Erinn Batykefer is a writer and a librarian based in Pittsburgh, PA. She earned her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is the author of Allegheny, Monongahela (Red Hen Press), The Artist’s Library (Coffee House Press), and Epithalamia, winner of the 2019 Autumn House Press Chapbook Prize. She served as co-founder and editor of The Library as Incubator Project, for which she was named a Library Journal Mover and Shaker, and is co-instigator of the I Art Libraries network.
Erinn teaches yoga and wears a lot of bracelets.
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F. J. Bergmann is the poetry editor of Mobius: The Journal of Social Change. She lives in Wisconsin and fantasizes about tragedies on or near exoplanets. Her work has appeared in Asimov’s SF, Polu Texni, Soft Cartel, Spectral Realms, Vastarien, and elsewhere. She thinks imagination can compensate for anything.
F. J. hopes all of her dreams materialize simultaneously, but this might best take place outdoors, a long way from any power lines.
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Michael Brockley is a retired school psychologist who lives in Muncie, Indiana where he is looking for a dog to adopt. He is a fan of the Cincinnati Reds, the blues, singer-songwriters, and noir movies. His poems have appeared in Down in the Dirt, Of Rust and Glass, and Visiting Bob: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Bob Dylan.
During his 33 years of working in rural northeast Indiana schools, Brockley became well-known for his collection of over 800 conversational neckties which he wore to celebrate or commemorate the various holidays, historical events, birthdays, and national days that fell within any given calendar year.
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Dr. Sara Cleto and Dr. Brittany Warman are award-winning folklorists, teachers, and writers with over four dozen publications. Together, they founded The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic, teaching creative souls how to re-enchant their lives through folklore and fairy tales. Their poetry and prose can be found in Uncanny Magazine, Apex, Star*Line, Enchanted Living, and more. Sara and Brittany also deliver sold-out lectures at venues like the Smithsonian, the Profs & Pints series, the Maryland Renaissance Festival, the Contemporary American Theater Festival, and FaerieCon.
Sara and Brittany are actually kind of shy in person, but, during the full moon, they have been known to crush “Total Eclipse of the Heart” at karaoke.
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Michael Thomas Ellis has been published in various and diverse corners of the poetry world, including The Talking Stick, Waymark, the anthology Moving Images: Poetry Inspired by Film, Anti-Heroin Chic, Cajun Mutt, Loud Coffee Press, Red Fez, Everywriter, Red Penguin and Sunlight Press, and frequently in his favorite daily breakfast treat, The Drabble. He writes when the urge strikes him, and submits his poetry for publication even less so.
Michael claims to have never found a punctuation mark that he particularly cared for, except maybe the anticlimactic period, and so in this regard (if not others), begs the forgiveness and indulgence of all who read his stuff. He is married to an editor. Imagine the conversations.
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Alexander Etheridge has been developing his poems and translations since 1998. His poems have been featured in Wilderness House Literary Review, Cerasus Journal, The Cafe Review, The Madrigal, Abridged Magazine, Susurrus Magazine, The Journal, Roi Faine’ant Literary Press, and many others. He was the winner of the Struck Match Poetry Prize in 1999.
Alexander LOVES dogs, and long walks through twilight trees. He has a crippling addiction to Red Bull. He’s not afraid to be a dork. He is Alexander Etheridge, and he is a recovering snob.
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Karen Greenbaum-Maya is a retired clinical psychologist, German major, and two-time Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee. Her work has appeared in journals including Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, B O D Y, Comstock Poetry Review, Rappahannock Poetry Review, CHEST, and Spillway. She is a frequent contributor to Riddled with Arrows. Kattywompus Press publishes Burrowing Song, Eggs Satori, and, Kafka’s Cat. Kelsay Books publishes The Book of Knots and their Untying. She co-curates Fourth Sundays, a poetry series in Claremont, California. Her husband Walter died of lung cancer in 2018.
Karen’s poem “Storisende” first appeared in Schuykill Valley Journal in 2019.
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Becky Nicole James earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University. Her poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared in many publications including Margie, Birmingham Arts Journal, Moon City Review, and Third Wednesday, and she writes for the International Bipolar Foundation. A former English professor, Becky is a reader for the speculative magazine Metaphorosis. Follow Becky on Twitter @beckynjames to see what she’s thinking about books, writing, and theatre.
Becky loves roller skates, Broadway show tunes, and Moon Cheese. You’re likely to find her hunched over books of poetry or taking photographs of wild violets.
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Lorraine Jeffery has won prizes in state and national contests and published over a hundred poems in journals including Clockhouse, Kindred, Calliope, Canary, Ibbetson Street, Rockhurst Review, Naugatuck River Review, Orchard Street Press, Healing Muse and Bacopa Press. Her first book is titled When the Universe Brings Us Back, 2022.
