Issue Fifteen Contributors

J.L. Adams - I am originally from Indianapolis, IN where though heavily involved in teaching and writing poetry, I have yet to pursue publishing.   So, I'm a newbie to the publishing community, but an oldie in the literary community.   I taught a workshop with the Writers Center of Indiana called the "Writers Way," a workshop for high school students interested in either poetry or prose.   I have also been involved with the slam scene and even though that was great fun, I find more satisfaction writing for the page and not the stage.   I've also taught workshops for children through Girls Inc. an after school program for at risk students.   Currently I am a volunteer, travelling around the country for an organization that works with individuals struggling with drug or alcohol addiction.  

Mike Amado is a performance poet from Massachusetts where he enjoys eating key lime pie at every meal. A percussionist and drummer, Amado does lyrical, rhythm-based tomes attuned to the soul and semi-political. His first volume of verse is entitled: "Poems: Unearthed from Ashes" (2006). He is an online reviewer for Rattle Magazine and the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene. He has been published in the Wilderness House Literary Review, the Bagelbard's Anthology 1&2, apt magazine #12, and Down in the Dirt. Amado has two collections to be out in '08 (from Cervena Barva Press & Ibbetson Street Press). To quote the author: "I don't Slam, I rock!"

Tyler Cobb is a poet living in St. Paul, Minnesota. He graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College. His current reading diet consists mainly of Charles Bukowski and John Bennett.   He is currently working on a chapbook called Take In My Dusty Blood . He can be reached at asilverbrew@gmail.com.

William Doreski's work has appeared in various other journals, recently in Harvard Review, Smoking Poet, Loch Haven, Natural bridge, Ars Interpre, and Notre Dame review. HIs favorite pie is blueberry.

George Freek has recently been published in Abyss & Apex, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, Rough Road Review, Big Tex(t) and Whimperbang and his short play, Laws of Necessity was published in the latest Oregon Literary Review. He also has plays published by Playscripts, Inc ., JAC Publishing and Lazy Bee Scripts in the UK.

Carissa Halston, writer/director of Cleavage, author of A Girl Named Charlie Lester and Sequentially Yours, co-founded Aforementioned Productions in 2005. Her favorite type of pie (today) is apple. Look for her work in places. Search for her name on the internet.  E-mail her and tell her what you think.

Scott Hughes's work has appeared in Crazyhorse, Redivider, Strange Horizons, Crab Creek Review, The Raleigh Quarterly, elimae, and Chiaroscuro. The first novel in his young adult fantasy series, Magellana and the Mergonauts, is being represented by LJK Literary Management.

Sarahlynn Lester lives in St. Louis, Missouri. By day, she lives an ordinary life. But once the kids are asleep, she has a remarkable time at the laptop propped against the front window of her house, prompting her neighbors to ask, "How's the organ practice going?" On weekends, this season, she's baking dark chocolate cream pies. Fictionally, of course.

David Meyer - I am from New York originally, but I currently live in Brussels Belgium, where my wife, a Belgian, is a practicing lawyer and I am studying for a Masters in European Studies at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. It has been a circuitous path to wind up here. After college in Minnesota I worked for two years in an office with no windows in Washington DC, where I was author of a few short articles on education statistics still available through the website for the National Center for Education Statistics ( www.nces.ed.gov ) for anyone bored enough to look for them. Two years was about all of that that I could take, and since quitting I have worked on a dairy farm in Vermont, as an English teacher in Austria, as a ghostwriter in Brooklyn, and as an office assistant in Belgium. My wife and I met in Mongolia. Through it all I have done my best to keep writing, and my first short story to be published will appear in the June issue of the Istanbul Literature Review . My favorite pie is pumpkin, which is impossible to find in Belgium and which I have been forced these past few years to make from scratch every fall. Though it always turns out well, I miss the good old American canned filling, a craving my wife finds incomprehensible.

Michelle Reale's work has been published in Verbsap, 3711 Atlantic, Pequin, Underground Voices and others.

Douglas Silver's fiction and poetry have appeared in Our Stories, apt, The Vagrant Literary Quarterly, Dark Phrases , and elsewhere. He lives in New York City.

Sean Wiebe is an assistant professor of language and literacy at the university of Prince Edward Island. His papers and poetry appear in a variety of journals and book chapters in the areas of the arts, teacher education and curriculum studies. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Journal of Educational Thought, Standards, JAAACS, The Windsor Review, and Arabesques .

Ragan Leah Willis - I am a former journalist from Seattle, but I've since traded journalism for the law, and Seattle for Boston. Oh yes, my favorite kind of pie is lemon meringue if we count the whole piece (including crust). If I'm just eating pie filling - my favorite is pumpkin. Or cherry. Anything but chocolate cream and apple, really. And I prefer Cool Whip over whipped cream -- a childhood-memory thing.