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Contributors' Biographies Presidential Poet Ted Kooser is one of America's national treasures. He served two terms as the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from October 2004 to May 2006 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his book, Delights and Shadows (Copper Canyon Press 2004.) Poet Kooser's writing weaves deep textures in the fabric of thought. His poem, "In the Corners of Fields," affirms a sense of hope and life. "In the Corners of Files" from /Flying at Night: Poems 1965-1985/, by Ted Kooser , ©2005. Reprinted by kind permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press and Presidential Poet Ted Kooser. Presidential Poet Kooser's poem will also be published in our spring, print edition of Grey Sparrow. Sheila Ryan's Luminescent Cup is mindful of a Japanese term known as shabui: objects that grow beautiful with use; just a simple aluminum cup. Cover Artist Susanne Riette-Keith said, "I have been a commercial artist in the giftware, toy, fabric, and paper products industries for many years and presently have my own freelance design studio in my home in Easton. I am a graduate of the Massachusetts College of Art and Design where I majored in Painting and Illustration. Painting, primarily with watercolors, is my first love. My paintings are fantasy-oriented with a 'slight edge', combining dream worlds with reality and incorporating a touch of humor.My creatures float in space--acrobatic in many instances--and some move in their own confined spaces. Overall, they have a 'carnival' quality and feel as if they originated from a different world. In sum, what is conveyed is something serious, but not too serious because of an over-riding playfulness in its style and theme." Email her at susannerk@comcast.net for more information. Sonal Aggarwal lives in New Delhi, India. She is currently working on a collection of short stories, tentatively titled Piece of Clay. Her work has appeared in Open Wide Magazine in the United Kingdom. Roberta Allen is the author of eight books, including two story collections, THE TRAVELING WOMAN and CERTAIN PEOPLE, both praised by The New York Times Book Review; AMAZON DREAM, a travel memoir; THE DAUGHTER, a novella-in-shorts; and THE DREAMING GIRL, a novel. A visual artist as well, she has work in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum. She is working on a memoir about her family and completing a story collection. She teaches at The New School and in private workshops. Her web site is robertaallen.com Guy R. Beining hails from Massachusetts. His most recent chapbooks include in rue from Phrygian Press, 2008, Snug from Epicenter Press, 2008, and The Centipede that Dances with Scrub Brushes, Unarmed Press, 2009. Forthcoming in February 2010 is World Pig 1-34 via Alternating Current Press. In the Art World was part of "Art without Walls," New York City, July 2009, 9/11 Project, and was included in the Color Matters Art Show at the South Shore Art Center, Cohasset, Massachusetts, Autumn of 2009. Julie Mark Cohen, PhD, PE, SECB, is a Consulting Structural and Forensic Engineer who practices in New York State. She has published over forty flash fiction and short stories, recently winning Sam's Dot Publishing's Drabble 16 contest on "Alien Architecture" with her SciFi character, Seyfert. She plans to increase her Seyfert collection from two to four dozen stories and return to her novel, Shear Folly, which started her on the journey of expressing herself with something more universally understood than equations of equilibrium. Julie can be reached at jmcohen1028@yahoo.com David M. deLeon has had work in publications like Rattle, Fence Mag, The Cortland Review, Adirondack Review, a forthcoming Bat City and 2River View. He's worked as a music journalist and editor in New York, and currently is based out of Philadelphia. He keeps a website at http://davidmdeleon.com Angele Ellis is the author of Arab on Radar (Six Gallery Press, 2007). A 2008 recipient of a poetry fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, she won Pittsburgh Filmmakers’ G-20 Haiku Contest in 2009, and was a prizewinner in the 2007 RAWI Competition for Creative Prose. Her work has appeared in a number of publications. A longtime community activist as well as a writer and editor, she lives in the Friendship neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Cecilia Galarraga is a recent graduate of Oberlin College in Ohio. She lacks credentials but not enthusiasm. She works as a health educator in New York City. Cleveland W. Gibson was born in colonial India in an atmosphere of color, mystery and intrigue. In the United Kingdom he has worked for many major companies as well as the government. He’s been involved with charity work, trained as a Life Guard and was a Road Race Director for over ten years. Since taking up writing he’s published over 200 short stories, poems, articles in over eighty-five countries. Moondust represents his first surreal book of classic short stories, with a fantasy novel, Billabongo, to follow soon. He’s married with one son, teaches ESOL, and helps novice writers. Contact him on URL: http://linktiles.com?tile=641 Andrew Kaufman grew up near NYC and graduated from Oberlin College, He earned his MFA in poetry writing at Brooklyn College, and his doctorate, with the dissertation on William Blake, at the University of Toronto. Cinnamon Bay Sonnets won the Center for Book Arts chapbook competition in 1996, and Earth's Ends appeared in 2005 after winning the Pearl Poetry Award. His poems have also been widely published in journals and magazines. Much of the travel they reflect was made possible by an NEA award in poetry. Poet Kaufman said, "I feel the time I've spent in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America has been essential to my writing, in allowing me access to a fuller range of human capacities and experiences than would otherwise have been available to me." Wing-Fu Lai - Featured Artist for January 2010 Wing-Fu Lai graduated in the specialty of fine art from the Hong Kong First Institute of Art and Design, and is currently pursuing his doctoral studies at the University of Hong Kong where he has received his bachelor's degree with first class honors. He is a great aficionado of multiple artistic genres ranging from poetry to painting, and his fervent enthusiasm for them has never been wavered by frustrations over his creative journey. His artwork has appeared in a few print publications, including Qin Zi Guan Xi Jiao Shi (The Chinese University Press, 2008), Qin Zi De Yu Gu Shi Ji (Multimedia Services Limited, 2008) and Zhong Guo Shao Nian Er Tong Mei Shu Shu Fa She Ying Zuo Pin Ji (The China Youth & Children Research Center, 2000). Recently, Mr. Lai has published several chapters in edited books and has co-authored a storybook for children with his enlightening teacher, Prof. Zenobia C. Y. Chan, from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He can be reached by e-mail at rori0610@graduate.hku.hk. Alex Morton is a high tech pioneer and inventor whose products can be found on computers throughout the world. Although he claims that he learned the craft of fiction by writing business plans for startup software companies, he has always been a writer and now devotes his full time to it. He lives, with his wife, on the coast, near Vancouver BC, where he sails and writes articles for several magazines, and on the Greek island of Ikaria where he farms and is busy harvesting stories for his book, Somewhere Else. James S. Oppenheim was born in Washington, D.C., raised in Montgomery County, Maryland, schooled in Oxford, Ohio and resident in half a dozen Maryland towns (and, for a summer, Jacksonville, Florida). Jim has published in Equus, The North American Review, The Washington Post and Firehouse Magazine, worked as managing editor of the University of Maryland graduate literary magazine, Ethos. He has also had a life in music, producing one album and playing venues from cabin porches in West Virginia to bars in Florida. James offered the lovely dove that graces the back of the book. Today finds him in Hagerstown, Maryland as a photographer, singer/songwriter, and the editor of a blog: Oppenheim Arts & Letters devoted to the understanding of political conflicts and small wars, also art, culture, and language. The back of the dust jacket has a photograph of Doves for our new release In the Silence of this Room taken by James S. Oppenheim.