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Nature photographer, photo editor, now graduate student in information and library science, John Kaprielian brings his keen eye for natural history to his poems, which are often inspired by his observations. He has been writing poetry for 40 years, and studied creative writing at Cornell with the poet A.R. Ammons while getting his undergraduate degree in Russian linguistics. His work has been published in CP Quarterly, Poetry Quarterly, Young Ravens Literary Review, Seaborne Magazine, and many other journals, and he has a poetry collection available on Amazon. He lives in Putnam County, NY, with his wife and assorted pets.
John will soon be able to call himself a librarian, a fact he finds mildly terrifying. He is also the official stinkbug murderer of his household.
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A New Englander with old farming roots, Karen Kilcup has been an educator for over forty years, teaching all over the northeastern U.S. as well as in England and Switzerland. The Elizabeth Rosenthal Excellence Professor of English, Environmental & Sustainability Studies, and Women’s & Gender Studies at UNC Greensboro, she has numerous publications. Her first book of poetry, The Art of Restoration, was awarded the 2021 Winter Goose Poetry Prize. Karen regularly teaches courses in Literature and the Environment and, with her students, is developing an online, open-access anthology of children’s nature writing and environmental writing, The Envious Lobster. Visit Karen Kilcup.org.
An avid cook, runner, and rock climber, Karen is always trying to resist the urge for More Garden. In her indoor life, she edits a professional quarterly, ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture, and writes books with deliberately provocative titles like Who Killed American Poetry?: From National Obsession to Elite Possession.
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Anthony Lawrence‘s most recent collection is Ken (Life Before Man, 2021). Headwaters, (Pitt Street Poetry) won the Prime Ministers Award for Poetry, 2017. He is a senior lecturer in Creative Writing at Griffith university, and lives on Moreton Bay, Queensland.
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Influenced by David Bowie, Virginia Woolf and Sally Wainwright, Elinora Lord is a lesbian writer of stage, screen, fiction, poetry and radio from the UK. Her novel, Everland has been selected for the Penguin and Random House WriteNow 2021 Editorial Programme, and her short films have been selected by Pinewood Studios & Lift-Off Sessions, Cannes Film Festival, Raindance Film Festival, Camden Fringe Festival and Edinburgh Fringe Festival, while her theatre shows have been performed in London’s West End and on Broadway, where she won the award for Best Monologue.
Elinora is also working on The Art of Almost, a lesbian comedy-drama radio series as well as writing a television drama series and the sequel to her novel, Everland.
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Rachel Mallalieu is the author of A History of Resurrection (forthcoming April 23, 2022 from Alien Buddha Press). Her work is featured or coming soon in Haunted Waters Press, Nelle, Entropy, Anti-Heroin Chic, 8Poems, 2River View, Tribes, Jarfly, Dialogist, Rattle and elsewhere.
Rachel is an emergency physician and mother of five. It’s obvious these dual careers lend themselves to tons of downtime, so naturally, she needed another thing to do, and turned to poetry.
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Alex McKeown is an Australian poet, translator, playwright and software engineer. His work has appeared most recently in The Book of Penteract, The Osmosis Press Featured Writing Blog, The World Haiku Review, and The Black Scat Review. A selection can be read on his website.
You will often find Alex drinking yerba mate.
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Jennifer Met lives in a small town in North Idaho. She is a nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net anthology, a finalist for Nimrod’s Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, and winner of the Jovanovich Award. Recent work is published or forthcoming in Cimarron Review, the Museum of Americana, Nimrod, Ninth Letter, Superstition Review, and Zone 3, among other journals. She serves as an Assistant Prose Poetry Editor for Pithead Chapel and is the author of the microchapbook That Which Sunlight Chases (Origami Poems Project) and the chapbook Gallery Withheld (Glass Poetry Press). Find more at jennifermet.com
Jennifer’s poem “Vivarium” first appeared as “The Story of Man Vs Nature” in pacificREVIEW.
Jennifer can attest that the best part of living in the middle of nowhere is you don’t have to close your curtains because there is no one to look inside (except Bigfoot). At an early age she was inspired to write poetry by the movie So I Married An Axe Murder. The opening of that same movie is probably why she never drinks coffee.
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Kathryn Paulsen’s poetry and prose have appeared in publications from Canada to Ireland to Australia, including New Letters, The New York Times, The Stinging Fly, Humber Literary Review, Scum, London Reader, and Spillway. Her short story collection The Gravity of Longings and poetry chapbook Catch of the Night have been finalists in a variety of competitions, and she’s been awarded fellowships at Yaddo, MacDowell, and other retreats. She lives in New York City but, having grown up in an Air Force family, has roots in many places and suffers from chronic wanderlust. See her occasional musings at ramblesandrevels.blogspot.com.
