Volume Seven Contributors
Contributors
France-Luce Benson’s plays have been staged by Ensemble Studio Theatre, Crossroads Theatre, City Theatre, Billy Holiday Theatre, Loyola Marymount University, and Bishop Arts among others. Awards include: Miranda Foundation Grant Recipient (Detained); Zoetrope Grand Prize (Caroline’s Wedding); Princess Grace Award Runner Up (Boat People); The Kilroys List (Boat People, Deux Femmes on the Edge dela Revolution); New Black Fest 2018; Dramatists Guild Fellow 2016; Sam French OOB Festival Winner; NNPN Best Play 2016, Alfred P. Sloan New Play Commission (The Devil’s Salt). Residencies: Instituto Sacatar; Camargo Foundation; Djerassi; Space on Ryder Farm. Publications: Samuel French; Routledge Press. www.francelucebenson.com.
Joseph Brunetti lives in Sarasota, FL, where he teaches at Suncoast Polytechnical High School. A graduate from The Pennsylvania State University and San Diego State University, where he received his MFA in Creative Writing, his publications include: Valley Voices, Eclectica Magazine, San Diego Writers Monthly, The Limestone Review, The St. Croix Avis, and Mommy Magazine.
Sarah Cedeño’s work is forthcoming or has appeared in Punctuate, The Journal, 2 Bridges, The Pinch, The Baltimore Review, New World Writing, The Rumpus, Hippocampus Magazine, Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. Sarah holds an MFA from Goddard College in Vermont. She lives in Brockport, NY with her husband and two sons, and teaches writing at the College at Brockport.
Alice B Fogel is the NH poet laureate. Recent books include A Doubtful House and Interval: Poems Based on Bach's Goldberg Variations, which won the N. Schaffner Award for Music in Literature and the NH Literary Award in Poetry. She’s also the author of Strange Terrain, a guide to appreciating poetry without necessarily “getting” it. A ten-time nominee for the Pushcart, and recipient of an NEA Fellowship, she works one-on-one with learning disabled students at Landmark College, in Putney, VT.
D.E. Hardy’s work has appeared in The Esthetic Apostle and Junto Magazine. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area.
Alamgir Hashmi is the author of numerous books of poetry and literary criticism. He has taught as a university professor in Europe, America, and Asia. His recent work appears in Poetry Review, New Letters, Poetry International, Connecticut Review, The Cape Rock, Chicago Review, and Prairie Schooner. He is Founding President of The Literature Podium, An Independent Society for Literature and the Arts.
Teacher/poet Donna Isaac works as a teaching artist throughout the Twin Cities and helps organize community poetry readings. Published work includes a poetry book, Footfalls (Pocahontas Press), and two chapbooks, Tommy (Red Dragonfly Press) and Holy Comforter (Red Bird Chapbooks). Her poems appear in various literary magazines, such as Crosswinds Poetry Journal, The St. Paul Almanac, and Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, and at donnaisaacpoet.com.
Jill Frances Johnson grew up overseas, schooled in Jordan, Nepal, and Nigeria with a sprinkling of American culture from her Quaker family’s roots in South Jersey farm country. She earned her MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA in 2017 after graduating from Smith College in the Ada Comstock Scholars Program for nontraditional (older!) students. Jill’s a nonfiction reader and contributor for Solstice Literary Magazine. Her work is forthcoming in Under the Gum Tree. Her current project is a memoir called Water Skiing in Kashmir about expat life during the ‘60s. She tweets @jillvtbrat.
Sean Kenealy’s plays have been staged in New York and Chicago at 13th Street Repertory, Gorilla Tango Theater, Brooklyn's Impact Festival, Frigid Festival, and with The 52nd Street Project. His fiction has been published with Scapegoat Journal and The Promethean. As a screenwriter, his first independent feature film is currently in post-production, an action comedy! Sean received an MFA in Creative Writing from The City College of New York, and he lives in Brooklyn with his wife Leah.
Beth Konkoski is a writer and high school English teacher living in Northern Virginia with her husband and two children. Her work has been published in literary journals such as: Mid-American Review, Gargoyle, and The Potomac Review. A second chapbook of her poetry is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in 2019.
