AAKAASH
Buffy Aakaash grew up around hills and lakes in New Jersey west of New York City, Buffy Aakaash has since lived as a queer man in cities and rural towns throughout the US. His poems have been published by Sweety Cat Press, Main Street Rag and Dissonance Magazine, among others. “Untangling the Knots,” his chapbook of How To poems, will be published by Kelsay Books in December of 2022. Currently he resides in Vermont’s Green Mountains with his 4-legged companion, Bodhi. His work can be viewed at his website.
BAKER
Celeste Rita Baker is a Virgin Islander currently flitting between Harlem and St. Thomas, VI. The author of Back, Belly and Side, a short story collection, her genres include Speculative Fiction, Magical Realism and Reality Based Fiction, some in Caribbean Dialect and some in Standard English. A 2019 graduate of Clarion West Science Fiction Writers Workshop and proud member of the Harlem Neighborhood Writers, Celeste loves doing performance readings, often in costumes she makes herself. She welcomes feedback through her website and can be found occasionally on Twitter as @tenwest522.
BARILE
Stephen Barile, a Fresno, California native, educated in the public schools, and attended Fresno City College, Fresno Pacific University, and California State University, Fresno. He studied poetry writing with famed poet, Maude Meehan, at University of California, Santa Cruz. He was a long-time member of the Fresno Poet’s Association. Barile taught writing and literature at Madera Community College, and CSU Fresno. He also taught poetry writing at branches of the Fresno County Library. He lives in Fresno. His poems have been published extensively, including in: Featured Poets, Santa Clara Review, Writer’s Club, Kathmandu Tribune, Tower Poetry, As It Ought To Be Magazine, Rue Scribe,Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, Metafore Magazine, From Sac Literary Journal, North Dakota Quarterly, The Heartland Review, Rio Grande Review, The Broad River Review, The San Joaquin Review, Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Pharos.
BUONOCORE
Michael Buonocore is a screenwriter, storyteller and podcaster from Portland, Oregon. His scripted storytelling podcast, The First Michael, became a top-ten hit on Apple Podcasts charts in the Arts category in 2021. He recently left a long career in the public sector to pursue his writing and creative life full time, which is only occasionally terrifying.
CARDONA
Roxanne Cardona is a retired Elementary School Principal. She spent 31 years in the same Bronx school, building her educational career. Born in New York City, she currently lives in New Jersey with her husband. Writing has always been her passion. She was a theater major/anthropology major at Hunter College where she received her BA/MS, as well as the departmental acting award. She has another MS in Administration. Roxanne has been published online and in print in the following publications: One Art, Mason Street, Constellations, Commuter Lit, Red Eft, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Poetic Medicine-New Voices, Ethelzine and elsewhere.
CLAYPOOL
Maggie Claypool, after growing up in Missouri, and then making Colorado her home for 20 years as she travelled the country as a consultant, now lives in the First State (Delaware) with her two rescue dogs, Fancy and Chico. In her stories, she attempts to strike a resonant chord of emotion in the reader. Her short stories have appeared in Instant Noodles “Hot Buttered Holidays” Spillwords, FromOneLine Volume 3, and Close to the Bone. She also regularly includes brief fiction in her blog, and you can find her on Twitter.
CORNFORD
Susan Cornford is a retired public servant, living in Perth, Western Australia. She/her has most recently had pieces published or forthcoming in Ab Terra Flash Fiction, Defuncted Journal, Flash Frontier, Flights of Fantasy Anthology, INK Babies Literary Magazine, Instant Noodles Literary Magazine, Roi Fainéant, Spillwords and Wyldblood Magazine.
DUTT
Pat Dutt is a landscape estimator living in Ithaca, New York. “Miracle Chicken” was inspired by a real-life event! Pat has also published flash fiction and short stories in about a dozen small literary magazines. Her non-fiction book about an Iranian immigrant, The Good Moms, Their Children and Friendship can be found online.
EAGEN
Christina Eagen is a poet residing in New Hampshire. In addition to writing and reading poetry, she is deeply involved in local community service work as a library trustee and performance co-coordinator for the Concord Multicultural Festival. Her work has been published in New Note Poetry’s inaugural issue and The Metaworker Literary Magazine.