Kathryn’s favorite way to start a day is writing down her dreams of the night before.
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M. Kelly Peach was baking bread long before the pandemic. Recent loaves include Struan, Italian, and Potato. He donated, of his own volition, the family collection of Disney movies to a thrift store years ago and his children, all adults, have yet to forgive him. His author’s website is mkellypeach.com. He has work published or appearing in Suicidaliens, Entropy, Inverted Syntax, Resist With Every Inch and Every Breath, Unsung Stories, and Woods Reader.
It’s corny but true. M. Kelly Peach, after forty years, still believes his beloved bride Monica is the most beautiful girl in the world.
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Barbara Reynolds is a retired mathematics teacher whose poems have appeared in Avocet, Indolent Books: What Rough Beast, Muddy River Poetry Review, The Somerville Times, Willowdown Books anthology “Poems from The Lockdown,” and Somerville Poetry Open 2021: Together In Poetry, a collection of Somerville poets. She was also a winner in the poetry category of Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Funky Nests in Funky Places contest. Barbara lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, with Tootie.
Until Barbara retired from teaching, much of her writing was unwritten.
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Fiona Ritchie Walker is a Scot, now living in England. A former journalist, she landed her dream job in her 40s, travelling the world to help fair trade producers and artisans share their stories. Her own writing was mainly poetry for many years, with work in anthologies and collections, plus poems appearing in an airport, on postcards and in bus shelters. Recently she has been enjoying writing short fiction, but poems do still spring up on her. Find her on Twitter @guttedherring
Fiona’s poem “Typecast” first appeared in her collection Garibaldi’s Legs (Iron Press, 2005)
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Marge Simon is a writer/poet/illustrator living in Ocala, FL, USA. A multiple Stoker winner and Grand Master of SFPA, her works appear in Asimov’s, Daily Science Fiction, Silver Blade, and anthologies such as Spectral Realms, Chiral Mad series, You, Human, and What Remains, Firbolg Publishing. Visit her art galleries at margesimon.com
Marge has lived long enough to realize she really don’t know that much, and neither does anyone else or we’d be having no more wars.
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Sivakami Velliangiri is a poet, born in Madras and brought up at Trivandrum, and now living in Chennai. When Sivakami Velliangiri was Sivakami Ramanathan she published her poems in Youth Times, and in various other literary journals. Professor Srinivasa Iyengar included her among the women poets in his History of Indian Writing in English (1980). She is Founder Member and Co-curator of The Quarantine Train, an online Poetry Workshop. Her online Chapbook In My Midriff was published by Lily Literary Review. How We Measured Time is her debut poetry book. Her poems appear in The Penguin Book of Indian Poets, edited by Jeet Thayil, April 2022.
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T.D. Walker is the author of the poetry collections Small Waiting Objects (CW Books, 2019) and Maps of a Hollowed World (Another New Calligraphy 2020). Her poems and stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, Web Conjunctions, The Cascadia Subduction Zone, Luna Station Quarterly, and elsewhere. Find out more at tdwalker.net
One of these days, T.D. Walker will actually put everything together for Part 15 Poetry, in which work read by poets will be broadcast via a low-power FM transmitter to listeners standing (very) nearby….
T.D.’s poem “Last Generation: The Undertaker Examines the Bones of the Last Dead Aboard the Ship” first appeared in her collection Maps of a Hollowed World (Another New Calligraphy, 2020).
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Stephen Wing is the author of three books of poems, the “Earth Poetry” chapbook series, and Free Ralph!, an eco-comic novel with an environmental theme. He lives in Atlanta, where he serves on the boards of Nuclear Watch South and the Lake Claire Community Land Trust and hosts his “Earth Poetry” workshop each season in a different urban greenspace or nature preserve. His work has appeared most recently in Communities magazine and the online publications Cobalt Review and The Ear. Visit him at StephenWing.com.
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Amanda Yskamp is a writer of many genres and a collagist. Her artwork has appeared in such magazines as Black Rabbit, WordRunner Editions, and Stoneboat. She lives on the 10-year flood plain of the Russian River, where she teaches writing from her online classroom and serves as a librarian at the local elementary school.
Riddled with Arrows 5.3:
“Eulogies, Epilogues, & Effigies”
Foreword: After Words
Contents | Featured Fiction
To the Sea | Earth to Earth
Blood and Bone | Dust in the Wind
Writing Endings