READ ISSUE SEVENTY-SIX
Good writers, good poets, good art. This is going to be a fantastic week.
Brett Stout
Brett Stout is a 33-year-old artist and writer. He is a high school dropout and former construction worker turned college graduate and Paramedic. He creates art while mainly hung-over from a small cramped apartment in Myrtle Beach, SC.
Christina Marie Glessner
Christina Marie Glessner received her BA in Creative Writing at Susquehanna University and is currently working on an MFA in Fiction at the University of New Mexico, preparing to defend her story collection in the spring. She is the current Managing Editor at Blue Mesa Review. This is her first publication in poetry.
Michael Dwayne Smith
Michael Dwayne Smith is a California desert native and graduate of the creative writing program at U.C. Riverside. He’s the poetry editor at Cease, Cows Literary Journal and has been a professor since long after the cows came home. His work has won both the Hinderaker Prize for poetry and the Polonsky Prize for fiction; poems and stories appear in journals like burntdistrict, Word Riot, decomP, >kill author, Heavy Feather Review, Monkeybicycle, and The Cortland Review. He lives near a ghost town with his wife and rescued animals.
Rochelle Jewel Shapiro
Rochelle Jewel Shapiro’s novel, Miriam the Medium (Simon & Schuster) was nominated for the Ribelow Award and her newest novel, Kaylee’s Ghost (Amazon and Nook) was finalist in the Indie 2013 Awards. She’s published essays in the New York Times (Lives), Newsweek, and won the Brandon Memorial Award for an essay in Negative Capability. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in appeared in many literary magazines such as The Iowa Review, Stand, Inkwell Magazine, Poet Lore, Compass Rose, Controlled Burn, The Griffin, Lost Angeles Review, The Atlanta Review, Moment. Her poem, Second Story Porch, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Shapiro is a psychic who also teaches writing at UCLA Extension.
Danny Earl Simmons
Danny Earl Simmons is an Oregonian and a proud graduate of Corvallis High School. He is a friend of the Linn-Benton Community College Poetry Club and an active member of Albany Civic Theater. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in various journals such as Naugatuck River Review, Off the Coast, Shadow Road Quarterly, Grey Sparrow, and Verse Wisconsin.
Keith James
Keith James is an undergraduate student at Idaho State University. According to strangers, he enjoys hiking, painting, and volunteering at soup kitchens. According to friends and family, he is a liar. Keith does not believe in ghosts, but prefers to be in a dead sprint when the lights are off in the hallway. This is his first time writing for Crack the Spine.
Michel Collins
An anthropology graduate of Indiana University he tends to write about the American cultural psyche. He finds archeology, barber shop culture, and the art of the donut fascinating.
Shaun McMichael
Shaun McMichael lives with his wife and cat in Seattle. He teaches creative writing and zine creation to homeless youth in the U-district and runs the blog Zine Project Seattle, which features poetry and artwork from street youth in crisis. Shaun’s writing has also appeared in Scissors and Spackle and online at Pongo Publishing.