of essays, poems, stories, literary translations, etc., and has cultivated a semi-cult following as an editor of the legendary lit journal Exquisite Corpse. After earning three degrees in Creative Writing (a BA from the U of MN, an MA from CU, and an MFA from LSU) he taught Creative Writing and Literature for five years at Truman State University in Missouri. He is now a professor in the Department of Writing at the University of Central Arkansas, where he lives on the shores of Lake Conway and checks his droplines daily for mongo one-eyed catfish, fugly prehistoric gars, and garbage-fish like largemouth bass. He is now Managing Editor of Toad Suck Review, and is married to the zombie writer Robin Becker.
Matt Dennison
After a rather extended and varied second childhood in New Orleans (as street musician, psych tech, riverboat something-or-other, door-to-door poetry peddler, etc.), Matt finished his undergraduate degree at Mississippi State University where he won the National Sigma Tau Delta essay competition (as judged by X.J. Kennedy). He currently lives in a 100-year-old house with “lots of potential.” His work has appeared in Rattle, Spoon River Poetry Review, Cider Press Poetry Review, GUD, Natural Bridge, A Cappella Zoo, Marginalia, G.W. Review, and Main Street Rag, among others.
Meg Day
Meg is a poet, spoken word artist, and arts educator hailing from San Diego but is currently earning her MFA at Mills College in Oakland and teaching young poets to hold their own at the mic with Youth Speaks in San Francisco. Her poems have appeared in PULP, The Greenbelt Review, Outspoken: An Anthology, Temper Magazine, Bellissima, and Flaneur Foundry. She lives and writes in Alameda with her sweet, dumb Dalmatian.
Megan Burns
Megan has an MFA from Naropa University and edits the poetry magazine, Solid Quarter. She has been most recently published in Callaloo, Constance Magazine, and YAWP Journal as well as online at horseless press, shampoo, trope_5, Exquisite Corpse and BigCityLit. Her book Memorial + Sight Lines was published in 2008 by Lavender Ink. She lives in New Orleans where she and her husband, poet Dave Brinks, run the weekly 17 Poets! reading series.
Megan DiBello
Megan received an MFA in Writing & Poetics from the Jack Kerouac School and a BA from Marymount Manhattan College in Communication Arts and Creative Writing. She’s been published in Symposium, Fact-Simile, The Bathroom, and Flaneur Foundry.
Meghann McCormick
Meghann is an aspiring poet/florist from Central New York. She is exceptional at untangling knots. She doesn’t want to be an ant.
Mel Kozakiewicz
Mel is a poet/performer in Jersey City, New Jersey. There is no place in the world she would rather be.
Melanie Miller
Melanie is a former multimedia choreographer/dancer and Naropa University MFA candidate who turned to visual art, blogging, and playwriting in 2008 while battling Transverse Myelitis, a rare and debilitating neurological disorder that’s turned her into a badass-cane-walking disabilities and rare disease advocate. Her poems have appeared in Broken Pencil, Main Street Rag, Guilty as Charged, Watching the Wheels: A Blackbird, and other funky journals and onlines zines. Check her out at www.neurodetour.com.
Michael Bernstein
Michael is the author of the forthcoming chapbooks 8s, from “a heap of swords and mirrors”, the transit illuminate, and The Fire District. His poems have appeared in numerous magazines. He currently co-edits the online literary arts magazine Pinstripe Fedora.
Michael Filimowicz
Michael is a new media artist working in the areas of sound, experimental video, creative writing, net art, public art and digital photography. As a writer he has published poetry, fiction and philosophy, and as a sound designer he’s mixed soundtracks for film and television. He’s an American Midwest transplant currently living and working in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he is on the faculty at the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University.
Michelle Naka Pierce
Michelle is the author of two books: Beloved Integer (2007) and TRI/VIA (2003), co-authored with Veronica Corpuz. She teaches at Naropa University.
Michelle Puckett
Michelle, a native of Dallas, Texas, earned her BA in Writing from Naropa University where she spent a semester abroad in Prague. She is currently working toward an MFA in Poetry from Mills College in Oakland, California. She writes about the way Texas haunts her no matter where she goes. Her work has appeared in the Naropa Summer Writing Program Journal N.U.T.S. and is forthcoming in Bang Out San Francisco #2.
Min Jung Oh
Min Jung worships the sunlight, finds empathy in water’s gaze, and dreams of becoming a male peacock in her next life. She is the author of Body in a Hydrophilic Frame.
Mitch Maraude
Mitch is a writer of paranoid splatter-noir with a literary bent and a fanatical vendetta against tame prose. Originally from Dirty Jersey, now living in Longmont, Colorado, he has published two chapbooks of short fiction and is currently hammering the final nails into the coffin of his first novel.
