Issue 1 Contributors

Sharisa Aidukaitis is a writer and college educator in upstate New York. Her poems have appeared in numerous print and online journals, including Penstricken, Moss Piglet, The Quarter(ly), Drifting Sands Haibun, Sublimation, and others.

Michael Alcée’s work has appeared in Aphor, Psychoanalytic Perspectives, Quarter Press, San Antonio Review, Tarry, and The Raven Review and is forthcoming in Eunoia Review, Black Iris, Inflectionist Review, Literary Cocktail, Metonym, Skipjack Review, Syncopation, and The Branches. In addition to being a poet, he is a psychologist and author of Therapeutic Improvisation (Norton, 2022) and The Upside of OCD (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024).

Ori Aviram: Born in 1965 in Jerusalem. After a short career as a producer and editor in television and the advertising world, he decided to dedicate himself to art. As an artist, he has worked over the years with various types of media – sculpture, assemblage, collage, drawing and painting. Today, his work is characterized by large formats in oil paints, with the paintings moving from figurative to expressive abstract. Alongside

these, there are also series of paintings on book pages, scriptures, bills and more, so that their past becomes an inseparable part of the creation of new art.

Cultural connections, including Biblical stories and local and Western art history, recur

repeatedly in his work and correspond with his rich emotional world. Aviram presents solo exhibitions and participates in group exhibitions in museums, galleries and alternative spaces. His works and interviews with him have been published in a variety of international magazines and his works appear in collections in Israel and abroad.

James Benger is the author of several books of poetry and prose. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Writers Place, and the Riverfront Readings Committee. He is also the founder of the 365 Poems in 365 Days online workshop. He lives is Kansas City with his wife and children

Z. T. Corley is a Tennessee-based poet, a current student at Austin Peay State University, and the Assistant Poetry Editor at Zone 3 Press. Her work has been published in The Roanoke Review and is forthcoming in Revolute. She is currently working on a poetry collection.

Roger Camp is the author of three photography books including the award winning Butterflies in Flight, Thames & Hudson, 2002. His documentary photography has been awarded the prestigious Leica Medal of Excellence and published in The New England Review, New York Quarterly and Orion Magazine. He is represented by the Robin Rice Gallery, NY. More of his work may be seen on Luminous Lint Virtual exhibits.

Anita Dime: Anita Dime is a noir lover and self-published author of Five Mibs and a Martini, a short story collection. She is also a linocut artist, sometimes photographer, and sound designer, contributing frequently to the podcast Coffee Contrails. Collectively, her authored audio adventures exceed 24,000 downloads. Recent publications include The Dread Literary Review and *82 Review. Follow on Facebook (@AnitaDime) and Instagram (@AnitaDime1982).

Jim Eigo is a writer-activist living in New York City. His work on ending the AIDS epidemic is profiled in the documentary “How to Survive a Plague.” His short fiction, visual poetry and essays have appeared widely online and in print. You can read some of his plays at https://newplayexchange.org/users/57231/jim-eigo. This fall his latest flash fiction will appear in The Woolf, Antler Velvet Arts Magazine and Coalitionworks Online Journal.

Ted Bernal Guevara has had poems appear in THAT Review, Suisun Valley Review, Vita Brevis Press, Vending Machine Press, Otherwise Engaged, FU Review Berlin, Cathexis Northwest Press, and more. His website is his name on Amazon.com. He is on Instagram and Facebook. His precept has always been “Labels, you can peel off. Minds, you don't know where the edges are.”

Olesia Herashchenko (Shambur) is a Ukrainian visual poet, collage artist, and publicist. She is the author of the book ”(Sub)Conscious Art” (2022) and the eponymous podcast about art in times of war, as well as articles on the role of art in conflict transformation. Her visual works have been featured in the New York literary and artistic almanac “Chernovik.” In her collage pieces, the artist focuses on the theme of post-catastrophic memory and overcoming destruction.

Cameron J Laing is a British-Luxembourgish contemporary artist whose transdisciplinary practice investigates the evolving relationship between nature, technology, and the environment through a critical, research-led lens.

