Contributor's Notes - Eclectica Magazine, v25n4 Oct/Nov 2021

Oct/Nov 2021

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.

David Ewald is Eclectica's Nonfiction Editor. A previous contributor, his work has also appeared in Metazen, BULL: Men's Fiction, Denver Syntax, The Chimaera, Spork Press, and Halfway Down the Stairs, among other publications. He is the author of the novel He Who Shall Remain Shameless, and his chapbook Markson's Pier (written with Stuart Ross) was published in Volume XI of Essays & Fictions.

Evan Martin Richards is Eclectica's Poetry Editor. He grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, and lives in Chicago. He received his MA in Writing and Publishing from DePaul University, where he worked as a writing tutor and facilitated creative writing and EdD candidate writing groups. His poetry has appeared in Poetry East and Eclectica. He has read fiction for Another Chicago Magazine and served as a poetry judge for the Golden Shovel Anthology Competition hosted by Roosevelt University. He works as an editor, both freelance and in the nonprofit management field.

M. M. Adjarian is this issue's Spotlight Author runner-up for nonfiction. She is a critic, essayist, freelance writer, and occasional poet who has published in such journals as the Baltimore Review, Verdad, Grub Street, Pif, Glint, Gravel, Crack the Spine, and the North Dakota Quarterly. Her articles and reviews have appeared in Arts + Culture Texas, Bitch, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, and the Dallas Voice. A former college professor, Ms. Adjarian now lives in Austin and teaches craft courses in creative nonfiction through the Writers League of Texas. "The Periodic Heart" is the second chapter of her family memoir-in-progress, This Life That Binds. You can follow her on Twitter @mmveritas.

Peter Amos lives in Queens, New York, with his wife and young son. He studied jazz and classical guitar in college before moving to the city. You can read more of his work at The Bitter Southerner, Cleaver Magazine, and Brevity.

Peter Bernstein is an aspiring writer living in the Seattle area. He was educated for two years at Seattle Central Community College, and then continued his education for free at the local library, where he is still educated to this day. His fiction has appeared in Spring Hill Review, with forthcoming fiction to be published in Evening Street Review. His poetry has appeared in WestWard Quarterly, Spread, and PoetsWest.

Andrew Bertaina is the author of the short story collection One Person Away From You (2021), which won the Moon City Press Fiction Award (2020). His work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Witness Magazine, Redivider, Orion, and The Best American Poetry and notable at Best American Essays 2020. He has an MFA from American University in Washington, DC. He says, "As for the essay itself, I wrote it during a very interesting and difficult stretch in my life. I feel like this essay really captures a particular moment in my intellectual and personal development when everything was in flux, and I think you can see that play out in the essay. It's a bit of a spiritual and philosophical investigation of what actually comprises a self, and I think this question really drove a lot of my thinking for a year or two in my life."

Susan Bloch-Welliver xxxxx

Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels.

Barbara De Franceschi is an Australian poet who lives in Broken Hill, a small mining town in outback New South Wales. Besides two collections of poetry, her work has appeared in anthologies and journals Australia wide, on-line, and in other countries, as well as being featured on national radio. For the past four years, Barbara has been part of the Enrich-Art in Health programme, an initiative of the NSW University Department of Rural Health to increase communication skills through creative writing and expand attitudes to compliment undergraduate studies for health professionals. She is also a member of The University of the Third Age and shares her skills with the community at large and people in aged care facilities.

Jenny Falloon studied English Literature at UC Berkeley and years ago wrote articles for San Francisco Bay Area sailing magazines. She has lived in Canada, the US, The Bahamas, England, and now Spain. Since retirement, her writing has won prizes in the U3A Javea and Xabia Book Circle. Her short stories have appeared in The Writing Disorder, Belle Ombre, Tales From a Small Planet, CafeLit, and CommuterLit. She writes satire, flash fiction, and short stories.

