POETRY
Mi viejo profesor, Sarah Degner Riveros
Once April Came, Rajendra Sharma
Peat Bogs, Burning, Kelly R. Samuels
Carbon Man, Vern Fein
Shush please, Tamizh Ponni
Paging Frida Khalo, Erren Geraud Kelly
Schwarzwald, A Family Hike, Danielle Hanson
The Movie Theater, Jeremy Szuder
Less, Jan Wiezorek
T-Boned, John Cecil Dendy
Terrain, Heather Laszlo Rosser
Happened to be passing, Jenny Hockey
The “Talk,” Imran Boe Khan
A Pinpoint in the Dark, Susan K. Maciolek
Our Lady Burning, Kevin C. Shyne
Eating Crow, Kate Deimling
Gloucester Harbor, Doug Holder
Selling Short, Claire Scott
Bully for You, Patrick Theron Erickson
Synchronizing, Allison Whittenberg
Octane, Fred Chandler
“Festival of Lights,” Rajiv Khandelwal

FLASH FICTION
Transition, Marjorie Drake
Sawmill, Massimo Fantuzzi
Finding Something in the Light, Louella Lester
Bicycle Story (Micro,) Francine Witte
Translation, James Miller
River of Doors, Dan A. Cordoza
Mourning Becomes the Law, Howie Good
Love Shack Maintenance, Adele Evershed

Contributors

GREY SPARROW’S NATIONAL TREASURE, Winter 2021:

Joy Harjo, as noted by the author at Poets.org, “was appointed the new United States poet laureate in 2019. Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1951, Harjo is a member of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation. She is the author of several books of poetry, including An American Sunrise, (W. W. Norton in 2019) and Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (W. W. Norton, 2015). She is a current Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.”

CONTRIBUTORS

Dan A. Cardoza’s poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared, or will appear in After the Pause, Apricity, BlazeVOX, Bull, Cleaver, Entropy, Fri(c)tion, Gravel, Grey Sparrow Journal,In Parentheses, Open Journal of Arts & Letters, New Flash Fiction Review, Poetry Northwest, Running WildPressAnthology, 2021, Spelk, and Your Impossible Voice. He’s been nominated for Best Micro Fiction, “Tiny Molecules,” 2020 and Best Poetry, “Coffin Bell,” 2020.

Fred Chandler has had the honor of being a KCET/PBS Poet of The Month, a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant recipient, and a published poet in the domestic and international journals The Muse, Black Lantern, The Splizz, and Northern Stars. He is also a fellow of the American Film Institute, a member of the Writers Guild of America, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Fred spent his earlier life in New Jersey & New York City and now lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Jo.

Kate Deimling is a translator, poet, and fiction writer. Her poems have recently appeared in Rockvale Review, Ekphrastic Review, and Slipstream. She has translated six books from French on topics ranging from the wine industry to Renaissance art. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her family.

John Cecil Dendy grew up in an Alabama coal mining camp, worked his way through college shoveling coal for 79¢/hour and other ways. He is a retired engineer and executive. Dendy lived in Arizona, California, New York, Provence, and Texas. His hobbies are cooking, tennis, writing, singing, and piano. He lives in North Carolina but loves the Mountain West, as well as hisyoung-at-heart wife, an 83-year-old Ford convertible, and Life as it was and as it is. One of Dendy’s poems received an Honorable Mention in the 2020 Reuben Rose competition (Voices Israel).

Marjorie Drake recently closed her firm, after thirty years of practicing law in Hartford, Connecticut, to concentrate on her writing. She is in the process of finishing her first novel. Her work appeared recently in Seascape, Best New England Crime Stories 2019.

Patrick Theron Erickson, a resident of Garland, Texas, a Tree City, just south of Duck Creek, is a retired parish pastor put out to pasture himself. His work has appeared in Grey Sparrow Journal, Tipton Poetry Journal, and The Main Street Rag, among other publications, and more recently in Torrid Literature Journal, South Florida Poetry Journal, Arlington Literary Journal and Sheila-Na-Gig.

Adele Evershed has written poetry and prose her whole life but has only had the courage in the last year or so to send out her efforts. She was born in Wales and has lived in Hong Kong and Singapore before settling in Connecticut with her family. Each place has given her plenty of fodder for her writing. When she is not scribbling in her notebook she teaches to keep the wolf from the door. Her poetry has been or will be published in a number of anthologies—Mingled Voices 5 from Proverse Press, Winter 2020 by Other Worldly Women Press, Southwest Poetry Review 2020, and the Whitman Collaborative Project from Local Gems Press. Online her poetry and flash prose can be found in various places including Reflex Fiction, Flashflood Fiction, Flash Fiction North, and Every Day Fiction.