Cameron’s projects, such as Biophony: Dancing Nature exhibited at Ars Electronica, demonstrate a commitment to art-science collaboration, translating environmental data into compositional pieces that foster empathy and engagement. His work has been recognised by the Luxembourg Art Prize and EU cultural initiatives, and often engages in site-specific interventions and public engagement to address urgent environmental issues. Through this practice, he aims to democratise ecological awareness, using sound as a tool for both measurement and emotional connection.

Website: www.cameronjlaing.com

Bluesky: @cameronJlaing

Adria Libolt lives in Bellingham. After high school she attended two universities in Michigan, taught students briefly intending to teach but landed a job in Corrections and made it her career and held positions in different prisons for men and worked in a women’s prison. She also taught Corrections officers in a community college, and published a book about her experiences, A Deputy Warden’s Reflections on Prison Work (Wipf & Stock, 2012) and another book, Food: An Appetite for Life (White Bird Publications, 2019). She publishes poetry in anthologies and some journals, most recently Poetry Pigeon, Creative Colloquy, and Snakeskin.

Samantha Lucia (she/her) is a queer poet and photographer based in Asheville, NC. Her work bears witness, informed by chronic illness, religious deconstruction, and survival. Publications include Witches Magazine, Poetries in English, M E N A C E, January House Literary, Fang & Flower Literary Magazine, Lunar Sea Literary, and Yin Literary, among others. Connect with her on Instagram, Bluesky, X, Substack, Tumblr, and Vero: @iamsamanthalulu.

Yang Lijie, born in Wugang, Hunan, currently lives in Hangzhou, is a designer, cartoonist and artist. His creative fields cover graphic design, comics, illustration, installation and performance art.

Jen Maidment is an oil painter from Leeds currently living and working in South Wales, UK.

Jen earned her BA from Reading University and her MA from Wimbledon School of Art, UAL. Having focused mostly on drawing during her education she became increasingly interested in painting afterwards and taught herself to paint using the internet as guidance. She has exhibited nationally; including the Affordable Art Fair London and Edinburgh Art Fair, the Mall Galleries and Wells Contemporary. Jen works with the Fallingwater foundation in Pennsylvania, US, as an ongoing residency that highlights the organic architecture and harmony with nature that Frank Lloyd Wright originated

Juliet Mathe's work centers on oil portraiture, exploring both human and animal subjects as a means of expressing the deep emotional landscapes that often go unspoken. She's drawn to the raw, often hidden sides of the human experience — fear, vulnerability, longing — and she uses colour and dramatic lighting to bring these inner states to the surface.

At the heart of her practice is the desire to portray the profound bond between people and animals, and to remind us of the quiet, sometimes forgotten connection we share with the natural world. Whether she's painting a solitary human figure or an animal caught in a moment of stillness, her aim is to reveal the emotional resonance that links us all.

Through use of expressive colour and tonal contrast, she invites viewers to confront their own inner worlds — the insecurities and emotions we tend to mask — and to find, in that confrontation, a sense of recognition and connection. Her hope is that each piece serves as a mirror, reflecting not just individual identity, but a shared human (and more-than-human) experience.

Laurene Bois-Mariage: Finland-based visual artist originating from France, I develop a protean artistic practice through photography-, digital-, and installation arts.

My main inclinations lie in how historical and media-driven changes in image-making affect our understanding of the relationship between image and reality. With a particular interest in photography, I am often to point both the medium´s specificity and hybridity out, as well as to observe where digital and analog spheres overlap.

My practice draws exclusively upon material from external sources such as stock photos, art reproductions, ads, archives or found objects; while investigating the boundaries between amateur, art and professional productions.

Grounded in appropriation, my works playfully cite, borrow, sample, mix and blend from here and there.

Website: https://laureneboismariage.weebly.com/

Metalhead Melankolis is a writer and poet who has a strong attachment to the art of collage. He uses collage art as a therapeutic tool for his mental health while representing life issues in an absurd way. All his original works are archived in a workshop called ‘Secarik Kliping’.

Izabela Ołdak is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and art educator. She holds a Master of Fine Arts from ArtEZ University of the Arts in Enschede, Netherlands, and a degree in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań, Poland. She runs the artistic studio Portal Mocy in Maków Podhalański, where she creates mystic-symbolic paintings, intentional tattoos, and leads workshops. Her work explores the intersections of symbolism, spirituality, and art, drawing inspiration from nature, myths, and sacred geometry.

