Meet the contributors of upcoming Issue 211
Jennifer Lee
Jennifer Lee is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins MA Writing Program and an editor at the Baltimore Review. Her work has appeared in JMWW, New South, the Bellevue Literary Review, The Greensboro Review, Monkeybicycle, and elsewhere. Her work has won the Maryland Writers’ Association short fiction prize and has been nominated for a Pushcart Award. She is currently hard at work on a looming science fiction project, among other things. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland, where she teaches middle school math and pursues her interests.
Lucía Damacela
Lucía Damacela’s work has appeared in venues such as Erbacce, Slippery Elm, Into the Void, and Duende. One of her poems won first prize at the Wisehouse International Poetry Award 2016. Born in Ecuador, Lucía currently lives in Singapore with her family, blogs at notesfromlucia and tweets as @lucyda.
Julia Porter Howe
Julia Porter Howe is a writer, actress, and musician originally from Long Island, but a happy city dweller for well over a decade. She was the first place recipient of the Sidney Harman Fiction Writing Award in 2013 and has dabbled in screen writing for films Carter and Louise and her Lover, in which she also starred. She has degrees in English and Journalism from Baruch College. One day she will open a café by the sea.
Katherine Hill
Katherine Hill is a student at the University of Houston studying Creative Writing.
Lenny Levine
Lenny Levine attended Brooklyn College, graduating in 1962 with a BA in Speech and Theater. Immediately thereafter, he forgot about all of that and became a folk singer, then a folk-rock singer and songwriter, and finally a studio singer and composer of many successful jingles, including McDonald’s, Lipton Tea, and Jeep. He has composed songs and sung backup for Billy Joel, Neil Diamond, Peggy Lee, Diana Ross, Barry Manilow, the Pointer Sisters, Carly Simon, and others. In addition, Lenny performed for a number of years with the improvisational comedy group War Babies. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Amarillo Bay, Bitter Oleander, Cairn, The Dirty Goat, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Eleven Eleven, Forge, The Griffin, Hobo Pancakes, The Jabberwock Review, Lowestoft Chronicle, Penmen Review, Rio Grande Review, riverSedge, Rougarou, Verdad, Westview, and Wild Violet. He received a 2011 Pushcart Prize nomination for short fiction.
David Hammond
David Hammond lives and dreams in Virginia with his wife and two daughters. His short stories have appeared in Bartleby Snopes, Gravel, Icebox Journal and Vine Leaves Literary Journal. More of his writing can be found at oldshoepress.com.
Jeff Fleischer
Jeff Fleischer is a Chicago-based author, journalist and editor. His fiction has appeared in more than a dozen publications including the Chicago Tribune’s Printers Row Journal, Shenandoah, the Saturday Evening Post, Steam Ticket, Pioneertown and Crossborder Journal. He is also the author of non-fiction books including “Votes of Confidence: A Young Person’s Guide to American Elections” (Zest Books, 2016), “Rockin’ the Boat: 50 Iconic Revolutionaries” (Zest Books, 2015), and “The Latest Craze: A Short History of Mass Hysterias” (Fall River Press, 2011). He is a veteran journalist published in Mother Jones, the New Republic, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Magazine, Mental_Floss, National Geographic Traveler and dozens of other local, national and international publications.
Peter Grandbois
Peter Grandbois is the author of seven previous books, the most recent of which is, “The Girl on the Swing” (Wordcraft of Oregon, 2015). His poems, stories, and essays have previously appeared in such journals as, The Kenyon Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Denver Quarterly, and Prairie Schooner, among others, and have been shortlisted for both Best American Essays and the Pushcart Prize. His plays have been performed in St. Louis, Columbus, Los Angeles, and New York. He is senior editor at Boulevard magazine and teaches at Denison University in Ohio.
Charlie Monte Verde
Charlie Monte Verde always wanted to live in one of the ‘big three’ cities, and darn if he didn’t land in the best one. Charlie was raised in Upstate New York before his current five years in Chicago, and honed his writing skills in Mrs. Bonar’s AP English class before he was bumped down to the regular English class. As CultofAmericana.com founder, Charlie cultivates original American art forms. He willingly and fully disappears into art, often at the expense of his reality. He’s currently working on his first based-on-a-true-story novel, The Great Hate, which will be available…hopefully someday. Charlie is also a board member of the Chicago Writers Association, and an associate editor of CWA’s official publication, Write City Magazine.