Oct/Nov 2008

Tom Dooley co-founded Eclectica in 1996 and serves as its Managing Editor. In the 12 years between earning a BA in English literature from the University of Chicago and a MPA in municipal management from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, he taught middle and high school English in Alaska, Arizona, and Wisconsin, amassing fond memories, dubious experiences, and debt. Two careers post-teaching later, he now creates spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides for the man by day, edits Eclectica by night, and feels very grateful for the blessings he has received—chief among them being married to the sweetest gal and the best poet he knows. He and said gal reside in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with enough rescued lapdogs to field a diminutive Iditarod racing team and the empty-nest echoes of two amazing Haitian-American children who have flown the coop.

Colleen Mondor is Eclectica's Review Editor. She also reviews for Bookslut, the Voices of NOLA, and Booklist. Short story excerpts from her novel on Alaskan aviation have recently appeared in failbetter and Storyglossia. She maintains a daily blog on all things literary (and sometimes not) at her site, Chasingray.com.

Elizabeth P. Glixman is Eclectica's Interview Editor. Her fiction and poetry have appeared online and in print in Wicked Alice, In Posse Review, 3 A.M. Magazine, Tough Times Companion, a publication of The Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, Her Circle Ezine, Frigg, and Velvet Avalanche, an anthology of erotic poetry. Besides Eclectica, her author interviews, articles, book reviews, and creative non-fiction pieces have appeared in The Pedestal Magazine, Whole Life Times, Spirit of Change, Hadassah Magazine, and the anthologies Chocolate for A Woman's Soul II and Cup of Comfort For Women. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks: A White Girl Lynching (Pudding House Publications, 2008), Cowboy Writes a Letter & Other Love Poems (Pudding House Publications, 2010), and The Wonder of It All (Alternating Current, 2012). Elizabeth's story, "Mother's Bony Behind," was chosen one of the notable online stories of 2006 by the Million Writers Award. Elizabeth is an animal lover, and she has a blog devoted to shelter animals, especially those at kill shelters.

Jennifer Finstrom has been the Poetry Editor of Eclectica since the fall issue of 2005. This is her final issue in that capacity. A former Spotlight Author, she teaches in the First-Year Writing Program, tutors in writing, and facilitates writing groups at DePaul University. Recent publications include Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Escape Into Life, Gingerbread House Literary Magazine, and NEAT. For Silver Birch Press, she has work appearing in The Great Gatsby Anthology, the Alice in Wonderland Anthology, and in Ides: A Collection of Poetry Chapbooks.

Pamela Mackey is Eclectica's Copy Editor. She teaches English at a community college in central New York. Earlier in her career, she wrote feature stories for newspapers, including The New York Times. Even earlier, she was a researcher and editor in the magazine industry, holding staff positions at LOOK and Saturday Review magazines. She writes poetry and is the mother of a gifted young novelist.

Tamara M. Brenno-Uribarri served as the fiction co-editor for this issue. She received her masters in creative writing and literature theory from Hollins University. She lives in Albuquerque with her husband Dominic and teaches English at the University of New Mexico.

Jason Armitage lives in Madrid and splits his time between technology analysis, teaching, and writing.

Alan C. Baird lives in Phoenix, where the temperatures hover just below ten thousand degrees.

Nick Bakshi recently finished his sophomore year at Brown University, where he was awarded the Lisa Beth Feldman Prize for literary arts. He's taking a semester off from his studies to live and write in Paris. To occupy his free time, he works as an intern, online, at The Adirondack Review. His works have appeared in Johnny America, Diddledog, The Forge Journal, Pocket Change, and Static Movement. Regarding "Stanley's Lonely Love Song," he says, "This was my first attempt at horror. I recieved some very harsh criticisms from my mother and grandmother ('This is vile,' 'I can't believe this came from my (grand) son,' 'You're sick,' etc.), and realized I had something worth shopping around."