Rogelio Martinez is an award-winning playwright whose plays have been workshopped and produced in theaters across the country and abroad. His newest play, Blind Date, was produced this past season at the Goodman Theatre. Mr. Martinez is a recipient of a 2017 Guggenheim Fellowship. Martinez is also the winner of a Princess Grace Award, and a Mid-Career Fellowship at the Lark Theater Company. In the past he has received grants and awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts Grant, NEA/TCG, and the James Hammerstein Award among others. He was born in Sancti-Spiritus, Cuba and came to this country on the Mariel boatlift in 1980.
Claudia Owusu is a senior Creative Writing major at Otterbein University with minors in Film Studies and Race & Ethnic Studies. Her work has appeared in Quiz & Quill, Otterbein University’s Literary Magazine, Wusgood.black, and Ohio’s Best Emerging Poets 2017. Her short film, Zora (2017), was showcased at the Nkabom Literary Art Festival in Accra, Ghana and Lome, Togo. Her favorite book, if she had to choose, is Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston; and her favorite song, if she had to choose, is “Hey Baby” by Stephen Marley.
Ju-Hyun Park is a poet, storyteller, and dreambot of the Korean diaspora. His writing has previously appeared in Winter Tangerine, Public Radio International and The Fader. He currently resides in Brooklyn, NY in Lenapehoking, homeland of the Lenape people.
Meg J. Petersen is a writer and a teacher of writing at Plymouth State University, where she directs the National Writing Project in New Hampshire. Her poems have won prizes with the New England Association of Teachers of English and the Seacoast Writers Association. She was named as a feature poet by the New Hampshire Arts Council. Her poems have appeared in Concrete Wolf, Entelechy International: A Journal of Contemporary Ideas, Garden Lane, English Journal, The Leaflet, The International Journal for Teaching Writing and other publications.
Raquel F. Ponce is a Peruvian-American writer living in Pittsburgh. She received her BFA in Creative Writing from Pratt Institute, where she completed a thesis in fiction. Her thesis project, Miami Moscas, which is now the novel-in-progress from which “The Conquistador” is excerpted, centers on a family that flees Peru during the 90s terrorism movement and takes refuge in America. Raquel has lived in all parts of the US: California, Florida, New York, and now Pennsylvania. She has worked as a dog walker, an ice cream scooper, a podcast/radio intern, a Spanish translator, and a customer service call representative.
Adrian Shirk is the author of And Your Daughters Shall Prophesy, a hybrid-memoir exploring the lives of American women prophets and mystics, named an NPR ‘Best Book’ of 2017. She’s currently working on a manuscript about utopian communities. Shirk was raised in Portland, Oregon, and has since lived in New York and Wyoming. She’s a frequent contributor to Catapult, and her essays have appeared in The Atlantic, among others. Currently, she teaches in Pratt Institute’s BFA Creative Writing Program, and lives on the border of the Bronx and Yonkers with her husband Sweeney and Quentin the cat.
Nancy Storrow lives and works in Putney, VT. As an artist member of A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY since 1982, she has had 12 solo exhibitions and been involved in all aspects of running the gallery. She has exhibited throughout the US and in Europe. Recent exhibitions include Next Stage Arts Project, Putney, VT; House 4B, Governors Island, NY; Dianich Gallery, Brattleboro, VT; Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, Brattleboro, VT; Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Steinhardt Conservatory Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; and Konsthallen, Sandviken, Sweden, where she gave a Gallery Talk. Her drawing was selected for a Wall Program at Yellow Barn Music, Putney, VT, in 2018.
Lloyd Suh is the author of plays including The Chinese Lady, Charles Francis Chan Jr.’s Exotic Oriental Murder Mystery, American Hwangap, The Wong Kids in the Secret of the Space Chupacabra Go! and others, produced at theaters including Ma-Yi, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Magic Theatre, ArtsEmerson, Children’s Theatre Company, Milwaukee Rep, Denver Center, The Play Company, and more, including internationally at the Cultural Center of the Philippines and with PCPA in Seoul, Korea. He currently serves as a member of the Dramatists Guild Council and as Director of Artistic Programs at The Lark.
Mark Lee Webb received an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. He has published two chapbooks: WHATEVERITS (Finishing Line Press, 2014) and The Weight of Paper (ELJ Publications, 2014). His poems have appeared in many literary journals, including Ninth Letter, Rattle, The Louisville Review, Aeolian Harp, Soundings Review, Glassworks, Chiron Review, The Baltimore Review, RipRap, and Star 82 Review.