Mona Nicole Sfeir
Mona was born in New York City but raised in countries around the world. She received her BA from UC Boulder, her MA from SJSU, California, and her MFA from the California College of Arts in San Francisco. Her poetry has been published in several journals and has won prizes from the Louisiana State Poetry Society and the Arlington Arts Center. She’s also a visual artist and her work has been exhibited in both the US and abroad. She was selected as one of the top seventeen students coming out of MFA programs in 2002 by Sculpture Magazine. She currently resides in Geneva, Switzerland with her husband and five year old son and is trying to avoid writing odes to cheese and chocolate.
Naomi Lore
Naomi is a writer and musician living in Brooklyn, New York. She was the Tomaselli Award recipient for Best Poetry when she graduated from SUNY New Paltz in 2008, and is a founding member of the Intangible Arts Collective. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in Static Before the Storm and In Search Of….
Nancy has five books to her credit, including Searching for Suzi and Fast Forward: The Mix Tape, the latest in an annual series of flash fiction released by Fast Forward Press. She’s currently on the writing faculty at the Community College of Denver.
Nate Cook
Nate is lead yell manager for The Yawpers and moonlights as associate editor for Monkey Puzzle Press.
Nathan Antar
“That’s what she said.”
Nicholas B. Morris
Nicholas received an MFA in Prose from Naropa University, which inadequately prepared him for things like paying rent, buying groceries, and the other harsh realities of life outside the Boulder Bubble. Fortunately, he grew up in rural Arkansas, where he was equipped with survival instincts, a blue-collar work ethic, and a drawl that gets thicker when mixed with alcohol. He currently works undercover as an oil company lackey in Denver, where he lives with his partner and fellow Kerouac School alum Alyssa Piccinni. His creative work has appeared online and in print in some of the following fine establishments: The Arkansas Literary Forum, Fact-Simile, Cliterature, Fear Knocks, The Gut, and of course Monkey Puzzle. His first book Tapeworm was published by Monkey Puzzle Press in 2010.
Nicholas Michael Ravnikar
Nicholas lives well below the poverty line in Racine, Wisconsin. His moderately evolved hominid brain has managed to squeeze out some things made of words. When he’s not pursuing such ends, Ravnikar has been known to sustain himself by working in videography, nonprofit programs, and plasma donation. Like he said: well below the poverty line.
Nick Demske
Nick may or may not have had work in Barnaby Jones, Sawbuck, The Bathroom, Queef, KNOCK, Pank,Fact Simile, Arsenic Lobster, and every other journal in the world that doesn’t suck. He lives in Racine, Wisconsin where he helps curate the BONK! performance series. Nick works at the Racine Public Library where everything is free but the late fees!
Olatundji Akpo-Sani
When not writing poetry, Olatundji runs Baobob Tree Press with friend Rob Geisen. When he’s not being bookish, he’s into good beer, good jazz, and good whiskey.
Paige is a writer and environmental educator. She teaches the Community Adventure Program at New Vista High School. She is currently writing her first book, Unwinding Myself Whole, which is the story of her recovery from an eating disorder and the journey towards a fully nourishing life. She loves dancing, the wilderness, singing cheesy 80s love tunes in the shower, and performing at children’s concerts as a honey bee.
Paul A. Toth
Paul lives in Sarasota, Florida. He is the author of three novels: Fishnet, Fizz, and Finale.The majority of his short fiction, poetry, and multimedia work can be accessed at www.netpt.tv.
Perry Lavin
Perry’s favorite qoute is, “Overcome your fear of goo. Come and taste goo goo stew.” He currently lives on Shakedown Street.
Peter Rugh
Peter lives in New York City.
Peter’s photography has appeared in such online literary journals as CELLA’s Round Trip, eyeshot, and Litterbox Magazine. Poor and utterly in love with his camera, he will never give up his Kodak to the bad guys.
After graduating from Providenciaal Technisch Instituut Kortrijk as a Textile Designer, Peter embarked on a journey of self discovery. He has traveled extensively for the past fourteen years, living and working in Ibiza, Austria, Venezuela, The Dominican Republic and Mexico. He now lives in the jungle of the Yucatan, Mexico. In this tranquil environment, he is able to share his unique view of the world through paint, canvas and pallet knives.
Philip lives in Houston, Texas, and is the author of over 200 poems and 44 short stories. His essays, articles, poetry, and reviews have appeared in eighty-four publications in eight countries with one story even produced for radio in Australia. Included in his many awards is the Hemingway Center Short Story Prize.
