CONTRIBUTORS

GREY SPARROWS NATIONAL TREASURE

“Marie Howe is an American poet, journalist, academic, and director of collections. From 2012 to 2014, she was the Poet Laureate of the State of New York. In 2015 she was received as a member of the Academy of American Poets. In 2025 Howe won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for “New and Selected Poems”, published by W. W. Norton & Company. Marie Howe has taught at various universities, Tufts University, Dartmouth College, New York University and Sarah Lawrence College. She resides in New York’s West Village with her daughter Grace Yi-Nan Howe, whom she adopted from China in 2003.” Truncated from Best Poems Encyclopedia, 2026

CONTRIBUTORS

Duane Anderson currently lives in Olathe, Kansas.  He has had poems published in Fine Lines, Cholla Needles, and several other publications. He is the author of “On the Corner of Walk and Don’t Walk,” “Conquer the Mountains,” “Family Portraits”’ and “The Life of an Ordinary Man,” and “In the Eyes Of.”

Marie-Andree Auclair’s poems appeared in many publications, such as Bywords,ca (Canada); Sierra Nevada Review (US); The Frogmore Papers (UK); Tokyo Poetry Journal (Japan). In 2024, one of her poems was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Bumble Puppy Press published the chapbook she co-wrote with Adrienne Stevenson, “Skipping Stones.” She lives in Canada and enjoys photography, dancing and traveling, adding to her cooking repertoire after each trip.

Laura Golden Bellotti is a poet, short story writer, nonfiction author, and ghostwriter living in Los Angeles. Her poems and stories have appeared in anthologies, literary journals, and other print media, including Poetic Medicine (Putnam) and West, the Los Angeles Times Sunday magazine. She is the author of a story collection entitled in the land of glare and the co-author of a number of nonfiction books, including Parents Who Cheat, Latina Power, and You Can’t Hurry Love.

Joshua Berida loves to write and travel. He uses the places he’s been to as a backdrop for his creative writing.

Jean Biegun’s poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She has received two Pushcart nominations and written two poetry collections, Hitchhikers to Eden and Edge Effects (2022 and 2024, Kelsay Books). Poems have appeared recently in Sheila-Na-Gig, As It Ought to Be, Third Wednesday, Ekstasis, Unbroken, and The Scarred Tree: Poetry on Moral Injury. She discovered poetry and its super-power just before retiring in 2004 from a career in Special Education with the Chicago Public Schools. Like the exclamation on a 2005 Lewis and Clark nickel: O! The joy!

Dan Carpenter is a freelance journalist, poet, fiction writer, essayist and blogger, residing in Indianapolis. He has contributed poems, stories and essays to Laurel Review, Poetry East, Illuminations, Pearl, Xavier Review and many other journals and anthologies. He has published two books of poems, The Art He’d Sell for Love (Cherry Grove, 2015) and More Than I Could See (Restoration, 2009); and two books of non-fiction.

Addison Curran is an aspiring poet. She recently won an honorable mention for her poem for her annual literary competition. Curran has been inspired by loss, grief and perseverance, and writes mainly about themes of nature, philosophy and spirituality. She hopes to one day have her poetry read widely and inspire people.

William Goulet resides in Cornwall, Connecticut. His work has appeared recently in Stone Poetry Quarterly, Apricity Magazine, The Rush Magazine, and Tipton Poetry Journal. His play, filler, was produced at Paradise Factory, 64 East 4th Street, New York City.

Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas is a recent graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts with an MFA in Writing. In 2012, her chapbook, Before I Go to Sleep, won the Red Ochre Press Chapbook Contest. In 2019, her chapbook An Ode to Hope in the Midst of Pandemonium was a finalist in the Eric Hoffer Book Award, and in 2021, her collection Alice in Ruby Slippers was short-listed for the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize and received honorable mention in the poetry category. She was recently awarded a certificate of achievement by the California Writers Club and named Centennial Poet for her contribution to their 100-year celebration. She has served as editor-in-chief for both The Orchards Poetry Journal and Tule Review. A thirteen-time Pushcart Prize nominee and seven-time Best of the Net nominee, she is a recent member of the Board of Directors for Women’s Wisdom Art in Sacramento and is currently working as an editor for Kelsay Books. 

