CONTRIBUTORS
Ignatius Valentine Aloysius is a naturalized U.S. citizen, born in India and raised in Mumbai by a Tamilian father and Anglo-Indian mother. He earned his MFA in Creative Writing from Northwestern University, where he teaches. Ignatius hosts and curates the popular reading series Sunday Salon Chicago. Twice Pushcart nominated, he is the author of the literary novel Fishhead. Republic of Want (Tortoise Books), and the collaborative poetry collection, Salt Pruning (Hummingbird Poetry Press), co-authored with David Allen Sullivan. A second poetry collection, Bone Dust Mother is forthcoming on Glass Lyre Press in Spring 2026. Ignatius' prose and poetry appear in several venues, including Allium: A Journal of Poetry & Prose, Porter Gulch Review, & Red Wheelbarrow, among others. He serves as Co-Chair of the Curatorial Council at Ragdale Foundation, an artists residency, where he is also a Board of Trustees member. Ignatius lives in Evanston, Illinois. https://linktr.ee/ignatius.valentine.aloysius
Dennis Donoghue's work has been published in various journals and magazines, including Blue Lake Review. His memoir, The Final One Eighty, was published by Adelaide Books in 2020 and also reviewed in Blue Lake Review. Dennis is currently seeking a publisher for his second memoir, We'll Do What's Best for You.
Jonathan Fletcher holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Columbia University School of the Arts. His work has been featured in numerous literary journals and magazines, and he has won or placed in various literary contests. A Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Microfiction nominee, he won Northwestern University Press’s Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize contest in 2023, for which he will have his debut chapbook, This is My Body, published in 2025. Currently, he serves as a Zoeglossia Fellow and lives in San Antonio, Texas.
George Freek's poem "Enigmatic Variations" was recently nominated for Best of the Net. His poem "Night Thoughts" was also nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
John Horváth -- Mississippian John Horváth has published poetry internationally since the 1960s (In Parenthesis, The Write Launch, Streetlight, recently in Quagmire Magazine, Burningword Literary Journal (Best of 2018), Brave Voices (Zimbabwe)). In total Horvath has published nearly 500 poems since the 70’s. After Vanderbilt and Florida State universities, following a bad parachute drop in Iraq leaving him 100% disabled with the VA, "Doc" Horváth taught at historically Black colleges. To promote contemporary international poetry, Horváth edited the magazine at www.poetryrepairs.com from 1997 to 2017.
Mark Jacobs has published more than 200 stories in magazines including The Hudson Review, The Atlantic, Playboy, Evergreen Review, and Blue Lake Review. His seventh book, a novel called Memory Falls, is forthcoming from Regal House Publishing. A full list of his publications can be found at markjacobsauthor.com,
Susan Land currently has stories at The Avenue, Gargoyle Online and The Best of the Delmarva Review. Her fiction has appeared in many journals, including Bellevue Review and Alaska Quarterly, and she was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford.
Sam W. Pisciotta is a writer and visual artist. He earned an M.A. in Literary Studies from the University of Colorado at Denver, and he’s a graduate of the Odyssey writing workshop. Find his fiction in publications such as Flash Fiction Online, Nightmare Magazine, and Asimov’s. Connect at www.silo34.com and @silo34 on Instagram, and @swpisciotta on Bluesky Social.
Karen Sanderson has straddled the border of reality and fiction in work and life. Her professional life has been as a filmmaker, editor and producer of films/ videos on issues of women, class and race. Karen has been a closeted fiction writer since her childhood in Reno, Nevada, where she received a full dose of false reality; she is now devoted to give fiction her full attention. Memory, family and perception are Karen’s topics of fascination and inquiry.
Richard Schreck is the author of over 30 non-fiction pieces and a former publication editor for a large professional association. “Civil Procedure” explores a fictional world he is developing in Brain Game, a novel set in Baltimore and New Orleans. Brain Game background stories also appear in The Razor, The Loch Raven Review, Gargoyle, The Write Launch, and other literary magazines. See links to these stories at richardschreck.com and commentary at Instagram @richardschreckwriting and Bluesky @richardschreck.bsky.social.
Connie Song writes short stories and bruised poetry from the edge of Brooklyn, New York. Her works include The Grimalkin, The Ghost of Stillwell Avenue, Souls for Sale, Perfect Girls, Bruised Poetry.
David Allen Sullivan is the former poet laureate of Santa Cruz county. His books include: Strong-Armed Angels, Every Seed of the Pomegranate, a book of co-translation with Abbas Kadhim from the Arabic of Iraqi Adnan Al-Sayegh, Bombs Have Not Breakfasted Yet, and Black Ice. He won the Mary Ballard Chapbook poetry prize for Take Wing, and Tim Seibles selected Black Butterflies Over Baghdad for the Hilary Tham capital collection, Word Works Books. Salt Pruning, a co-authored book of poems with Ignatius Valentine Aloysius, was published by Hummingbird Poetry Press. He teaches at Cabrillo College, where he edits the Porter Gulch Review with his students, lives in Santa Cruz, California. https://dasulliv1.wixsite.com/website-1.
Tara Zafft -- Most recently Winner of the Moonlit Getaway Poetry Prize, Tara has published in the anthologies Rumors Secrets and Lies, Poems about Abortion, Pregnancy and Choice, Write-Haus, Aether Avenue Press, The San Diego Poetry Annual, Vita and the Woolf Literary Journal, and Dumbo Press. She received a BA in Russian Literature from UC San Diego and Ph.D. in Modern Languages from the University of Bath, UK. In addition, Tara regularly teach poetry workshops.
