OPENING LETTERS > FROM THE EDITORS

In my doctoral program, my cohort has a motto: Do it now.

If you have a window of time, even 15-20 minutes, you crack open a book and read a chapter, grab a pen to annotate an article or type a paragraph in the dissertation. Respecting the law of inertia, you keep the ball rolling, and whenever you have the choice, you do it now.

This mantra has implications for my daily life as well, especially in the fall. As the leaves turn colors, I often try to be strategic, aiming to be in the woods or driving scenic routes at the “perfect” time to enjoy the autumnal landscapes. The truth is, whenever I get into the woods, the leaves crunch beneath my feet, offer their soothing fragrance with each breath, and delight my eyes. The perfect time to get out there is right now. If I find a pocket of time, I feel a sense of urgency—I get out there and I do it now. If the forecast calls for rain, but I see the sun creeping through the clouds, I hop on my bike and get in a few miles. I round up my dogs and hightail it to the neighborhood park. Whenever I get a chance, I do it now.

In many ways, the format of our journal affords a similar opportunity. Maybe you have a morning, an afternoon, or an evening wide open to explore every piece of Issue 26 in succession. Or maybe you just have a few minutes while water is boiling on your stovetop or steeping your cup of tea, you can always click the orange button that transports you to a literary world created by one of our phenomenal writers and poets. If you have a moment, you’re always welcome to dive in—do it now and enjoy.

I’m so thankful you’re here now, and I hope you’ll stop by often. 

Respectfully,

Jeff Sommerfeld, Co-Founder, Co-Editor-in-Chief, and Voices from the Sky Podcast Host

My ranch faces the eastern flank of the Florida Mountains; this desolate side of the range is hidden from the town of Deming, New Mexico, which only knows its western face. The undulating foothills above the ranch sprout surreal rock formations several stories high, ideal for bouldering and ripe for exploration. These foothills quickly give way to steep inclines and a sharp spine of ragged peaks that ultimately define the profile of the Floridas: 12 miles of rock bursting wildly—like a living thing—from the calm, flat sea of desert surrounding it. Where those foothills transition to slopes, there is a wide draw that narrows to a slender canyon. This canyon leads to a hidden arroyo. In its folds and creases are cold springs that drip from the rocks, creating microbiomes and microclimates; there are plants, insects, and animals here that can’t be found anywhere else in the region.

Whenever Jeff and I venture into this place—especially during the fall—we climb and explore together for a while, but, inevitably, we drift apart. After an eternity of silence, one of us will suddenly appear on a peak, and the other one will notice—50 yards away perhaps—from the vantage of a sheltered ledge freshly commandeered as a reading nook. This can go on for hours, until our canteens are almost dry. There is never any talking, but whenever we a fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of each other, we exchange a broad smile. It is a secret smile, from one thief to another—an acknowledgement that we have stolen our way into a place where people should not be, a place so ancient and remote that the fabric of time and space surrounding it seems to shimmer translucent, a place where the veil between worlds and lives is palpably thin.

So, as our hemisphere’s fall settles into winter, dear readers, we hope that you can warm each other with similar secret smiles after stealing away to the many worlds, and exploring the many lives, that our contributors have so gracefully created for you in Issue 26. It is a refugium of transport, transformation, and transcendence.

When the light outside begins to wane, and we find ourselves turning toward the collective hearth of the ether, it can be easy to lose ourselves in its comforting glow or the dark shadows that the same flame casts. The internet is the best and worst of us, simultaneously. When we see the senseless suffering and wholesale slaughter of innocent civilians in Gaza and Israel, for example—hatred and violence on levels most of us will never experience—it can be difficult to exfil ourselves from the despair of the human condition. The same news cycles that inform us, also trick us into living in feedback loops and echo chambers; they make it easy for us to forget that we are more than this moment.

And we ARE more than this moment.

One of the few things that separates us from other animals is that we understand the concept of tomorrow. This is hardly a surprise when you consider that another thing which separates us is language. Language gives us the power to resurrect our past, define our present, and create our future. Language is the sword and compass of the human imagination.