Joseph Gustafson received his MA in English from Assumption College and has taught in high schools and colleges for over 20 years. Winning several Massachusetts cultural grants, Joseph Gustafson’s poems have appeared in The Writer, Yankee, The New York Quarterly,Lake Effect, The New Renaissance, Frogpond, Japanophile, Crosscurrents, Tabula Rasa, Parnasus Literary Journal, The Poetry Peddler, Worcester Review, Skylark, Pearl, and many other magazines. He is also the author of seven books of poetry, Catnips: A Book of Haikuon Cats, October Sun: A Year of Haiku (Merit Book Award from the Haiku Society of America), A Talk on Haiku, Fathers Who Won’t Die, Homosapien USA, Gettysburg Voices: Civil War Poems, Searching for Hearts, a chapbook of love poems, a novel, East Side Angels, and two satires, Ireland in Wonderland and Cinque Terre Highlights. He taught for many years in the summer program, State of Maine Writers’ Conference, Ocean Park, ME and Cape Cod Writers’ Conference, Craigville, MA.

Ayobami Káyọ̀dé is a Nigerian and an African literature enthusiast, interested in Academics and Yorùbá translation. His works have been published or forthcoming inicefloepress, Olongo, Àtẹ́lẹwọ́, PoetrySangoỌta, isele, Ake review, South Florida, and elsewhere. He was shortlisted for the “ake climate change” poetry prize (2022).

Paul Kindlon was born and bred in Albany, N.Y. He is a graduate of SUNY Albany and the University of Illinois at Chicago. While in Chicago, Paul worked as a stage actor and bartender. After obtaining a Ph.D. in Russian literature and Philosophy, he lived and worked in Moscow, Russia for 25 years as both a professor and journalist. In 2025, he also taught at Beijing Jiaotong university in China for a semester. Having started writing in the year 2000, he now has 100 publications in various genres.

Paul Karnowski, an artist, poet, and retired art teacher, lives on a few acres just north of Asheville with his dog, Bingo.  He spends his days growing flowers, vegetables, paintings, and poems.  His art and poetry have been featured in Kakalak 24, Wild Root, COOP, Witcraft, The Rappahannock Review, The Scop, Brillig, and The Appalachian Journal. For more information see paulkarnowski.com

Colin McGuigan holds a doctorate in theology from the University of Dayton. His research engages wonder, ecological crisis, epistemology, and theological ethics. He has taught courses in religious studies, theology, and ethics at the university and secondary school levels. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, four children, and three cats.

F. Kevin Murphy received his B.A. and M.A. in “Writing Seminars” at Johns Hopkins, where he was poetry editor of the Charles Street Review, and his M.D. at UCLA, where he was editor of Plexus. He subsequently trained in medicine, pediatrics, and infectious diseases at the University of Wisconsin, Center for Disease Control, and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School. Late in life, he returned to writing poetry after a career in academic and clinical medicine. He remains clinical professor of medicine at University of Nevada, Reno, School of Medicine. His poetry has appeared inVisions International and Gemini Magazine and fiction in The Brussels Review. He lives in the rain-shadow of the Sierras, surrounded by spruce, aspens, pines, quail & jays, bobcats, foxes, and bears. Tonight a limping bear ambled across the patio, consuming strawberries left for rabbits, reminiscent of the bear and the strawberry tree in Madrid’s Puerto del Sol.

Busari Shukura Oyeronke is a Nigerian poet who writes from the intersections of grief, healing, and emotional survival. Her poetry emerged as a personal response to loss and has since grown into a language of care, for herself and for others navigating silent pain. Through tender, honest lines, she explores mourning, vulnerability, faith, hope, and the slow work of becoming whole. Oyeronke’s work is deeply rooted in mental health advocacy, using poetry as a tool to name feelings often left unspoken and to remind readers that their experiences are valid. She writes to make people feel seen, held, and less alone. Her poems resist performance and instead offer intentional presence in the rawest form. Beyond poetry, she is a writer and editor, but at her core, she believes words can be a form of refuge. She continues to write toward healing, truth, and the courage it takes to keep living. 