Simon Barker is an Australian who lives in Sydney but has lived in both Melbourne and California. Amongst other things he has worked as a bus conductor, a teacher, a librarian and (unwittingly) as a typist on the Star Wars project. Some of his fiction has previously appeared in Overland and Fieldstone Review, and some is due to appear in Antipodes and Istanbul Literary Review.

Greta Bolger is a writer and entrepreneur from the heart of Michigan. She has published poetry in The Red Cedar Review and other small journals and recently published an essay, "Homing Instinct," in Third Coast.

Siddhartha Bose grew up in Mumbai and Calcutta, followed by a seven year itch in the United States. Trained as an actor, he made short films and is presently completing his first collection. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in various journals, including The Wolf (London), Fulcrum (Boston) and Alhamra Literary Review (Karachi). He lives in London, where he has been a featured performer at poetry nights like the acclaimed "La Langoustine est morte" series, "New Blood," and "The Shuffle." He has read his work on radio and will be reading for the Poet in the City/City of London festival in June.

Bob Bradshaw is a programmer living in Redwood City, CA. He is a big fan of the Rolling Stones. Recent work of his can be found at Tattoo Highway, Slow Trains, Boston Literary Magazine, Mannequin Envy, Poems Niederngasse, Blue Fifth Review, Orange RoomæReview, Apple Valley Review, and Cha.

S.J. Brooks writes fiction, non-fiction, and songs. A graduate of Auburn University, he lives with his wife in Tucson, where he plays in a band, walks in the desert, and is a second-year student in the MFA program at the University of Arizona. His fiction has most recently appeared online in nimble and Stickman Review.

Kevin Brown resides in Cleveland, Tennessee, where he teaches English and writes. He has published poems and articles in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Academe, REAL: Regarding Arts and Letters, Inside HigherEd.com, Jeopardy, Pinyon, Eclectica, and The Pacific Review, among other journals. His forthcoming book, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels, will be published this year. Regarding the essay in this issue, he says, "My original thought for the essay comes from a different story my mother tells about me. Whenever the old Nationwide commercial could come on (Nationwide... is on your side), I would pull up my shirt, look at my side, and say, "It's not on my side." That made me think about why one takes anything literally."

Jared Carter recently published Cross this Bridge at a Walk with Wind Publications in Kentucky. His poem, "Prophet Township," which first appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review, was selected for the print anthology Best of the Web 2008 published by Dzanc Books. Additional poems and stories may be found on his web site.

Antonia Clark works for a medical software company in Burlington, Vermont. She has taught college-level creative writing and is currently co-administrator of an online poetry forum, The Waters. Her poems have recently appeared in kaleidowhirl, Lily, Loch Raven Review, Lucid Rhythms, Orange Room Review, The Pedestal Magazine, Rattle, Stirring, and elsewhere. She loves French travel, food, and wine, and plays French cafe music on a sparkly purple accordion. Toni invites poets to visit The Waters, home of 77 Sunset Beach, where members go to write a poem a day for seven days.

Barbara De Franceschi is an Australian poet who lives in Broken Hill, a small mining town in outback New South Wales. When not writing poetry or committed to family and business, Barbara involves herself in community work. She was awarded the Order of Australia Medal in 2002 for her achievements in the area of multiculturalism. Her poetry has appeared in various literary journals Australia-wide and online in the USA and Switzerland. Barbara is an adventuress writer who is continuously trying to find new ways and forms to present her work; she has experimented with sound and musical composition to enhance her recitals, with stimulating results. Her first collection, Lavender Blood, was published in 2004, and the manuscript for a second collection is well under way. Barbara is a member of the performance group "The Silver Tongued Ferals" and performs at caravan parks, arts festivals, etc., and has read her poetry live to air on ABC Radio on a number of occasions.

Gez Devlin skulls the seas around San Francisco. He writes in the left transept of the Tenderloin's St. Boniface Church and frequents Frank's "21 Club" on Turk.

