Maura Atwood is an actress and poet currently located in Milwaukee. Her poetry has been published in Artifact Nouveau and Centrique Magazine. “And all my fortunes at Thy foot I’ll lay and follow Thee my Lord throughout the world.”
New York fine arts photographer Amy Bassin and writer Mark Blickley work together on text based art collaborations and videos. Their collaborative work has been exhibited in New York City, London, Lisbon and Brussels. Their video, Widow’s Peek: The Kiss of Death, was selected to the 2018 International Festival of Experimental Video and Film at Bilbao, Spain. They’ve published a text based art chapbook, Weathered Reports: Trump Surrogate Quotes From the Underground (Moria Books, Chicago) and their video, Speaking In Bootongue, was selected for the 2019 International Art With Me GNP Festival in Tulum, Mexico. Bassin is co-founder of the international artists cooperative Urban Dialogues. Blickley is the author of Sacred Misfits (Red Hen Press) and a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and PEN American Center. Their five text based art pieces in this issue of Assisi are excerpted from their recently published book, Dream Streams from Clare Songbird Publishing House. https://www.claresongbirdspub.com/shop/featured-authors/amy-bassin-mark-blickley/
Joe Bisicchia writes of our shared dynamic. An Honorable Mention recipient for the Fernando Rielo XXXII World Prize for Mystical Poetry, his works have appeared in numerous publications. His website is www.JoeBisicchia.com.
Dorothy Cantwell lives in NYC and has worked as an educator, actor and playwright. She’s been a featured poet in Great Weather for Media Sunday Series, Su Polo’s Saturn Series, Patricia Carragon’s Brownstone Poets, and the Huntington Poetry Barn. Her work has been published in the Long Island Literary Journal, Brownstone Poets Anthology, Constellate Literary Journal, Flash Boulevard, and River and South Review. She is currently working on a chapbook, Awaiting Solace.
William C. Crawford is the inventor of Forensic Foraging, a throwback, minimalist technique for modern digital photographers. See William C. Crawford on Pinterest.
Ben D’Alessio is the author of three novels, four short stories, and various other writings ranging from a newfound appreciation for the WWE to why we should bring back public executions. Born and raised in northern New Jersey, he has lived in suburban Philadelphia, west London, southern Spain, and New Orleans. A legal services attorney during the day, he moonlights as a writer in his Linwood, New Jersey home, where he lives with his fiancée and three mischievous cats.
Lynda DeWitt lives in the Washington, D.C. area and is the author of several children’s books. She has an MA in Journalism from American University and has written and edited for numerous organizations, including the National Geographic Society, Discovery Communications, and the Smithsonian Institution. Her poems have been published in The American Journal of Poetry (Vol Five), Blue Lake Review (Sept, 2018), and 50 Haikus (Vol 1, Issue 14).
Natalie Droeske is a recent graduate of Loras College, holding a degree in Creative Writing with a minor in Journalism and Public Writing & Rhetoric. She currently utilizes her writing passions in the marketing field as a social media account manager for Fourge Social, a social media agency in Dubuque, Iowa. She enjoys taking in the world around her and sharing/documenting what it means to be from the Midwest. A longtime lover of words and avid reader, she enjoys a “Sunday afternoon” lifestyle that includes hiking in the Driftless region, drinking copious amounts of coffee, and retiring to the porch at night to enjoy listening to swing music on the record player. “The Hairdresser” is her first published piece of fiction.
Jim Farfaglia has resided in Central New York for most of his life. After earning a teaching degree from the State University College at Oswego, Jim enjoyed a fulfilling career in classroom and outdoor education. In 2011, after retiring from this work, Farfaglia transitioned to his lifelong interest in writing, including the local history books Of the Earth: The Stories of Oswego County’s Muck Farms, Voices in the Storm: Stories From The Blizzard of ’66, Pioneers: The Story of Oswego County’s Search and Rescue Team, and Nestlé in Fulton, New York: How Sweet It Was. Jim is also the owner of ClearPath Publishing, which allows him to pursue another passion: helping others write their stories. His editing work includes The Memoir Project, sponsored by the Fulton Public Library, which annually publishes a book of essays written by its townspeople.
