Grey Sparrow’s National Treasure
Jericho Brown was honored with the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2020. The Pulitzer Prize Committee wrote that Brown delivered “a collection of masterful lyrics that combine delicacy with historical urgency in their loving evocation of bodies vulnerable to hostility and violence.”
Robert Bly is a poetry legend. His prose book, “Iron John: A Book About Men (1990), “spent 62 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list, and is a key text of the mythopoetic men’s movement. He won the 1968 National Book Award for Poetry for his book The Light Around the Body.” [Wikipedia]
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Cezarija Abartis has published a collection, Nice Girls and Other Stories (New Rivers Press) and stories in Baltimore Review, Bennington Review, FRiGG, Grey Sparrow, Waccamaw, and New York Tyrant, among others. Recently she completed a crime novel. She lives and writes in Minnesota.
Hari Adhikari, PhD is a poet and academician. He teaches courses on Writing and World Literature in the College of Liberal Arts at Wenzhou-Kean University, in China. He earned his PhD in English Studies with a concentration on Children’s and Young Adult Literature from Illinois State University in 2012. Adhikari taught at Tribhuvan University, Illinois State University (USA), and Beijing Normal University-Hong Kong Baptist University, United International College in Zhuhai China for over 20 years. His teaching and research interests are Multicultural Children’s and Young Adult Literature, World Literature, Postcolonial Studies, and Pedagogies for Literature. Dr. Adhikari’s poems have appeared in Grey Sparrow Journal and Of Nepalese Clay, among other publications. He also writes scholarly articles and textbooks for school children. He is working on two anthologies of poetry: one in English and one in Nepali (his mother tongue) which he will publish simultaneously soon. He has presented his creative as well as research works at seminars and conferences in Nepal, India, China, Taiwan, and the USA. Dr. Adhikari is the running President of NWEN (Nepalese Writers Writing in English).
David S. Atkinson is the author of books such as Roses are Red, Violets are Stealing Loose Change from my Pockets While I Sleep and the Nebraska book award winning Not Quite so Stories. He is a Prose Assistant Editor for Digging Through The Fat and his writing appears in Spelk, Jellyfish Review, Literary Orphans, and more. Atkinson’s writing website is http://davidsatkinsonwriting.com/
Danny P. Barbare resides in the Upstate of the Carolinas, where he attended Greenville Technical College. He works as a janitor at a local doctor’s office. His poetry has won the Jim Gitting’s Award and has been nominated for Best of Net by Assisi Online Journal. Barbare’s writings have recently appeared in Plainsongs, North Dakota Quarterly, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Blood and Thunder, Birmingham Arts Journal, Fine Lines, and High Plains Register. He lives with his wife and family and small dog, Miley, in Greenville, SC.
Phillip Barcio is a fiction author, arts journalist, and radio host. His writing has been published in Western Humanities Review, Michigan Quarterly Review online, Tikkun, Hyperallergic, Space Squid, The Swamp Ape Review, Momus, and a smattering of other fine publications.
Morgan Bazilian is a poet and short story writer. He has lived and worked recently in Dublin, Vienna, and Denver. On the side, he is a Professor at the Colorado School of Mines.
Mallika Bhaumik has a Master’s degree in English literature from the University of Calcutta. Her works have been widely published in reputed e mags like Cafe Dissensus,Stag Hill Journal, The Woman Inc, Pangolin Review, Shot Glass journal, Harbringer Asylum,Mad Swirl, In Parentheses Journal, Oddball Journal,Narrow Road Journal, Madras Courier, Kitaab, Borderless Journal,Bengaluru Review,The Alipore Post,Alien Buddha Press to name a few. Her first book of poems, Echoes(2017) by Authorspress,New Delhi, won the Reuel International Award for the best debut Poetry collection,2018. Her second book of poems,How not to remember(2019) has been published by Hawakal Publishers,Kolkata. She is also a nominee for the Pushcart Prize for poetry, 2019. Her poems are included in the Post Graduate syllabus of BBKM University, Dhanbad,2020. Bhaumik lives and writes from Kolkata.
Joshua Berida has written all sort of things over the years from car parts to dental work to marketing to poems to short stories to travel. These days he focuses on writing about destinations in the Philippines and Asia. He works freelance because he thinks he is his own boss.