Born in Milan, Massimo Fantuzzi lives in Leicestershire, England. Worked as a barman in clubs and hotels; good and bad companies to make his days less predictable. Poems published in the nineties in magazines (Artecultura yearly anthologies, 1992-1996 and Agenda dei Poeti yearly anthology, 1995), two exhibitions (No Comment, 1996, 1997). Author of Marcia Gioie, collection of poems and prose lyric is published by Alkalea Edizioni, 1999(review by Ettore Fobo available on the blog Strani Giorni). Degree in Education. Since 2001 works supporting SEND individuals of all ages in schools and residential settings. British resident from 2005, became naturalized citizen in 2014. Recently his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Alba, Morphrog, Poetry WTF?!, LiteLitOne, Triggerfish Critical Review, Poetry Salzburg Review and Bombay Gin. From his window over the National Forest, he dares to keep detailed score of the lasting proceedings between treetops, low clouds and other liminal frontiers.

Vern Fein is a retired special education teacher. He has published over one hundred fifty poems on over sixty sites, a few being: *82 Review, Bindweed Magazine, Gyroscope Review, Courtship of Winds, Young Raven’s Review, Nine Muses, Monterey Poetry Review, and Corvus Review.

Danielle Hanson is the author of Fraying Edge of Sky (Codhill Press Poetry Prize, 2018) and Ambushing Water (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2017). Her work has appeared in over 80 journals, she won the Vi Gale Award from Hubbub, was finalist for the 2018 Georgia Author of the Year Award, and was nominated for several Pushcarts and Best of the Nets. She is Poetry Editor for Doubleback Books, and is on the staff of the Atlanta Review. Her poetry has been the basis for visual art included in the exhibit EVERLASTING BLOOM at the Hambidge Center Art Gallery, and Haunting the Wrong House, a puppet show at the Center for Puppetry Arts. More about her at daniellejhanson.com

Jenny Hockey trained as an anthropologist and retired from a Chair at The University of Sheffield to explore some of her research interests through poetry: these include death, gender, memory, and material culture. In 2013, she was among the winners of a New Poets Award from Newcastle’s New Writing North and in 2019 her debut collection, Going to bed with the moon, was published by Oversteps Books. Her poems have also appeared in anthologies and magazines such as The North, Magma, Artemis, Dreamcatcher, Iota and Orbis. In 2017, she co-authored a memoir, Family Life, Trauma and Loss. The Legacy of War was published by Palgrave Macmillan. She is an active member of four poetry writing and reading workshops in Sheffield.

Doug Holder is the founder of the Ibbetson Street Press, and the arts editor for The Somerville Times. The “Doug Holder Papers Collection” is currently housed at the University at Buffalo, NY. Holder ran poetry groups for psychiatric patients at McLean Hospital for over 30 years.

Imran Boe Khan has recent work appearing, or forthcoming, in places such as the Rumpus, Cosmonauts Avenue, Yes, Poetry, and Sixth Finch. A previous winner of the Thomas Hardy Prize, he is the author of Hive (Pen and Anvil Press, 2020). Imran is an Amnesty International speaker and a lecturer at Bournemouth University. He lives in Christchurch, Dorset.

Rajiv Khandelwal was born in 1957 in Kanpur. He received his primary education in convent schools at Kanpur and Agra and obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and Sciences (BITS), Mesra, Ranchi. Khandelwal co-produced a documentary film titled “Visit India, Discover Agra” in 1986. He was invited by the Sikkim Akademi on the occasion of the 7th World Poetry Day on the 21st March 2006.

Louella Lester is a writer and amateur photographer in Winnipeg, Canada. Her work has appeared in New Flash Fiction, Spelk, Reflex Fiction, Vallum, Prairie Fire, Gush: menstrual manifestos for our times (Frontenac House, anthology, 2018), A Girl’s Guide to Fly Fishing: Reflex Fiction, Volume 3 (Reflex Press, anthology, 2020), and Wrong Way Go Back, Volume 19 (Pure Slush, anthology, 2020). Her Flash-CNF book, Glass Bricks (At Bay Press, April 2021) is upcoming. https://louellalester.blog

Susan K. Maciolek is a writer in metro Milwaukee who also likes to draw. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in print and online publications, including Willow Review, Thunderclap!, Postcard Shorts, Vestal Review, Microw, Blink Ink, Full of Crow, and Midwestern Gothic. Her artwork has been shown in Illinois and Wisconsin. Other projects include two picture books; Fugue State, a comics blog found on Susan’s website lilymack.net; and a young adult novel, now in revision. For the last six years, Maciolek has belonged to the VC Writers who meet twice a month, formerly in person and now, virtually.

