Contributor's Notes, Eclectica Magazine, v29n1, Jan/Feb 2025

Jan/Feb 2025

Tom Dooley co-founded Eclectica in 1996 and serves as its Managing and Fiction 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.

Marko Fong is Eclectica's Nonfiction Coeditor. A former Spotlight Author, he lives in North Carolina with his wife, dog, and two cats. He's written fiction and non-fiction for many years, and publications include Solstice, Prick of the Spindle, RKVRY, and Volleyball Magazine.

Christine Potter is Eclectica's Poetry Editor. A former Spotlight Author, she appeared in Eclectica a dozen times before joining the staff. She lives with her husband and chonky cat Bella in a very old house in the Hudson River Valley. Her poetry has also appeared in Grain, The McNeese Review, Rattle, Roi Fanéant, Does It Have Pockets, ONE ART, SWIMM, and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily as well as having been featured on ABC Radio News. Her latest collection of poems, Unforgetting, is on Kelsay Books, and her young adult time travel novels are published by Evernight Teen.

Ben Adams is a poet, academic researcher, arts reviewer, and part-time servo clerk based on Kaurna Yerta in Adelaide, South Australia. His first full collection, A Synonym for Sobriety, was published in 2019 after being selected as the winner of that year's Friendly Street Single Poet Competition. More recently, he has been a regular arts reviewer for Solstice Media, completed a PhD in literature on Charles Bukowski and postmodern humanism, and co-authored scholarship on subjects including ideology and radicalization, securitized education, masculinities, and the incel movement.

Mikki Aronoff lives in New Mexico, where she writes tiny stories and advocates for animals. Her work has been long-listed for the Wigleaf Top 50 and nominated for Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, Best American Short Stories, and Best Microfiction. She appeared in Best Microfiction 2024 and in Best Small Fictions 2024.

Catherine Arra lives in the Hudson Valley of upstate New York, where she teaches part-time and facilitates local writing groups. She is the author of four full-length poetry collections and four chapbooks. Recent work appears in San Pedro River Review, Thimble Literary Magazine, Origami Poems Project, Stone Circle Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Unbroken, Impspired, and Unleashed Lit.

Joseph Bardin is an essayist and playwright based in Arizona by way of Trenton, NJ; Washington, DC; and Tel Aviv, Israel. He is the author of the essay collection Outlier Heart (IFERS Press). His essays have appeared in numerous publications, including Interim, Louisville Review, Superstition Review, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and Eclectica, and he has been anthologized in the Transhumanism Handbook (Springer). His plays have been performed both domestically and abroad. A scholarship alumni of the Valley Community of Writers, he is a member of the Dramatists Guild.

Andrew Bertaina is the author of the essay collection, The Body Is A Temporary Gathering Place (Autofocus 2024), and the short-story collection, One Person Away From You (Moon City Press Award Winner 2021). This is his eighth appearance in Eclectica; and his work has also been published in The ThreePenny Review, Orion, Prairie Schooner, Witness Magazine; anthologized in The Best American Poetry, The Best Microfiction; and listed as notable in three editions of The Best American Essays and as a Pushcart special mention. He has an MFA from American University.

Greta Bolger has written and published poetry for decades, both online and in print publications, including Eclectica, Sea to Sky Review, Thema, Juice Box, Literary Bohemian, The Mom Egg, and others. As a long-time participant in The Waters Poetry Forum, she has been recognized by the Interboard Poetry Competition multiple times. Greta lives "up north" in Michigan, making art and avoiding housework and large groups of people.

Theresa Buchta is a barista, union organizer, and writer with an MFA from Columbia University. Their work has been published by The Los Angeles Review and threeroomspress.

Rachel Dacus is the author of six novels and four poetry collections: Arabesque, Gods of Water and Air, Femme au Chapeau, and Earth Lessons. Her poetry, stories, and essays have appeared in Boulevard, Gargoyle, Prairie Schooner, Eclectica and Image: Art, Faith, and Mystery. Her poems are in Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California and Radiant DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English. She enjoys San Francisco Bay Area's open spaces, bohemian culture, and mild climate, despite being recently surprised by tsunami and tornado warnings. Poetry is the best warning system so far. Of the work in this issue, she says, "These two poems are from a new poetry collection I'm assembling at a time best described by the Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times. After a period of tumult and destruction in the outer world, my inner world was stuck in a whirlwind, and pausing my creative life seemed the only way. Now emerging from that, the title for a new book became my life story for the past few years, a new creative way forward, and a home for these poems. The book is called Pause, Shift and will be out in 2025."