Born and raised in Kentucky, Kelli Lynn Woodend received her undergraduate degree from Berea College and her MFA from Murray State. She has written scripts for Emmy Award-winning documentaries for History Channel and PBS. She is employed by a renowned puppet workshop where she works with the Muppets and Sesame Studios. Her plays have been produced in New York, Massachusetts, Arizona, New Mexico, and Washington. She is a two-time winner of Fusion Theatre's Seven Festival, and her first full-length play Angel Food Cake won the national 2016 playwriting award held by Strange Sun Theater in New York.
Joseph Brunetti lives in Sarasota, FL, where he teaches at Suncoast Polytechnical High School. A graduate from The Pennsylvania State University and San Diego State University, where he received his MFA in Creative Writing, his publications include: Valley Voices, Eclectica Magazine, San Diego Writers Monthly, The Limestone Review, The St. Croix Avis, and Mommy Magazine.
Sarah Cedeño’s work is forthcoming or has appeared in Punctuate, The Journal, 2 Bridges, The Pinch, The Baltimore Review, New World Writing, The Rumpus, Hippocampus Magazine, Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. Sarah holds an MFA from Goddard College in Vermont. She lives in Brockport, NY with her husband and two sons, and teaches writing at the College at Brockport.
Alice B Fogel is the NH poet laureate. Recent books include A Doubtful House and Interval: Poems Based on Bach's Goldberg Variations, which won the N. Schaffner Award for Music in Literature and the NH Literary Award in Poetry. She’s also the author of Strange Terrain, a guide to appreciating poetry without necessarily “getting” it. A ten-time nominee for the Pushcart, and recipient of an NEA Fellowship, she works one-on-one with learning disabled students at Landmark College, in Putney, VT.
D.E. Hardy’s work has appeared in The Esthetic Apostle and Junto Magazine. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area.
Alamgir Hashmi is the author of numerous books of poetry and literary criticism. He has taught as a university professor in Europe, America, and Asia. His recent work appears in Poetry Review, New Letters, Poetry International, Connecticut Review, The Cape Rock, Chicago Review, and Prairie Schooner. He is Founding President of The Literature Podium, An Independent Society for Literature and the Arts.
Teacher/poet Donna Isaac works as a teaching artist throughout the Twin Cities and helps organize community poetry readings. Published work includes a poetry book, Footfalls (Pocahontas Press), and two chapbooks, Tommy (Red Dragonfly Press) and Holy Comforter (Red Bird Chapbooks). Her poems appear in various literary magazines, such as Crosswinds Poetry Journal, The St. Paul Almanac, and Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, and at donnaisaacpoet.com.
Jill Frances Johnson grew up overseas, schooled in Jordan, Nepal, and Nigeria with a sprinkling of American culture from her Quaker family’s roots in South Jersey farm country. She earned her MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA in 2017 after graduating from Smith College in the Ada Comstock Scholars Program for nontraditional (older!) students. Jill’s a nonfiction reader and contributor for Solstice Literary Magazine. Her work is forthcoming in Under the Gum Tree. Her current project is a memoir called Water Skiing in Kashmir about expat life during the ‘60s. She tweets @jillvtbrat.
Sean Kenealy’s plays have been staged in New York and Chicago at 13th Street Repertory, Gorilla Tango Theater, Brooklyn's Impact Festival, Frigid Festival, and with The 52nd Street Project. His fiction has been published with Scapegoat Journal and The Promethean. As a screenwriter, his first independent feature film is currently in post-production, an action comedy! Sean received an MFA in Creative Writing from The City College of New York, and he lives in Brooklyn with his wife Leah.
Beth Konkoski is a writer and high school English teacher living in Northern Virginia with her husband and two children. Her work has been published in literary journals such as: Mid-American Review, Gargoyle, and The Potomac Review. A second chapbook of her poetry is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in 2019.
Rogelio Martinez is an award-winning playwright whose plays have been workshopped and produced in theaters across the country and abroad. His newest play, Blind Date, was produced this past season at the Goodman Theatre. Mr. Martinez is a recipient of a 2017 Guggenheim Fellowship. Martinez is also the winner of a Princess Grace Award, and a Mid-Career Fellowship at the Lark Theater Company. In the past he has received grants and awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts Grant, NEA/TCG, and the James Hammerstein Award among others. He was born in Sancti-Spiritus, Cuba and came to this country on the Mariel boatlift in 1980.