Byron Beynon lives in Swansea, Wales. His work has appeared in several publications including Grey Sparrow, The London Magazine, Poetry Wales, Cyphers, The Blue Nib, Agenda and the anthology Moments of Vision (Seren). Collections include Cuffs (Rack Press), Human Shores (Lapwing Publications) and The Echoing Coastline (Agenda Editions). His selected poems appeared in 2018 (Bilingual: English/Romanian– published by Bibliotecha Universalis/Collectiile/ Revistei “Orizont Literar Contemporan”, translations by Dr. Monica Manolachi, University of Bucharest).
Sarah Butchin is the author of In the Time of Towertown (Black Rose Writing). Her work has been published by or is forthcoming from The Smart Set, Across the Margin, From Whispers to Roars, The Big Windows Review, and Flora Fiction. She is an MFA candidate at Lindenwood University.
Len Carber, 73, is a retired teacher. In the past 5 years he has had over 50 poems published online/in print by 19 literary magazines in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and India. Married 40 years, his life has been largely mundane, other than for 2 aspects: teaching ESL in Asia in 1973-75, including Cambodia, leaving there about a year before the Killing Fields’s genocide of 2,000,000–something he still cannot understand as the Khmers were the gentlest people he had ever known; and an NDE he had whilst almost drowning in a Vermont river at 24. Before then, he was a materialist, believing only matter was real: no God, no soul, and death meant extinction, or in his case, escape from clinical depression. He learned, the hard way, in this instance, a very hard way, that he was wrong on all accounts. Carber also writes under the pen name Nolo Segundo.
Juliana Chang is a Taiwanese American writer, storyteller, and filmmaker. She is the 2019 recipient of the Urmy/Hardy Poetry Prize, the 2017 recipient of the Wiley Birkhofer Poetry Prize, and a 2015 Scholastic Art & Writing Gold Medalist in Poetry. She received a BA in Linguistics and a MA in Sociology from Stanford University in 2019.
Alan Cohen has been composing poems for decades. He was poetry editor of his high school magazine, had a poem in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1977 and one in The Road Not Taken in 2017, and edited The Beast in a Cage of Words, a book of poems about nuclear weapons. He is a retired physician, teacher and primary care manager. He has been married to Anita for 40 years and they live in Eugene, Oregon.
Mark Danowsky is a Philadelphia poet, author of the poetry collection As Falls Trees (NightBallet Press), Managing Editor of the Schuylkill Valley Journal, and Editor of ONE ART poetry journal. His poetry is published in tandem with his mother’s in memoriam. Roberta “Bobby” Santlofer passed away in June. Please see her contributor’s note alphabetically under her name.
Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Grain, and Harvard Review. Her newest poetry collections are Where We Went Wrong (Clare Songbirds Publishing), Into the Cracks (Golden Antelope Press), Cross Referencing a Book of Summer (Silver Bow Publishing), and The Tooth is the Largest Organ in the Human Body (Anaphora Literary Press).
Laine Derr is a graduate of Northern Arizona University’s MFA Creative Writing program. He has published in Thin Air, interviews with Carl Phillips and Ross Gay, and is currently based in Rockville, MD.
Linda Eve Diamond’s poetry has been honored with several awards, including a Dancing Poetry Grand Prize from Artists Embassy International “for exceptional poetry that inspires dance and for furthering intercultural understanding and peace through the universal language of the arts.” Her poetry appears in numerous journals, including The Ekphrastic Review, Grey Sparrow Journal, High Shelf Press, Leaping Clear, Poets Reading the News, and Your Daily Poem. She has been a featured reader at bookstores, coffee shops, art galleries, wine bars, classrooms, and conferences. Find Linda Eve’s poetry collections and more at http://LindaEveDiamond.com
Colin Dodds is a writer with several acclaimed books to his name. He grew up in Massachusetts and lived in California briefly, before finishing his education in New York City. He’s made a living as a journalist, editor, copywriter, and video producer. Colin also writes screenplays, has directed a short film, and built a twelve-foot-high pyramid out of PVC pipe, plywood, and zip ties. He lives in New York City, with his wife and children. You can find more of his work at thecolindodds.com
Ronald Tuhin D’Rozario studied for a Bachelor of Commerce (B.Com) with a specialization in Marketing Management from St. Xavier’s College, Calcutta. He has written since 2003 and currently writes from Calcutta, India. Apart from writing, he has a keen interest in reading non-fiction, advertising, parallel cinema, Indian classical music, photography, interior designing, and artistic drawings. During his schooling days, he was a student journalist (trainee) in the largest student-run newspaper in East-India, TTIS [The Telegraph in Schools]. His articles, book reviews, essays, poems, and short stories have been published in many national and international journals, online and in print such as The Herald (church), Whypoll blog founded by the writer Hindol Sengupta and Ramona Sen, The Little Messenger Newspaper for Young Life, Reflection W&R Mag, Learning & Creativity-Silhouette Magazine, The Mind Creative, Kaafiya, Poem Kubili, GloMag, Velvet Box, GetBengal, Duane’s PoeTree blog, Cafe Dissensus Everyday, Narrow Road Literary Journal, Kitaab, The Pangolin Review, The Alipore Post, Alien Buddha Press and ‘Zine and many more.
