Biographies, Eh?

We couldn’t resist. Also, we have to say these are among the most entertaining bios we’ve ever published, so score one for our neighbors to the north!

Brandon Amico is from Manchester, NH. His poems have appeared in Midwest Literary Magazine, Borderline and Indigo Rising online, as well as a few print journals. He tries to incorporate as much of the world as he has experienced into his writing. As such, Brandon considers himself a writer, which is to say simply that he writes things: any inferences you make past that are your own and he will not be held responsible for them. He is currently an undergraduate student at the University of New Hampshire.

Max Baru is a colliding body at York University. He has both a heartbeat and an overabundance of black hair dye. He is prone to explosive bouts of gloom. Most recently he has been published in the anthology Between Brilliance and Insanity: Stories from the Basement of Discontent and is currently the house blogger for Majlis Multidisciplinary Arts.

Tyler Bigney was born in 1984. His short stories, travelogues, and poetry have appeared in Poetry New Zealand, Underground Voices, Iodine, Nerve Cowboy, and The Legendary, among others.

Patrick Braley is an 18-year-old poet living in a small town deep in the heart of Maine. He spends much of his time reading Bukowski, listening to podcasts and not sleeping. He does few things pasionately, with the exception of writing and lovemaking.

Caleb JW Brasset lives in Toronto.

Gabrielle DeMarre is a senior studying English at Concordia University, St. Paul.

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.

Chloë Filson and Stephanie Doig began their writing careers together with the pamphlet “How To Grow an Arm”, which was inspired by an offhand comment made by their clearly misinformed high school science teacher. After that they got English degrees from different universities and eventually became editors with different companies, only to reunite happily in Internet-land, where they both write for the blog Real Life Artist (http://reallifeartist.wordpress.com). Stephanie lives in Toronto and Chloë lives in Halifax.

George Freek: I’m a poet/playwright living in Belvidere, IL who has recently had poems published in Angelic Dynamo, The Talon, Whispering Fire, and (shortly) The Tower Journal. Plays have also recently been produced by the Laurel Mill Playhouse (MD), Theatre Unleashed (LA), the University of Utah Youth Theatre, and the Bowery Poetry Club (NY).


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 abstract 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 abstract paintings. A lot of his abstract paintings are anthropomorphic. The shapes seem familiar. The faces are real. The gestures and movements are recognizable. More of his abstract paintings, both in color and black and white, may be seen at www.jimfuessart.com

Blake Johnson is a writer based out of Toronto, Ontario. He is currently working on a collection of short fiction loosely based on the hip-hop album A Tribute to Lisa Bonet by the group Felt. Work from this collection has previously appeared in the White Wall Review. He owns a 1967 Remington typewriter and keeps a picture of Bob Dylan on his bookcase. “Dirty Girl” originally appeared at www.theglasscoin.com.

Michael Lee Johnson is a poet published in 23 countries and from Itasca, Illinois. He lived for 10 years in Canada during the Vietnam era. He runs four poetry sites, and his website is http://poetryman.mysite.com. His poetry books are available through his site, Amazon.Com, Borders Books, and Lulu.com.

Louis K. Lowy: A former firefighter, I am the recipient of a State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship. My work has appeared in Coral Living Magazine, New Plains Review, Merge, The Florida Book Review, Ethereal Tales, and Sniplits. My humorous poem “Poetry Workshop” was the 2009 second place winner of Winning Writers Wergle Flomp Contest. I am working toward my MFA in creative writing at Florida International University and am on the staff of Gulf Stream, the University's literary journal. My sci-fi novel Die Laughing is scheduled for release on April 2011.

Starting in Cincinnati, still entrenched in the Midwest, Michael M. Marks was schooled during the cold war/fallout shelter era evolving to anti-Vietnam war college days, from Elvis to the Rolling Stones. The first of the baby-boomers, he is the middle child of five born in a six-year span, always fighting to be heard. Now seriously younger than each of his own five children, he recently celebrated his fifteenth birthday for the forty-ninth time. With about forty poems published in the last few years, he is nearing his first poetry book tentatively titled “The Peanutbutter Chronicles.”

Darrin M. McCloskey spent his formative years choking on the iron-laced sand of a Netted Gem. He now has hemochromatosis and lives on the west coast where there is less iron, but where the potatoes, he says, ‘Lack any semblance to a true tuber.” “Li’l Story: From the Pen” is a continuation of his novella Li’l Story: the true story of the rise and fall of the Great Canadian Novel, self-published under Black Ice Press. He has also recorded music under the pseudonym Steve Heron> http://radio3.cbc.ca/#/bands/Steve-Heron

Thomm Quackenbush is a novelist and teacher in the Hudson Valley, where he lives with his mad scientist girlfriend and many occult artifacts. He has been previously previously published by Cave Drawing Ink, The Broken City, and Paragon Press. His first novel, We Shadows, will be published by Double Dragon in April 2011. He posts his work at http://xenex.org

James Sandham is a Toronto-based writer and the author of The Entropy of Aaron Rosclatt (www.clarknovabooks.com). His short fiction has been short-listed for things like the CBC Literary Awards, Pop Montreal’s LitPop Awards, and has appeared most recently in the anthology Writing Without Direction: Ten and a Half Short Stories by Canadian Authors Under Thirty. He is currently seeking publication of his second novel, Bantown Logic, and trying to write poetry.

G. David Schwartz is the former president of Seedhouse, the online interfaith committee. Schwartz is the author of A Jewish Appraisal of Dialogue. Currently a volunteer at Drake Hospital in Cincinnati, Schwartz continues to write. His new book, Midrash and Working Out Of The Book is now in stores or can be ordered.

Adina Siperman likes buying toiletries in foreign countries and being reminded of her adventures through the weird scripts on the shampoos in her bathroom. She eats all cuisines intended to be consumed with chopsticks. And she heads straight to the bookshelf in a new home, to understand who it is she is visiting. Adina is originally from Toronto, Canada, but she now lives next to the beach in Tel Aviv, Israel.

James Spencer: “Poetry for me is the last bastion of the artist within who might have been.”

Paul A. Toth is the author of three novels, his latest being Finale. His next, Airplane Novel, will be released in July 2011. He also publishes poetry, nonfiction and multimedia pieces. Links to all of his work can be accessed via www.tothworld.com.

James Valvis lives in Issaquah, Washington. His poems or stories have appeared in 5 AM, Confrontation, Pearl, Quercus Review, Rattle, Southern Indiana Review, and are forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Atlanta Review, Catalonian Review, Crab Creek Review, Gargoyle, Los Angeles Review, Midwest Quarterly, New York Quarterly, Nimrod, Pank, Potomac Review, South Carolina Review, and others. A collection of his poems is due from Aortic Books in 2011.