Tragically, language and imagination are precisely the things that we tend to use less of, the more hatred and violence back us into our respective corners, and those corners are filled with such tension, and such urgency, that we become blind to everything else that isn’t this moment. Tomorrow seems impossible when all we can see, smell, taste, touch, and hear is this moment. Moment after moment after moment—until we forget our past and forsake our future—adrift on a roiling sea of reaction—the regular rhythm of panic and anxiety lulling us into a kind of numbness that can make the art of writing and the joy of reading seem irrelevant.

Well, we refuse to give up on humanity, and we refuse to give in to that numbness. We believe in visualizing and creating a better tomorrow.

As an independent international literary journal, our positive energy, rugged independence, and relentless tenacity keep us strong and publishing. We keep a fire burning for readers and writers who may be discouraged by this life or doubting their path. We keep it burning for those who, through literature, want to break free from their matrix programing and feel things they’ve never felt before—see things from different perspectives and be completely transported by the hearts and minds of others. By keeping the fire burning for others, we are also able to provide some warmth and light for ourselves, and it will always be enough to sustain and guide us to the next issue. Path and purpose. Relentless resilience. Endless evolution. Reading and responding to every submission—then being able to share the work of writers from around the world, with readers from around the world—are privileges beyond the telling.

We believe in the power of reading and writing, and we believe that art can make a difference in people’s lives. Our constellation of over 125,000 readers in 145 countries, and over 800 published contributors, are fearless inward explorers and brave outward adventurers. They believe in the love that can be found in our shared humanity—even, and especially, during these dark hours. That’s what sustains us. That’s what propels us forward into the unknown with every issue.

We’ve elected to leave the "scroll-through” experience and the pop-up ads to other literary platforms. By design, the writing in Sky Island Journal opens as a protected Word document for an authentic, focused, and immersive experience that encourages a close, intimate, distraction-free reading of the work. We want your experience with the work of our contributors to be singular—just as it would be on the printed page, with crisp white paper between your collective fingertips. ( Four poems with unusually long line lengths or unconventional formatting, however, will open as jpegs so fidelity to the author’s original line and stanza breaks can be maintained on all mobile devices around the world. ) Without advertising to distract from and cheapen the literary experience, you can fully engage with the worlds that our contributors have so carefully crafted for you. We are free access; without subscriptions and pay walls, you are welcome to read and enjoy whenever you like, wherever you like, regardless of your means. We believe in removing the barriers between readers and access to high quality literature, especially in regions of the world that have traditionally been underserved by English language journals or completely ignored by the literary establishment.

So welcome to Sky Island Journal—where this moment becomes tomorrow, where the desert meets the mountains, the indigenous meets the exotic, and the old ways meet the digital frontier.

Of the 1,498 individual pieces that we received from around the world for Issue 26, we found these 60 to be the finest. Enjoy.

Respectfully,

Jason Splichal, Co-Founder and Co-Editor-in-Chief

Amy Katherine Cannon > Poetry > California, USA

Amy Katherine Cannon is a writer and writing teacher living in Los Angeles. She received her MFA from UC Irvine and is the author of the chapbook the interior desert (Californios Press) and the mini chapbook to make a desert (Platypus Press). Her work can be found in Bone Bouquet, LETTERS, LIT, and Rock & Sling, among other places. She is managing editor of Palaver Arts Magazine, a student publication.

Andrea Damic > Creative Nonfiction > Australia

Andrea Damic, born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, lives and works in Sydney, Australia. She’s an amateur photographer and author of prose and poetry. She writes at night when everyone is asleep; when she lacks words to express herself, she uses photography to speak for her. Her literary art appears in Door Is A Jar, The Dribble Drabble Review, Five on the Fifth, Roi Fainéant Press, Your Impossible Voice, and elsewhere.

Anima Pookkunniyil > Poetry > India

Anima Pookkunniyil is an award-winning journalist and writer from Delhi. She belongs to Kerala but Delhi has been home as well as workplace for nearly two decades. Her journalistic writing focusses on climate change, gender inequality, archaeology, and books. An alumna of University of Hyderabad and Asian College of Journalism, she is currently working on her first book of non-fiction. 