Ajay Prasannan was born and raised in the UK, where he currently works as a web designer and all-round IT troubleshooter. Regular trips to Kerala allow him to re-connect with his Indian roots and better understand the country he hopes to retire in. He has served as Grey Sparrow's art editor for one year and we hope he continues. James Rawbone has, (in no particular order), spent significant parts of his life; being mugged in Johannesburg and Maputo, sleeping on the temples at Tikal, building a ranger’s post in Belize, losing cheques for Barclays International, working with drug addicts in Manchester, tomb-stoning in Jersey, learning Spanish in Guatemala, being beaten up by Hell’s Angels in Sheffield. accidentally joining a brainwashing cult (as defined by the CIC), and spending subsequent months ‘kulking´ around Denmark, working in a Street Children’s Orphanage in Mozambique, being a special needs teacher, owning two very spoilt ginger cats. He is 31, still not dead and lives with his wife in the rolling countryside of the North Downs. Sheila Ryan is an artist and consulting archivist living in the Driftless Region of the Upper Midwestern United States.
John Schellhase is originally from Arkansas. He is currently serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines. John's poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Four and Twenty, Foundling Review, Strong Verse, and Barnwood Poetry Magazine. In 2007, he received the Walton Fellowship in Translation for his work with ancient Greek poetry. Nancy Stebbins is a psychiatrist and an MFA student. Her stories have been published in The Summerset Review and Menda City Review. D. E. Steward's Aprilois is one of the months in a month-to-month project begun in 1986. Almost 200 are published or in press with literary magazines. Cutter Streeby is a graduate from the University of California, Riverside. Now attending King's College, London in pursuit of an MA, when he is not braindead from literary spaces and modes of resistance he writes poetry. He also writes poetry when he realizes he will die anonymously if he does not. Ajay Vishwanathan is mesmerized by the power of words, more now when he sees his two-year old twins form them. Two-time Best of The Net Anthology nominee, Ajay has work published or forthcoming in over fifty literary journals, including elimae, The Potomac, DecomP, Drunken Boat, Denver Syntax and LITnIMAGE. Julie Wakeman-Linn edits The Potomac Review , and blogs at www.potomacreview.blogspot.com and manages the creative writing program at Montgomery College. Her writing draws on her years spent in central Africa. Her first novel, Chasing the Leopard," was a finalist for the 2008 Bellwether Prize. A second novel, The Thief, the Housekeeper and the Diplomat's Wife, is in progress. Her Master’s in Writing is from the John Hopkins University/DC program. Julie's personal website is at url: www.juliewakemanlinn.com.
Michael Weems is a NYC based writer, playwright, and actor. Recent playwriting credits include: Bludgeon the Lime and Necessary Adjustments (Phare Play Productions) Fragments, Waiting Life, and Onward, Forward (Little Hibiscus Productions), Subtlety (Algonquin Productions), Burden Me (Strawberry Riant Festival & Awakening Drama); Waiting Life, Ready to Shine, and Subtlety (Brief Acts). Recent fiction/poetry credits: Love Me, As Well (Record Magazine - Winter 08-09) When We Reached the Forest (Indite Circle Literary) and being named the poet of the month for 'O Sweet Flowery Roses Literary Journal (October 2008), as well as recent works being published by 63 Channels Literary, Jump In Magazine, and Oregon Literary Review, amongst others. Thanks to my loves, Christine, Thomas, & Jack. www.michaeltweems.com Christopher Woods is a writer, photographer and teacher. He lives in Houston and in Chappell Hill, Texas. His work has appeared recently in GLASGOW REVIEW, LITCHFIELD REVIEW and NARRATIVE MAGAZINE. His books include a prose collection, UNDER A RIVERBED SKY, and a book of stage monologues for actors, HEART SPEAK. He shares an online gallery with his wife Linda at MOONBIRD HILL ARTS - www.moonbirdhill.exposuremanager.com/ © Luminescent Cup by Sheial Ryan | |
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