Contributor Bios

It seems like we say this every time…but these bios just keep getting better and better.

Ali Al Saaed: I am a writer from Bahrain with three published books, “QuixotiQ”, “Moments” and “Sad Man Dancing”. I am a recipient of the Bahrain Outstanding Book of the Year Award. My work has appeared in numerous print and online journals, magazines, and anthologies.

Chelsey Baggot is a graduating senior from Columbia's fiction writing department. She is two inches away from legally being a midget, can fit in the average-sized dryer, and wishes she was the incarnate of Darth Vader.

Tom Besson is a product of 1950s America and a Czech immigrant subculture. His work has been displayed in museum exhibitions sponsored by the Czech Ministry of Culture and in galleries in Texas, Denmark, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. His work is 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 and can be seen at www.tombesson.com.

George Bishop was raised on the Jersey Shore before moving to Florida where he lives and writes. Recent work has appeared in Melusine, Prick of the Spindle. Forthcoming work will be featured in The Burnt Bridge & Nova Scotia Review. His chapbook, Love Scenes, is available from Finishing Line Press & his new chapbook, Marriage Vows and Other Lies, has been released by Flutter Press.

Robert Cormack is a writer living and working in Toronto. He has just completed a novel called “The Do Da Man”, based loosely on his thirty-three years as an advertising copywriter.

Sam D. Church II is finishing his Secondary Education degree with an English major and Art minor. He aspires to be a famous novelist if his teaching career does not work out. He has a weakness for ice cream.

Chris Crittenden: I teach Environmental Ethics for the University of Maine and do much of my writing in a hut in a spruce forest. Some recent acceptances are from Brink Magazine, Vox Humana, The Centrifugal Eye and Portland Review.

Tannen Dell is a writer from Tigard, Oregon who loves writing poetry and fiction. He is usually busy editing Indigo Rising Magazine when he isn’t drinking coffee or writing, though all three have been known to converge on the same day, causing low temperatures to rise and snow to fall in Ireland. He feels bad for the blizzard of ‘07.

Jacob Edwards studied at the University of Queensland, graduating with a BA (English) and an MA (Ancient History). He lives with his wife and son in Brisbane –Australia's river city – where he continues to foster an almost pathological dislike of four-wheel drives.


B.D. Fischer lives in Lincoln Square, Chicago, Illinois, in the United States of Chimerica.

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.

Arthur Levine: Not that you asked, but my latest efforts can be found in the current edition (Summer/Fall) of The Washington Square Review, and the forthcoming issues of The Turtle Quarterly and Kitty Snacks (Issue 5).

Mike Perkins lives, writes, and works in Columbia, Missouri. He is the father of four and teaches at a local liberal arts college.

Beth Rolingson lives outside Austin, Texas on Pan’s Farm, a place where roses and mesquite trees grow and where she has raised angora goats, children, and grandchildren. She has been writing poetry for 40-some years and a dream journal for nearly 20. She helps fight poverty and social injustice in her day job at Advocacy Outreach in Elgin.

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.

Ian Singleton writes in the morning on a train, sweaty from riding his bike. He has lived in Detroit, Birmingham, Boston, and now in San Francisco. He has degrees from the University of Michigan and Emerson College. For his daily bread, he is a librarian. Ian uses the English, German, and Russian languages. He has taught writing in a prison, which he is not allowed to name. He has works of translation, fiction, essay, book review, and now poetry in publication in journals such as Conte, qarrtsiluni, The Houston Literary Review, Fringe, Ploughshares, Knock, and Word Riot. He is one of many people who have blogs.

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 in many journals including Sensations Magazine, Cover, and Global City Review. 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. Mr. Trause 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.