Ann Chinnis > Poetry > Virginia, USA

Ann Chinnis has been an Emergency Physician for 40 years and studies in the Writers Studio’s Master Class under Philip Schultz. Her poetry has been published in The Speckled Trout Review, Drunk Monkeys, Around the World: Landscapes & Cityscapes, Sledgehammer, Open Door, Last Leaves, Mocking Owl Roost, Sky Island Journal, Sheila-Na-Gig, and Nostos. Her first chapbook, Poppet, My Poppet, is forthcoming by Finishing Line Press. Ann Chinnis lives with her wife in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Arthur Davis > Flash Fiction > New York, USA

Arthur Davis is a management consultant who has been quoted in The New York Times and in Crain’s New York Business, taught at The New School and interviewed on New York TV News Channel 1. He was featured in a collection, nominated for a Pushcart Prize, received the 2018 Write Well Award for excellence in short fiction and, twice nominated, received Honorable Mention in The Best American Mystery Stories 2017.

Arthur Mandal > Flash Fiction > United Kingdom + Oregon, USA

Arthur Mandal is a writer based in Eugene, Oregon (but grew up in the United Kingdom). Alongside writing he works as an independent craftsman, making rings, necklaces, and ornaments. His stories have appeared in The Signal House Edition, 3:AM, Sky Island Journal, and the US/UK journal LITRO. 

Barbara Boyle > Flash Fiction > Italy

Barbara Boyle, after a long and colorful career creating advertising around the world, now resides in a 300-year-old stone farmhouse in Northern Italy.  She’s surrounded by hazelnut orchards, vineyards, and barking deer.  Her first book, PINCH ~ Waking up in Italy, is about to be published by She Writes Press.

Bethany Bowman > Poetry > Indiana, USA

Originally from New York's Mohawk Valley, Bethany Bowman has lived and taught in Indiana for over a decade. She is the author of Swan Bones (2018). Her poems have been nominated for Pushcarts and Best of the Net, and have recently appeared in Nimrod, Apple Valley Review, and Poetry Online.

Bruce E. Whitacre > Poetry > New York, USA

Bruce E. Whitacre’s debut collection, The Elk in the Glade: The World of Pioneer and Painter Jennie Hicks, was a BookLife Reviews Editors Pick and Indy Spotlight. It also placed 2nd in Contemporary Poetry at The BookFest Spring 2023. Publications include The American Journal of Poetry, World Literature Today, Life and Legends, The Mandarin, Nine Cloud Journal. Published in anthologies from Southern Arizona Press (Castles and Courtyards, 2023 and The Wonders of Winter, 2022) and Milk and Cake Press (I Wanna Be Loved by You: Poems on Marilyn Monroe, 2021). “Leave Meeting” was a sample poem in Diane Lockward’s craft book, The Strategic Poet, Terrapin Books, 2021. He has garnished nominations for Pushcart and Best of the Net. Good Housekeeping is forthcoming in 2024 from Poets Wear Prada. A retired theatre executive, he lives with his husband in Queens, New York.

Claire Rain > Poetry > North Carolina, USA

Claire Rain is a writer, designer, and herbalist based in Charlotte, North Carolina. She is the face and founder behind High Huntress, an online creative media studio and apothecary. Claire has served clients all over the world through plant medicine, astrology, functional design, and holistic wellness. She is pursuing a degree in Interactive Design & Digital Media at Savannah College of Art and Design to bring a more multi-faceted approach to improving the past, present, and future. Between her many vices and tendency for hopeless romanticism, her writing is just another form of alchemy where she transmutes and transforms the ideas that get boring after a while.

Daria Uporsky > Poetry > North Carolina, USA

Daria Uporsky lives in Madison County, North Carolina, where she works as a writer and marketing consultant for small businesses. A contributing author for a number of regional magazines and literary journals, her prose pieces have appeared in Glide Magazine, Mountain Outlaw Magazine, Valparaiso Review, and Mountain Xpress. Her poetry is published or forthcoming in Sky Island Journal, HitH Review, Eunoia Review, Rising Phoenix Review and elsewhere. Daria is nearing completion of her first book of poetry.

