Singer/Songwriter Maria Sebastian has opened for dozens of national acts and has recorded with many of their members. She has earned 15 Western NY Music Awards, as well as a NISOD Master Teacher Award in 2011 through Genesee Community College, and an Adjunct of the Year award at Niagara County Community College (2013) where she teaches undergraduate English. Her poem “Still See My Father Walking” was recently published in the Buffalo News Spotlight section to promote her first poetry collaboration, “The Company We Keep,” co-authored with her husband, poet and professor Perry S. Nicholas. More at her website.
Roberta Harris Short is a fiction writer and teacher living and working in Texas. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing Fiction and a Ph.D. in Creative Writing/Fiction and English Literature from the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. Her work was nominated by the CWP for Best New American Writers; and she was awarded a Michener Fellowship for fiction for an excerpt of her first novel, “Touring with Mariana.” A second novel, “Girolama, Accursia, and Caraminella,” received the $20,000 Women’s Studies Fellowship from the University of Houston. Other works have been published in Texas Review and Céfiro Journal.
Mitchell Waldman’s fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including, among others, The Brooklyn Voice, The Big Stupid Review, Troubadour 21, eFiction Magazine, Milk Sugar, Pulse Literary Journal, Litsnack, Red Fez, The Houston Literary Review, Wind Magazine, Wilderness House Literary Journal, Eclectic Flash, The Battered Suitcase, and HazMat Review. He is also the author of the short story collection, “Petty Offenses and Crimes of the Heart” (Wind Publications, 2011), and the novel, “A Face in the Moon” (iUniverse), and serves as Fiction Editor for Blue Lake Review. (For more info, see his website.
Kat Gonso’s flash piece, “A Pinch of Salt” was recently named the 2013 winner of the World’s Best Short-Short Story Contest, judged by Robert Olen Butler. In 2010 and 2012, “Escape Plan: and “Capture the Flag: were listed as finalists in this same competition and were published. Her short fiction can also be found in American Literary Review, River Styx, Pindeldyboz, Fringe, and Pamela Painter and Anne Bernay’s textbook What If: Exercises: Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers. New Stories from the Midwest named “Something She Did Not Have to Give” a distinguished Midwestern Story.
Timothy Riordan’s poems have appeared in such journals as The Sewanee Review, North American Review, Envoi (UK), The Cincinnati Review, Journal of Kentucky Studies, Santa Fe Literary Review, and The New Review. He has published four collections of poems: “Red In Reykjavik” (2011), “The Urge To Migrate” (2006), “In A Fluid State” (1998), and “Lesser Bird of Paradise” (1990). His chapbooks include “simulacrum” (2008), “A Latin Vulgate” (2007), “Foreign Correspondence: Poems in the Wake of September 11, 2001” (2002), “Portfolio Breeches” (1988); “Dense Communion” (1985), winner of an Iolaire poetry competition in the UK; and “Prague Letters,” based on a two-month artist residency there in 2003. In 2006, he was artist-in-residence in Reykjavik, Iceland. In addition, Mr. Riordan collaborates with visual artist Diana Duncan Holmes on both artist books and installation pieces, many contained in collections both in the U.S. and abroad. A professor at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Mr. Riordan was born in St. Louis, MO.
Gabrielle Pastorek is currently an MFA student at the University of Pittsburgh. She holds a BA in English and a BA in French from Ohio University. Crack the Spine is her first major publication.
Bruce Sager was recently named the winner of the 2014 William Matthews Poetry Prize, selected by Billy Collins. Past awards include the Harriss Poetry Prize, with Dick Allen serving as judge, and the Artscape Literary Arts Award in poetry, chosen by William Stafford.
Jeffrey Kingman lives by the Napa River in Vallejo, California. He is the winner of the 2012 Revolution House Flash Fiction Contest, a semifinalist in the 2013 Frost Place Chapbook Fellowship, and a finalist in the 2012 Midwest Writing Center contest. His novel, “Moto Girl,” was a semifinalist in the 2009 Dana Awards. His poetry has appeared in PANK, lo-ball, Squaw Valley Review, Off Channel and others. Jeff has a Master’s degree in Music Composition and can be heard banging his drums in a large shed in his backyard.