CHIRPS FROM THE SPARROW
POETRY
Our National Treasure, Pulitzer Prize Poet Kay Ryan
The Edges of Time, Relief, Home to Roost
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Two Poems, Tim Stobierski
Senryu, Craig W. Steele
Changing Perspectives, Mike Ambrose
There are Skies that are Closer…, Greg Moglia
Eusociality, Evolved, Discussion, Scott Duke Kominers
Until the Last Breath, Judith Zukerman
In the Lingering Days to Come, Mercedes Lawry
It Is Only a Movie, Barry Harris
Senryu, William Cullen, Jr.
Three Poems, John Sibley Williams
Troubling Myself…, James Silas Rogers
Pilgrimage I, Pilgrimage II, Peter Schireson
Another Portrait of My Mother, Marge Barrett
Autumn Revival, Kevin Heaton
FLASH FICTION
Do Elephants, G. David Schwartz
The Last Two Minutes of the Game, Natalie McNabb
War, Love, Rain, Louis M. Abbey
Drummer, Blue Glass, Straightjacket, Jeffrey Kingman
Turbulence, Jenna Morgan
Only a Moment, Erin Christian
SHORT STORIES
School‘s Out Forever, Ricky Ginsburg
Beacon Falls, A.S. Pinchasick
Painting Elephants, Luke Hawley
A Good One with her Name in It, Casey Francis
The Teeth of Freedom, Steve Wade
The Virgin Mary Tree, David S. Atkinson
PHOTOGRAPHY
Swedish Gun, Peek-a-boo Girl, Edward F. Palm, Ph.D.; Major, USMC (Ret.)
Voodoo Fetish Market, Woman Cooking in Togo Village, Paul Williams
Chrys I and Chrys II, James S. Oppenheim
LITERARY NEWS
Interview, Nicholas Birns on the Publishing Revolution,
by Joseph Michael Owens
CONTRIBUTORS
Our National Treasure, Kay Ryan
Photo of Ryan by Christina Koci Hernandez
Kay Ryan was appointed to the Library of Congress as the sixteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry in 2008. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, and other periodicals. Ryan is also the recipient of numerous accolades, including the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She teaches at the College of Marin.
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Louis M. Abbey is a retired Professor of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology from VA Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA where he also received his MFA in Creative Writing. Publications include both poetry and fiction in journals such as Indiana Review, The MacGuffin, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Georgetown Review, among others. He has also published twice in Toasted Cheese, an online journal. One of his poems was anthologized in Blood and Bone, Poems by Physicians, Angela Belli & Jack Coulehan, Eds. U. Iowa Press, 1998. He currently lives and writes in Revere, MA.
Mike Ambrose is an engineering executive at a New England aerospace company with degrees from the University of New Haven and MIT. He started publishing his work just this past year and has really enjoyed the experience as it provides balance in a life that is very exact. He lives in Connecticut with his wife and occasionally two children when they get tired of college food and beverages. He has also had work published in Westward Quarterly, Lucid Rhythms, and Trumbull Times.
David S. Atkinson received his MFA in writing from the University of Nebraska. His stories have appeared in (and/or are soon to be appearing in) “Gray Sparrow,” “Children Churches and Daddies,” “Split Quarterly,” “Cannoli Pie,” “C4: The Chamber Four Lit Mag,” “Brave Blue Mice,” “Atticus Review,” and “Fine Lines.” His book reviews have appeared in “Gently Read Literature,” “The Rumpus,” and “All Things Pankish.” The web site dedicated to his writing can be found at http://davidsatkinsonwriting.com/. He currently serves as a reader for “Gray Sparrow” and in his non-literary time he works as a patent attorney in Denver.
Marge Barrett has published prose and poetry in numerous magazines, most recently in Talking Stick, Plains Song Review, SN Review, The Broome Review, Dust and Fire, and online with hotmetalbridge.org and hotmetalbridge.net. Her work is included in Best of the Web 2009 and the Minnesota Historical Society’s The State We’re In. While earning an MFA from the University of Minnesota, she won the Marcella DeBourg Fellowship and Honorable Mention in the Gesell Award for Excellence in Poetry. She currently teaches at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and the Jewish Community Center in St. Paul and run short-short story contests for MinnPost.com.