Chelsey Flood lives in Cornwall, UK, where she runs a lit night called Telltales (online submissions encouraged). While she is in Cornwall, she spends her time trying to leave, and while she is away, she spends her time trying to get back. She's starting to realize this is just the kind of person she is. "So Small and So Far Away" was written in a blast at Alex Keegan's Bootcamp and was generally unpopular, so she's very happy it found a home at the Eclectica. Chelsey's newest work can be seen at Word Riot and is upcoming in Route 'Born in the 1980s and Birmingham Arts Journal.

Vanessa Gebbie is Welsh, lives in England, holidays in Scotland, and writes in Ireland. She is new to poetry and her tentative first steps have appeared in Shadowtrain, Innisfree Poetry Journal, and Alba among others. Her short fiction is widely published (including two appearances in Eclectica) and has won many awards. She co-edits the small press literary short story magazine Cadenza and runs her own ezine, Tom's Voice Magazine, for writing from those whose lives have been touched by addiction. Her debut collection Words from a Glass Bubble (Salt Publishing 2008) was nominated for the Frank O'Connor Award. She is studying for an MPhil in Writing at the University of Glamorgan, writing a novel, co-writing a growing collection of Kafkaesque letters, and working on her second collection of short fiction, due out from Salt in late 2009. The two poems in this issue are from a growing series inspired by memories of Merthyr Tydfil in south Wales.

Taylor Graham has appeared many times in Eclectica and also in International Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, The New York Quarterly, Poetry International, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere, and she's included in the anthology, California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara University, 2004). Her book, The Downstairs Dance Floor (Texas Review Press, 2006), was awarded the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize. Her current project is Walking with Elihu, poems on the American peace activist Elihu Burritt, the Learned Blacksmith.

William Reese Hamilton lives in Choroni, a fishing village on the coast of Venezuela, butted up against a mountainous cloud forest, in a region that produces the finest cacao in the world. His stories have appeared in The Paris Review, The North American Review, Puerto del Sol, Night Train Magazine, Eclectica Magazine, Review Americana, In Posse Review, Adirondack Review, Scrivener Creative Review, Steel City Review, Loch Raven Review, Vestal Review, Temenos, The MacGuffin, Taj Mahal Review, Ink Pot/Lit Pot, Smokelong Quarterly, and elsewhere. He has found his paradise and is studying it, warts and all.

Thomas J. Hubschman is a regular contributor to Eclectica's Salon, the author of the novel Billy Boy (Savvy Press), and the publisher of Gowanus, an ezine for authors in and from the so-called Third World. He is also editor of The Best of Gowanus: New Writing from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean (Gowanus Books). His short stories, articles and reviews have appeared in The Blue Moon Review, Morpo Review, New York Press, on the BBC World Service and in numerous other print and online publications.

Sheila Killian is a teacher and writer living in the west of Ireland with her young family. Her poetry and short prose has appeared in Brevity, the national radio compilation A Page in the Life, Common Ties, Smokelong Quarterly, The Shop, and Revival. In 2005 she won the Molly Keane Creative Writing Award. She is working on a book about Africa.

Niranjana Iyer is a writer from Ottawa, Canada, whose work has appeared in The Missouri Review, The Smithsonian Magazine, and SmokeLong Quarterly, amongst other venues. Her blog is called "Brown Paper" (see link).

Lori Lamothe lives in Massachusetts with her eight-year-old daughter and two hermit crabs. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in 42opus, Barn Owl Review, Blackbird, Third Coast, Seattle Review, Linebreak, Switched-on Gutenberg, and other magazines, with several reviews forthcoming at Mostly Fiction Book Reviews.. Her chapbook, Camera Obscura, was published by Finishing Line Press.

Dorothee Lang edits the BluePrintReview, an experimental online journal, and is the author of Masala Moments, a travel novel about India. Her work has appeared in Hobart, Pindeldyboz, The Mississippi Review, Juked, NoTellMotel, Subtletea, and numerous other places, including, Eclectica.

