Meet the latest group of Crack the Spine contributors…
Kavita Venkateswar
Kavita Venkateswar is a recent graduate of Rice University in Houston, Texas, with a degree in Chemical Engineering. Her poetry has been published in The Dreamcatcher: Awaken the Sleeping Poet Festival and in R2: The Rice Review. In 2011, she was awarded the Schumann Brothers Grant for Creative Expression, through which she was awarded $1000 to research and create a series of poems about different types of world dance. Her favorite poets are Naomi Shihab Nye and Emily Dickinson. Kavita is an avid photographer and Bharata Natyam dancer, and will be pursuing advanced studies in dance in India this fall. In 2013, she will be moving to Boston to work as a consultant for Deloitte.
Jenny Davis
Jenny Davis lives just outside of New York City. She is passionate about veganism, knitting, baking, and, most of all, writing. Her work has been published in The Wheel and Independent Voices literary magazines. Although she has written novels and short stories, poetry is her preferred medium.
Taylor McDaniel
Taylor McDaniel was born and raised in South Louisiana. He is a recent graduate from Louisiana State University where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in creative writing. His work has appeared in LSU’s delta journal, as well as Vitrine: a printed museum.
Troy Frings
Troy Frings holds a B.A. in Economics from Manhattanville College and an A.A.S in Accounting from Bergen Community College. He also recently spent time as a biology research assistant (not that far a stretch from economics, actually!). Never one to stray far from the classroom, he will be attending graduate school this fall.
Melissa Chan
Melissa is an editor, freelance writer, and proud New York City native. She currently lives in Brooklyn where she is working on her first novel.
Karen Cook
Karen Cook has been writing short stories and poetry since childhood. Her first published piece, an essay ‘on being a girl,’ was published in a college sociology textbook. She writes it all: short stories, articles, poetry, essays, and — most recently — a novel set in France, in the 14th century. She has had four short stories, a poem, and over 50 articles published. After writing, and her family, Karen’s great love is traveling.”I find inspiration wherever I go,” she says. “My novel is based on a visit to a prehistoric site in Brittany that I visited in 2009. The standing stones I saw there became a character in my story.” This is her first appearance in Crack the Spine.
Alex Stuart
Alex Stuart is a Boston native who studies at the University of Michigan. He hopes to become a successful writer and marine biologist, but figures he might as well add “supermodel” and “secret agent” to that list. For now, he writes frequently, studies, and tries to keep compromising photos off of Facebook. Can’t have that coming back to bite him when he’s a pulitzer-prize-nobel-prize-winning President of the World.