Born in Italy some decades ago, Gabriella Garofalo fell in love with the English language at six, started writing poems (in Italian) at six and is the author of Lo sguardo di Orfeo, L’inverno di vetro, Di altre stelle polari, Casa di erba, Blue Branches, and A Blue Soul.
Craig Greenman lives in New Hampshire. His work has appeared in a number of journals, including The Big Windows Review, Potomac Review, and PANK. He has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and was a finalist for the Walker Percy Prize in Short Fiction.
Edward Lee’s poetry, short stories, non-fiction and photography have been published in magazines in Ireland, England and America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen, and Smiths Knoll. His debut poetry collection Playing Poohsticks On Ha’Penny Bridge was published in 2010. He is currently working towards a second collection. He also makes musical noise under the names Ayahuasca Collective, Lewis Milne, Orson Carroll, Blinded Architect, Lego Figures Fighting, and Pale Blond Boy.
His blog/website can be found at https://edwardmlee.wordpress.com.
Ann LoLordo is an editor/writer for an international health non-profit based in Baltimore. A former journalist and foreign correspondent, Ann is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. Her poems have appeared in The Greensboro Review, The MacGuffin, Southern Poetry Review, Puerto Del Sol, and other journals. In the Margins, a collection of poems authored with three other poets, debuted from Cherry Grove Collections in 2017. She lives in Maryland with her husband and son.
Keith Moul is a poet of place, a photographer of the distinction light adds to place. Both his poems and photos are published widely. His photos are digital, striving for high contrast and saturation, which makes his vision colorful (or weak, requiring enhancement).
JB Mulligan has had more than 1000 poems and stories in various magazines over the past 40 years, and has had two chapbooks published: The Stations of the Cross and THIS WAY TO THE EGRESS, as well as 2 e-books, The City of Now and Then, and A Book of Psalms. He has appeared in several anthologies, including Inside/Out: A Gathering Of Poets; The Irreal Reader (Cafe Irreal); and multiple volumes of Reflections on a Blue Planet.
Patrice S. Nolan has lived her entire life in southeast Michigan and her outlook is informed by a love of lake water, the thrum of industry, and the optimistic belief that while people are often foolish, they essentially mean well. She has been assembling words since she was allowed to use sharp pencils and earns her keep as a freelance writer in the marketing/communications field. She actively participates in a workshop founded by Michigan poet Glen Armstrong. Her poetry has been published in local anthologies, Mezzo Cammin, and BlogNostics. Patrice is an enthusiast of the performing arts and reviews theatre in the greater Detroit area. Her personal motto is: There’s a lot to be said for brevity
Dan O’Connell is a four-time award winning poet, and multiple finalist and honorable mention. His poems have appeared over seventy times, including in Mississippi Review, Homestead Review, San Francisco Reader, Parthenon West Review, RavensPerch, Prometheus Dreaming, and Ghost Town Review. A former Philosophy and Rhetoric professor, Dan has his own law practice with a focus on protecting renters and workers. He is the author of two full-length collections of poetry: Different Coasts and Theory of Salvation. Find Dan O. at www.danoconnellpoetry.com.
Neil O’Hara writes: I am a novelist, poet and philosopher living in the UK. My first novel, The Madness in Their Hearts, came out with Artemis Publishers in 2012, and a work of moral philosophy, Moral Certainty and the Foundations of Morality, with Palgrave Macmillan in 2018.
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 Gibson Poems published by Cholla Needles, 2019. For more information, including free e-books and his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities,” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com. To view one of his interviews please follow this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSK774rtfx8. [Editor’s Note: Please see a review of The Gibson Poems in this volume of Assisi.]