Susie Gharib is a graduate of the University of Strathclyde with a Ph.D. on the work of D.H. Lawrence. She is currently a university lecturer in Syria. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in multiple venues including Adelaide Literary Magazine, Down in the Dirt, the Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Impspired Magazine, Mad Swirl, Leaves of Ink, A New Ulster, The Ink Pantry, The Opiate, The Penwood Review, Synchronized Chaos, Peacock Journal, The Blue Nib, Crossways, The Poetry Village, Amethyst Review, The Curlew, Green Hills Literary Lantern, River Poets Journal, Westward Quarterly, Miller’s Pond Poetry Magazine, Grey Sparrow Journal, Peeking Cat Poetry, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, the Pinyon Review, Three Drops from a Cauldron, The Moon Magazine, Blue Unicorn, River Poets Journal, The Blotter, and Plum Tree Tavern.
Wendy Gist was raised in the forest of the Southwest on the outskirts of Flagstaff, Arizona. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Burningword, For Women Who Roar, Galway Review, Fourth River, New Plains Review, Oyez Review, Rio Grande Review, Soundings Review, St. Austin Review and other fine journals She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of the chapbook Moods of the Dream Fog (Finishing Line Press, 2016). She was named semifinalist for The Best Small Fictions, 2017.
Nicholas Godec seeks to bring a sense of contemplation to his work as a product manager of financial indices when not reading and writing poetry. Born and raised in New York City and a woeful Knicks fan, Nick resides in midtown Manhattan with his wife Julia and their miniature pinscher, Emma.
Stephanie Harris-Goad is a senior at Arkansas state University pursuing a degree in vocal music education, along with a minor in art and English. Poetry has always been a huge passion. She will continue to pursue this for as long as possible.Harris-Goad grew up in the small town of Bradford, along with her three other siblings. She is an animal lover and owns one dog and one cat who keep her on her toes. Inspiration for her poem came from losing someone to suicide. She wanted to show the deep image of what she believed her friend was feeling.
Matthew Hunt is an inveterate traveler, mountaineer, and musician. He has released music as Slim Hunt, Slim Rosa, and The Iris Bell and performs regularly. He lives in Washington DC with his wife and children.
Josef Krebs has a chapbook published by Etched Press. His poetry also appears in the Bicycle Review, Burningword Literary Journal, Calliope, The Cape Rock, The Chaffey Review, Inscape, Mouse Tales Press, Organs of Vision and Speech, Tacenda, The Bohemian, Agenda, The Corner Club Press, Crack the Spine, The FictionWeek Literary Review, the Aurorean, Carcinogenic Poetry, The Bangalore Review, 521magazine, Former People, Grey Sparrow Journal, IthacaLit, New Plains Review, Inwood Indiana Press, Free State Review, Poetry Nation, Witness, American Writers Review, From Whispers to Roars, and The Cats Meow. A short story has been published in blazeVOX. He’s written three novels and five screenplays. His film was successfully screened at Santa Cruz and Short Film Corner of Cannes film festivals.
Kharys Ateh Laue is a South African writer whose short fiction has appeared in Cleaver Magazine, Jalada, Brittle Paper, New Contrast, Itch, and Pif Magazine. In 2017, her short story “Plums” was long-listed for the Short Story Day Africa Prize. Her academic work, which focuses on the depiction of race, gender, and animals in South African fiction, has been published in English Studies in Africa, Scrutiny2, and the Journal of Literary Studies. She currently lives in Port Elizabeth.
Christian McCulloch’s short stories have been published in various modest but worthy publications:Wordgathering, Rejected Manuscripts, Hip Pocket Press, Mysterious Suspense Stories, Rainfall Records, Red Planet, Piker Press, Graham Brash, Flash Fiction Magazine, Bangalore Review, Storgy Press, and Scribble, 101 words in 2019.)
