Jul/Aug 2026

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 editor. 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 has also published poetry in Rattle, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, ONE ART, Glimpse, BOOTH, and many other magazines. She has two new poetry collections out: Before The World Was on Fire (Bottlecap) and Why I Don't Take Xanax (Kelsay Books). She lives in a very old (haunted) house with her adorable kitty and husband in the Hudson Valley.

Zach Abend is a Utah-based journalist and essayist whose work has appeared in Salt Lake City Weekly, 15 Bytes, and Religion Unplugged. His reporting on Indigenous communities, religion, mental health, arts, and culture has received multiple awards from the Society of Professional Journalists.

Lana Hechtman Ayers shepherded over 150 poetry collections into print as managing editor for three small presses. She lives in Oregon on unceded lands of the Yaqo'n people with her beloved husband and fur babies, where on clear, quiet nights she can hear the Pacific ocean whispering to the moon.

Daniel Gene Barlekamp is the author of poetry, fiction, and audio drama for adults and young readers. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the Paterson Literary Review, Seventh Quarry, Pictura Journal, and elsewhere, and have been translated into Chinese by Poetry Hall. Originally from New Jersey, he now lives with his wife and two children in Massachusetts, where he practices immigration law.

Ruth Bavetta has appeared in Rattle, Nimrod, North American Review, Slant, Nerve Cowboy, Atlanta Review, and many other journals and anthologies. She likes the light on November afternoons, the music of Stravinsky, and the smell of the ocean. She hates pretense, prejudice, and sauerkraut.

Haresh Bhojwani is the founder and master distiller at Destilería Andina, a high-altitude distillery in the Peruvian Andes crafting spirits from heirloom sugarcane using traditional methods. Originally from the Canary Islands, Haresh brings a global perspective shaped by decades of work across Latin America, the USA, Africa, and Asia in sustainability, climate policy, and community development.

Loukia Borrell is a Virginia-based writer whose work has appeared in North Coast Voices 2025, Talking River Review, Allium, and Hawai`i Pacific Review, among others. She received her Bachelor of Arts in English, with a journalism concentration, from Elon University and also earned an Associate of Applied Science in Administration of Justice from Tidewater Community College. She is a first-generation American born to Greek-Cypriot immigrant parents in Toledo, Ohio. Author's Note: "I had a difficult relationship with my mother. Our personalities clashed, especially as I entered adulthood and began to strike out on my own. She often seemed exasperated and frustrated with my choices and took my mistakes personally. She was offended by my decisions, so she usually withdrew when I needed her support. By the time she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, I was in my early 40s and the mother of three young children. My only sibling was deceased, leaving me alone to manage her care along with running my household. I jumped into action and stuck with her for 15 years, feeling more frustrated with each passing year. By the time she died, I was approaching 60 and feeling fractured physically and emotionally. I felt faded, as though I had disappeared along with her. That is when I knew the trauma I felt would find its way to the surface. I wanted the world to know I endured. I wanted to show everyone my scars."

Joyce Brinkman was Indiana's Poet Laureate from 2002 to 2008. Her latest collaborative book, Vanishing Life, a Poetic Warning, will be published by Kelsay Books later this year. She believes in poetry as public art and creates public poetry projects involving her poetry and the poetry of others. Collaborations with visual artists using her poetry for permanent installations include her words in a 25-foot stained glass window by British glass artist Martin Donlin at the Indianapolis International Airport, in lighted glass by Arlon Bayliss at the Indianapolis-Marion County Central Library, and on a wall with local El Salvadoran artists in the town square of Quezaltepeque, El Salvador. She is a graduate of Hanover College and lives in Zionsville, Indiana, with a cantankerous cat.

John Carey is a UK-based writer. This is their first published piece.

Jordan Cobb is a queer American poet based in NYC. Her work has recently appeared in Interpret Magazine, West Trade Review, Fugue Journal, and The McNeese Review.

Steve Cushman is the author of three novels, including Portisville, winner of the 2004 Novello Literary Award. He has published two poetry chapbooks, and his first full-length collection, How Birds Fly, won the 2018 Lena Shull Book award. His latest collection, The Last Time, was published by Unicorn Press in 2023. Cushman lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, and works in the IT department at Cone Health.

Barbara De Franceschi is an Australian arid zone poet living as she does in the outback mining city of Broken Hill. Besides four collections, her work has been published widely in Australia, also in other countries and online. Many poems have been featured on national and regional radio.

