Contributors
POETS
Rasma Haidri grew up in Tennessee and currently makes her home on the arctic seacoast of Norway. Her essays and poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Passages North, Nimrod, Kalliope, Sycamore Review, Runes and other journals. Anthologies from, among others, Seal Press, Grayson Books, Puddinghouse, Bayeux Arts, Bluechrome, Marion Street Press and The Chicago Review Press have also featured her work. She writes a Norwegian language slice-of-life column for a regional newspaper, and has authored two English college textbooks in Norway. Her writing awards include the Southern Women Writers Association emerging writer award in creative non-fiction, and the Wisconsin Academy of Arts, Letters and Science poetry award. The poem "Vacancy" is part of her manuscript-in-progress entitled As if Anything Could Happen.
K. T. Landon is currently studying in the MFA in Writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters PRIME, Ibbetson Street, CALYX, and The Examined Life. Claudia Emerson selected her poem, "Waning Crescent," as the third place winner in Fugue’s 2013 Poetry Contest, and her essay, "Turf War," was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by The Journal. She works as a software engineering manager at a research institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Peter Mason is a 21-year-old poet from Rochester, New York. He is currently a SUNY Fredonia undergraduate student studying English Literature and Creative Writing. He has worked as a poetry editor for SUNY Fredonia’s literary magazine, The Trident, and founded the Inn House Review, an online literary magazine. His poetry has also been published by Arcadia Magazine.
Airea D. Matthews is a Cave Canem and Callaloo fellow, a 2013 Pushcart Prize nominee, and is currently a Zell Postgraduate Poetry Fellow at the University of Michigan where she earned her MFA. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Missouri Review, The Baffler, The Indiana Review and WSQ. She is currently at work on her first full-length poetry collection. She lives in Detroit with her husband and four children.
Emily O'Neill is a proud Jersey girl who tells loud stories in her inside voice because she wants to keep you close. Her most recent work is present or forthcoming in Sugar House Review, Weave Magazine, Whiskey Island, Paper Darts, and FRiGG Magazine. You can pick her brain at http://emily-oneill.com.
Ife-Chudeni A. Oputa is a native of Fresno, Ca. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Poetry and an MA in African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. She is a Cave Canem and Callalloo fellow. Her work has been published in [PANK] online.
Meghann Plunkett is a New York City based writer and performer. Her work has been published in national and international literary magazines including The Shop, Southword Press and Simon & Schuster’s new anthology, Chorus. She has been the artist in residence at Berklee College as well as an Acentos Writers’ fellow. She is the 2013 Paris-American Pushcart Nominee and has taught poetry everywhere from Yale University to halfway homes and sober living environments. She is a co-founder, producer and performer for the show Kiss Punch Poem: an official selection at the Chicago Improv Festival, the New York City Poetry Festival, the Hawaii Improv Festival and the Boston Comedy Arts Festival.
Staci R. Schoenfeld is an MFA candidate in poetry at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale and Managing Poetry Editor at Revolution House. Her poems appear in or are forthcoming from Appalachian Heritage, Still: The Journal, Hayden’s Ferry Review, diode poetry journal, and Bellevue Literary Review, among others.
Raena Shirali is from Charleston, SC, and currently lives in Columbus, OH, where she is earning her MFA in poetry at The Ohio State University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Banango Street, The Boiler, Boston Review, Fogged Clarity, Four Way Review, Ostrich Review, Pleiades, and The Nervous Breakdown. She recently won a 2013 “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Prize.
Sarah Sweeney's poetry and essays have appeared in Rattle, Quarterly West, Pank, Thrush Poetry Journal, Barrelhouse, and others. Her manuscript about growing up in the South was a semifinalist for the Crab Orchard Poetry Series and she has received awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Foundation, and a Pushcart nomination. She lives in Boston, where she writes for the Harvard Gazette and travels often to Latin America, chronicling her journeys at www.loosegringa.com.
ARTISTS
Sabrina Barnett is an artist, writer and pug enthusiast based in Middle-of-Nowhere Virginia. Barnett attended Hollins University, graduating with a degree in English (emphasis in creative writing), and considers her art an extension of the stories in her head. Sabrina is inspired by dreams, myth and the body, the symbols of magick and the labor of illness and death.