Iyesatta Massaquoi Emeli is a writer, emergency medicine physician, professor, and mom. Her work has appeared in Eclectica Magazine, the New York Times Magazine, the Boston Globe, Journal of the American Medical association, Annals of Emergency Medicine, the Examined Life Journal, and Midnight & Indigo Magazine. She won the Richard J. Margolis Award for her short stories depicting the impact of war on Sierra Leone's children.

Munkh-Erdene lives in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, and was born into a herdsman family. He started riding horses when he was four. His interest in politics began after he became a victim of corruption, which made him want to study political science in the USA and learn how to make a positive difference.

Erica Miriam Fabri is a Brooklyn-based poet and the author of two books: Morphology (winner of the Write Bloody Publishing 2024 Jack McCarthy Book Award) and Dialect of a Skirt (finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize). She has been published in numerous literary journals, magazines, and anthologies. Her poetry has been featured in multi-media formats including art installations, short films, and television commercial programming. She teaches writing at Pace University and for The City University of New York (CUNY).

Elaine Brown Folgar was expected to be born with a silver spoon but arrived clutching handfuls of Crayolas. Attended Art Students League NYC Studied Fine Arts at School of Visual Arts NYC. Hung around Andy Warhol’s Factory NYC /included in Cecil Beaton portrait of Andy Warhol. Private classes in Batik with Morag Benepe, West Nyack, NY. Textile design program at Fashion Institute of Technology NYC. Private catering for artists: Richard and Evelyn Pousette-Dart, Bill T Jones and Arnie Zane and Co., Ms Jessye Norman at La Orchidee, Christina Biaggi. Taught private classes in Batik. Lives, draws, and paints in Valley Cottage, NY.

Amanda Ford is a mother, scientist, and comedy superfan. She has been published in Intima, and her work on galaxy evolution has appeared in Science, The Astrophysical Journal, and Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. She works as a data scientist for the San Francisco Mayor's Office, using modeling to better respond to the homelessness crisis.

Jeff Friedman has received an NEA Literature Translation Fellowship, two individual artist grants from the New Hampshire Arts Council, and numerous other awards. His 11th book, Broken Signals, was published by Bamboo Dart Press in August 2024. His poems and mini stories have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, Poetry International, New England Review, Dreaming Awake: New Contemporary Prose Poetry from the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, Smokelong Quarterly, Flash Fiction Funny, Flash Nonfiction Funny, 110-Word Story, Contemporary Surrealist and Magical Realist Anthology, Hotel Amerika, Antioch Review, 101 Jewish Poems for the Third Millennium, Best Microfiction 2021 2022, 2023, and 2024, and The New Republic.

Laura Foley is a bi/queer poet and the author of nine poetry collections. She has won a Narrative Magazine Poetry Prize, The Common Good Books Poetry Prize, The Poetry Box Editor's Choice Chapbook Award, the Bisexual Book Award, Atlanta Review's Grand Prize and others. Her work has been widely published in such journals as Alaska Quarterly, Valparaiso Poetry Review, American Life in Poetry, and included in numerous anthologies such as How to Love the World and Poetry of Presence. Regarding "The Good Kind of Chill," she says, "...a daily meditation practice, usually outside, beneath a tree, or on a stone, by a stream. I sit, even in winter. In this poem, I'm contemplating the feeling of opening that occurs during meditation, a kind of loosening that, I recall, also happens when you take LSD, or do Holotropic Breathwork. I had just read Diane Seuss's Frank, and reading that collection was an amazing experience. I felt transported, my head blown open; I was changed, in a good way." Regarding "Murder!" she says, "I had been thinking about the collective word for a group of crows, a murder, a favorite expression often found in poems, so ominous and creepy. But in a walk around my neighborhood one morning, I understood that the crows, with their loud calls, were alerting everyone to the dark deed they had witnessed. Perhaps they are heralds, not criminals. They certainly weren't going to let Fox slink away with its stolen breakfast, without letting everyone know."

R. Nemo Hill is the author of a novel, Pilgrim's Feather (Quantuck Lane, 2002), a book-length poem based on a story by H.P. Lovecraft, "The Strange Music Of Eric Zann" (Hippocampus, 2004), four books of poetry from Dos Madres Press, When Men Bow Down (2012), In No Man's Ear (2016), Magellan's Reveries (2018), and Awake In Sand (2024), as well as a travel memoir, also from Dos Madres, Just In Case It Isn't There: Postcards From Elsewhere (2022). He is also the editor and publisher of EXOT BOOKS. He's lived in New York City, San Francisco, and Portugal, and he's travelled extensively in Southeast Asia—to Bali, Java, Thailand, and Burma. More recently, after living in his family home on Long Island for several years, caring for his aging mother, he moved with his husband to a remote area of the Catskill Mountains where they run a little indigo-dyeing business. He spends the temperate months of each year working in his garden, while the colder months find him indoors at his writing desk. Approaching his 70th year, he has sworn to clear the decks of scores of unpublished manuscripts, and sail quietly, with a pocketed packet or two of perennial seeds, into darkness.