Lisa Delan has received a Best of the Net and three Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has been featured in Burningword Literary Journal, 3rd Wednesday Magazine, Milk Press, The Wild Umbrella, American Writers Review, Anthropocene Poetry Journal, and Passengers Journal, among other publications, and she recently penned the libretto for a multi-media choral work which premiered in her adopted hometown of San Francisco. When she is not writing you can find the soprano, an international performer who records for the Pentatone label, singing songs on texts by some of her favorite poets.

Tina Harrach Denetclaw is a clinical pharmacist by trade, specialized in critical care and emergency medicine. Her poetry and creative nonfiction have appeared on several occasions in Eclectica Magazine and Silver Birch Press | Poetry and Prose... from Prompts Series, and also in The RavensPerch, Leading the Way: The Wisdom of the Navajo People, Synkroniciti, Verse-Virtual, andPulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine. Her debut chapbook, Life Travels, was released in March 2026 from Finishing Line Press.

Dolo Diaz is a scientist / poet with roots in Spain, currently residing in California. Her work has appeared in ONE ART, The Summerset Review, Third Wednesday, and Dog Throat Journal, among others.

Michael Ross Dolan is a writer from London, Ontario. In addition to Eclectica, his work has appeared in the anthology Out of the Woods: Voices from the Forest City.

Sam Everick received their MFA in fiction from The Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin and now lives in Baltimore, Maryland, with two dogs and an army of houseplants. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Toast, Robot Butt, Weekly Humorist, and elsewhere.

Linda Meg Frith devotes her time to family, friends, reading, and writing poetry. She has published poetry in River and South, eMerge, Rainy Weather Days, Amethyst Review, Eclectica Magazine, and Tipton Poetry Journal. She lives with her Chihuahua, Jasmine, in Louisville, Kentucky.

Joel Fry lives in Athens, Alabama. His poetry has appeared in Eclectica, Asheville Poetry Review, The Florida Review, North Dakota Quarterly, and elsewhere. His first book of poetry is Late Alabama.

Michael J. Galko is a scientist and poet who lives and works in Houston, Texas. He was a finalist in the 2020 Naugatuck River Review and the 2022 Bellevue Literary Review poetry contests. Recent poems have appeared or will appear in Spillway Magazine, Atlanta Review, Silk Road Review, and Plainsongs.

Gloria D. Gonsalves is an award-winning author, a Pushcart-nominated poet, an emerging sketch artist, and occasional columnist. Her poems have been published in Brittle Paper, Collateral, The Decolonial Passage, Harpy Hybrid Review, Tangled Locks, and other literary magazines, journals, and anthologies in Africa, Europe, and the US.

John Grey is an Australian poet and US resident, recently published in Midnight Mind, Novus, and Abbey. His latest books, Bittersweet, Subject Matters, and Between Two Fires are available through Amazon. He has work forthcoming in the MacGuffin, Touchstone, and Willow Review.

Madronna Holden won the 2022 Kay Snow Poetry Award. Her poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Verse Daily, the Bitter Oleander, Cold Mountain Review, Eclectica, Pensive, Valley Voices, and the Christian Science Monitor. Her poems written in conjunction with the watercolors of David Wolfersberger have also appeared in Puerto del Sol, the Slippery Elm Literary Review, The Santa Clara Review, the Chestnut Review, and more. She authored the chapbook, Goddess of Glass Mountains.

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.

Dennis Kaplan is a Chicago native, transplanted to Oakland, California, where he writes computer code by day and other things by night. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Eclectica, First of the Month, Bristol Noir, Eureka Literary Magazine, Oxford Magazine, Rockvale Review, Tales of the Fantastic, the New York Times Syndicate, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Bay Guardian, and others. He is also co-editor of The Workplace Anthology. Regarding the story in this issue, the political opinions of the fictional Rabbi Solomon Zoller are based in part on the Wikipedia entry for Rabbi Avigdor Miller, author of Rejoice O Youth!

Kathy Karlson was awarded an NEA grant for fiction writing in 1998. Her short stories have been featured in Eclectica and other journals such as The Barcelona Review, Carve, Chiron Review, and Calyx, while her paintings have been exhibited in more than 50 private collections.

 
Rachel Kerwin is a multidisciplinary artist with a BFA from Cornell University who lives and works in Maryland. She was awarded the DC Mayor's Arts Award for Outstanding Emerging Artist and an Artist Fellowship Program grant from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Her work is in the collections of Capital One Bank, Accenture Federal Services, and DC's Art Bank, a rotating collection in government buildings around the District.

Ayoung Kim has been published in The Good Life Review, The Manifest Station, Khora, and Best Travelers' Tales, among others. She is originally from San Francisco. "Five Dollar Midlife Crisis" shows it's never too late to learn something new, and that wisdom comes from an unexpected source.

