Contributors to Volume Ten, 2023
Contributors, Clockhouse, Volume 10
Daisy Bassen is a community child psychiatrist and poet. She has been published in several journals, including Salamander, Smartish Pace, and McSweeney's. She has won several awards, most recently the 2022 Erskine J. Poetry Prize. Born and raised in New York, she lives in Rhode Island with her family.
Doug Bolling’s poetry has appeared in Roanoke Review, BlazeVOX Journal, Writers Resist, Poetry Pacific, Connecticut River Review and About Place Journal, among many others. He has received Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations and several awards and has taught at several academic institutions. He writes from the Chicago area.
Joanne Clarkson's sixth poetry collection, Hospice House, is forthcoming from MoonPath Press in 2023. Her poems have been published in such journals as Poetry Northwest, Nimrod, Poet Lore, Western Humanities Review and Beloit Poetry Journal. She has received an Artist Trust Grant and an NEH grant to teach poetry in rural libraries. Clarkson has Masters Degrees in English and Library Science, has taught and worked for many years as a professional librarian. After caring for her mother through a long illness, she re-careered as a Registered Nurse working in Home Health and Hospice. See more at http://JoanneClarkson.com.
Tricia Currans-Sheehan teaches at Briar Cliff University and is editor of The Briar Cliff Review. She has published in Big Muddy, Connecticut Review, Crab Orchard Review, VQR, Fiction, Portland Review, Calyx, South Dakota Review and other journals. Her collection of stories, The Egg Lady and Other Neighbors, won The Headwaters Literary Competition, sponsored by New Rivers Press. Currans-Sheehan’s second book, The River Road: A Novel in Stories, was an Honorable Mention for the Nashville Prize. Recently, she published a YA trilogy (Scaled, Outside In, and Tongues of Light) with writing partner Jeanne Emmons, under the pen name of J.T. Ashmore.
Rae Diamond is an artist, educator, and nature advocate, who weaves language, breath, sound, movement, and things found outside into intricate doorways that lead to vast worlds. They began self publishing zines as a homeless youth in the '90s, and their poems now appear or are forthcoming in Pidgeonholes, Litro, Sinister Wisdom, Audience Askew, and others. Her book, The Cantigee Oracle, is published by North Atlantic Books. Their first poetry collection will be published by First Matter Press in 2024. Find Rae online at raediamond.com and @rae13diamond.
Sandra Dreis, a member of WinstonSalem Writers and NCWriters’ Network, won a Silver Nautilus Award for her debut YA Fiction, Ecowarriors. She was a finalist for the James Applewhite Poetry Contest 2022. Her poems are published in The NC Literary Review, Main Street Rag, Flying South, Medical Literary Messenger and Kakalak, among others.
Terry Dubow has published more than 20 stories, most recently in Salamander, Painted Bride Quarterly, The Greensboro Review, Witness, and Ninth Letter. Other stories have appeared in Paper Street, Story Quarterly, Ascent, Natural Bridge, and The MacGuffin. In 2013, The Community Partnership for Arts and Culture named him the Seth Rosenberg Prize Winner for his short fiction. He has received two individual artist grants from the Ohio Arts Council and has had five Pushcart Prize nominations in total and one Special Mention. His novels are represented by Lisa Grubka of Fletcher and Co.
Gary James Erwin’s work has appeared in The Sun, Santa Fe Literary Review, Red Cedar Review, 3288 Review, Adelaide Literary Magazine, The MacGuffin and Third Wednesday to name a few. He’s been nominated by editors for a couple of Pushcart Prizes and had a story anthologized in The PrePress Awards Volume II: Michigan Voices. His book of stories, Trail Crossing Sixteen Counties, was published in 2019 by Adelaide Books (https://amzn.to/2XW44Fh). Gary lives with his family in Clarkston, Michigan. He’s currently working on a novel titled Cut River Redemption.
Gina Gidaro (she/her) is a creative writing graduate from rural Ohio who loves reading, playing video games, working with animals, and being with family. Several of her stories, poems, and photographs have appeared in magazines and online zines. If she's not obsessing over other people's stories, she's probably writing her own . . . or eating an excessive amount of fudge brownies. Her ultimate dream is to become a successful novelist. https://ginagidaro.wordpress.com.