Monika Lange (aka Mona Long) is a fiction writer and a former research scientist with numerous publications in scientific journals. Her essays, memoirs and short fiction were published in The Copperfield Review, Reader's Digest's Polish edition, Cenotaph's new Book of Remembrance Anthology, The Pilot, Living MS Magazine, Whistling Shade, Brew City Magazine, Long Story Short, and MS Connection. Her memoirs appeared in Eclectica in July/August 2006 and 2007. She also writes essays and memoirs for The Biulletin of Polish-Netherlands Culture Society in Breda, NL. A naturalized American citizen, Ms. Lange was born and raised in Poland, moved to Iran in 1977, and to the US in 1985. She lives in California with her husband and daughter. During the many years she spent in Iran, she studied that country's language, culture, and history, and she has just finished a semi-autobiographical novel set there just before the revolution of 1979, entitled Opium. Her other novel, The Dancing Shiva, inspired by a statuette in her father's study, is also ready for submission.

Richard Lewis is the son of American missionaries to Indonesia. He was born and raised in Bali, where he still lives with his wife and children, and was nine years old when all hell broke lose on that paradisiacal island. This scrap of memoir is critical background work to a novel that he is preparing to write about the 1965 massacre. He is the author of several YA novels (The Flame Tree, The Killing Sea, The Demon Queen, and the forthcoming Monster's Proof, all published by Simon and Schuster.

Elizabeth Mack is a graduate of The University of Nebraska at Omaha, where she received a BFA in Creative Writing and an MA in English with an emphasis in Nonfiction writing. She teaches English and Literature at Creighton University and Metro Community College in Omaha, and she dabbles in freelance writing. Her work has been published in South Dakota Review, Celebrate Poetry Journal, Eureka Studies, and is forthcoming in ISLE and Nebraskaland.

Gary Moshimer still works in a hospital near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where co-workers read his stories and shake their heads. He had to stress that "Priapus" was a totally fictional work, resembling no incidents in his real life. His most recent stories appear in Boston Literary Magazine, Pequin, and Ken*again.

Micah Nathan is the author of the best-selling novel Gods of Aberdeen (Simon & Schuster, 2005). He has written for Boston Globe Magazine, sold a horror screenplay, and his short fiction has been a finalist for the Tobias Wolff Award. Novels #2 and #3 are forthcoming.

Cecily Niumeitolu is a student of philosophy and English at Sydney University, works in a mad-hatter independent book store, and writes poetry that is occasionally published in printed journals and online. She has appeared in Voiceworks, Dotlit, Vibewire's annual Interface mag, Australian Reader, and the upcoming September issue of Underground Voices.

Tony O'Brien has published stories in various online and print magazines and in the print anthologies At Home and best New Zealand Fiction Volume 2. Tony works as a mental health nurse and lecturer in mental health nursing. "Kafka on everything" was written following a visit to Prague in 2005. He says, "There's a huge Kafka industry there, and I was fortunate to be able to see an exhibtion originally curated by the Barcelona Museum. The most telling exhibit was the Kafka family tree, which more or less ended about 1940."

Chez Pauff, CheesePuff to those who know him, is a regular Boot Camper, a man of many disguises!

Bojan Pavlovic is a Canadian author with roots in Bosnia-Hercegovina. He was born in Sarajevo, former Yugoslavia, in 1979, and immigrated to Canada in 1992, where he now lives and works in Toronto. He has written a number of short story collections and poetry compilations. Most of his works deal with themes of history and historicity, the role of myth in national consciousness, topics of nationalism, of war, and of identity. His first novel, Newcomers, Temporaries, was published in 2006. He has won a number of literary awards, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2004 and 2005 for his short-story work. This is his fourth appearance in Eclectica.

Roxanne Payne has been a working actress (as Julie Payne) since 1969. She now finds the act of writing more compelling, less dependent on the kindness of strangers, and deeply connected to the scene-building form of theatrical improvisation, which was her favorite way to work. (Her last role, as Larry David's mother-in-law in "Curb Your Enthusiasm," was improvised.) "Anneka" is her first published work, her second submission. The story was begun one night when she didn't want to make a phone call to a notoriously difficult woman whom she had never met, so she sat down and typed: "I didn't want to make the phone call." The purely fictional result bespeaks a life's worth of confusion about faith, others' and her own. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, actor/songwriter Richard Reicheg, and a miniature apricot poodle, her muse for a story-in-the-works about faith, confusion and dogs.