Danielle Hubbard lives in Kelowna, BC, where she works as the CEO of the Okanagan Regional Library. Her poetry has appeared in CV2, Prairie Fire, Grain, and Geist, among other places. When not writing or working, Danielle spends most of her time swimming and cycling. Of the work in this issue, she says, "This poem is inspired by the heady early days of a romantic relationship I was in some time ago, the period of a relationship where one is an eager magnet to learn everything one can about the other person. I'm delighted to have it appear in Eclectica! I hope the sentiments resonate for some readers."

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 author of three chapbooks, most recently, A Pandemic Alphabet. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Pleiades, Poet Lore, Hunger Mountain, Comstock Review, and Prairie Schooner. Her poem, "Sword Swallowing Lessons," was featured on "The Slowdown." Judy won the 2021 and 2023 Maine Poetry Contest. She received a Maine Literary Award in 2024. Her book, Landscape With Rocks, Sky, Nails, is forthcoming from Fernwood Press in 2025. She is a past poet laureate of Belfast, Maine (2021-2023).

Timothy Laurence Marsh splits his time between the US and Costa Rica, where he teaches literature and writing at Texas Tech University-CR. Past essays and stories can be found at The Rumpus, Catapult, The Los Angeles Review, Fourth River, Grist, and more recently in Cream City Review and Coolest American Stories 2025. His novella, Advanced Comprehenstion at the Doctor Awesome English Academy, is forthcoming from Gnashing Teeth Press in 2026. Find him on Blue Sky (@tlmarsh7.bsky.social) and X (@TLMarsh7)

Bradon Matthews is a writer based in Philadelphia. He likes enjoys post-punk music and feeding pigeons. His work has previously appeared in Soundings East, TERSE., and The Viridian Door and a few other literary magazines. Regarding the work in this issue, he says, "I was walking through the Pennsylvania woods, looking at the trees and noticing how rapidly they'd changed during the seasons. It struck me how little I noticed the daily differences, yet they'd added up so quickly. And then I thought about my life. And then I wrote this poem."

Penelope Moffet is the author of the chapbooks Cauldron of Hisses (Arroyo Seco Press, 2022), It Isn't That They Mean to Kill You (Arroyo Seco Press, 2018) and Keeping Still (Dorland Mountain Arts, 1995). Her poems have been published in Afield, The Ekphrastic Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, Natural Bridge, One by Jacar Press, ONE ART, The Rise Up Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, The Sow's Ear Poetry Review, and other literary journals, as well as in several anthologies. She lives in Southern California. She says, "The first draft of 'Iridescence' was written on the back of a postcard in this summer's poetry postcard festival, run by Cascadia Labs in Seattle. This is my seventh year of participating in that festival. It's very freeing, writing first drafts onto the backs of postcards and sending them off to strangers. 'What Looks Through the Window' was written in response to a Rattlecast prompt."

Gary Moshimer has stories in Frigg, Smokelong Quarterly, Eclectica, Necessary Fiction, and many other places.

Tom Nakasako is a writer from Bexley, Ohio. His work has been published in Eclectica Magazine. He can be found between Ohio, Quebec, and Hiroshima.

Brad Rose was born and raised in Los Angeles and lives in Boston. He is the author of six collections of poetry and flash fiction: WordInEdgeWise, Lucky Animals, No. Wait. I Can Explain, Pink X-Ray, de/tonations, and Momentary Turbulence. His poetry collection, I Wouldn't Say That, Exactly, is forthcoming. Eight times nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and three times nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology, Brad's poetry and fiction have appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, The Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Review, New York Quarterly, Lunch Ticket, Puerto del Sol, Clockhouse, Folio, Best Microfiction (2019), Action Spectacle, Right Hand Pointing, and other journals and anthologies. He says, "I'm interested in found text, overheard language, and American idioms, all of which I use in my pieces to suggest the identity of the poem's speaker. In the last ten years or so, I've shifted to mainly writing prose poems because I felt that I'd reached the end of what I felt I could accomplish with the lyric, lineated poem. I wanted a form that would not depend upon my own feelings and experiences, but on another (imaginary) person's experience, hence I began to write persona prose poems."