Claudia Owusu is a senior Creative Writing major at Otterbein University with minors in Film Studies and Race & Ethnic Studies. Her work has appeared in Quiz & Quill, Otterbein University’s Literary Magazine, Wusgood.black, and Ohio’s Best Emerging Poets 2017. Her short film, Zora (2017), was showcased at the Nkabom Literary Art Festival in Accra, Ghana and Lome, Togo. Her favorite book, if she had to choose, is Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston; and her favorite song, if she had to choose, is “Hey Baby” by Stephen Marley.
Ju-Hyun Park is a poet, storyteller, and dreambot of the Korean diaspora. His writing has previously appeared in Winter Tangerine, Public Radio International and The Fader. He currently resides in Brooklyn, NY in Lenapehoking, homeland of the Lenape people.
Meg J. Petersen is a writer and a teacher of writing at Plymouth State University, where she directs the National Writing Project in New Hampshire. Her poems have won prizes with the New England Association of Teachers of English and the Seacoast Writers Association. She was named as a feature poet by the New Hampshire Arts Council. Her poems have appeared in Concrete Wolf, Entelechy International: A Journal of Contemporary Ideas, Garden Lane, English Journal, The Leaflet, The International Journal for Teaching Writing and other publications.
Raquel F. Ponce is a Peruvian-American writer living in Pittsburgh. She received her BFA in Creative Writing from Pratt Institute, where she completed a thesis in fiction. Her thesis project, Miami Moscas, which is now the novel-in-progress from which “The Conquistador” is excerpted, centers on a family that flees Peru during the 90s terrorism movement and takes refuge in America. Raquel has lived in all parts of the US: California, Florida, New York, and now Pennsylvania. She has worked as a dog walker, an ice cream scooper, a podcast/radio intern, a Spanish translator, and a customer service call representative.
Adrian Shirk is the author of And Your Daughters Shall Prophesy, a hybrid-memoir exploring the lives of American women prophets and mystics, named an NPR ‘Best Book’ of 2017. She’s currently working on a manuscript about utopian communities. Shirk was raised in Portland, Oregon, and has since lived in New York and Wyoming. She’s a frequent contributor to Catapult, and her essays have appeared in The Atlantic, among others. Currently, she teaches in Pratt Institute’s BFA Creative Writing Program, and lives on the border of the Bronx and Yonkers with her husband Sweeney and Quentin the cat.
Nancy Storrow lives and works in Putney, VT. As an artist member of A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY since 1982, she has had 12 solo exhibitions and been involved in all aspects of running the gallery. She has exhibited throughout the US and in Europe. Recent exhibitions include Next Stage Arts Project, Putney, VT; House 4B, Governors Island, NY; Dianich Gallery, Brattleboro, VT; Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, Brattleboro, VT; Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Steinhardt Conservatory Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; and Konsthallen, Sandviken, Sweden, where she gave a Gallery Talk. Her drawing was selected for a Wall Program at Yellow Barn Music, Putney, VT, in 2018.
Lloyd Suh is the author of plays including The Chinese Lady, Charles Francis Chan Jr.’s Exotic Oriental Murder Mystery, American Hwangap, The Wong Kids in the Secret of the Space Chupacabra Go! and others, produced at theaters including Ma-Yi, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Magic Theatre, ArtsEmerson, Children’s Theatre Company, Milwaukee Rep, Denver Center, The Play Company, and more, including internationally at the Cultural Center of the Philippines and with PCPA in Seoul, Korea. He currently serves as a member of the Dramatists Guild Council and as Director of Artistic Programs at The Lark.
Mark Lee Webb received an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. He has published two chapbooks: WHATEVERITS (Finishing Line Press, 2014) and The Weight of Paper (ELJ Publications, 2014). His poems have appeared in many literary journals, including Ninth Letter, Rattle, The Louisville Review, Aeolian Harp, Soundings Review, Glassworks, Chiron Review, The Baltimore Review, RipRap, and Star 82 Review.
Born and raised in Kentucky, Kelli Lynn Woodend received her undergraduate degree from Berea College and her MFA from Murray State. She has written scripts for Emmy Award-winning documentaries for History Channel and PBS. She is employed by a renowned puppet workshop where she works with the Muppets and Sesame Studios. Her plays have been produced in New York, Massachusetts, Arizona, New Mexico, and Washington. She is a two-time winner of Fusion Theatre's Seven Festival, and her first full-length play Angel Food Cake won the national 2016 playwriting award held by Strange Sun Theater in New York.