Dominique Schleider > Creative Nonfiction > Singapore + California, USA

Dominique Schleider, raised in Singapore, now studies at Stanford University. She enjoys classical singing, fashion, and creative writing, of course. This is her first publication!

Eric Rasmussen > Flash Fiction > Wisconsin, USA

Eric Rasmussen is a western Wisconsin writer and teacher who serves as fiction editor for Sundog Lit, as well as editor of the upper Midwest literary journal Barstow & Grand. He has published short fiction in Third Coast (2022 Fiction Contest finalist), North American Review (2022 Kurt Vonnegut Prize runner-up), Blue Mesa Review (2022 Fiction Contest winner), Fugue, and Pithead Chapel, among others.

Gary Lark > Poetry > Oregon, USA

Gary Lark’s most recent collection is Easter Creek (Main Street Rag, 2021). Other work includes Daybreak on the Water (Flowstone Press, 2020), Ordinary Gravity (Airlie Press, 2019), River of Solace (Flowstone Press, 2016), In the House of Memory (BatCat Press, 2016), Without a Map (Wellstone Press, 2013), and Getting By (Logan House Press, 2009). His poetry has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Catamaran, Hubbub, Poet Lore, ZYZZYVA, and Sky Island Journal.

Janet E. Irvin > Poetry > Ohio, USA

Janet E. Irvin is a career educator, author, and poet. She holds a BA in Spanish and English from Ohio University, an MSed from the University of Dayton, and an MA in Spanish from the University of Cincinnati. Writing as J.E. Irvin, she is the award-winning author of six mystery/thriller novels. Her shorter works have appeared in a variety of print and online publications, including Hawaii Pacific Review, Creosote, The Raven’s Perch, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Literary Mama, and Sky Island Journal. She and her husband reside in southwest Ohio on the edge of a nature park, which serves as inspiration for much of her work.

Joan McBride > Poetry > Washington, USA

Joan McBride’s poems have appeared in RavenChronicles, Clamor, Yours Truly, and Nightshade.  She studied creative writing at the University of Washington, The Evergreen State College, and Richard Hugo House including a weekly seminar with poet David Wagoner.  She is currently pursuing an MFA at Spaulding University and working on her first book of poetry.  Joan recently retired from the Washington State Legislature and formerly served as mayor of Kirkland, Washington. 

Joanne Durham > Poetry > North Carolina, USA

Joanne Durham is the author of To Drink from a Wider Bowl, winner of the Sinclair Poetry Prize (Evening Street Press 2022) and On Shifting Shoals (Kelsay Books 2023). In 2023 she won the Third Wednesday Annual Poetry Contest and the Mary Ruffin Poole Prize. Her poetry appears in Poetry South (Pushcart nomination), Whale Road Review, The Inflectionist Review, CALYX, NC Literary Review, and many other journals and anthologies. She lives on the North Carolina coast, with the ocean as her backyard and muse.

José Enrique Medina > Poetry > California, USA

José Enrique Medina earned his BA in English from Cornell University. He writes poems, short stories and novels. His work has appeared in Best Microfiction 2019 Anthology, Tahoma Literary Review, The Burnside Review, Sky Island Journal, and other publications. When he is not writing, he enjoys playing with his baby chicks, bunnies, and piglets on his farm in Whittier, California.

Kait Leonard > Flash Fiction > California, USA

Kait Leonard writes from her Los Angeles home, which she shares with five parrots and her gigantic American bulldog, Seeger. Her fiction has previously been published in Roi Faineant, Paragraph Planet, Six Sentences, Every Day Fiction, and Flash Fiction Magazine, among other online journals. Stories will be appearing in Does It Have Pockets and Academy of the Heart later this year. Her favorite novel is Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger because who doesn’t need “consecrated chicken soup”?

Kate Dargan > Flash Fiction > New York, USA

Kate Dargan is a writer from Long Island, New York. Her fiction has been featured in Happy Captive Magazine, Cathartic Youth Literary Magazine, White Wall Review, Alternate Route Magazine, The Stirling Review, and Defiant Scribe Magazine. She is currently studying law.

