Contributor Bios – May 2023
50’♀ (50 Foot Woman) is a musical experiment by intermedia artist and writer Rahne Alexander. More at rahne.com and 50footwoman.bandcamp.com.
Brook Bhagat is the author of Only Flying, a Pushcart-nominated collection of surreal poetry and flash fiction on paradox, rebellion, transformation, and enlightenment from Unsolicited Press. Her writing has won contests at Loud Coffee Press and A Story in 100 Words, and she was a first-round winner in the 2022 Colorado Hearts and Minds Poetry Contest. Brook’s paintings and drawings have hung in galleries, art shows, theaters, and coffee shops in Poughkeepsie, New York and Colorado Springs, Colorado. Her poetry, prose, humor, and creative nonfiction have been published in Monkeybicycle, Empty Mirror, Soundings East, The Dribble Drabble Review, The Alien Buddha Goes Pop, Anthem: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen, and other journals and anthologies. She and her husband Gaurav cofounded Blue Planet Journal, which she edits and writes for. She is a professor of English and creative writing at Pikes Peak State College and the founder and facilitator of The Nearby Universe writers’ group. Read her work and learn more about Only Flying at brook-bhagat.com, and follow her on Twitter and Instagram @BrookBhagat.
Chris Ciattei is a Baltimore native, a drummer and poet, and has recently been seduced into creating visual art. He takes photographs — frequently abstract landscapes — and uses pen, paint-marker, and sometimes digital augmentation to create something completely different. His work has been included in two group shows (Katsea Gallery and Overlea Arts Fest) in 2022. He has been writing poetry for 40 years, and had four chapbooks published by Shattered Wig Press in the 1990s. His recent collection of poetry, Nothing Doing, was published by Apathy Press in 2023. He has been a musician for over 40 years and currently plays drums for Batworth Stone, Le Libre Quartet, Go Pills, and Half Japanese. Some of his artwork can be found on Instagram at @chrisciattei23.
Devon Evans is a librarian in New England. One of her poems was chosen as a winner in the 2022 Poetry in the Pines contest, and can be read trailside at the Cathedral of the Pines. In 2023 she served as a poetry judge for the Massachusetts Book Awards. Her poems have been published in Eye to the Telescope, the Quest and Frankenstein issues, and in Naugatuck River Review. More is forthcoming in the 2023 Heathentide Orphans issue from Zoetic Press.
JLS Gangwisch works with the interaction of digital and physical media with a focus on the human figure, often collaborating with various cinema and performance groups for video installation, cinematic exhibition, and new media distribution. A founding member of the Baltimore-based new media collective strikeWare, Gangwisch’s most recent work experiments with augmented and virtual reality installations. Gangwisch lives and works in New Haven, CT.
Janis Greve teaches literature at UMass Amherst, specializing in memoir, disability studies, and service-learning. She has previously published in such places as The Florida Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, New Delta Review, and The Ekphrastic Review. She can be found on Instagram at @janisgreve.
Josh Humphrey was born and bred in Kearny, New Jersey. His career as a librarian, which is into its second decade, has been the source of much poetry in his life. Recently, his poems have been published in the Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow, Paterson Literary Review, US1 Worksheets, Innisfree Poetry Journal and Oberon. He has upcoming work in Havik, Naugatuck River Review and Pinhole Poetry. His first chapbook of poems, Afterlife, which includes the photography of his father, Bill Humphrey, is available through Lulu and Amazon.
Ashley Kirkland writes in Ohio where she lives with her husband and sons. Her work can be found in 805 Lit +Art, Cordella Press, The Madison Review, Boats Against the Current, among others.
Karen Klinedinst (www.karenklinedinst.com) is a Baltimore, Maryland based artist using photography to explore themes of place, nature and the environment. Using digital and analog technologies, she creates richly layered landscapes and botanicals that combine the real with the imagined. She is a graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore. In 2022, she was a PLAYA artist-in-residence in Summer Lake, Oregon. Other artist residencies include a 2004 Platte Clove artist residency at the Catskills Center for Conservation and Development in New York, and a 2006 National Park Service artist residency at Acadia National Park in Maine. In 2015, was awarded an Individual Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council. She has exhibited her work at Baltimore’s Creative Alliance, Maryland Art Place, University of Maryland Global College, Loyola University Maryland, Center for Photographic Arts, The Center for Fine Art Photography, Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, Biggs Museum of American Art, Griffin Museum of Photography, and the Fort Wayne Museum of Art. Her work is in the collection of the National Park Service, and the Fort Wayne Museum of Art.
Jackie Sanfrancisco is an artist who has found her creative passion at the intersection of space tourism and video art. By day, she dedicates herself to promoting the awe-inspiring wonders of space exploration, inspiring others to embark on extraordinary journeys beyond our planet. By night, Jackie delves into her projects, crafting unique videos that transport viewers to unexplored realms. Jackie eagerly anticipates her upcoming Mars journey in 2024, a pivotal moment that embodies the realization of her dreams and the harmonization of her passions for space exploration and video art.
Daniel Schall lives in Pennsylvania, where he is a teacher, poet and avid birdwatcher. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Shore, Right Hand Pointing, streetnotes and other journals.
Ruthie Yudelson is a student splitting time between Manhattan and Kfar Etzion. Her work is forthcoming in Verklempt and Beyond Words Literary Magazine.
