Pleased To Meet Ya!

Isn’t it nice to see so many new faces in the bio section? Their eloquence, is, as usual, impressive.

Sarah Ahmad was born in India and lives in Pakistan. She works as a photographer. She considers herself a struggling poet and artist as in her world where life is so fragile, not knowing if you will return alive every time you step out of the house, getting someone to acknowledge your art is a real struggle. Her work has appeared in various e-zines and magazines and that makes her want to dance like a crazy person (which she often does). Her chapbooks are My Bipolar head is epic fail (The Red Ceilings Press), Chaotic Disillusion (Calliope Nerve Media), Lurking Exposure (Chippens Press) and Unfulfilled Doubts (Artistically Declined Press). Blog: http://scribblingpoetry.blogspot.com/.

Greg Baldino fled Michigan for Chicago's south side, where he spends far too much time and money accumulating books. His work has appeared in the Washington Square Review, City Pulse, and Skin Two. According to legend, he's powered by Red Bull and a stubborn refusal to acknowledge that he has no idea what he's doing.

P.A.Bees reports that winter seems interminable in Cleveland, Ohio and then, without warning, it is adorable summer. She is thankful for the Cleveland Orchestra and the Brecksville Community Choir concerts for keeping her alive during the dark months. Travel is a necessity (although every time she sits at her computer she travels, often beyond time and earth.) She has been published in technical magazines, Halfway Down the Stairs, The Green Silk Journal, Ghostlight, and Joyful! among others. To see (or purchase) her special poetic tribute to Max and Henry (and search for the magic eye!) visit Etsy at ARBrownCreations.etsy.com

Tom Besson, born in 1951, is a product of 1950s America and a Czech immigrant subculture. He studied at The University of Houston Art College for three years before “dropping-out” and moving to Austin in 1974. His involvements with symbolism lead to the creation of a Neosymbolist collective of American, Czech, German, Slovakian and Danish artists. The collective’s exhibitions have traveled across the United States, Northern and Central Europe. Besson’s work has been displayed in museum exhibitions sponsored by the Czech Ministry of Culture and in contemporary art galleries in Texas, Denmark, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. His work is represented in the permanent collection of the University of Houston, The Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art and in private collections in Ireland, Wales, Czech Republic, Canada and the United States. Besson’s work can be seen at http://www.tombesson.com/ and at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, Chicago Illinois, from May 28th-July 11, 2010.

Michael Frissore was born in a small, fictional town in Massachusetts. No one is quite sure when. He has a book called Poetry is Dead (Coatlism Press, 2009) that friends and family use as coasters and one bookstore in Tucson, Arizona uses to clean up small spills. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Monkeybicycle, Monkey Puzzle, Fear of Monkeys and plenty of other non-monkey-based journals, he swears. Unless you count Feathertale, this is his first bird-based publication. Mike lives and writes in Oro Valley, Arizona with his wife, son and a little cartoon alien only he can see.

Jim Fuess works with liquid acrylic paint on canvas. Most of his paintings are abstract, but there are recognizable forms and faces in a number of the paintings. He is striving for grace and fluidity, movement and balance. He likes color and believes that beauty can be an artistic goal. There is whimsy, fear, energy, movement, fun and dread in his paintings. A lot of his paintings are anthropomorphic. The shapes seem familiar. The faces are real. The gestures and movements recognizable. More of his paintings, both in color and black and white, may be seen at http://www.jimfuessart.com/.

Cyndi Gacosta was born and raised in San Diego, California spending only a few years of her early childhood in Sorsogon, Philippines. She studied German literature at UC Santa Cruz.

Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of 15 print and digital poetry chapbooks and the full-length collection of poetry, Lovesick (2009). His second full-length collection, Heart With a Dirty Windshield, will be published by BeWrite Books.

