Meet the contributors of upcoming Issue 258
Amanda Leahy
Amanda Leahy is a native of Lowell, Massachusetts. She is currently pursuing an MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts and lives in Montpelier, Vermont. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Thin Air, Dream Pop Journal, MoonPark Review, Pithead Chapel, and elsewhere.
Gina Willner-Pardo
Gina Willner-Pardo has written short stories published in Berkeley Fiction Review, Bluestem, Pleiades, COG Magazine, Five on the Fifth, Mad River Review, Origins Journal, The South Carolina Review, Streetlight Magazine, Summerset Review, White Wall Review, and Whetstone, which awarded her story “Accident” the John Patrick McGrath Memorial Award (1999). She has also written seventeen books for children, all published by Clarion or Albert Whitman. Gina’s book “Figuring Out Frances” won the 1999 Josette Frank Award, presented by the Bank Street College of Education, to honor a book of “outstanding literary merit in which children or young people deal in a positive and realistic way with difficulties in their world and grow emotionally and morally.” Gina has a BA in English from Bryn Mawr College and an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley. She has studied with James Frey. When not writing, Gina enjoys running, hiking, kayaking—and she makes a mean blueberry custard pie.
Jean Ryan
Jean Ryan, a native Vermonter, lives in coastal Alabama. Her debut collection of short stories, Survival Skills, was published by Ashland Creek Press and short-listed for a Lambda Literary Award. Lovers and Loners is her second story collection. Her book of nature essays, Strange Company, is available in digital form, paperback and audio.
Kaylie Saidin
Kaylie Saidin is an MFA candidate at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington. She reads fiction at Ecotone and Pithead Chapel. Her work has appeared in Catamaran Literary Reader, upstreet #15, Bridge Eight, and elsewhere.
Jacqueline Doyle
Jacqueline Doyle’s flash chapbook “The Missing Girl” won a contest at Black Lawrence Press, and was included in “Best Books of 2017” lists at Paper Darts and The Coil. She has recent flash in The Collagist, Little Fiction/Big Truths, Juked, Wigleaf, and elsewhere. Find her online at www.jacquelinedoyle.com and on twitter @doylejacq.
Dave Petraglia
A Best Small Fictions 2015 Winner, Dave Petraglia’s writing and art has appeared in Bartleby Snopes, bohemianizm, Cheap Pop, Crab Fat, Crack the Spine, Five:2:One, Gambling the Aisle, Gravel, Hayden’s Ferry Review, matchbook, Medium, McSweeney’s, Mojave River Review, Necessary Fiction, North American Review, Per Contra, Points in Case, Prairie Schooner, Popular Science, Razed, SmokeLong Quarterly, Up the Staircase, and others. His blog is at www.davepetraglia.com
Barbara Daniels
Barbara Daniels’ book “Rose Feve”r was published by WordTech Press and chapbooks “Black Sails,” “Quinn & Marie,” and “Moon Kitchen” by Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press. Her poetry has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Mid-American Review, and elsewhere. She received three fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
Helena Lipstadt
Helena Lipstadt was born in Berlin and lives in Los Angeles and Blue Hill, Maine. She studied with poets Melanie Kaye Kantrowitz and Irena Klepfisz, among others. Lipstadt’s poems have been featured in Rattling Wall, Trivia, basalt, Porter House Review (forthcoming), The Cape Rock (forthcoming), and elsewhere. Lipstadt is the author of two chapbooks, “Leave Me Signs” and “If My Heart Were A Desert.” She has been awarded writing residencies at WUJS Arts Project, Arad, Israel and Borderland Foundation, Sejny, Poland
Jeff Barker
Jeff Barker has many short stories published in literary journals and anthologies including Hobart, The Broadkill Review, HelloHorror Journal, Literally Stories, Jolly Horror Press, and the Taco Bell Quarterly Literary Journal. Jeff is also a healthcare provider in the field of psychiatry. Before that, he had a nine year career as a television news anchor and reporter in Texas, Alabama, Florida, and Oregon. He has interviewed three U.S. Presidents, and stood in the middle of five major hurricanes. He lives on the Gulf Coast in Daphne, Alabama. You can follow his work at jeff-barker.com or on twitter: @JB_JeffBarker.