Art:

Jan Donley’s artwork is on display at Stewart Clifford Gallery in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and her fiction has been published in various places, including her novel “The Side Door.”

Mario Loprete’s new series of works on concrete is the one that is giving him more personal and professional satisfaction. It was the result of an important investigation of his work, the research of that “quid” that he felt was missing. Looking at my work in the past ten years I understood that there was the semantics and semiotics in my visual speech, but the right support to valorize the message was not there.
The reinforced cement, the concrete, was created two thousand years ago by the Romans. It has a millenary story, made of amphitheatres, bridges and roads that have conquered the ancient and modern world. Now it’s a synonym of modernity. Everywhere you go and you find a concrete wall, there’s the modern man in there. From Sidney to Vancouver, from Oslo to Pretoria, the reinforced cement is present and consequently the support where the “writers” can express themselves is present.

Jim Ross: After retiring from a career in public health research in early 2015, Jim Ross resumed creative pursuits in hopes of resuscitating his long-neglected left brain. He’s since published 75 pieces of nonfiction, a dozen poems, and 200 photos in 80 journals in North America, Europe, and Asia. His publications include Bombay Gin, Columbia Journal, Friends Journal, Gravel, Ilanot Review, Lunch Ticket, Kestrel, MAKE, The Atlantic, and Wordpeace. In the past year, he wrote and acted in his first play, and one of his nonfiction pieces led to a role in a soon-to-be-released major documentary film. His goal is to combine creative nonfiction with photography. He and his wife–parents of two health professionals and grandparents of four wee ones–split their time between Maryland and West Virginia.

Fiction:

Ernie Brill is originally from Brooklyn. Much of his writing explores race and class in America among urban people. He lived in San Francisco from 1965 until 1979 and was very active in the San Francisco State Strike Against Racism from Nov 6 1968 until March 20 1969 that established the first Department of Black Studies and an entire School of Ethnic Studies, which later added a Woman’s Studies Dept. and a Middle East Studies. Dept. That strike changed his life and reaffirmed my commitments to bringing to people global literature.

Rachel Stein is a recently retired professor of literature and women, gender, sexuality studies. She has published several academic books about environmental justice literature and activism and many articles on related topics. She is only now commencing to write fiction. She has published several stories and a novel excerpt in The Great Smokies Review, as well as serving as a guest editor of this journal. She has also read three memoir pieces on “51 Percent: The Woman’s Perspective,” a National Public Radio program.

Non-Fiction:

Cecile Earle is retired and a writer in Berkeley, California. She was part of publishing group, Center for the Studies of the Americas (CENSA) which focused on political and economic analyses of issues in Latin America. She has taught English and literature at local colleges. She is now pursuing a career in poetry and creative non-fiction, including memoir, and has gained some recognition in both poetry and prose.

Jenna R. London’s work has been published in the anthology Triumph: Stories of Victories Great and Small, at Assay, Berkshire Living, AMC Outdoors and elsewhere. She works as editor-in-chief at Steel Toe Books, and as an assistant editor at C&R Press and Typehouse Literary Magazine. She also works freelance. She earned her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2017.

David Pérez:  Bred in the South Bronx and living in the Southwest, David Perez is a writer, actor, editor, radio host, and author of two memoirs: WOW! (2011) and WOW! 2 (2016). His “Read Your Writing Aloud” workshop is a regular feature of the Tupelo Press Poetry Conference. David’s acting roles range from Othello to Santa Claus.

Poetry:

Rebecca Alexander is a horticulture librarian in Seattle, and a contributing editor of the Washington Park Arboretum Bulletin. Her poems have appeared in Standpoint Magazine (UK), the Washington Park Arboretum Bulletin, Canary Literary Journal, Naugatuck River Review, Wordpeace, and Paper Nautilus.

D. Dina Friedman has published widely in literary journals (including Calyx, Common Ground Review, Lilith, Pinyon, Negative Capability, New Plains Review, Steam Ticket, Bloodroot, Inkwell, Pacific Poetry and Fiction Review, Tsunami, The Sun, Jewish Currents, Anderbo, San Pedro River Review, Mount Hope, Rhino) and received two Pushcart Prize nominations for poetry and fiction. Her first chapbook of poetry, Wolf in the Suitcase, is from Finishing Line Press.