Katharine Cristiani > Poetry > Pennsylvania, USA

Katharine Cristiani (she/her) is a mother, union organizer and Pushcart nominated poet who calls Philadelphia home. Her chapbook, Preserving the Unraveled, is forthcoming (Finishing Line Press). Her work appears in San Pedro Review, Literary Mama, Full House Literary Magazine and elsewhere. She builds campfires in any weather with love and prowess.

Katherine Riegel > Poetry > Tennessee, USA

Katherine Riegel is the author of the poetry books Love Songs from the End of the World, What the Mouth Was Made For, and Castaway; her prose poetry/creative nonfiction chapbook Letters to Colin Firth was published by Sundress Press. Her work has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Hole in the Head Review, One, Poets.org, SWWIM, and elsewhere. She is co-founder and managing editor of the literary magazine Sweet and teaches online classes in poetry and creative nonfiction.

Kathryn Jankowski > Creative Nonfiction > California, USA

Kathryn Jankowski is a writer of Lithuanian/Hispanic descent based in northern California. Her creative nonfiction is forthcoming in Longridge Review.

Kerry Langan > Flash Fiction > Ohio, USA

Kerry Langan has published three collections of short stories, My Name Is Your Name & Other Stories, the most recent. Her fiction has appeared in more than 50 literary magazines published in North America, the U.K. and Asia, including The Saturday Evening Post, Persimmon Tree, StoryQuarterly, West Branch, Cimarron Review, Other Voices, The Seattle Review, Literary Mama, Rosebud, The Blue Mountain Review, The Fictional Café, JMWW, Reflex Fiction, Fictive Dream, Capsule Stories, The Syncopation Literary Review, Café Lit Magazine and others. Her stories have been anthologized in several publications, including XX Eccentric: Stories About the Eccentricities of Women and in Solace in So Many Words. She was a recently featured author on the podcast, Short Story Today. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and two Best Small Fictions 2023. Her drama has appeared in The Hooghly Review. Additional fiction is forthcoming in Cloudbank. Her nonfiction has appeared in Working Mother and Shifting Balance Sheets: Women’s Stories of Naturalized Citizenship & Cultural Attachment.

Lalini Shanela Ranaraja > Poetry > Sri Lanka

Lalini Shanela Ranaraja is a multigenre creative from Kandy, Sri Lanka. She has written about defiant women, mothertongues, and luminous worlds for Off Assignment, Sky Island Journal, Strange Horizons, Uncanny Magazine, and others. She is currently based in the United States.

Lisken Van Pelt Dus > Poetry > Massachusetts, USA

Lisken Van Pelt Dus teaches languages, writing, and martial arts in western Massachusetts. Her poetry can be found in many journals, including most recently Sand Hills Literary Magazine, Book of Matches, Split Rock Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Sky Island Journal, the Ekphrastic Review, and in anthologies such as the Crafty Poet Anthology Series. Available books include a full-length collection, What We’re Made Of (2016), and a chapbook, Letters to my Dead (2022).

Logan Anthony > Poetry > Indiana, USA

Logan Anthony is a queer writer and transgender artist. Anthony holds a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing & English and works as a curriculum developer. Logan has poetry published or forthcoming in Thin Air Magazine, Oberon Poetry Magazine, Hive Avenue Literary Journal, Papers Publishing Literary Magazine, Hare’s Paw Literary Journal, and more. You can read their short stories in Stoneboat Literary Journal, The Write Launch, and Hare’s Paw Literary Journal.

Lucie Chou > Poetry > China

Lucie Chou is an ecopoet working in mainland China. Currently an undergraduate majoring in English language and literature, she is also interested in the ecotone between ekphrasis and ecopoetics, and in exploring the magic presences of other-than-human living beings bleeding into the lonely arrogance of human experience. Her work has appeared in the Entropy, Black Earth Institute Blog, Tiny Seed Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Transom, Sky Island Journal, and in the Plant Your Words Anthology published by Tiny Seed Press. A poem is forthcoming in from Tofu Ink Arts, both in print and online. She has published a debut collection of ecopoetry, Convivial Communiverse, with Atmosphere Press. She hikes, gardens, and studies works of natural history by Victorian writers with gusto. In August 2023, she participated in the Tupelo Press 30 / 30 project where she fundraised for the indie press by writing one poem each day for a month. She writes for a constellation of brilliant readers hopefully including street trees and feral animals she encounters in each city she travels to.