Jacqueline Bates, our cover artist, speaking of her art, said, “Creation is the landscape of life to me. My work often explores a person’s choice to see their world as an apparatus to emerge with in and explore in play. It is a testament to perspective: the will to enjoy not lay amuck in critical commentary. I have born witness to the darkness of a looking glass easily available to the ponderer in these modern times, and it has been the engagement of imagination which has shown me the vibrancy of the world and its keepers.”
Nicholas Birns, Ph.D., teaches at Eugene Lang College, the New School, New York. He is the Secretary-Treasurer of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals and the author of Theory After Theory: An Intellectual History of Literary Theory (Broadview, 2010).
A.S. Pinchasick [pen name] graduated with a BA in English literature with a concentration in creative writing in 2010 from the University of Connecticut. While in school, she was a fiction editor for the nationally award-winning literary journal, Long River Review and is currently employed at Yale University Press.
Erin Christian received an MFA in Fiction from the University of Georgia [2010], and had a short work, “Just a Pounding,” published in Staccato Fiction’s Fall 2009 issue.
William Cullen, Jr. has had his poems published in a number of journals over the years including Asahi/International Herald Tribune, Boston Literary Magazine, Christian Science Monitor, Farming Magazine, Grey Sparrow Journal, Home Planet News, Mainichi Daily News, Modern Haiku and Plainsong. Bill works at a non-profit in Brooklyn, New York. He’s married and has two college-age sons. He was nominated for a Pushcart prize for a poem that appeared in the journal Magnapoets in 2010.
Casey Francis is currently pursuing a graduate degree in English at New Mexico Highlands University. He has published or work forthcoming in Boston Literary Magazine, Verse Wisconsin, the Red River Review and the Blog for Rural America (www.cfra.org/blog).
Ricky Ginsburg is one of those writers who sees a flock of birds heading south for the winter and wonders what they talk about on their journey. His portfolio consists of over 200 short stories, half of which have found their way into various magazines, both paper and electronic, and four novels, as yet unpublished. While much of his writing has elements of magical realism and humor, he also has a serious side, but keeps it in a small plexiglass box under his desk.
Barry Harris is editor of the Tipton Poetry Journal and has published one poetry collection, Something At The Center. He lives in Zionsville, Indiana and works for Eli Lilly and Company. His poetry has appeared in Silk Road Review, Saint Ann’s Review, Boston Literary Magazine, Night Train, Hiss Quarterly, Cherry Blossom Review, Flying Island, Lily, The Centrifugal Eye, Flutter Poetry Journal, Wheelhouse Magazine, Houston Literary Review, Snow Monkey, Fissure, Awaken Consciousness and Writers’ Bloc. One of his poems is on display at the National Museum of Sport and another is painted on a barn in Boone County, Indiana as part of Brick Street Poetry’s Word Hunger public art project. His poems are included in two anthologies: From the Edge of the Prairie and Twin Muses: Art and Poetry.
Luke Hawley lives in the cold of Minnesota with his wife, two small kids, border collie, and mother-and-son cats. He moonlights as a songwriter and otherwise spends his time writing, growing a beard, and building bookcases out of old windows. He has had work published in Hobart Lit Journal and, now, in Grey Sparrow. He is on the brink of completing his MFA at the University of Nebraska. In fact, he will be heading to Kinkos today to print his thesis, a collection of short stories and accompanying songs entitled The North Woods Hymnal. He’ll gladly print you a copy if you’re interested.
Kevin Heaton’s fourth chapbook, “Chronicles,” is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in early 2012. His poem, “The Third Hand,” has been nominated for Best of the Net for 2011 from Sundress Publications. His work has appeared in one hundred and twenty-five journals and anthologies, and he is a listed poet at KansasPoets.com.
Jeffrey Kingman has written two books, Moto Girl (a novel) and Two Mountains and Other Stories. Three of his stories have been published in the North Atlantic Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and SoMa Literary Review. He was a finalist in the 2009 Arthur Edelstein Prize for Short Fiction, the 2009 Writers at Work Fellowship Competition, the 2009 Rick De Marinis Short Fiction Competition, and the 2006 Howard Frank Mosher Short Fiction Prize. Also, his novel reached the semifinalist level in the 2009 Dana Awards.