Nadia Ibrashi’s work received prizes with the NFSPS, Michigan Poetry Society, Writer’s Digest, Springfed Arts, Detroit Working Writers, and others. Her work appears in Narrative, Quiddity, The MacGuffin, Nimrod, Alimentum, Peacock Journal and others. Two of her poems and two short stories were nominated for Pushcarts. She served as assistant editor at Narrative magazine, and has practiced medicine in Egypt and in the States.

John Laue is a teacher/counselor, a former editor of Transfer and Associate Editor of San Francisco Review has won awards for his writing beginning with the Ina Coolbrith Poetry Prize at The University of California, Berkeley. With five published poetry books, a sixth coming out next year, and a book of prose advice for people diagnosed as mentally ill, he presently coordinates the reading series of The Monterey Bay Poetry Consortium, and edits the online magazine Monterey Poetry Review. Two successful shows of his photographs have occurred this year. His newest project consists of matching photos with three line 5-7-5 syllable poems similar to haiku to make essays on various subjects. He calls the results Poemages.

Ann E. Michael assists college students in writing at DeSales University and has been widely published in print and online. Her poetry collections include Water-Rites, The Capable Heart, Small Things Rise & Go. Her next collection of poetry will arrive in 2021. She blogs at: www.annemichael.wordpress.com

Sara Triana Mitchell is a writer and mother. She writes picture books (Love Love Bakery) and poetry. Sara lives with her husband, their three daughters, two cats, one dog, and all of the mosquitoes outside of Houston.

Jim Ross: After retiring from a career in public health research in early 2015, Jim Ross resumed creative pursuits in hopes of resuscitating his long-neglected left brain. He’s since published 75 pieces of nonfiction, a dozen poems, and 200 photos in 80 journals in North America, Europe, and Asia. His publications include Bombay Gin, Columbia Journal, Friends Journal, Gravel, Ilanot Review, Lunch Ticket, Kestrel, MAKE, The Atlantic, and Wordpeace. In the past year, he wrote and acted in his first play, and one of his nonfiction pieces led to a role in a soon-to-be-released major documentary film. His goal is to combine creative nonfiction with photography. He and his wife–parents of two health professionals and grandparents of four wee ones–split their time between Maryland and West Virginia.

Susan Shaw Sailer lives in Morgantown, West Virginia. She has published two books, The God of Roundabouts and Ship of Light plus a chapbook, Coal. Her recent poems appear in Minerva Rising, Kakalak 18, and The Main Street Rag. She thinks war is evil and hopes the poems she is submitting show this.

Pegi Deitz Shea is a two-time winner of the Connecticut Book Award for Children’s Literature, and the author of more than 450 published articles, essays, and poems for adult readers. Her works for young readers (poetry, articles, fiction and nonfiction picture books, as well as novels) frequently focus on human rights issues. Her poetry for adults has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Ireland of the Welcomes Magazine, Connecticut River Review, Earth’s Daughters, bottle rockets, under the basho, Here, Snapdragon and other journals and anthologies. She is also a photographer, and has had solo exhibits combining poems and pictures. She founded and direct “Poetry Rocks!”, a quarterly poetry series in Vernon, CT. I teach in the Creative Writing Program of the University of Connecticut.

Sandra Soli’s poems focus on war, social issues and justice. Her work has been recorded for NPR and appeared in The New York Quarterly, Ruminate, Southern Poetry Review, Oklahoma Humanities magazine, Naugatuck River Review, and War, Literature, and the Arts, among many other journals. Her article on prose poetry was featured in Poet’s Market. She emigrated from postwar England and holds an honors M.A. in creative studies. Sandra is a regular presenter at the Woody Guthrie festival and other venues Honors include an Oklahoma Book Award, nominations for the Pushcart Prize, and New Delta Review’s Eyster Poetry Prize.

Jonathan Travelstead served in the Air Force National Guard for six years as a firefighter and currently works as a full-time firefighter for the city of Murphysboro, and as co-editor for Cobalt Review. Having finished his MFA at Southern Illinois University of Carbondale, he also turns a lathe, crafting pens under the name Scorched Ink Penturning. His first collection “How We Bury Our Dead” (Cobalt Press) was released in March, 2015, and “Conflict Tours” (Cobalt Press) was released in 2017.