Megan Nicholson > Flash Fiction > Michigan, USA

Megan Nicholson (she/her) hails from Texas and currently lives in Michigan with her husband, three children, and a menagerie of rescue animals.

Michael Thériault > Flash Fiction > California, USA

Michael Thériault has been an Ironworker, union organizer, and union representative at various levels. He published fiction in his twenties, half a dozen stories in literary magazines, but abandoned it for decades to support first a family, then a movement. In his recent return to it he has been published in Pacifica Literary Review, Overheard, Erato Magazine, Livina Press, and Remington Review and accepted for publication in Iconoclast. Popula.com has published a brief memoir of his time as Ironworker organizer. He is a graduate of St. John’s College, Santa Fe and a native and resident of San Francisco.

Olive Lowe > Creative Nonfiction > Idaho, USA

Olive Lowe is a memoir ghostwriter, wife of an exceptionally attractive accountant, and mother of three littles. She grew up in the charming rural community of Fruitland, Idaho. After graduating from Brigham Young University, she worked as a recreational therapist in a memory care facility in Arizona. When the pandemic hit in 2020, remote work allowed her and her family to move back to her hometown of Fruitland, where she and her daughters are currently enjoying taking horseback riding lessons together. When not writing others’ stories, Olive likes to write her own. Her work has also appeared in Her View From Home.

Olivia Piper > Poetry > Connecticut, USA

Olivia Piper is a writer, an educator, and a New Englander. Her work has previously been published in The Connecticut River Review, Funicular Magazine, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Devastation Baby, Cargoes, and Connecticut Bards Poetry Review. She is currently an MFA Candidate in Creative Writing.

Özge Lena > Poetry > Turkey

Özge Lena is an Istanbul-based writer & poet who has a published novella titled Otopsi, and her poems have appeared in The London Magazine, iamb, Ink Sweat & Tears, Green Ink Poetry, Red Ogre Review, Harana, Acropolis, The Phare, After Poetry, The Selkie, and elsewhere. Her poem “Celestial Body” is selected for Take Flight 2023 Best Poetry Anthology. Her poetry is shortlisted for the Ralph Angel Poetry Prize and Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition in 2021, and for The Plough Poetry Prize in 2023.

Paris Rosemont > Poetry > Australia

Paris Rosemont is an Asian-Australian poet whose poetry features in eclectic homes, from literary journals to kooky underground zines! Some of the publications Paris’s poetry has appeared in include Verge Literary Journal, FemAsia Magazine, Red Room Poetry’s ‘Admissions’ and Live Encounters: Poetry & Writing (Special Australian Edition and 14th Anniversary Edition). Winner: New England Thunderbolt Poetry Prize 2022; Shortlisted: Born Writers Award 2023 and Hammond House Publishing International Literary Prize 2022; Longlisted: Liquid Amber Poetry Prize 2023, New Writers Poetry Competition 2023 (UK) and Joyce Parkes Award 2022. Awarded: Atelier Artist-in-Residence Ireland 2024, Kathmandu International Artist in Residence 2024, Varuna Shanghai Lamplight Residency 2023 and WestWords/Copyright Agency Fellowship 2023. Paris’s niche is performance poetry. She has performed at events including the Sydney Fringe Festival, world premiere of Slam Messiah 2022, Ubud Writers & Readers Festival 2023 and Short+Sweet Festival Illawarra 2023, where she was awarded Best Script, Best Actor (runner up) and Best Overall Production (runner up). Paris’s debut poetry collection, Banana Girl, is due for release in November 2023.

Robert Carr > Poetry > Maine, USA

Robert Carr is the author of Amaranth, published by Indolent Books, and two full-length collections published by 3: A Taos Press – The Unbuttoned Eye and The Heavy of Human Clouds. His poetry appears in many journals and magazines including Lana Turner Journal, the Maine Review, the Massachusetts Review and Shenandoah. He is the recipient of a 2022 artist residency at Monson Arts

Ryan Borchers > Flash Fiction > Nebraska, USA

Ryan Borchers is a writer from Omaha, Nebraska and holds an MFA in fiction writing from Creighton University. His work has been published by The Rumpus, Flash Fiction Magazine, Prairie Schooner, Umbrella Factory Magazine, Spelk, 50-Word Stories, and other literary journals. He is also the author of three unpublished novels. Currently, he is collaborating with his sister on a graphic novel about adorable dinosaurs who discover the Internet.