George Guida is author of ten books, including five collections of poems, most recently New York and Other Lovers (revised edition, 2021) and Zen of Pop. He teaches creative writing and literature at New York City College of Technology.
Hampton Harmon currently lives in Denver, Colorado with his wife and dog, where he teaches rhetoric and composition. He previously studied religion at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Ryan Harper is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Colby College’s Department of Religious Studies. He is the author of My Beloved Had a Vineyard, winner of the 2017 Prize Americana in poetry (Poetry Press of Press Americana, 2018.) Some of his recent poems and essays have appeared in Kithe, Consequence, Fatal Flaw, Tahoma Literary Review, Cimarron Review, Chattahoochee Review, and elsewhere. A resident of New York City and Waterville, Maine, Ryan is the creative arts editor of American Religion Journal.
Todd Heldt is a writer and librarian in Chicago.
Mary Crockett Hill is an Appalachian poet and novelist hailing from the hinterlands of southwestern Virginia. In poetry, she is the author of A Theory of Everything and If You Return Home with Food, and in fiction, How She Died, How I Lived. Mary's poetry has appeared in The Paris Review, Electric Literature, Best of the Net, and Poetry Daily, among other venues. She teaches at Roanoke College and edits Roanoke Review.
Lisa Morovic Kimball was born in NYC and raised in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. The daughter of immigrants, her plays reflect the struggles of the marginalized working class. Productions: The New Jersey Repertory Theater, Axial Theater, Love Creek Productions, The Know Theater, Candy Shoppe Theater, Rhinebeck Performing Arts Center, Half Moon Theater, Manhattan International Theater. Publications: Smith and Kraus and The Rip Rap Literary Journal. The Terror of Tulle was one of six finalists in The American Bard Theatre in NYC. Spin the Donkey had its first reading at Rosendale Theatre in 2022. She resides in the Hudson Valley with an array of critters, including her eighteen-year-old Sheltie mix.
Rachel Leighson is a bi-coastal playwright, actor, and singer with two moms, two cats, and too many hobbies. Writing credits include: Little Egg, Big World (honorable mention for the 2022 Jane Chambers award in feminist playwriting), Blood on My Mother's Apron (nominated for nine 2021 Broadway World awards, including best new play), The Scarcity of Illness, and La Morte Finale. As an actor, Rachel has been seen Off Broadway in The Christians (Playwrights Horizons), Lili Marlene (St. Luke's Theater), and Before a League (Actors Temple Theater). She strives to highlight gray morality and female-centered voices throughout history, and she hopes to find humor in horror and lessons in frivolity. www.RachelLeighson.com.
Katharyn Howd Machan, an enthusiastic professor in the Department of Writing at Ithaca College, has served as coordinator of the Ithaca Community Poets and director of the Feminist Women’s Writing Workshops, Inc. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines, anthologies, textbooks, and collections (most recently Dark Side of the Spoon from The Moonstone Press in 2022 and A Slow Bottle of Wine, winner of the Jessie Bryce Niles Chapbook Competition, from Comstock Writers, Inc. in 2020.) She has edited three thematic works, including Adrienne Rich: A Tribute Anthology with Split Oak Press. For body and spirit, she belly dances.
Kaecey McCormick is a writer and artist living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has found a home in different literary journals, including Red Earth Review, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, and The Raw Art Review. Her chapbooks include Pixelated Press (Prolific Press, 2018) and Sleeping with Demons (Finishing Line Press, 2023). When not writing, you can find her climbing a mountain or curled up with a book and a mug of hot tea.
Josh Nicolaisen taught English for twelve years and is currently an MFA candidate at Randolph College. He organizes and officiates snowboard and freeski events, coaches snowboarding at Holderness School, and is the owner of Old Man Gardening, LLC. Josh lives in New Hampshire with his wife, Sara, and their daughters, Grace and Azalea. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee whose work has recently appeared in Colorado Review, So It Goes, Northern New England Review, Backlash, East by Northeast Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. Find him at www.oldmangardening.com/poetry.
