Issue Forty Contributors

 

Justin McDaniel, a graduate student at Eastern Illinois University, is a student of business; however, his in-depth exploration of this professional discipline doesn’t keep him from engaging the arts. Writing songs, short stories, and poems are the fabulous extension of his essence. Exercising his creativity, which he claims is granted him by an infinitely eternal source, ensures that he remains honest and connected to the hidden shadows in his soul.

Rich Ives has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Artist Trust, Seattle Arts Commission and the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines for his work in poetry, fiction, editing, publishing, translation and photography. His writing has appeared in Verse, North American Review, Massachusetts Review, Northwest Review, Quarterly West, Iowa Review, Poetry Northwest, Virginia Quarterly Review, Fiction Daily and many more. He is the 2009 winner of the Francis Locke Memorial Poetry Award from Bitter Oleander. His story collection, The Balloon Containing the Water Containing the Narrative Begins Leaking, was one of five finalists for the 2009 Starcherone Innovative Fiction Prize. In 2010 he has been a finalist in fiction at Black Warrior Review and Mississippi Review and in poetry at Mississippi Review. In both 2011 and 2012 he is again a finalist in poetry at Mississippi Review, as well as receiving a nomination for The Best of the Web and two nominations for both the Pushcart Prize and The Best of the Net. He is the 2012 winner of the Creative Nonfiction Prize from Thin Air magazine. The Spring 2011 Bitter Oleander contains a feature including an interview and 18 of his hybrid works.

Amanda is an energetic, masters degree educated, 20-something happily living in an attic apartment in Boston with her shelter-adopted cat.  She writes scifi, horror, urban fantasy, literary fiction, and paranormal romance.  She has previously published short stories, as well as a novella, Ecstatic Evil, and a novel, Waiting For Daybreak.

Nate Musser is currently a student writing out of Long Beach. His works have been published in The Legendary and with Bank-Heavy Press. At the moment, his purpose in life is to find his purpose in life.

Whitney Reinhard is a graduate of Bowling Green State University. Writing has always been her passion. Her other works can be seen in Catfish Creek, scissors and spackle, Mad Swirl, and Prairie Margins. Her letters can along be read in The Letter Project.

Paul-Victor Winters is a teacher and writer living in southern New Jersey.  Poems and essays have appeared widely in journals such as TLR: The Literary Review, New York Quarterly, and in the Jane Street Press anthology of writing prompts from Peter Murphy, Challenges for the Delusional. 

Tamara Madison is the author of the collection “Wild Domestic” (Pearl Editions; July, 2011) and the chapbook “The Belly Remembers” (Pearl Editions, 2004).  She was the featured poet in Pearl 43, and Moontide Press’ Poet of the Month in February, 2010.  Her work has appeared in numerous small press journals, including Chiron Review, Spot Lit, Hobble Street Review, Tears in the Fence etc.  Two of her poems were also recently featured on the Writers Almanac. Tamara has two grown children and teaches French and English in a high school in Los Angeles.

J/J Hastain (Cover Artist)

J/J Hastain is the author of several cross-genre books including riding the lace barometer (ISMs Press), trans-genre book libertine monk (Scrambler Press), treoOA (Marsh Hawk Press (with Eileen Tabios)), approximating diapason (Spuyten Duyvil Press (with Tod Thilleman)) and anti-memoir a vigorous (Black Coffee Press/ Eight Ball Press (forthcoming)). J/J’s writing has most recently appeared in Caketrain, Trickhouse, Housefire, Bombay Gin and Aufgabe.