David Rosenthal is a public school teacher in Berkeley, California. His poems and translations have appeared in Rattle, HAD, Rust & Moth, Birmingham Poetry Review, Cosmic Daffodil, Teachers & Writers Magazine, Measure, and many other journals. He has been a Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award Finalist and a Pushcart Prize Nominee. His collection, The Wild Geography of Misplaced Things, was published by White Violet Press (Kelsay Books).

Robert Schechter is a past winner of the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize and the X.J. Kennedy Parody Award. His book of children's poems, The Red Ear Blows Its Nose: Poems for Children and Others, was named one of the best books of 2023 by School Library Journal and Bank Street College, after receiving starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, and School Library Journal. His poems have appeared in The Washington Post, The Spectator, Highlights for Children, Cricket, Spider, Ladybug, The Caterpillar, The School Magazine, The Paris Review Online, Poetry East, Measure, Snakeskin, The Evansville Review, and Light, where he also appeared as a featured poet, as well as in several anthologies such as the Everyman's Library Villanelles and The National Geographic Book of Nature Poetry.

Rachel Schmidt is a registered nurse and military spouse. She holds an MA in Writing from Johns Hopkins University and has been featured or is forthcoming in Bath Flash Fiction, Collateral, Winged Penny Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, DarkWinter Literary Magazine, and Kelp Journal.

Connie Wasem Scott is the author of the full-length collection The Open Hand of Sky (Finishing Line Press 2022), and the chapbook Predictable as Fire (Moonstone 2021). Her poems appear in a variety of literary reviews, including Citron Review, Night Music Journal, American Poetry Journal, The Shore, and Streetlight. She lives with her Aussie husband and Belgian Malinois surrounded by maples and pines in Spokane, Washington.

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.

Janice D. Soderling has published many poems and fiction texts over the years, most recently in Light, Form in Formless Times, and London Grip New Poetry. A volume of feminist poems, her eighth, is forthcoming from Kultivera Press: The Women Come and Go, Talking.

Charlie Sutphin has lived in Indianapolis for more than 60 years. His cobbled career includes editor, journalist, writer, attorney, professor, investment manager, and capitalist. He earned degrees from Yale University, Butler University, and Indiana University, and he taught for 18 years at the University of Indianapolis. "The Grave," he says, "...is about Charles Sutphin writing about Charles Sutphin opining about the deceased Charles Sutphin." Married for 35 years, the author's living iteration has published in The Flying Island, Helix Literary Review, Vita Poetica, Chamber Magazine, Agape Review, and Literally Stories.

Wendy Vardaman, PhD, works as a web & digital media specialist. The author of three poetry collections, her creative practice includes editing, prose writing, printing, and book arts. She served as Madison, Wisconsin, poet laureate from 2012 to 2015 and volunteers as a graphic designer.

Charles Weld has been collected in two chapbooks, Country I Would Settle In (Pudding House, 2004) and Who Cooks For You? (Kattywompus, 2012.) A full-length collection, Seringo, was published by Kelsay Books in 2023. A retired administrator for an agency serving youth with mental health challenges, he now lives in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York.

Gabriel Welsch is the author of a collection of short stories, Groundscratchers, and four collections of poems: The Four Horsepersons of a Disappointing Apocalypse, The Death of Flying Things, An Eye Fluent in Gray, and Dirt and All Its Dense Labor. His work has appeared widely, in journals including Ploughshares, Southern Review, THRUSH, Harvard Review, Moon City Review, Lake Effect, Missouri Review, as well as on Verse Daily and in Ted Kooser's column "American Life in Poetry." Welsch lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with his family, and works at Duquesne University. He says, "I don't have much to add about the pieces themselves other than to remark that while I know parenting is not for everyone, for me, it continues to feel like I constantly have access to new ways to see the world. Not all of those ways are pretty."

Laynee Wessel is an Oklahoma student of literature and writer of fictions and memoir. Her fiction work has featured in Oakland University's online and print publications, Oakland Arts Review andFrontier Mosaic. "This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Two of Us" is her first published work of nonfiction. She says, "I hope that through this essay I could create place, and communicate my feelings for said place, through a character. Small towns and small children are often represented in small terms, and I wanted to steer away from that, and allow for the children I knew in my small town to be as big as they felt."

Gail White writes formalist poems in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. Her latest collection is the chapbook Paper Cuts, and if you like cats like a sensible person, she also recommends her prior chapbook Catechism. She's a contributing editor to Light Poetry Magazine and two-time winner of the Nemerov Sonnet Award.

Francine Witte lives in NYC. Her flash fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous journals. Most recently, her stories have been in Best Small Fictions and Flash Fiction America. Her latest flash fiction book is RADIO WATER (Roadside Press.) Her upcoming collection of poetry, Some Distant Pin of Light, is forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press.