FITZGERALD
Jane Fitzgerald’s poetry is written with clarity and insight. She has written four books including, Notes From the Undaunted ,which can be found on Amazon. Her poetry has been featured in Your Daily Poem, Open Door Magazine, Dreamers Creative Writing, Sad Girls Club, Quillkeepers Press, Devil’s Party Press, Sweetycat Press, and more. Jane hopes that others will find comfort and a sense of togetherness in her poetry. Jane and her husband love living in Jupiter, Florida. Find more of Fitzgerald’s poetry, and follow her.
FREIMOR
Jacqueline Freimor won first prize in the Unpublished Writers category of the Mystery Writers of America’s 50th Anniversary Short Story Competition in 1995, and she’s been writing primarily crime, detective, and speculative fiction ever since. Her short stories have been published in both print and online magazines, including Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Rock and a Hard Place Magazine, Murderous Intent, and the e-zine Blue Murder, among others, as well as at akashic.com. Most recently, her stories have appeared in the anthologies When a Stranger Comes to Town (edited by Michael Koryta) and The Best Mystery Stories of the Year: 2021 (edited by Lee Child). She is a native New Yorker and lives in Westchester County with her husband and her Yorkshire Terrier. Check out her website.
GILLIAM
Gabby Gilliam lives in the DC metro area. Her poetry has most recently appeared in Tofu Ink Arts Press, Tempered Runes Press, Cauldron Anthology, and two anthologies from Mythos Poets Society. You can find her online or on Facebook.
GOOD
Howie Good’s latest poetry collection is The Horses Were Beautiful, available from Grey Book Press.
GUNDRED
Betty Naegele Gundred has enjoyed writing since high school when she was editor of her school’s literary magazine, though she taught middle school science for twenty years. She received her B.S. from Cornell and her M.S. from Michigan State. Her work has appeared or will soon appear in publications such as Current, The Heron’s Nest, Frogpond, Last Leaves, Months to Years, Orchards Poetry Journal, and Open Door Magazine. She is currently writing a series of memoir stories. Betty lives with her husband in the Sierra Foothills of Northern California and enjoys Zumba, hiking, and photography. Find Betty here and here too!
IBITEYE
Overcomer Ibiteye is a Nigerian writer and an alumnus of the SprinNG Writing Fellowship. Her works have appeared in anthologies like Iskanchi, Land Luck Review, Scrawl Place and others. She was also a finalist for the African Writers Awards (2021) and the Calanthe Collective Prize (2022).
JOHNSON
John Johnson is the rare poet who loves language but also data and numbers. He resides in Northern Virginia where in addition to running his consulting firm as a professional econometrician, he loves pizza, professional wrestling, and regularly writes with his wild writing circle. Johnson’s poetry tends to focus on humorous aspects of his geeky childhood and his journey as it relates to entrepreneurship, family and friendship, and failed athletic endeavors. His recent work has been published in The Parliament Literary Journal, Poetic Sun, Quillkeepers Press, and Pure Slush. His website is poemsovercoffee.com.
JUMBELIC
Mary Jumbelic is an author from Syracuse, New York, and the former chief medical examiner of Onondaga County. Performing thousands of autopsies in her career, she has developed a strong voice for her deceased patients. With her experience, Jumbelic is intimately acquainted with the biologic and human perspectives of death. Her stories explore the personal side of her work through the lens of forensic cases. She placed in the top ten for the 2014 AARP-Huffington Post Memoir Writing Contest. Other pieces have been published with Tortoise & Finch, Foliate Oak, GFT Press, and Vine Leaves. You can read her blog, Final Words.
LEONARD
Colin Leonard lives in rural Co. Meath, Ireland, beneath the hills from which the ancient Samhain festivals spawned Halloween. His stories have been published in the magazines CultureCult, Frost Zone Zine, Fudoki, and The Harrow and are included in the anthologies Eyes from Gravestone Press, It Calls From The Veil from Eerie River Publishing and Horror Library Volume 7 by Dark Moon Books. His first novel is due for release in 2023. Find him on Twitter and his website.