Ernest O. Ògúnyẹmí writes from Nigeria. His work has recently appeared/is forthcoming in Kenyon Review, AGNI, Common Ground Review, Mooncalves: An Anthology of Weird Fiction, and elsewhere. His debut chapbook, A Pocket of Genesis (Variant Literature), will appear this year. He is working toward a B.A. in History and International Studies at Lagos State University.
Sondra Olson’s essays are published in Clockhouse, The Lindenwood Review, Creative Nonfiction, Under the Gum Tree, and the anthology Twenty/Twenty by Stories on Stage. Her influences are Annie Dillard, Maggie Nelson, Rebecca Reilly, Jenny Boully, Carole Maso, and John D’Agata, with whom she worked at a conference in Tomales Bay, California.
Laurel Radzieski is a poet and the author of Red Mother (NYQ Books, 2018), which won the 2020 Whirling Prize in Poetry from Etchings Press–University of Indianapolis. Her poems have appeared in New York Quarterly, Rust + Moth, Atlas and Alice, Kosmos Journal, on a street sign in Wisconsin, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA at Goddard College and currently lives in southeastern Pennsylvania. Laurel enjoys writing poems for strangers in public places and can be found online at www.laurelradzieski.com.
David Semanki shepherded into publication Sylvia Plath’s Ariel: The Restored Edition. His poetry has appeared in a mix of mainstream and literary publications including The New Yorker, The Yale Review, The American Poetry Review, and The Paris Review. He is the literary advisor for the estates of poets Linda Gregg and Jack Gilbert.
Vincent Worsley is a somewhat young writer who dabbles mostly in poetry and creative nonfiction. His poetry has been twice nominated for the John Graves Award presented by Thalia, and his first ever one-act play, Misunderstandings, was a semifinalist in the Circle Theater 2022 Playwriting Project. Vincent is transgender. In more interesting news, he likes to climb trees and research niche subjects, such as spirit photography, theoretical nuclear experimentation, and 12th century Nordic poems. He aspires to be a storyteller.
Janet Jiahui Wu writes and makes art. She has published in various publications of literature and is working on her first book. She lives and works in Sydney, Gadigal Country.
Daisy Bassen is a community child psychiatrist and poet. She has been published in several journals, including Salamander, Smartish Pace, and McSweeney's. She has won several awards, most recently the 2022 Erskine J. Poetry Prize. Born and raised in New York, she lives in Rhode Island with her family.
Doug Bolling’s poetry has appeared in Roanoke Review, BlazeVOX Journal, Writers Resist, Poetry Pacific, Connecticut River Review and About Place Journal, among many others. He has received Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations and several awards and has taught at several academic institutions. He writes from the Chicago area.
Joanne Clarkson's sixth poetry collection, Hospice House, is forthcoming from MoonPath Press in 2023. Her poems have been published in such journals as Poetry Northwest, Nimrod, Poet Lore, Western Humanities Review and Beloit Poetry Journal. She has received an Artist Trust Grant and an NEH grant to teach poetry in rural libraries. Clarkson has Masters Degrees in English and Library Science, has taught and worked for many years as a professional librarian. After caring for her mother through a long illness, she re-careered as a Registered Nurse working in Home Health and Hospice. See more at http://JoanneClarkson.com.
Tricia Currans-Sheehan teaches at Briar Cliff University and is editor of The Briar Cliff Review. She has published in Big Muddy, Connecticut Review, Crab Orchard Review, VQR, Fiction, Portland Review, Calyx, South Dakota Review and other journals. Her collection of stories, The Egg Lady and Other Neighbors, won The Headwaters Literary Competition, sponsored by New Rivers Press. Currans-Sheehan’s second book, The River Road: A Novel in Stories, was an Honorable Mention for the Nashville Prize. Recently, she published a YA trilogy (Scaled, Outside In, and Tongues of Light) with writing partner Jeanne Emmons, under the pen name of J.T. Ashmore.
Rae Diamond is an artist, educator, and nature advocate, who weaves language, breath, sound, movement, and things found outside into intricate doorways that lead to vast worlds. They began self publishing zines as a homeless youth in the '90s, and their poems now appear or are forthcoming in Pidgeonholes, Litro, Sinister Wisdom, Audience Askew, and others. Her book, The Cantigee Oracle, is published by North Atlantic Books. Their first poetry collection will be published by First Matter Press in 2024. Find Rae online at raediamond.com and @rae13diamond.