Dixon Hearne teaches and writes in southern California. His work has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and his new book, Plantatia: High-toned and Lowdown Stories of the South, is nominated for a 2010 PEN award. Other short fiction appears in Post Road, Cream City Review, Wisconsin Review, Louisiana Literature, Roanoke Review, and other magazines and journals. He is currently at work on a novel and another short story collection.

Writing under the name of iDrew to co-ordinate with her titles, Drew has previously been published in various magazines such as: The Delinquent, Battered Suitcase, All Things Girl, Leaf Garden and several others. Originally an Essex girl (possibly the U.S. equivalent would be L.A., only minus the gloss, glamour, and sunshine) she enjoys over indulging in shopping, boys, and is a free range clubber prepared to go wherever the beats are pumping, but maintains these are all merely research for her writing. She recently moved to the countryside which is desperately lacking in shops, murders her heels with mud and unmentionable brown stuff, and is full of funny smells. Currently working on her first collection titled iPoets, she is also one of the founding members of the Clueless Collective and can be found at: http://www.cluelesscollective.co.uk/


Colin James has poems forthcoming in Labyrinthin Inhabitant, Moon Milk Review and Monday Night. He is a member of The Brothers Of The Endemic and is a great admirer of the Scottish landscape painter, John Mackenzie.

David Kowalczyk lives and writes in Oakfield, New York. His poetry and fiction have appeared in seven anthologies and over one hundred magazines and journals, including The Buffalo News, Istanbul Literary Journal, and Maryland Review. He has taught English in South Korea and Mexico as well as at Arizona State University. He was founding editor of the late Gentle Strength Quarterly.

Ryan Mattern, a 21-year-old native of Southern California, grew up immersed in a suburban x counter-culture of punk rock. His parents owned an independent record store in a conservative small town, and Ryan spent his developing years skating behind the store and listening to his older mohawked friends tell him about the evil imperial system and the best way to get liberty spikes to stand up. When he got older he picked up a book called Hairstyles of the Damned by Joe Meno and it all clicked for him. He wanted to move to Chicago and become a writer. And although he did live in Chicago for a year, circumstance has brought him back to California where he is currently going to school and working on his first novel.

Born in Savannah, Georgia in 1965, Jef Peeples is a poet and fiction writer currently living near Atlanta. He holds an M.A.T. in English and an M.S. in professional counseling from Georgia State University. Influenced poetically by the poets Sylvia Plath, Stevie Smith, Scott Cairns, Billy Collins, almost any of the Beat poets, and his daughter, he has been published in various journals.

Davide Trame: To really talk about myself is a hard thing to do. I say that I am Hamletic to the bone and at the root of my being doubts and lack of self-confidence predominate, even if as a teacher I feel determined and love teaching entertaining students and having fun with them. But maybe the only really good thing I have done in my life, besides marrying my wife, is to write poems in my second language, English, (my first is Italian). I started doing that in 1993 and luckily poems still keep coming although they never tell me about their intentions in the future.

John J. Trause is a library director. His chapbook of poetry, Seriously Serial, is published by Poets Wear Prada, and his earlier chapbook Latter-Day Litany has been staged off-off Broadway and elsewhere by Daniel P. Quinn since 1998. His translations, poetry, and visual work appear or are forthcoming in many journals including Sensations Magazine, Cover, Global City Review, Xavier Review, Radix, Now Culture, The Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow, Off the Coast, The Journal of New Jersey Poets, Lips, Xcp, Offerta Speciale, Plainsongs, Brevitas, Third Wednesday, U. S. 1 Worksheets, Conclave, Ditch, Otoliths, and the artists' periodical Crossings, published by the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition. In 2005 he co-founded the William Carlos Williams Poetry Cooperative in Rutherford, N. J., where he serves as programmer and host and in 2009 he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Aside from his professional interest in literature and the arts, Mr. Trause also enjoys film, dance, juggling, hiking, Chinese footbinding, and Afrin ® nasal spray. For the sake of art Mr. Trause hung naked for one whole month in the summer of 2007 on the Art Wall of the Bowery Poetry Club, NYC.