Izabela has participated in dozens of exhibitions, plein-airs, symposia, and 16 international artist residencies, presenting her work in Europe and Asia. She has conducted over 150 art and personal-development workshops. In addition to her artistic practice, she organizes Circle Gatherings, drum journeys, integrating creative expression with transformative and educational experiences.

Petition, Joyce Peseroff’s sixth book of poems, was designated a “must read” by the Massachusetts Book Award, as was her fifth, Know Thyself. Recent poems and reviews appear in ArtsFuse, Hanging Loose, On the Seawall, MicroLit, Plume, Sugar House Review, and on her website SO I GAVE YOU QUARTZ <joycepeseroff.com> . She directed the Creative Writing MFA program at UMass Boston in its first four years.

Marion Reynolds paints intimate and expansive spaces looking into and out of windows, and the stories found therein. Her work draws from the places she has lived worked, with a penchant for studios with rooftop views. She has shown her work in New York City, Charlottesville Virginia, New York’s Capital Region, and nationally, and is the recipient of a Greenshields Foundation Grant. She studied art at Middlebury College and received her MFA from Queens CUNY. Marion has taught drawing and painting at the McGuffey Art Center in Charlottesville, The Douglass Street Artspace in Brooklyn, and the Art Center of the Capital Region in Troy NY, where she currently lives.

Gerard Sarnat is a multiple Pushcart/Best of Net Award nominee. His work’s been widely published; including four collections; by Rattle, Brooklyn Review, Tokyo Poetry Journal, Gargoyle, New Delta Review, Buddhist Review, New York Times, Oberlin, Northwestern, Yale, Pomona, Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, Penn, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, NYU, Brown, North Dakota, McMaster, Maine, British Columbia/Toronto/Chicago and Virginia university presses. He’s a Harvard Medical School-trained physician, Stanford professor, healthcare CEO. Currently, he’s devoting energy and resources to dealing with climate justice, serving on Climate Action Now’s board. Gerry’s married since 1969, has three kids, seven grandsons --and looks forward to future granddaughters. gerardsarnat.com

Johannah Simon (she/her) is a corporate strategist, adjunct professor, and (sometime) creative. A Midwest GenX multi-genre writer, her tiny pieces have appeared in BULL, The Hooghly Review, Underbelly Press, A Sufferer’s Digest, and Fahmidan Journal. You can find her on X @JohannahWrites, @johannah.bsky.social, and at www.thewritingtype.com.

Christopher Stolle has many roles: writer, uncle, partner, music aficionado, and baseball enthusiast. His writing has been published by Indiana University Press, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Coaches Choice, “Tipton Poetry Journal,” “Flying Island,” and “Plath Poetry Project,” among many others. He lives in Richmond, Indiana.

Mark Thomas is an artist and writer living in St. Catharines Canada. He has recently published five books with indie presses (Next to Ewe, The Enclave, Paper Dragon, A Robot a Ghost and an Alien Walk into a Bar, and Searching for Martian Slutfest IV-- which sounds like porn but is a noir satire). Check out his work at https://flamingdogshit.com

Damaris West was born and brought up in East Anglia but now lives in south west Scotland. She has been a librarian, tutor and director of a tuition agency, then during the 13 years she spent in Umbria, Italy, she worked as a free-lance commercial writer. Her poetry has appeared in many publications, including The Lake, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Friday Poem and Acumen, and been placed in a number of competitions, national and international. She is currently preparing her first collection, to be published by Yaffle Press. She is also a novelist. She has a website at https://damariswest.site123.me

Sergio Yepes “Zurya” is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist, born in Medellín, Colombia, living in Bogotá, who since childhood has felt a strong pull towards the knowledge, art, culture, and science of Native peoples.

After years of asking himself about shamanism, the time came for him to sit with his Yagé Elders; he was first invited in 1995, but it took him three years to muster the courage.

His question about shamanism and technology took him to Nagoya in 2002 for the “Orai” event of ISEA, where he delivered a passionate 20-minute presentation of his view on art, digital art, creation, and shamanism.

After 30 years of freelancing, at 40 he devoted himself to developing his work, 18 years in the making.