Bios

Ah summer, time to kick back and relax…though from reading these bios, we doubt these hard-working folks ever do.


Joel Allegretti: I'm the author of two collections, the second of which, Father Silicon, was selected by the Kansas City Star as one of 100 Noteworthy Books of 2006, along with "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy and "Against the Day" by Thomas Pynchon. My work has appeared in many US journals, including New York Quarterly, Margie and Rattapallax. In April, Kean University in New Jersey premiered a song cycle based on my poetry. The composer, Frank Ezra Levy, was for many years cellist with the Radio City Music Hall Orchestra and has a CD of his symphonic work in the American Classics series on Naxos.


Annabelle Baptista is a poet and short story writer born in Indianapolis, Indiana. She currently teaches English as a second language and lives in Heidelberg, Germany with her husband. She has been published in Coloring Book: An Eclectic Collection of Fiction and Poetry, Andwerve Magazine and Families: The Front Line of Pluralism.

John Bruce’s writing has appeared recently, or will appear, in 13th Warrior Review, Cantaraville, decomP, Diddledog, DOGZPLOT, Eskimo Pie, Fiction at Work, Greenbeard, The Journal of Truth and Consequence, Long Story Short, Lyrical Ballads, Pear Noir!, Press 1, Short Story Library, Underground Voices, Why Vandalism?, and Word Riot. He has degrees in English from Dartmouth College and the University of Southern California and lives in Los Angeles.

Harry Calhoun is a widely published poet, article and essay writer. Check out his trade paperback, I knew Bukowski like you knew a rare leaf, the recently published The Black Dog and the Road and his chapbook, Something Real. Another chapbook, Near daybreak with a nod to Frost, is now out from Propaganda Press. He’s had recent publications in Chiron Review, Chiaroscuro, Orange Room Review, The Centrifugal Eye, Monongahela Review and many others. He is the editor of Pig in a Poke magazine. Find out more at http://harrycalhoun.net./


Chris Castle is English but currently teaches in Greece. He has sent his work out this past year and been accepted over 100 times. His influences include Ray Carver, the films of PT Anderson and Bill Murray. He can be reached at chriscastle76@hotmail.com


Michael Cluff is a full-time English and creative writing professor at Norco College in Southern California. He published his eighth book of poetry on Petroglyph Books called Casino Evil in July 2009. He is also a part-time actor who recently played Alfred Doolittle and Neppomuck in George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion for the Gold Leaf Theater in Moreno Valley, California. He is also currently finishing up another book of poetry concerning a family and town's reaction to the death of a soldier in Iraq.



My name is Amanda Deo and I live in Montclair, NJ. I edited the literary magazine In/Words in Ottawa, Ontario from 2003-2006. My first chapbook was published by In/Words Press in 2005 called "North of the Mason-Dixon Line" which was really a poetry series dedicated to my international love escapades! My most recent chapbook, The Hanged Man, self-published in 2010 is available by mail for free. My blog is http://www.amandadeo.blogspot.com/ and please check out my new press at http://www.thunderclappress.wordpress.com./


Richard Donnelly publishes poetry in a variety of venues including Chronogram, Buffalo Carp, and The Dos Passos Review. During the day he slaves away at a desk in Minneapolis, MN. Slave might not be the word, but the coffee is very bad.


Hugh Fox was born in Chicago in 1932 but with a Czech- and Yiddish-speaking grandmother in Cicero raising him, he might just as well have been born in ("Pass the sauerkraut!") Prague. His father was an ex-violinist turned into an M.D. by Hughie's $-starving mom who herself should have been a film-star (looked and sounded exactly like Bette Davis)...so they soaked little Hughie in violin playing, piano, art, ballet, opera and when he went down to the U. of Illinois for his Ph.D. in American Lit, he married Peruvian poet Lucia Ungaro de Zevallos and started a process of total Latin Americanization...three wives, the Peruvian, a Kansas Cityian, for thirty years a Brazilian MD., barely able to crawl at age 78 but fingers still working on the computer keyboard...110 books published, another 110 on the shelves.


Kenneth P. Gurney lives in Albuquerque, NM. His poetry appears mostly on the web due to his habit of purchasing flowers for his lover instead sticking stamps on SASE envelopes and paying reading fees. His website is at http://www.kpgurney.me/Poet/Welcome.html


Molly Guy: I'm an Australian writer of micro-stories and poetry. My fourth book has just been accepted for publication. Being a 'nano' freak, I believe in keeping bios brief.


Sheri Hillson grew up in rural Illinois, but always had her sights set on the 'Big City'. New York City at first, but then Chicago seemed easier to make happen. So she moved to Chicago with dreams of being a published writer someday. She didn't know where to start, so she went to art school. Eventually, she graduated from Columbia College where she studied fiction writing. But somehow the muses led her to poetry where she is today.



JANEisnotplain is a Chicago-based word artist whose work has been featured in a variety of rags like CRIT Journal, Xtsis MAG, Sein Un Verden, etc. JANE has become adventurous of late and has been experimenting with text and visual media. She is always investigating self and surroundings, bending zones of comfort. She is anxiously awaiting the return of Polaroid 600 to complete visual text documentaries.


A Canadian author/composer, Luigi Monteferrante's recent poetry has been published in over 30 magazines, with short stories in Chicago Quarterly Review and other journals. From poetry to song, and experimental music, he's enjoyed airplay on Studio 8 (Washington), Canada's CBC 3, Fleet FM (NZ). Since his residency at STEIM, Amsterdam's prestigious experimental music center, August 2009, Luigi has been writing for the stage, with a musical and several plays. Luigi's music: www.myspace.com/gangoftolstoy; www.myspace.com/mcmontylive .

Ben Nardolilli: I am a 24-year-old writer currently living in Arlington, Virginia. My work has appeared in Houston Literary Review, Perigee Magazine, Canopic Jar, Lachryma: Modern Songs of Lament, Baker’s Dozen, Thieves Jargon, Farmhouse Magazine, Elimae, Poems Niederngasse, Gold Dust, The Delmarva Review, Underground Voices Magazine, SoMa Literary Review, Heroin Love Songs, Shakespeare’s Monkey Revue, Cantaraville, and Perspectives Magazine. In addition I was the poetry editor for West 10th Magazine at NYU and maintain a blog at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com.

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.


River Otter was born in the year 2131 in an underground pickle factory run by the survivors of the apocalypse 119 years before. When he turned twenty, he lost both legs in a tragic herring-related incident and in an act of impromptu self-surgery, replaced them with chainsaws. Not wanting anyone to suffer as he did, he then invented a time machine and traveled back to the year 2007 to prevent the apocalypse. Unable to do that, he became a fiction writer instead.


Parker Tettleton is an English major at Kennesaw State University. His work has been accepted by Short, Fast, and Deadly, Right Hand Pointing, elimae and > kill author, among others. His chapbook Same Opposite was recently published by Thunderclap Press. He blogs at http://parkeraugustlight.blogspot.com/


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.