David Petruzelli has published poems and stories in Cloudbank, Crazyhorse, Hunger Mountain,The New Yorker, Pleiades, Southern Indiana Review, Southern Review, Virginia QuarterlyReview and elsewhere. A collection, Everyone Coming Toward You won the “Tupelo Press Judges Prize” for a first book in 2005. He has also contributed essays on illustration art for the website, Attempted Bloggery for the last decade. Petruzelli is retired and lives in Washington Hgts, N.Y.

 G. David Schwartz is the former president of Seedhouse Online Interfaith Committee, author of A Jewish Appraisal Of Dialogue: Between Talk And Theology (1994), Midrash And Working Out Of The Book (2004) and Shards And Verses (48 By Forty-Eight (2011).    

Prithvijeet Sinha is from Lucknow, India. He is a postgraduate in MPhil from the University of Lucknow, having launched his prolific writing career by self-publishing on the worldwide community “Wattpad” since 2015 and on his WordPress blog “An Awadh Boy’s Panorama” (https://anawadhboyspanorama.wordpress.com/)  His works have been published in several varied publications such as Madras Courier, Orenaug Mountain Publishing’s “We Are Here”,  “Personal Freedom” and “Lost Love” poetry anthologies (2024, 2025), Everscribe Magazine, Pyssum Literaria Journal, Irshaad Poetry, The Hooghly Review, Grey Sparrow Journal, FemAsia Magazine, Top Ten Films UK, Hoovufinds, High on Films, Wayzgoose Magazine, Chewers by Masticadores, Hudson Valley Writers Guild, Inklette Magazine, Piker Press, anthology Pixie Dust and All Things Magical published by Authors Press( January, 2022), Cafe Dissensus, The Medley, Screen Queens, Confluence- South Asian Perspectives, Reader’s Digest, Borderless Journal, Lothlorien Poetry, Live Wire, Rhetorica Quarterly, Ekphrastic Review, The Kolkata Arts, Aze Journal, Dreich Magazine, Visual Verse, Tarshi-In Plainspeak and in the children’s anthology Nursery Rhymes and Children’s Poems From Around The World ( AuthorsPress, February 2021) as well as Soul Spaces ( AuthorsPress, 2023)among others.

Richard C. Rutherford, as a boy, learned storytelling from racoon hunters who whittled and spit, recalling moon phase, moisture and wind (dry as a popcorn fart), black-and-tan cold-trailers, rattle-headed pups, and blue-tick tree dogs who could set down under an old oak and just go to preaching. He has daughters, so he’s a feminist. A member of the “Palm Springs Writer’s Guild,” his stories can be found in Hypertext, Fiction Southeast, Red Fez, Catamaran, The Writing Disorder, Stone Coast Review, Inlandia, Visitant, Cardinal Sins, Chiron Review, Oddville Press, and Oxford Magazine among others. He has a large collection of stories.

Cora Tate was educated as a scientist, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) as a mathematician. She has earned her living as a full-time professional entertainer most of her life, including a stint as a regular performer on the prestigious “Grand Ole Opry.”  Tate’s repeated attempts to escape the entertainment industry have brought work as a librarian, physics teacher, syndicated newspaper columnist, and city planner, among other occupations.  She lives, writes, and continues to improve her dzonkha vocabulary and pronunciation in Bhutan and visits North America, Europe, or Australia to perform and thereby to recharge her bank account.  She has written five novels, five novellas (two of which have been published), and ten novelettes (three published, one forthcoming).  Tate has written 100-odd short stories, of which eighty have been published in ninety literary journals in eleven countries.  Her short story “While The Iron Is Hot” won the Fair Australia Prize.

David Woodward aka unknown lives just south of Montreal with his wife and son. Some of his most recent work can be found in the engine(idling (poem nominated for Best of the Net), North Dakota Quarterly, The Field Guide Poetry Magazine (Featured Poet), Wilderness House Review, and upcoming in The Universes Poetry Magazine in the U.K.