Philip Meersman
Philip writes in NL, EN, DE, FR, ES, multilingual and sound forms. He creates improvisational, sound and poetry installations and performances using current affairs, socio-political and environmental issues in BE, NL, FR, IT, AT, BG, MK, RO, IL, AR… He’s been translated in AR, BG, EN, ES, FR, IT, IW, JP, MK, RO, RU. He’s been published internationally in magazines, anthologies and on the web. He’s the co-founder of DAsturgistenDA and artiestencollectief JA.
Rebecca George
Rebecca is, was, and will be something. Someday. Whether she ends up playing center field for the Chicago Cubs, mining for gold in the foothills, or training monkeys to brush her teeth, she will be something. In the meantime, she is an educator, writer and editor, with an unhealthy obsession with college and professional sports and bright shiny objects.
Rebecca Maillet
Rebecca is a graduate of Emerson College in Boston, current resident of Northampton, Massachusetts. She spent her formative years growing up in Orange, Massachusetts and thinks living through New England winters makes people more inherently cynical. She thinks beer and books are the God(s) intended food and thanks Mom for pushing her to put some words on paper every now and again.
Richard Schwass
Richard received an MFA Degree in Poetry from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. He once interviewed Grace Slick.
Rob Geisen
Rob is the author of eleven books of poetry. Along with friend Olatundji Akpo-Sani, he runs a weekly open mic on Wednesday nights at the Burnt Toast in Boulder, Colorado. He’s also a coeditor for Baobob Tree Press and poetry editor for Illiterate Magazine. He has a Mr. Hyde. When he drinks Canadian Mist he turns into GITCH.
Rocky Balboa
Rocky Balboa. Southpaw from Philly.
Rodrigo Gonzalez
Rodrigo (Mexico City, 1980). Poet and musician, Rodrigo is a dedicated writer currently enrolled in the Naropa University graduate writing program. He created and helped maintain an independent literary group in Mexico City. He contributed to the latest edition of American Environmental Leaders by Grey House Publishing. He’s an art enthusiast, meditation acolyte, and the oldest of three.
Ryan Clark
Ryan is taking a year off from doughnuts and other sweet, absolutely wonderful foods. Somewhat ironically he hopes soon to become the poetry version of Candy Cummings.
Sarah Suzor
Sarah’s poetry has been published in Hotel Amerika. She is co-curator of the 3+3 Poetry reading series.
Born in Binghamton, New York, Samuel learned to paint and mosaic from his mother Susan, founder of both Rude and Bold Woman and Susan Jablon Mosaics. While in Binghamton, Samuel studied freeform music with avant-garde composer Eric Ross, one of Samuel’s most influential mentors. He left Binghamton for Boulder, Colorado to study poetry, meditation, and painting at Naropa University. He also studied banjo, music theory, and composition with Jayme Stone; and was a studio assistant/apprentice to artist and poet Ana Maria Hernando. Samuel resides, and has a studio in Brooklyn, New York.
Sarah Cooke
Sarah is a low-residency graduate student in Naropa University’s Creative Writing MFA program. She predominantly writes poetry. She’s an assistant teacher at the Bellwether School in Williston, Vermont. Her work has been published in journals such as the Black Mountain Review and Whrrds and is available in audio form at instereopress.com.
Scott Larson
Scott lives, plays and writes in Colorado. He would like to take this opportunity to thank Beethoven, Dostoevsky, Van Gogh, and Kerouac for their moments of lonely suffering – his world is the better for it.
Shane Joaquín Jiménez
Shane received an MFA from the Jack Kerouac School at Naropa University and co-edits Zero Ducats. He is also the author of a chapbook of short stories, entitled It Can Be That Way Still, and has work in The Greensboro Review, Bat City Review, and elsewhere.
Shane Scaglione
Shane is an Irish Italian American writer and yoga instructor who divides his time between Boulder, Colorado, and India. He is a graduate of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. For more on his writing and yoga teachings, dig his blogs at: truthwritenow.blogspot.com and orchidofagni.blogspot.com.
Shlomo Yermoyahu
Shlomo likes to make people laugh and often succeeds with his name alone. In addition to a few published stories, he has authored novels for young adults (I Was a Teenage Television Addict), plays for young adults (Just Say No to Home Cloning), and the occasional essay. He resides in Philadelphia where he clings to the dream of one day making people laugh so hard that they finally start to take him seriously.
Stacy Walsh
Stacy enjoys daydreaming about her pseudo-rock band, devising intricate plans to travel the country living out of her car, and putting words into pleasing orders. None of these admirable endeavors, however, pay off her mounting student loan debt. Donations accepted.