LOPEZ
Xena Lopez is a Filipino and Puerto-Rican woman who illustrates scenes that are shamelessly relatable. It’s important for her to show that being naïve or quirky is a common experience for people. In 2020, she started writing a journal addressing her social anxiety starting at childhood. This journal bloomed with illustrations and eventually formed a comic. At first, it followed the sad narrative she knew and lived. As the years passed she came to acknowledge all the hard work and persistence she had put in to survive and succeed at a life she found worth living. What was to be a private journal became a self-published comic book. It’s fleshy, vulnerable, and weird– but by the end Xena turned out to be a resilient character who by chance has found one thing they really want to do in life– which is drawing stuff. Find Xena here or @xenalopezart.
MARIL
Nadja Maril is a former magazine editor and journalist living in Annapolis, Maryland, USA. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the Stonecoast Program at the University of Southern Maine and her short stories and essays have been or will be published in several literary journals and anthologies including Scarlet Leaf Review, Storynews, Change Seven, Lunch Ticket, Raconteur, Thin Air, and Burning Love and Bleeding Hearts. She blogs weekly about writing and life during Covid-1, and is close to completing her first novel. Additional credits include two reference books on American Antique Lighting as well as two children’s books illustrated by her artist father, the late Herman Maril.
McKEAN
Angela Mckean started writing when she was six. Poems mainly, which in her early years seemed to help her find out who she was. More recently, she has been writing short and flash fiction, which she edits ferociously in an attempt to make every word count. Returning to England eight years ago, she now lives in Northumberland, in the wild and beautiful north-east of England. Before that, she lived in the South and Midlands of England, Australia and France. She believes that her experiences of living as a stranger in foreign lands has added breadth and dimension to her work. She often writes on themes of ambiguity and the liminal – the borderlands of the mind. She has had poems and stories published in various regional and national magazines.
MILLEY
David Milley (he, him) has written and published verse since the 1970s, while working as a technical writer and web applications developer. His work has appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly, Bay Windows, Friends Journal, RFD, and Capsule Stories. Retired now, David lives in southern New Jersey with his husband and partner of forty-five years, Warren Davy, who’s made his living as a farmer, woodcutter, nurseryman, auctioneer, beekeeper, and cook. These days, Warren tends his garden and keeps honeybees. David walks and writes. Find David here.
OGILVIE-HOLME
PETSKA
Darrell Petska is a retired university engineering editor and a 2021 Pushcart Prize nominee. His poetry and fiction can be found in 3rd Wednesday Magazine, Nixes Mate Review, Verse Virtual, Loch Raven Review, Poetica Review and widely elsewhere (conservancies.wordpress.com). A father of five and grandfather of six, he lives near Madison, Wisconsin, with his wife of more than 50 years.
PRUITT
William Pruitt is an author whose three latest books are Hands No Hands from FootHills publishing and The Binding Dance and The Teacher Who Told Stories from Cyberwit. His website is wpruitt.com
ROMANO
Alice Campbell Romano says a poem is the face of what we’ve lived; everything is soaked in all that came before. Alice is a poet, published in print and online and anthologized. She lived in Italy for a dozen years where she translated/adapted Italian movie scripts into English. Poems have appeared recently, or will soon appear, in Orchards Poetry, New Croton Review; Persimmon Tree; Prometheus Dreaming; Beyond Words, Writing in a Woman’s Voice; Quartet Journal; Instant Noodles Devil’s Press; Pink Panther Magazine, among others. Alice and her husband make their home in drought-plagued Los Angeles. She grew up in the green Hudson Valley, where her heart still lives.
STANTON
Betty Stanton (she/her) is a writer who lives and works in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in various journals and collections and has been included in anthologies from Dos Gatos Press and Picaroon Poetry Press. She received her MFA from The University of Texas at El Paso.