Carol Parris Krauss is honored to have published poetry in Louisiana Lit, Quartet, the Arkansas Review, Salvation South, Eclectica, One Art, Story South, The South Carolina Review, and the Mid/South Sonnet Anthology, among others. Fernwood Press published her full-length book (Mountain.Memory.Marsh.) in November of 2025. Carol was born in South Carolina to mystical mountain people, raised in North Carolina, and attended Clemson University. She lives in Virginia with her saint bernard, Martha June.

Peter Krok has been the Editor-in-Chief of the Schuylkill Valley Journal since 2001. The journal was founded in 1990. Because of his identification with red brick Philadelphia, he is often referred to as "the red brick poet." In 2005 his poem "10 PM At a Philadelphia Recreation Center" was included in Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania, as well as his poem "Plinkies" in a later edition in 2025. His book, Looking for An Eye, was published in 2008 and Wounded World in 2020. For Krok, as he wrote in the poem "Echoes," "The past, like the tide comes back." He came to the US during the Berlin Air Lift. He says, "I heard Anne Sexton read at Philadelphia college campus in the spring of 1974. I was in awe of her presence and her delivery. Her poem, 'Her Kind,' is powerful and mesmerizing, and gives an example of her stirring voice. In the fall of 1974 she took her own life and left her agonizing last book, The awful rowing toward God. I have often been gripped by this title. "What Matters" is my constant search for meaning in this troubled world. I am reminded of the phrase when they asked Louie Armstrong, 'What is jazz?' His response, 'If you don't know, I can't tell,' is how I feel about the phrase."

David Anson Lee is a physician and poet from Texas who was born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. His work has appeared in Right Hand Pointing, Unbroken Journal, The Scarred Tree, Braided Way, Eunoia Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, Silver Birch Press, In Parentheses, The Orchards, Spillwords, Rat Bag Literary, and elsewhere.

J.G.P. MacAdam is the first in his family to earn a college degree. His fiction and nonfiction can be found in The Colorado Review, JMWW, and Pithead Chapel. His novelette A Square of Dirt is available from ELJ Editions.

Divya Manikandan is a fourth-year medical student at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She hopes to be a pediatrician-writer who works with critically and terminally ill children. Her work has appeared in Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, Off Assignment, The Lookout Journal, and more.

Elizabeth Terese Marr had a successful career in food and nutrition communications. She enjoys writing about family foodways, food and agriculture intersections, music, handcrafts, and quirks of life. She and her mother co-authored the historic memoir The Richest Soil Grows the Deepest Roots. An award-winning registered dietitian, she holds an MS in Food Science and Human Nutrition from Colorado State University and a BS in Clothing and Textiles From University of Missouri-Columbia. She says, "Taking my teen son D to metal concerts offered positive formative experiences for him, though not in every aspect. In 'A Family Outing' I recount the many ways one mother-son musical evening went off the rails. Yet the concert still contributed something valuable to his artistic and career choices. Today, D is an accomplished heavy metal musician working as a sound engineer in live event production. He quit smoking last year."

Claire Hamner Matturro is a former appellate attorney who has penned some quirky legal thrillers published by HarperCollins and other novels published by Red Adept Publishing. Her poetry appears in Salvation South, SLANT, Lascaux Review, ONE ART, Eclectica Magazine, and others. She is an associate editor at Southern Literary Review and lives in Florida with her husband and their bossy black cat.

Juan Pablo Mobili was born in Buenos Aires and adopted by New York. In January of 2025, he became Poet Laureate of Rockland County. His poems have appeared in The Louisville Review, Ilanot Review and Tupelo Quarterly, among other publications in the US, Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Australia. He was nominated for the Pushcart Prize multiple times, and his chapbook, Contraband, was published in 2022. His latest manuscript was a finalist in the Lily Poetry Review's 2026 Paul Nemser Prize.

Gary Moshimer has stuff in Frigg, Eclectica, Smokelong Quarterly, and many other places.

Jim Murdoch is a prolific Scottish poet. In 2025 alone, he published 140 poems and wrote a further 200 to replace them. Over the last 50 years, pieces have been accepted by respected journals such as Acumen, Stand, and—much to his own surprise—Analog, though the greater amount by far have vanished without trace. For ten years he ran the literary blog The Truth About Lies but now lives quietly in Glasgow with his wife and, whenever the mood takes him, next door's cat. He has published two books of poetry, a short story collection, and four novels—Jim, not the cat.