Jennifer Finstrom is both part-time faculty and staff at DePaul University. She was the poetry editor of Eclectica Magazine for 13 years, and recent publications include Atlanta Review and Escape into Life. Her work also appears in Ides: A Collection of Poetry Chapbooks and several other Silver Birch Press anthologies.

Virginia Bach Folger lives in an 1888 Victorian house in Schenectady, New York, where she writes from and office in the second story of the turret. She has had various jobs ranging from gas station attendant to corporate learning and development manager. Her poetry has appeared in Concho River Review, Adanna, and Plainsongs.

Robert Fromberg is the author of How to Walk with Steve (Latah Books), a memoir of autism, art, death, and embarrassment from Peoria to CBGB. His essays on the rhetoric of past pop culture can be found in the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Babel Tower Notice Board, Talk Vomit, and other periodicals. His essays on autism and the creative process are in The Dillydoun Review.

Cordelia Hanemann is a practicing writer and artist in Raleigh, North Carolina. A retired professor of English at Campbell University, she has published in numerous journals including Atlanta Review, Connecticut River Review, Southwestern Review, and Laurel Review; anthologies, The Poet Magazine's new anthology, Friends and Friendship, Heron Clan and Kakalak and in her own chapbook, Through a Glass Darkly. Her poem, "photo-op" was a finalist in the Poems of Resistance competition at Sable Press, and her poem "Cezanne's Apples" was nominated for a Pushcart. Recently the featured poet for Negative Capability Press and The Alexandria Quarterly, she is now working on a first novel about her roots in Cajun Louisiana.

Thomas J. Hubschman is a regular contributor to Eclectica's Salon and is the author of Look at Me Now, My Bess, Billy Boy, Father Walther's Temptation, Song of the Mockingbird, and The Jew's Wife & Other Stories, as well as three science fiction novels. His work has appeared in New York Press, The Antigonish Review, The Blue Moon Review and many other publications. Two of his short stories were broadcast on the BBC World Service. He has also edited two anthologies of new writing from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean, and he was the founding editor of the pioneering online publication Gowanus. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, which remains his chief inspiration.

Judy Kaber is the Poet Laureate of Belfast, Maine, as well as the author of three chapbooks: Renaming the Seasons, In Sleep We Are All the Same, and A Pandemic Alphabet. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in publications such as Atlanta Review, december, Crab Orchard Review, Hunger Mountain, and Spillway. She has won the Maine Postmark Poetry Contest, the Larry Kramer Memorial Chapbook Contest, and second place in the 2016 Muriel Craft Bailey Poetry Contest.

Autumn McClintock lives in Philadelphia. Poems of hers have recently appeared in The Account, Cimarron Review, Denver Quarterly, and The Georgia Review, among others. Her chapbook, After the Creek, was published in 2016. She is a staff reader for Ploughshares and Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. "Dirt Bird/Ugly Tanka" is part of a series, all in Japanese forms, that considers the human relationship to/with the common House Sparrow.

Tom Noyes has published three collections of short fiction: Come By Here (Autumn House, 2013), Spooky Action at a Distance (Dufour, 2007) and Behold Faith (Dufour, 2003). His newest book, The Substance of Things Hoped For: A Novel, appeared with Slant Books earlier this year. In addition, he directs the BFA program at Penn State Behrend, where he also serves as a Consulting Editor for the literary journal Lake Effect.

Christine Potter is a poet and writer from the lower Hudson River Valley. Her verse has appeared in Sweet, Fugue, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Rattle, and Kestrel as well as Eclectica—and has been featured on ABC Radio News. Her young adult time-traveling series, The Bean Books, is published by Evernight Teen.