SUPRANOWICZ
Edward Michael Supranowicz is the grandson of Irish and Russian/Ukrainian immigrants. He grew up on a small farm in Appalachia. He has a grad background in painting and printmaking. Some of his artwork has recently or will soon appear in Fish Food, Streetlight, Another Chicago Magazine, The Door Is a Jar, The Phoenix, and other journals. Edward is also a published poet.
WALKER
Nancy North Walker is an award-winning “second act” short fiction writer from Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, who took up creative writing following a long career as a business communications executive in Chicago, New York, and New Jersey. She’s partial to speculative fiction, especially sci-fi, horror, and magical realism, but also dabbles in rom-com and contemporary fiction. Her short stories have appeared in several mid-Atlantic anthologies and Devil’s Party Press’s (DPP’s) online literary magazine, Instant Noodles. Nancy’s first horror story, Insecticide, which appeared in DPP’s Halloween Party ’21 anthology, won second place for single short stories in the 2022 National Communications Contest sponsored by the National Federation of Press Women. It also won first place in the 2022 Delaware Press Association’s Communications Contest. Her sci-fi flash fiction story New Year’s 2044 With George, which appeared in DPP’s Instant Noodles, won second place in the same contest. Another of her sci-fi stories, The Companion, won a Judge’s Award in the 2021 Rehoboth Beach Reads Short Story Contest. It was published along with other contest winners by Cat & Mouse Press in their fall 2021 anthology, Beach Secrets. Nancy was a winner of the same short story contest in 2019 and was published in Cat & Mouse Press’s Beach Dreams. Nancy is currently working on a provocative sci-fi short story collection about the many unexpected ways advanced technology will change people’s lives in the coming decades. For more information about Nancy and her publications see her website.
WARNOCK
Kresha Richman Warnock lives in the Pacific Northwest, with her husband, Jim, where they moved just in time to spend the pandemic close to family. Her essays have been published in American Writers Review 2022, Pure Slush, and “Eat, Darling, Eat”. She is in the process of writing her memoir which focuses on her life as a political activist and former campus radical, contrasted to her experience as the mother of an Iraq War veteran and police officer. She is also learning to play the piano, because you’re never too old to learn. She is the mother of two adult children, two grand dogs, and a lifelong advocate for Early Childhood Education and families and children. #Kresha Richman Warnock@inftod.
WEATHERFORD
Bill Weatherford is a native Californian. He grew up in a small San Joaquin Valley town and much of his writing has its roots in that part of and produced/directed the 2014 feature film, “Underclassmen.” His short stories have been featured in Brown Bag, Evening Street Press, Aethlon and Five South. At present, he lives on California’s Central Coast where he has completed his first YA novel: Tilly and Turp.
WHITE
Ben White, as he was serving at various duty stations during his 22-year military career, and then again when he was earning his MFA from the University of Tampa, thought he was a poet. But he is not a poet at all. Ben is a witness; what he writes is testimony. You can find his work in many assorted journals from The Exterminating Angel Press, Havik, So Say We All, and Proud to Be. He is also the author of Conley Bottom: A Poemoir, The Recon Trilogy +1, Buddha Bastinado Blues, Always Ready: Poems from A Life in the Coast Guard, and (forthcoming) Mill Springs: A Poemoir of Place and People. You can also follow his work and the work he has edited.
YARBROUGH
Harlan Yarbrough, though educated as a scientist, and graduated as a mathematician, has earned his living as a full-time professional entertainer most of his life, including a stint as a regular on the prestigious Grand Ole Opry. Harlan’s repeated attempts to escape the entertainment industry have brought work as a librarian, physics teacher, syndicated newspaper columnist, and city (land use) planner, among other occupations. Harlan lives, writes, and continues to improve his dzonkha vocabulary and pronunciation in Bhutan but visits the US, Europe, or Australia to perform and thereby to recharge his bank account. He has settled in Bhutan but in previous decades has lived, performed, and taught in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, and Denmark. Harlan has written five novels, three novellas (of which two have been published), three novelettes (two published, one forthcoming), and ninety-some short stories, of which fifty-four have been published by sixty-one literary journals in nine countries.
INSTANT NOODLES 