Scott Duke Kominers (http://www.scottkom.com/) is an economist by moonlight. His work has appeared in Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Frostwriting, tinywords, and Four and Twenty.
Mercedes Lawry was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA and has lived in Seattle over thirty years. She’s published poetry in such journals as Poetry, Rhino, Nimrod, Poetry East, Seattle Review, and others. Her chapbook, There Are Crows in My Blood, was published by Pudding House Press in 2007 and her chapbook Happy Darkness was just released by Finishing Line Press. She’s also published some fiction as well as stories and poems for children and held a residency at Hedgebrook.
Annam Manthiram, our Associate Editor, is retiring with this issue. She will now serve as a volunteer Associate Editor at Grey Sparrow for one year. She is the author of the forthcoming novel, After the Tsunami (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2011), and a short story collection (Dysfunction), which was a Finalist in the 2010 Elixir Press Fiction Award and received Honorable Mention in Leapfrog Press’ 2010 fiction contest. A graduate of the MA Writing program at the University of Southern California, Ms. Manthiram resides in New Mexico with her husband, Alex, and son, Sathya. Starting this fall, she will transition to a volunteer associate editor position for one year at Grey Sparrow. Her url is: http://www.AnnamManthiram.com
Natalie McNabb lives and writes in Washington State where her dog, Skookum, and cat, Mo, can usually be found beneath the trees of her Eden with a squirrel tail, an exhumed mole or an up-flung mouse. She loves red—red dragonflies resting on bamboo stakes, red wine in her glass, red flip-flops on her red-toe-nailed feet—and words that caress, tickle, irritate or beat against her soul. Please visit her at http://www.nataliemcnabb.com.
Greg Moglia is a veteran of twenty-seven years as Adjunct Professor of Philosophy of Education at N.Y.U. and thirty-seven years as a high school teacher of Physics and Psychology. His poems have been accepted in over one hundred journals in the U.S., Canada and England as well as five anthologies. He is five times a winner of an Allan Ginsberg Poetry Award sponsored by the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College. His poem ‘Why Do Lovers Whisper?’ has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize 2005. He has been nominated by the College of William and Mary for the University of Virginia anthology BEST NEW POETS OF 2006. He lives in Huntington, N.Y.
Jenna Morgan lives in Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood with her husband and corgi.
James S. Oppenheim maintains a library, theater, desktop studio, a pretty good kitchen and bar, and the sole proprietorship Communicating Arts out of his secluded apartment in Hagerstown, Maryland.
Joseph Michael Owens, Grey Sparrow’s Associate Editor, has written for PANK Magazine, The Rumpus, The Houston Literary Review, InDigest Magazine and Grey Sparrow Journal. His short story “We Always Trust Each Other, Except for When We Don’t” was nominated for both Dzanc Books’ Best of the Web 2011 anthology and storySouth’s Million Writers Award. Joseph also manages the website, Category Thirteen, dedicated primarily to the hectic and haptic process of writing. He lives in Omaha with five dogs and one wife. Starting this fall, he will transition to a volunteer Associate Editor position for one year at Grey Sparrow.
Edward F. (“Ed”) Palm, Ph.D.; Major, USMC (Ret.) is a retired Marine Corps major turned academic (Ph.D. Pennsylvania). He has taught at the U.S. Naval Academy and at Glenville State College, in West Virginia, and has held dean appointments at Maryville University of St. Louis and Olympic College, in Bremerton, WA. He now teaches full-time online for Strayer University. He is also a lifelong, relentless amateur photographer and makes his home in the Seattle area. His full CV, along with some of his writing and photos, can be found at http://www.EdwardFPalm.com.
James Silas Rogers is director of the University of St Thomas Center for Irish Studies, where he edits the journal New Hibernia Review. His poems have appeared in numerous publications, among them Nimrod, Spiritus, and The Cortland Review. His chapbook Sundogs was published by Parallel Press in 2006.
Rogers had also published creative nonfiction in South Dakota Review, New Letters, and elsewhere His mixed-genre book on cemeteries and sacred space is forthcoming from Blueroad Press; the working title is “Notes from Places Near the Dead.”