Rebecca Pyle is Pushcart nominated author from Utah. Other stories by her are in, or about to be in, Pangyrus ("The Royal Dervish Hotel"), Guesthouse ("White as Clouds"), Posit ("The Dying Plane"), Gargoyle ("The Pond by the Anthropology Museum"), Gris-Gris ("The Girl Who Lived in the Lighthouse with her Brother"). And her work is in many other journals, as fiction, poems, an essay now and then. Also, as artwork—paintings, photographs, drawings, sometimes covers of journals.

Mala Rai is a poet, drummer, psychology student, and technical writing hired gun on the West Coast. Her poems have appeared in Eclectica Magazine, High Shelf Press, The Miramichi Reader, and Anti-Heroin Chic. You can follow her on Instagram @malaraipoetry.

Vikram Ramakrishnan was born in Bangalore, India, and grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He's an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania and enthusiastic member of Odyssey Writing Workshop's class of 2020, where he received the Walter & Kattie Metcalf Scholarship. He's the winner of the 17th Annual Gival Press Short Story Prize. His work has been published in SAND Journal, Newfound, and others.

Russell Rowland is a seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee who writes from New Hampshire's Lakes Region, where he has judged high-school Poetry Out Loud competitions. His work appears in Except for Love: New England Poets Inspired by Donald Hall (Encircle Publications), and Covid Spring, Vol. 2 (Hobblebush Books). His latest poetry book, Wooden Nutmegs, is available from Encircle Publications.

Greg Sendi is a Michigan native who lives in and writes from the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago. His career has included broadcast and trade journalism as well as poetry and fiction and a stint as fiction editor of Chicago Review. His work has appeared in a wide range of print and online literary magazines. Greg can be found on Twitter at @gsendi. "The Green Lion and the Sun" draws on the life history of Carl Stamitz, a prolific but little-remembered 18th century German-Czech composer who experienced a period of fame during his lifetime but died in poverty and obscurity in 1801.

Corinna Schulenburg (she/her) is an artist and activist committed to ensemble practice and social justice. She's a white queer transgender woman, a mother, a playwright, a poet, a Creative Partner of Flux Theatre Ensemble, and the director of communications at Theatre Communications Group. Corinna has worked on over 40 plays in New York City and across the country. She has poems published or upcoming in 86 Logic, Arachne Press, Canned, Capsule Stories, Eclectica Magazine, Lost Pilots, Long Con, LUPERCALIA Press, miniskirt magazine, Oroboro, Pastel Pastoral, The Westchester Review, Wingless Dreamer, and Zoetic Press.

Ann Skea lives in Australia. She is the author of Ted Hughes: The Poetic Quest (UNE Press, Australia) and has been contributing reviews to Eclectica Magazine since our very first issue back in October of 1996.

Gregory Stephenson grew up in Colorado and Arizona but has lived for many years in Denmark. His most recent publication is Is Baseball Holy? Jack Kerouac & the National Pastime, Ober-Limbo Verlag, Heidelberg, Germany, 2021.

Lakshmi Arya Thathachar is this issue's Spotlight Author runner-up for poetry. An academician based in India, she is a historian by training and a philosopher by aspiration. She earned a PhD in Modern Indian History from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her academic travels, however, have taken her out of her home discipline and into other terrain such as Philosophy. It is from such unexpected points of arrival and unforeseen destinations that she writes, both academically and creatively. She strives to bring place and emotion together in her work. Her poems and short stories have previously been published in Eclectica Magazine, Pratilipi, Mojave Heart Review, and other journals.

Varsha Tiwary is a writer at heart and a career Government Auditor from New Delhi, India. She says, "While audit reports try to measure gaps between the way things profess to be and the way they are by asking questions, literature's fascination is with questions themselves and how the personal and political are intertwined. Literature's supreme achievement is to make everything personal to the reader." Her short stories and essays have been published in DNA-Out Of Print lit mag; Kitaab; Basil O'Flaherty; Muse India, Jaggerylit, Manifest-station, Spark, Usawa, Café Dissensus, Gargoyle, Outlook, Shenandoah, and Months to Years Covid Flash.