Sandra Dreis, a member of WinstonSalem Writers and NCWriters’ Network, won a Silver Nautilus Award for her debut YA Fiction, Ecowarriors. She was a finalist for the James Applewhite Poetry Contest 2022. Her poems are published in The NC Literary Review, Main Street Rag, Flying South, Medical Literary Messenger and Kakalak, among others.
Terry Dubow has published more than 20 stories, most recently in Salamander, Painted Bride Quarterly, The Greensboro Review, Witness, and Ninth Letter. Other stories have appeared in Paper Street, Story Quarterly, Ascent, Natural Bridge, and The MacGuffin. In 2013, The Community Partnership for Arts and Culture named him the Seth Rosenberg Prize Winner for his short fiction. He has received two individual artist grants from the Ohio Arts Council and has had five Pushcart Prize nominations in total and one Special Mention. His novels are represented by Lisa Grubka of Fletcher and Co.
Gary James Erwin’s work has appeared in The Sun, Santa Fe Literary Review, Red Cedar Review, 3288 Review, Adelaide Literary Magazine, The MacGuffin and Third Wednesday to name a few. He’s been nominated by editors for a couple of Pushcart Prizes and had a story anthologized in The PrePress Awards Volume II: Michigan Voices. His book of stories, Trail Crossing Sixteen Counties, was published in 2019 by Adelaide Books (https://amzn.to/2XW44Fh). Gary lives with his family in Clarkston, Michigan. He’s currently working on a novel titled Cut River Redemption.
Gina Gidaro (she/her) is a creative writing graduate from rural Ohio who loves reading, playing video games, working with animals, and being with family. Several of her stories, poems, and photographs have appeared in magazines and online zines. If she's not obsessing over other people's stories, she's probably writing her own . . . or eating an excessive amount of fudge brownies. Her ultimate dream is to become a successful novelist. https://ginagidaro.wordpress.com.
George Guida is author of ten books, including five collections of poems, most recently New York and Other Lovers (revised edition, 2021) and Zen of Pop. He teaches creative writing and literature at New York City College of Technology.
Hampton Harmon currently lives in Denver, Colorado with his wife and dog, where he teaches rhetoric and composition. He previously studied religion at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Ryan Harper is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Colby College’s Department of Religious Studies. He is the author of My Beloved Had a Vineyard, winner of the 2017 Prize Americana in poetry (Poetry Press of Press Americana, 2018.) Some of his recent poems and essays have appeared in Kithe, Consequence, Fatal Flaw, Tahoma Literary Review, Cimarron Review, Chattahoochee Review, and elsewhere. A resident of New York City and Waterville, Maine, Ryan is the creative arts editor of American Religion Journal.
Todd Heldt is a writer and librarian in Chicago.
Mary Crockett Hill is an Appalachian poet and novelist hailing from the hinterlands of southwestern Virginia. In poetry, she is the author of A Theory of Everything and If You Return Home with Food, and in fiction, How She Died, How I Lived. Mary's poetry has appeared in The Paris Review, Electric Literature, Best of the Net, and Poetry Daily, among other venues. She teaches at Roanoke College and edits Roanoke Review.
Lisa Morovic Kimball was born in NYC and raised in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. The daughter of immigrants, her plays reflect the struggles of the marginalized working class. Productions: The New Jersey Repertory Theater, Axial Theater, Love Creek Productions, The Know Theater, Candy Shoppe Theater, Rhinebeck Performing Arts Center, Half Moon Theater, Manhattan International Theater. Publications: Smith and Kraus and The Rip Rap Literary Journal. The Terror of Tulle was one of six finalists in The American Bard Theatre in NYC. Spin the Donkey had its first reading at Rosendale Theatre in 2022. She resides in the Hudson Valley with an array of critters, including her eighteen-year-old Sheltie mix.