Susan Carr is represented by Giampietro Gallery New Haven Ct. She graduated from The School of The Museum of Fine arts Boston and Tufts University with an MFA back in the day. Susan is enthusiastic about the Internet, music, poetry and her dog Zera. She finds inspiration in the tops of trees, sonic youth, great fiction, and modern life.
Dirk W. Kiprik is a NYC native. Raised on a steady diet of Ren and Stimpy, and White Zombie. His art tends to lean more towards the obscure and sometimes obscene. He finds inspiration in his fellow man, often showcasing the inner monsters that lurk just beneath our surface. Aside from his comic art, Dirk is an obsessed Film photographer. Captivated by the rugged American West, which is a recurring subject in both his photography and drawings, he can be found lugging his over sized medium format camera through the streets of Manhattan and all over the American landscape.
Luisa Mesa was born in Havana, Cuba and earned her BFA (Magna Cum Laude) at FIU, in Miami, where she lives and works. Mesa has exhibited her work in numerous venues and is included in several important collections. Mesa’s pieces are about past, present and future, about the ancestors that genetically and culturally influenced who she is. They are about the Cuba of her family that lives on in her imagination. Although her work reflects who Mesa is, it is her intention to communicate with others through it, in the hopes that they can recognize themselves in her narrative.
Jake Reller received his BFA from Western Washington University, graduating as the department’s Distinguished Scholar. He has exhibited nationally and is slated for publication in Studio Visit Magazine through Open Studios Press in the winter. In 2013, in collaboration with Becca Taylor, Reller self-published Maelstrom, a monograph containing images and critical essays on his work. He is represented in Miami by the Robert Fontaine Gallery. Reller currently lives and works in Washington.
Sue Wicker is a freelance artist and graphic illustrator. Passionate about her work, she uses found ephemera to produce new studies of contemporary powerful imagery. She has collaborated in exhibitions ranging from social and cultural issues to having work published in diverse magazines and is currently represented by South West Artwork: http://southwest-artwork.co.uk/portfolio/sue-wicker/.
Sabrina Barnett is an artist, writer and pug enthusiast based in Middle-of-Nowhere Virginia. Barnett attended Hollins University, graduating with a degree in English (emphasis in creative writing), and considers her art an extension of the stories in her head. Sabrina is inspired by dreams, myth and the body, the symbols of magick and the labor of illness and death.
Susan Carr is represented by Giampietro Gallery New Haven Ct. She graduated from The School of The Museum of Fine arts Boston and Tufts University with an MFA back in the day. Susan is enthusiastic about the Internet, music, poetry and her dog Zera. She finds inspiration in the tops of trees, sonic youth, great fiction, and modern life.
Dirk W. Kiprik is a NYC native. Raised on a steady diet of Ren and Stimpy, and White Zombie. His art tends to lean more towards the obscure and sometimes obscene. He finds inspiration in his fellow man, often showcasing the inner monsters that lurk just beneath our surface. Aside from his comic art, Dirk is an obsessed Film photographer. Captivated by the rugged American West, which is a recurring subject in both his photography and drawings, he can be found lugging his over sized medium format camera through the streets of Manhattan and all over the American landscape.
Luisa Mesa was born in Havana, Cuba and earned her BFA (Magna Cum Laude) at FIU, in Miami, where she lives and works. Mesa has exhibited her work in numerous venues and is included in several important collections. Mesa’s pieces are about past, present and future, about the ancestors that genetically and culturally influenced who she is. They are about the Cuba of her family that lives on in her imagination. Although her work reflects who Mesa is, it is her intention to communicate with others through it, in the hopes that they can recognize themselves in her narrative.
Jake Reller received his BFA from Western Washington University, graduating as the department’s Distinguished Scholar. He has exhibited nationally and is slated for publication in Studio Visit Magazine through Open Studios Press in the winter. In 2013, in collaboration with Becca Taylor, Reller self-published Maelstrom, a monograph containing images and critical essays on his work. He is represented in Miami by the Robert Fontaine Gallery. Reller currently lives and works in Washington.
Sue Wicker is a freelance artist and graphic illustrator. Passionate about her work, she uses found ephemera to produce new studies of contemporary powerful imagery. She has collaborated in exhibitions ranging from social and cultural issues to having work published in diverse magazines and is currently represented by South West Artwork: http://southwest-artwork.co.uk/portfolio/sue-wicker/.