Dr. Shurooq Amin
In December 2007, Dr. Amin became the first Kuwaiti poet to be nominated for the Pushcart Prize in the USA. Dr. Amin holds a PhD in Creative Writing in which she analyzes (and disputes) the struggle between word and image in Ekphrasis. As both poet and painter, and as an Anglophone Kuwaiti, she has struggled internally with the paragon of word versus image, East versus West, all her life. Shurooq’s art, poems, and short stories have appeared in more than thirty international literary journals. Her chapbook The Hanging of the Wind has been published in 2009 by the Finishing Line Press, USA. During the day, she works as a Professor at Kuwait University; in the afternoons, she paints; in the evenings, she writes.
Stan Flukinger
Originally from New York City, Stan was abducted three years ago and taken to Austin, Texas, by a very smart woman who claims to be his wife. She has kept him hidden in a day job, abused him on a daily basis, and is suspected of having mothered his two sons. He is currently seeking to expose the entire gruesome account in a novel, the first chapter of which, “War Wounds,” can be found among these pages.
Steve Kisicki
Steve originally hails from Lincoln, Nebraska, and is a recent graduate of the Jack Kerouac School. He is terrified of the ocean and has an affinity for grilling steak. It just so happens that his favorite car is orange, and he would like to paint the ceiling the same color.
Susie Huser
Susie lives in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. She graduated from the Jack Kerouac School of Naropa University. Yesterday she saw a bull snake and an osprey. Neither tried to eat her. A couple weeks ago she purchased a used copy of The Enchanted Broccoli Forest.
Suzanne DuLany
Suzanne is a poet, visual artist, and environmental activist with roots in Austin, Texas. She received MFA from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and was associate editor of Bombay Gin. Her recent projects include the blog Humans for Wolves, and an anti-memoir about her father, Endangered Memory.
Suzanne Savickas
Suzanne obtained her MFA from Naropa University. She’s currently writing a poetry manuscript based on Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills. Suzanne resides in the Midwest where she writes poetry and works as a rehabilitation counselor. She is founder and editor of Le Pink-Elephant Press and co-editor of the press’s new subsidiary, A Trunk of Delirium.
Tim Z. Hernandez
Tim Z. Hernandez is an American Book Award winning writer originally from the San Joaquin Valley. His work has appeared in numerous anthologies and journals, and his performances featured in venues such as The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, The Getty Center in Los Angeles, Stanford University, and the Jack Kerouac of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado. His books include Skin Tax, Breathing, In Dust, and the forthcoming Culture of Flow from Monkey Puzzle Press.
Tim Skeen
Tim won the 2001 John Ciardi Prize for Poetry for his book Kentucky Swami which was published by BkMk Press at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. His poems appear in recent issues of The Potomac Review, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, Southern Review, The Southern Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He teaches in the MFA program at California State University-Fresno.
Timothy arrived in Boulder, Colorado, after a decade immersed in the fog of the Seattle arts underground where he helped found the collective Secluded Alley Works, produced the mini-comic Seclusion, and thousands of ceramic objects featuring his cartoons.
Tiph Parrish
Tiph is originally from Houston, has lived in Hawaii, and now resides in Boulder, Colorado. She is a bi-sexual poet, artist, woman of multi-ethnic descent who is also left-handed and therefore right-brained. Her loves include the ocean, writing, activism through poetry/performance and pointing out the elephant in the room.
Tomara Kafka
Delighted to have added Ape Noir into her writing repertoire, Tomara is completing her novel, The Bridal Luncheon, as well as working on a collection of short stories and, as always, composing songs.
Toshiya Kamei
Toshiya is the translator of Liliana Blum’s Curse of Eve and Other Stories (2008) and Naoko Awa’s Fox’s Window and Other Stories (2010), as well as selected works by Leticia Luna.
Travis Cebula
Travis is the author of three books of poetry, including Some Exits, Under the Sky They Lit Cities, and Jamaica.
Travis Macdonald
Travis’s work has appeared in Bombay Gin, Court Green, ditch, House Press: Source Material, Jacket, Otoliths, Requited, Wheelhouse and elsewhere. His experimental translation, Basho’s Phonebook, is available from “E-ratio”. His first full-length book, The O Mission Repo, an erasure of The 9/11 Commission Report is available from Fact-Simile Editions. Travis puts dental floss between his toes in the morning to keep them from getting confused with his shoes.
Upton Sinclair
Mr. Sinclair (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968) was a prolific American author who wrote over ninety books in many genres and was widely considered to be one of the best investigators advocating socialist views and supporting anarchist causes.
William Benton
William’s poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Open City and other magazines. His books include Birds, Normal Meanings, Marmalade, and Exchanging Hats: Elizabeth Bishop Paintings. He is also the author of Madly, a novel.
Yasamin Ghiasi
Yasamin is a poet. This is all she is willing to admit at present.