Meg Pokrass lives in San Francisco. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in 971 Menu, The Rose and Thorn, Thieves Jargon, Eclectica, Chanterelle's Notebook, 34th Parallel, Literary Mama, Blossombones, Ghoti, Elimae, Word Riot, Frigg, and Smokelong Quarterly's Fifth Anniversary Issue. She has performed with theatre companies throughout the United States and considers writing a natural extension of sensory work developed as an actor.

Gilbert Wesley Purdy has published poetry, prose and translation in many journals, paper and electronic, including: Jacket Magazine, Poetry International (San Diego State University), The Georgia Review (University of Georgia), Grand Street, SLANT (University of Central Arkansas), Consciousness Literature and the Arts (University of Wales, Aberystwyth), Orbis (UK), Eclectica, and Valparaiso Poetry Review. Links to his work online and to a selected bibliography of his work in paper venues appear at his Hyperlinked Online Bibliography.

Martin Roxby lives with his wife and many daughters in North Yorkshire in the UK. He writes with Alex Keegan's Boot Camp.

Nancy Saunders is a fiddle-playing mother of two lovelies from Bristol, who writes with Alex Keegan's Boot Camp. She has appeared in Seventh Quark, Eclectica, and Bluemag.

Susan Slaviero is the author of two forthcoming chapbooks of poetry: An Introduction to the Archetypes (shadowbox press, 2008) and Apocrypha (dancing girl press, 2009). Her work has appeared recently in Caffeine Destiny, Ghoti, Blood Orange Review, Cause & Effect, and elsewhere both online and in print. She designs and co-edits the electronic lit zine blossombones.

Ann Skealives in Australia. She is the author of Ted Hughes: The Poetic Quest (UNE Press, Australia).

Donna George Storey has a Ph.D. in Japanese literature and has published short fiction about East Asia in The Gettysburg Review and Prairie Schooner.

Don Thompson has been publishing poetry since the early sixties. Most recent chapbooks are Been There, Done That and Turning Sixty from March Street Press, and Sittin' on Grace Slick's Stoop, available from Pudding House. University of Wisconsin (Parallel Press) has Where We Live scheduled for next spring. He and his wife live on her family's cotton farm in the southern San Joaquin Valley. He commutes on back roads to a nearby prison where he's been teaching for a number of years.

Uche Peter Umez is the author of the children's novel Sam and the Wallet, the collection of short stories Tears in Her Eyes, and two volumes of poetry: Aridity of Feelings and Dark Through the Delta. He was the winner of the 2008 Bath Spa University Creative Writing Competition and a participant in the 2008 International Writing Program, USA.

G.K. Wuori is the author of over seventy stories published in the U.S., Japan, India, Germany, Spain, Algeria, Ireland, and Brazil. A Pushcart Prize winner and recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, his work has appeared in such journals as The Gettysburg Review, The Missouri Review, The Barcelona Review, Shenandoah, The Kenyon Review, StoryQuarterly, The Massachusetts Review, Mad Hatters Review, TriQuarterly, and Five Points. This is his third appearance in Eclectica. His story collection, Nude In Tub, was a New Voices Award Nominee by the Quality Paperback Book Club and his novel, An American Outrage, was Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year in fiction. He lives in Sycamore, Illinois, where he writes a monthly column called Cold Iron. About "Not the kind of pain..." he says, "Sometimes it’s fun to take a much-clichéd situation--in this case, the troubled marriage--and see if you can find a new way to work it. That's what got this story going, but the heart of it came about in a simple comment I overheard one day when a man, discussing a difficult time with his wife, said, 'I felt like she just cut my legs out from under me.' The rest of the credit we'll give to my muse, but it was a fun story to write."

 

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