James Miller won the Connecticut Poetry Award in 2020. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Lunch Ticket, The Atlanta Review, A Minor, Typehouse, Eclectica, Rabid Oak, Pioneertown, Juked, Off Course, North Dakota Quarterly, Yemassee, Phoebe, Mantis, Scoundrel Time, Permafrost, SOFTBLOW and elsewhere.

Tamizh Ponni worked as Design Facilitator in an International School, Bengaluru, India. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering, an MBA in Human Resources and a Masters in English Literature. She is currently pursuing her M.Tech, PhD integrated course in Data Science. She has worked as a Professional Development Coach and as a Tech Integrationist. Tamizh believes that the best thing in being an IB educator is that beyond teaching there’s a lot of deep learning involved in the process. Tamizh sees learning as a never-ending process and with technology integration, it gives her an interesting dimension to knowledge acquisition and skill-building. Tamizh spends most of her free time painting, reading, writing articles, stories and poems, playing keyboard and watching documentaries/movies.

Sarah Degner Riveros teaches Spanish and studies Creative Writing at Augsburg University in Minneapolis, Minnesota where she is currently working on an MFA in poetry and creative nonfiction. Her work is forthcoming in Sonora Review, Vassar Review, Barnstorm Journal, and Yes Poetry, and has appeared in Willawaw, Bearings, Porridge, Brain; Child, Murphy Square Quarterly, and Azahares. She is a single mother of five children.

Heather Laszlo Rosser holds an MA in English Literature from the University of Vermont and an MFA in Fiction Writing from Vermont College. Her writing has been published by The Baltimore Review and Zingara Poetry Review. A New Jersey native, she lives with her family in the Garden State.

Kelly R. Samuels is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. She is the author of Words Some of Us Rarely Use (Unsolicited, 2019) and Zeena/Zenobia Speaks (Finishing Line, 2019). Her poems have appeared in Salt Hill, The Carolina Quarterly, The Pinch, DMQ Review, and RHINO. Her collection about climate change, All the Time in the World, will be published in September by Kelsay Books. She lives in the Upper Midwest.

Claire Scott is an award-winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has appeared in 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.

Rajendra Sharma’s published work includes two collections of short stories, A Strange Wind Blowing (2019) and In My Arms (2000) and a collection of poems, No Season for Grief (2017). In addition, forty poems and short stories have appeared in US magazines like Grey Sparrow, North Dakota Qly, Crossways Lit Mag, S.N.Review, South Jersey Underground, The Monarch Review, Folly, JD Review, The Fine Line, TWJ Magazine, The Missing Slate, Exercise Bowler, Rock and Sling, Ascent Aspirations (Canada), Dr TJ Eckleburg Review, New Mercury Magazine etc. Sharma is a retired senior professor of English. He has worked at universities in India, the Middle East, and the USA.

Kevin C. Shyne is a life-long writer who at age 70 is noticing slight signs of becoming less fluent with language—a loss that is making him even more grateful for moments of clarity experienced as a poet and even more determined to capture these moments in writing. Shyne remembers one of his father’s favorite quotes by George Bernard Shaw, Life is no “brief candle” for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

Jeremy Szuder is a chef by night and creator of poetry and illustration work by day. His past track record in the arts includes; 15 years as a musician in various bands (drums, vocals), graphic design work for clothing/skateboard companies, 25 plus years of self-published Zines, showings of fine art in the underground art scene, a 10 year plus stint spinning vinyl at various events all across the city, and at present time continues to have both illustrations and poems published by over a dozen fine art and literary publications all across the U.S.A. as well as Canada. Jeremy Szuder continues to call Los Angeles California via Glendale his home at present.

Allison Whittenberg is a Philadelphia native who has a global perspective. If she wasn’t an author she’d be a private detective or a jazz singer. She loves reading about history and true crime. Her other novels include Sweet Thang, Hollywood and Maine, Life is Fine, Tutoredand The Sane Asylum.

Jan Wiezorek writes from Barron Lake in Michigan. The London Magazine, Minetta Review, Modern Poetry Quarterly Review, Caesura Online, and Flint Hills Review, among others, have published his poems. He wrote Awesome Art Projects That Spark Super Writing and taught English Composition at St. Augustine College, Chicago.

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.