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. Check out my book on Midrash: http://hometown.aol.com/
Peter Schireson was born in Los Angeles sixty-four years ago. I am Zen Buddhist priest and teacher and live in the foothills of the Sierras in California. I did my undergraduate study in UC Berkeley in Anthropology, although I should mention that I found Berkeley in the sixties to be a tough place to concentrate on class work and study. I worked in education as a teacher, researcher, and administrator and completed a Doctorate in Education at Harvard. I shifted my energies to business and had a long business career from which I finally retired. I am married with two grown sons and four grandchildren. I have just begun to submit my writing for publication.
Craig W. Steele published his first haiku in (the now defunct) Amelia in 1987. Then he got a day job and didn’t publish another haiku until 2010 in (the now defunct) 3LIGHTS. Since then his haiku and senryu have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous journals (thankfully, none of which are defunct…yet) including Modern Haiku, The Aurorean, paper wasp, Prune Juice, Shamrock Haiku Journal, and others. He is currently a Professor of Biology at Edinboro University and lives in the urban countryside of northwestern Pennsylvania.
Tim Stobierski is a recent graduate of the University of Connecticut. While a student, he worked for two years on the universities’ literary journal, The Long River Review. This past year he served as the Creative Non-fiction editor, and this summer is interning at Yale University Press in the Acquisitions Department.
Kim Suhr is an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in Foundling Review, Staccato Fiction and the Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar, 2011. In addition, her writing has aired on Lake Effect at the NPR affiliate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Kim is the director of RedBird-RedOak Writers and RedOak Young Writers, organizations dedicated to supporting writers through critique groups, workshops, camps and camaraderie.
Steve Wade is an M.Litt graduate of Trinity College, Dublin. Currently nominated for the PEN/O’Henry Award, his fiction has been published online and in print, in national and international magazines and anthologies such as First Edition, Crannog, Leaf Books, College Green, Pearl Magazine, New Fables, Biscuit Prize Winners Anthology, Boyne Berries and the Aesthetica Creative Works Annual and Biscuit Publishing. Other short stories have won prizes and been shortlisted in competitions, including First Prize in the abook2read.com Manuscript Competition, with the British lyricist sir Tim Rice heading the judging panel (‘On Hikers’ Hill’ is now published as an eBook), Second prize in the Biscuit International Short Story Competition 2008, and a nomination for New Irish Writer in the Hennessy Literary Awards 2008. Three of his stories for children are due for publication as easy reader books with Little Acorn Press, the first of which, ‘Christmas in the Forest’, is now published. http://www.stephenwade.ie
Townsend Walker, Grey Sparrow’s Assistant Editor, joins us for the first time with this fall issue. He is a writer living in San Francisco. During a career in finance he published books on foreign exchange, derivatives and portfolio management. His stories have been published in over forty literary journals and included in six anthologies. Two stories have been nominated for the PEN/O.Henry Award. Another was runner-up for the Gordon Award given by Our Stories Literary Journal. Four stories were performed at the New Short Fiction Series in Hollywood. His website is http://www.townsendwalker.com.
John Sibley Williams is a poet and book publicist residing in Portland, OR. He has a previous MA in Writing and presently studies Book Publishing at Portland State University, where he serves as Acquisitions Manager of Ooligan Press and publicist for Three Muses Press. His poetry was nominated for the 2009 Pushcart Prize, and his debut chapbook, A Pure River, was published in 2010 by The Last Automat Press. Some of his over one hundred previous or upcoming publications include: The Evansville Review, Rosebud, Ellipsis, Flint Hills Review, Euphony, Open Letters, Cadillac Cicatrix, Juked, The Journal, Hawaii Review, Cutthroat, The Furnace Review, Red Wheelbarrow, Aries, and River Oak Review.
Paul Williams, a British photographer, has been featured in National Geographic and other publications.
Judith Zukerman is an award winning poet and participates in Mind’s Eye monthly radio programs, Woodland Pattern Poetry Book Center Marathon, Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets Winter Festival, and Poet in Residence, Madison’s Lapham School, 2011. Recent work appears in Alehouse Press 2011 and Wisconsin Poets Calendar 2012. An earlier book and CD is Amsterdam Days, a journey through poetry. See bookthatpoet.com.
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