Sandrine Letellier > Poetry > Canada

Sandrine Letellier finds inspiration in human nature, music, and visual arts. She spends a great amount of time observing, pondering, and wandering around her city. From Montreal, she self-published her first collection, Aftermath, in 2022. Her work has been published in Firewords magazine. You can find her on Instagram @aftermath.poems where she posts daily.

Sarah Thomas > Flash Fiction > United Kingdom

Sarah Thomas lives in a suburb of Manchester, United Kingdom, with her husband, son and their black cat called Willow. She has been writing stories since the age of six and has a degree in English Literature and Creative Writing from Salford University. As well as writing short stories, Sarah is a keen reader and writer of haiku and has had her work published in The Haiku Journal.

Scott Lowery > Poetry > Wisconsin, USA

Scott Lowery counts himself lucky for a lifelong fascination with words. He grew up in Minneapolis, and lived for nearly thirty years near Winona, among the river bluffs of southeastern Minnesota. Lowery’s poems appear in numerous print and online journals, including Prairie Schooner, River Styx, Water-Stone Review, and Great River Review. He has been awarded the Julia Darling Memorial Poetry Prize, Pushcart and Best of Net nominations, and a residency at the Anderson Center. Empty-handed won the Emergence Chapbook Prize from Red Dragonfly Press (2013). Lowery’s second chapbook, Mutual Life (forthcoming from Finishing Line Press), documents everyday life during tumultuous times. A 30-year veteran public school teacher, Lowery has presented writing workshops to young poets from grade school through college. He is also a singer-songwriter and has recorded three CDs of Americana roots music. Lowery and his wife Connie Blackburn recently moved to Milwaukee, drawn by the inexorable pull of young grandchildren.

Sherrida Woodley > Creative Nonfiction > Washington, USA

Sherrida (Sherri) Woodley spent much of her young life as a private pilot and is now a confirmed writer. “One certainly informed the other,” she tells us, yet each was a separate experience until the last six years in which she recognized Amelia Earhart’s major influence in her early desire to fly. Woodley began writing about flight behaviors that united Earhart and herself while doing research about the early aviatrix in odd places, including parts of a desolate, somewhat haunting Wyoming. “Scud Runner” is the result, a hybrid memoir seeking out corners of Earhart’s inner life, especially as a phenomenal pilot. The project also takes a close look at what brought Woodley to aviation in the early 1970s, a time when the experience was still most unusual for an average, working woman. There has been a novel of speculative fiction, Quick Fall of Light, published in 2010 by Gray Dog Press which was awarded Foreword Reviews Silver Award in Science Fiction that same year. Other writing includes “Bird Watcher’s Digest” (2014 article) about Gene Statton-Porter and her last sighting of a passenger pigeon, 10000 Birds, and Medium, mostly exploring extinct birds and fictional pandemics. Two interviews during the recent Covid experience took another look at Quick Fall of Light “ten years after,” giving it further chance to tell the story of a modern-day pandemic.

Tanima > Poetry > India

Straddling Chicago and Delhi, Tanima writes poetry, makes theatre, and sometimes works on a PhD. Previous writing can be found in Soundzine, Rise Up Review, Stone Poetry Quarterly, The Passionfruit Review, and Indent: The Body and the Performative.

Yoda Olinyk > Poetry > Canada

Yoda Olinyk (she/her) is a Canadian memoirist and poet passionately exploring the hearty, sharp-edged topics that make us all human, including love, connection, and grief. Yoda serves her community by offering workshops that focus on writing toward addiction, recovery, and most recently, she has launched a workshop on the subject of mother. Yoda's work has appeared in Button Poetry, SamFiftyFour, Third Iris, Sky Island Journal, and Quail Bell. She has also published a full-length memoir called Salt and Sour.