Rachel Leighson is a bi-coastal playwright, actor, and singer with two moms, two cats, and too many hobbies. Writing credits include: Little Egg, Big World (honorable mention for the 2022 Jane Chambers award in feminist playwriting), Blood on My Mother's Apron (nominated for nine 2021 Broadway World awards, including best new play), The Scarcity of Illness, and La Morte Finale. As an actor, Rachel has been seen Off Broadway in The Christians (Playwrights Horizons), Lili Marlene (St. Luke's Theater), and Before a League (Actors Temple Theater). She strives to highlight gray morality and female-centered voices throughout history, and she hopes to find humor in horror and lessons in frivolity. www.RachelLeighson.com.
Katharyn Howd Machan, an enthusiastic professor in the Department of Writing at Ithaca College, has served as coordinator of the Ithaca Community Poets and director of the Feminist Women’s Writing Workshops, Inc. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines, anthologies, textbooks, and collections (most recently Dark Side of the Spoon from The Moonstone Press in 2022 and A Slow Bottle of Wine, winner of the Jessie Bryce Niles Chapbook Competition, from Comstock Writers, Inc. in 2020.) She has edited three thematic works, including Adrienne Rich: A Tribute Anthology with Split Oak Press. For body and spirit, she belly dances.
Kaecey McCormick is a writer and artist living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has found a home in different literary journals, including Red Earth Review, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, and The Raw Art Review. Her chapbooks include Pixelated Press (Prolific Press, 2018) and Sleeping with Demons (Finishing Line Press, 2023). When not writing, you can find her climbing a mountain or curled up with a book and a mug of hot tea.
Josh Nicolaisen taught English for twelve years and is currently an MFA candidate at Randolph College. He organizes and officiates snowboard and freeski events, coaches snowboarding at Holderness School, and is the owner of Old Man Gardening, LLC. Josh lives in New Hampshire with his wife, Sara, and their daughters, Grace and Azalea. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee whose work has recently appeared in Colorado Review, So It Goes, Northern New England Review, Backlash, East by Northeast Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. Find him at www.oldmangardening.com/poetry.
Ernest O. Ògúnyẹmí writes from Nigeria. His work has recently appeared/is forthcoming in Kenyon Review, AGNI, Common Ground Review, Mooncalves: An Anthology of Weird Fiction, and elsewhere. His debut chapbook, A Pocket of Genesis (Variant Literature), will appear this year. He is working toward a B.A. in History and International Studies at Lagos State University.
Sondra Olson’s essays are published in Clockhouse, The Lindenwood Review, Creative Nonfiction, Under the Gum Tree, and the anthology Twenty/Twenty by Stories on Stage. Her influences are Annie Dillard, Maggie Nelson, Rebecca Reilly, Jenny Boully, Carole Maso, and John D’Agata, with whom she worked at a conference in Tomales Bay, California.
Laurel Radzieski is a poet and the author of Red Mother (NYQ Books, 2018), which won the 2020 Whirling Prize in Poetry from Etchings Press–University of Indianapolis. Her poems have appeared in New York Quarterly, Rust + Moth, Atlas and Alice, Kosmos Journal, on a street sign in Wisconsin, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA at Goddard College and currently lives in southeastern Pennsylvania. Laurel enjoys writing poems for strangers in public places and can be found online at www.laurelradzieski.com.
David Semanki shepherded into publication Sylvia Plath’s Ariel: The Restored Edition. His poetry has appeared in a mix of mainstream and literary publications including The New Yorker, The Yale Review, The American Poetry Review, and The Paris Review. He is the literary advisor for the estates of poets Linda Gregg and Jack Gilbert.
Vincent Worsley is a somewhat young writer who dabbles mostly in poetry and creative nonfiction. His poetry has been twice nominated for the John Graves Award presented by Thalia, and his first ever one-act play, Misunderstandings, was a semifinalist in the Circle Theater 2022 Playwriting Project. Vincent is transgender. In more interesting news, he likes to climb trees and research niche subjects, such as spirit photography, theoretical nuclear experimentation, and 12th century Nordic poems. He aspires to be a storyteller.
Janet Jiahui Wu writes and makes art. She has published in various publications of literature and is working on her first book. She lives and works in Sydney, Gadigal Country.