Laura Manuelidis is a physician and scientist working on viral causes of dementia. She has published poems in diverse journals such as the Nation, Evergreen Review, Oxford poetry and Innisfree journal. Her two previous books of poetry are “Out of Order” and “One divided / by Zero.” Her new book, “Swimming to Oblivion,” was just printed this June 2020, is available on Amazon, and includes Grey Sparrow poems. For more author information see http://medicine.yale.edu/lab/manuelidis/profile/laura_manuelidis/ and associated links.
D.S. Maolalai has been nominated four times for Best of the Net and three times for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in two collections, Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden (Encircle Press, 2016) and Sad Havoc Among the Birds (Turas Press, 2019)
Stephen Mead is an Outsider multi-media artist and writer. Since the 1990s he’s been grateful to many editors for publishing his work in print zines and eventually online. He is also grateful to have managed to keep various day jobs for the Health Insurance. Currently he is resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, artistic renderings of LGBTQI historical figures, organizations and allies predominantly before Stonewall, The Chroma Museum.
John Means has published haiku, poems, short stories, novel excerpts, and two geological guidebooks–Maryland’s Catoctin Mountain Parks and Roadside Geology of Maryland, Delaware, and Washington, D. C. He still goes out to look at rocks, trees, creeks and sky.
Bruce Morton splits his time between Montana and Arizona. His volume of poems, Simple Arithmetic and Other Artifices, appeared in 2015. His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in San Pedro River Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, The Lake (UK), Better Than Starbucks, Main Street Rag, Nixes Mate Review, Blue Unicorn, and Mason Street Review. He served for many years as Dean of Libraries at Montana State University.
Zach Murphy is a Hawaii-born writer with a background in cinema. His stories have appeared in Peculiars Magazine, Ellipsis Zine, Emerge Literary Journal, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Ghost City Review, Lotus-eater, WINK, Drunk Monkeys, and Fat Cat Magazine. He lives with his wonderful wife Kelly in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Mark Niedzwiedz is a professional composer and lyricist, which helps bring rhythm and musicality to his poetry. Lyric writing may pave the way for penning poetry, but Mark is well aware of the key difference; song lyrics are written to be sung. whereas poetry is written to be read. From the UK, Mark lives just outside Brighton and often takes inspiration from this colourful, seaside city. Poetry is a relatively new venture for Mark and with that comes the usual insecurity about whether or not his poems are any good, but publication does wonders for self-doubt. The poem ‘Barefoot on Broken Glass’ is particularly close to Mark’s heart as it was written in response to the death of his mother, who sadly passed away three months ago. The poem is for anyone grieving; especially when the feeling is raw and at times overwhelming.
Lea Page is a member of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. Her essays have appeared in The Washington Post, The Rumpus, The Pinch, The Boiler and Entropy, among others. She is also the author of Parenting in the Here and Now (Floris Books, 2015). She lives in rural Montana with her husband and a small circus of semi-domesticated animals.
Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collection is The Rosenblum Poems published by Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, 2020. For more information including free e-books and his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at http://www.simonperchik.com To view one of his interviews please follow this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSK774rtfx8
Michael Salcman was chairman of neurosurgery at the University of Maryland and president of the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore. He lectures widely about art and the brain. Poems appear in Arts & Letters, Hopkins Review, The Hudson Review, New Letters, and Notre Dame Review. His work has received six nominations for a Pushcart Prize. Books include The Clock Made of Confetti (Orchises, 2007), nominated for The Poets’ Prize, The Enemy of Good is Better (Orchises, 2011), and Poetry in Medicine, his popular anthology of classic and contemporary poems on doctors, patients, illness & healing (Persea Books, 2015). A Prague Spring, Before & After (2016), won the 2015 Sinclair Poetry Prize from Evening Street Press; his most recent book, Shades & Graces (Spuyten Duyvil, New York, 2020), is the inaugural winner of The Daniel Hoffman Legacy Book Prize. Salcman is a poetry editor at the Baltimore Review and art editor at the Little Patuxent Review.
Roberta “Bobby” Santlofer (1943-2020) was a mother of sons, an avid reader, and a poet. A posthumous collection of her poetry is forthcoming. Her poetry is published in tandem with her son’s work.
Claire Scott is an award winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has been accepted by the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review, Enizagam and Healing Muse among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and Until I Couldn’t. She is the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.