Fabrice Poussin teaches French and English at Shorter University. Author of novels and poetry, his work has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, and many other magazines. His photography has been published in The Front Porch Review and the San Pedro River Review, as well as other publications.
Rebecca Rose lives in Santa Maria, CA and works in the nonprofit sector. She has written for numerous publications including Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, and Seventeen. She is currently working on a book of poetry.
P.C. Scheponik is a lifelong poet who lives by the sea with his wife, Shirley, and their shizon, Bella. His writing celebrates nature, the human condition, and the metaphysical mysteries of life. He has published four collections of poems: Psalms to Padre Pio (National Centre for Padre Pio, INC), A Storm by Any Other Name and Songs the Sea has Sung in Me (PS Books, a division of Philadelphia Stories), and And the Sun Still Dared to Shine (Mazo Publishers). His work has also appeared in numerous literary journals, among them, Adelaide, Visitant, Red Eft Review, Boned, Time of Singing, WINK, and others.
David Schimmelpfennig, Ph.D. is a writer and Fulbright Scholar with over 100 publications. His work has appeared in Science and National Geographic. He has been quoted in The New York Times, Bloomberg News, and The Des Moines Register, and appeared on talk radio in South Africa.
JN Shimko started her writing journey as a college reporter during one of the most significant moments in U.S. history, September 11, 2001. This led her to politics and government writing before switching to fiction, graduating from the Red Earth MFA program at Oklahoma City University, and many long hours trying to start a publishing business. She is a resident of Chicago, devoted to her wife, and loyal to the Chicago Cubs. Her fiction work has previously appeared in Dragon Poet Review.
Lisa Tellor-Kelley is the 2015 State of Illinois Emerging Writer of poetry. She is a previous lecturer of English composition at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, and a previous creative writing lecturer at Lindenwood University-Belleville, IL. Lisa is the “name giver” of the River Bluff Review at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. She is published in the River Bluff Review, Rhino, and OVS-Organs of Voice & Speech, and South Broadway Ghost Society.
Carolyn Westendorf writes: I am a wife and mother with a degree in nursing and creative writing. My passion is writing, especially poetry. I enjoy memorizing poetry, most notably, T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” I also have two publications in The Rockford Review under my maiden name, Carolyn Wetch. I currently work on a blog called “Pensive Readings” at https://pensivereadings.wordpress.com/.
Tony Whedon writes: I’m the author of three poetry collections and a poetry chapbook and two essay collections from Mid-List, Green Writers , and Fomite presses. My most recent book of essays, Drunk in the Woods, was a finalist this year for the Vermont Book Award; my new as yet unpublished essay collection, The Yellow Hatbox, was a finalist this year for the Orison Book Award. My poems and essays have appeared in Harper’s, Agni, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Salmagundi, Shenandoah, and more than 150 other journals.
Ruth Linnea Whitney is the author of SLIM (Southern Methodist Univ. Press, 2003), informed by two years of living in sub-Saharan Africa and other lengthy sojourns in East Africa. The novel received the First Book Award from the Presbyterian Writer’s Guild. Her short stories and personal essays appear in The Threepenny Review, Kaleidoscope, Natural Bridge, and elsewhere. She serves on the Social Justice team of the Presbyterian Church she attends. With husband, David, she has survived numerous hikes of varying length and incline. She taught ESL at Peninsula College in Port Townsend, Washington, where she lives and writes.
Steven Wingate’s works include the novel Of Fathers and Fire, published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2019 as part of its Flyover Fiction series; the digital memoir daddylabyrinth, which premiered at the Art/Science Museum of Singapore in 2014; and the short story collection Wifeshopping, which won the Bakeless Prize from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2008. He is an associate professor at South Dakota State University and associate editor at Fiction Writers Review. His writings on faith and culture have appeared or are forthcoming in such venues as Image Journal’s “Good Letters” blog, The Cresset, Dappled Things, The Windhover, The Other Journal, Talking Writing, and Belmont Story Review.