Huntley Gibson Paton is a former business journalist and news-media executive whose short fiction has also appeared in Narrative Magazine, Marrow Magazine, Rind, Bewildering Stories, and The Iowa Rag. Born in Kansas City, raised in Denver, he has lived all over the US during his career but now lives with his wife in the North Carolina mountains near Asheville.

Ron Riekki has been awarded a Michigan Notable Book, The Best Small Fictions, Shenandoah Fiction Prize, The IPPY Award, The Red Rock Film Fest Award, and was a Best of the Net finalist. He's won a Très Court International Film Festival Audience Award and Grand Prix, Dracula Film Festival Vladutz Trophy, a Rhysling Anthology inclusion, and a 2022 Pushcart Prize. He also co-edited The Many Lives of The Purge, which is a nominee for The Eiffel Award: The Year's Best Books on Film. Right now, he's listening to Miles Davis on the University of Virginia's WXTJ.

Jenny Root is an editor and event planner with a nonprofit in criminal justice in Eugene, Oregon. Her poems have appeared and are forthcoming in Emergency Horse, About Place, Cloudbank, basalt, Crab Creek Review, and Still Point Arts Quarterly, and as well as in the anthologies New Poets of the American West and Bookstore Clerks and Significant Others, where her writing received mention by Kirkus Reviews. Root's work was featured in "On This Land" Winter Writers Series by the McKenzie River Trust. The recipient of residencies at PLAYA and the Spring Creek Project, she is the author of a full-length collection of poems, The Company of Sharks.

Elizabeth Rose is a lifelong artist whose creative journey has taken many forms. She holds an MSA in Studio Art from The College of New Rochelle and a BA from Purchase College, where she studied design and photography. Her artistic path began in Berlin, where she wrote a screenplay and acted in a short black and white film, launching a lifetime of exploration across media and disciplines. Over the years, Elizabeth has worked in stone sculpture, rug hooking, mask-making and other visual arts, always drawn to the transformative possibilities of creative expression. Writing has remained a constant thread, weaving in and out of her life alongside her enduring passions for portrait photography and the historic art of palladium printing. In recent years, she has returned to writing with renewed focus. Her work reflects a lifetime of observation, artistry, and curiosity. This publication marks her first appearance in print as a poet.

David Rosenthal is a public elementary school teacher in Berkeley, California. His poems and translations have appeared in Rattle, Birmingham Poetry Review, Rust & Moth, HAD, Eclectica, Identity Theory, Teachers & Writers Magazine, Measure, and elsewhere. He has been a Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award Finalist and a Pushcart Prize Nominee. He is the author of The Wild Geography of Misplaced Things (Kelsay Books: White Violet Press).

Kathryn Pratt Russell has poems published in Gargoyle, Black Warrior Review, Free State Review, Atlanta Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Birmingham Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Her prose and essays have appeared in Ghost Story, American Book Review, and Disappointed Housewife, and her chapbook, Raven Hotel, was published by Dancing Girl Press. She lives in Decatur, Georgia.

Irina Ruvinsky is a professor of philosophy at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. When she is not shaping young minds into brilliant critical thinkers, she enjoys long walks with her mini dachshund. Her work has appeared in Eclectica Magazine.

Fran Rose Schumer has written poems, stories, and articles that have appeared in various sections of The New York Times; also The Nation, The North American Review, and other publications. She won a Goodman Loan Grant Award for Fiction from the City University of New York and in 2021, a Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing poetry fellowship. Forthcoming work in Blood+Honey, the Paterson Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Weight, was published in 2022 by Choeofpleirn Press. A native of Brooklyn, New York, she lives in Massachusetts. She says, "I wrote drafts of these poems in response to prompts in which I had only ten minutes to write. 'In Praise of Stupid Things' simply flowed. I find prompts an excellent way to sneak ideas and thoughts past my gate-keeping mind. As for 'Something Unbeautiful,' the hard work my father did to give me the life I have leaves me with endless love for him, and grief for the sacrifices he made. When I write about him, the words flow."

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.

J.R. Solonche has been nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award, twice for the National Book Award, and three times for the Pulitzer Prize. The author of 50 books of poetry and coauthor of another as well as of a book of criticism, he lives in the Hudson Valley.

Danijela Tomić is a dual citizen of Croatia and the US. Born and raised in Bosnia and Herzegovina, she later lived in Croatia for six years before moving to the United States, where she has spent more than three decades and built a career as a collegiate volleyball coach. "Between Two Worlds" is her first published nonfiction essay. About the essay, she says, "This essay was inspired by my experience of living between Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and the United States, and by my ongoing reflections on identity, belonging, and the meaning of home. A routine passport renewal prompted me to consider how the places we live shape our expectations and influence where we imagine spending the next chapter of our lives."

 

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