Carina Silverman is a writer and graduate of Villanova University’s English Bachelor’s program. She has been published twice before: once in protoTYPE, an e-newsletter created by Villanova’s College of Engineering and once in The American Journal of Poetry. She lives in Pennsylvania and currently works as an automotive salesperson.
Ron Singer has two new books out, and another forthcoming. The Promised End (Unsolicited Press, Dec. 2019) is a collection of stories about aging. On You Tube and the publisher’s website, there are also video recordings of the author reading from the book. (Two readings were given before the virus struck.) Gravy (Unsolicited Press, July 2020) is a mixed-genre collection about life after 70. On YouTube and the publisher’s website, you can find video recordings of the author reading from this book. The Real Presence (Adelaide Books, 2021) is a historical novel, set mainly in Nigeria, and centering around the Biafra War (1967-70). On YouTube and the publisher’s website, you can find video recordings of the author reading from this book as well.
Thomas R. Smith lives in River Falls, Wisconsin, and teaches at the Loft Literary Center. He has two new books coming out this fall, a poetry collection Storm Island (Red Dragonfly Press,) and a prose book called Poetry on the Side of Nature: Writing the Nature Poem as an Act of Survival (Folded Word Press). During his COVID sheltering he has been studying, with his wife Krista Spieler, the ancient Chinese art of Qigong. The title poem for his new collection first appeared in Grey Sparrow.
Marjorie Stelmach has published five volumes of poems, most recently Falter (Cascade, 2017). Her sixth collection, Walking the Mist, is forthcoming this summer from Ashland Poetry Press. Her work has recently appeared in American Literary Review, Gettysburg Review, Hudson Review, Image, Notre Dame Review, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner,and Presence, among others. A group of her poems received the 2016 Chad Walsh Poetry Prize from the Beloit Poetry Journal. She served ten years as Director of the Howard Nemerov Writing Scholars Program at Washington University in St. Louis.
Larry D. Thomas, a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, served as the 2008 Texas Poet Laureate. He has published twenty-two print collections of poems, including As If Light Actually Matters: New & Selected Poems (Texas A&M University Press Consortium, 2015). Thomas will be the featured poet in a forthcoming issue of the Delta Poetry Review.
Patricia Walsh was born and raised in the parish of Mourneabbey, Co Cork. Her first collection of poems titled Continuity Errors was published in 2010 and a novel titled The Quest for Lost Éire, in 2014. Her poetry has been published in Southword; Narrator International; Third Point Press, Revival Journal; Seventh Quarry; Hesterglock Press; The Quarryman; Unlikely Stories; and Otherwise Engaged. A further collection of poems, titled Outstanding Balance, is scheduled for publication in March of 2020. She was the featured poet in the inaugural edition of Fishbowl Magazine and is a regular attendee at the Ó Bhéal poetry night in Cork city.
Robert Wexelblatt is a professor of humanities at Boston University’s College of General Studies. He has published seven fiction collections; two books of essays; two short novels; two books of poems; stories, essays, and poems in a variety of journals, and a novel awarded the Indie Book Awards first prize for fiction.
John Sibley Williams is the author of As One Fire Consumes Another (Orison Poetry Prize, 2019), Skin Memory(Backwaters Prize, University of Nebraska Press, 2019), Summon (JuxtaProse Chapbook Prize, 2019), Disinheritance, and Controlled Hallucinations. A twenty three-time Pushcart nominee, John is the winner of numerous awards, including the Wabash Prize for Poetry, Philip Booth Award, American Literary Review Poetry Contest, Laux/Millar Prize, Phyllis Smart-Young Prize, Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize, and others. He serves as editor of The Inflectionist Review and works as a poetry editor and literary agent. Previous publishing credits include: The Yale Review, North American Review, Midwest Quarterly, Southern Review, Sycamore Review, Prairie Schooner, The Massachusetts Review, Poet Lore, Saranac Review, Atlanta Review, TriQuarterly, Columbia Poetry Review, Mid-American Review, Poetry Northwest, Third Coast, and various anthologies. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
Francine Witte is the author of four poetry chapbooks and two full-length collections, Café Crazy and The Theory of Flesh from Kelsay Books. Her flash fiction has appeared in numerous journals and anthologized in the most recent New Micro (W.W. Norton.) Her novella-in-flash, The Way of the Wind, has just been published by Ad Hoc Fiction, and her full-length collection of flash fiction, Dressed All Wrong for This, was recently published by Blue Light Press. She lives in New York City.
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