Issue 30 Contributors

Feyisayo Anjorin is a screenwriter, songwriter and short story writer whose writings have appeared in Litro, African Writer, Brittle Paper, Bella Naija, and Kalahari Review.

He lives in Akure, Nigeria.

Sharon Berg attended the Banff School of Fine Arts Writing Studio in 1982 and was accepted to Banff’s Leighton Artist Colony in 1987. She is also an alumni of Humber College’s Writing Program. She did her B.A. in Indigenous Studies at Laurentian U, followed by her B.Ed for Primary Education at U of T. Her M.Ed focused on First Nations Education at York U, and her D.Ed focused on Indigenous Education at UBC. She also received a Certificate in Magazine Journalism from Ryerson U. Sharon founded and operated the international literary E-Zine Big Pond Rumours (2006-2019) and its associated press, which released chapbooks of Canadian poets as prizes for the magazine’s contests. She's published five full books and three chapbooks, working in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Her work appears in periodicals across Canada, the USA, Mexico, the UK, the Netherlands, India, Germany, Singapore, and Australia. Her 3rd poetry collection Stars in the Junkyard (Cyberwit 2020) was a Finalist in the 2022 International Book Awards, and her narrative history The Name Unspoken: Wandering Spirit Survival School (Big Pond Rumours Press 2019) won a 2020 IPPY Award for Regional Nonfiction. When she retired from teaching, she opened Oceanview Writers Retreat in Charlottetown (Terra Nova National Park) Newfoundland.

Recipient of the Deepankar Khiwani Memorial Poetry Prize 2022 and longlisted for the TOTO Awards for English Poetry, Tuhin Bhowal's poems and translations appear or are forthcoming in The Margins, Ballast Journal, Redivider, Soft Union, Poetry at Sangam, and elsewhere. A Mentee with the South Asian Literature in Translation (SALT) project and a Translation Fellow at the South Asia Speaks Literary Mentorship Programme – Class of 2025, Tuhin lives alone in Bangalore and tweets @tuhintranslates.

Kiley Davis is a young writer from Illinois who writes about women, politics, and poetry. This is her first published work.

Maggie Dillow grew up writing an embarrassingly prolific amount of terrible teen poetry in Chicagoland, primarily inspired by the private perils of suburban girlhood. She now lives and teaches in Roanoke, Virginia, and has an MFA in Creative Writing from Hollins University. She is the founding member of the Post-apocalyptic Poets for a Pre-apocalyptic World, a collective dedicated to community care, elevating the work of emerging artists, and performance-based poetics. She is also the co-host of Girlhood Movie Database, a podcast deconstructing depictions of girlhood in film. She has won prizes in flash fiction and poetry and her work can be found in Hot Pink Magazine, Blue Earth Review, Cathexis Northwest Press, and elsewhere. When she's not writing or performing, you can find her in the woods.

Photo credit: Charles Earl

Amanda Earl (she/her) writes, edits, reviews and publishes on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg Peoples. She is managing editor of Bywords.ca and the editor of Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry. Her latest book is Beast Body Epic, a long-poem collection provoked by her near-death health crisis. Amanda offers an editing and mentorship service. Visit TinyUrl.com/AmandaEarlEdits for more information and subscribe to her Substack: Amanda Thru the Looking Glass for whimsy, exploration and a feeling of connection with kindred misfits.

Oladosu Michael Emerald (he/him) is the author of the poetry book Every Little Thing That Moves, an art editor at Surging Tide magazine, a first-reader at Radon Journal, a digital/musical/visual artist, a photographer, a footballer, a boxer, and a political scientist. He teaches art at the Arnheim Art Gallery to kids and adults, is an Art Instructor at the Anasa Collection Art Gallery, and is a volunteer art instructor at Status Dignus Child Rescue Home and Ibeere Otun Initiative. He is a Pioneer Fellow of the Muktar Aliyu Art Residency, Minna, Niger State, Nigeria.

His works have been published or forthcoming in many magazines and won numerous awards in writing and art; a few to mention: winner of Garden Party Collective Neurodivergent Poetry contest, winner of Off the Limit Art contest, winner of Sprinng Annual Poetry Contest, second runner-up in Fireflies poetry contest, finalist in AprilCentaur Essay contest, finalist in Arting Arena Poetry Chapbook contest, Providus Bank anthology alongside Professor Wole Soyinka, finalist in Paradise Gate House Poetry Contest, Lolwe, Better Than Starbucks, Ake Review, Daily Times Nigeria, Nigerian Tribune, Guardian News, Flash Frog, Blanket Gravity, Icefloe Press, Feral, Inner Worlds, Lyra, Oriire, Kalahari Review, Con-scio, Madness Muse Press, Fraidy Cat Lit, Eco Punk, Spill Word Web, Paper Lantern Lit, the Maul magazine, Zoetic, Pinch Journal, Penumbric, Motheaten magazine, Native skin, Third Estate Art magazine, thehearth magazine, kalonipa, and elsewhere.

He's a man who does not know how to give up, and art chose him before he existed.

Say hi to him on Twitter @garricologist and Instagram @garrycologist

Maria Giesbrecht is a Canadian poet whose writings explore her Mexican and Mennonite roots. Her work has previously been published in ONLY POEMS, Queen's Quarterly, Contemporary Verse 2, Hobart, and is forthcoming in Canadian Literature. Maria is the founder and host of the writing table Gather, and spends her days nurturing creative folks to write urgently and unafraid.

Bex Hainsworth is a poet and teacher based in Leicester, UK. She won the Collection HQ Prize as part of the East Riding Festival of Words, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry Wales, The McNeese Review, Sonora Review, Nimrod, and The Rialto. Walrussey, her debut pamphlet of ecopoetry, is published by The Black Cat Poetry Press.

Blossom Hibbert has a pamphlet, suddenly, it’s now, published by Leafe Press. Her work has appeared in places such as Litter, International Times, Anthropocene & Buttonhook Press. She is a poet from nowhere in particular.

Salma Hussain writes poetry and prose. Her writing has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Fiddlehead, The Humber Literary Review, Temz Review, Queens Quarterly, CV2, The Antigonish Review, The Hong Kong Review, Ex-Puritan and Pleiades: Literature in Context. Her young adult novel, The Secret Diary of Mona Hasan, about a young girl’s immigration and menstruation journey, was published by Penguin Random House in 2022. It was selected for ALA’s Rise: A Feminist Book Project List and shortlisted for the Geoffrey Wilson Historical Fiction prize.

James Croal Jackson is a Filipino-American poet working in film production. His latest chapbook is A God You Believed In (Pinhole Poetry, 2023). Recent poems are in ITERANT, Stirring, and The Indianapolis Review. He edits The Mantle Poetry from Nashville, Tennessee. (jamescroaljackson.com)

Anastasia Jill (they/them) is a queer writer living in Central Florida. They have been nominated for Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, and several other honors. Their work has been featured or is upcoming with Poets.org, Sundog Lit, Flash Fiction Online, Contemporary Verse 2, Channel Magazine, and more. Follow them on Instagram: @anastasiajillies

Theresa Kishkan lives on the Sechelt Peninsula with her husband, John Pass (a poet and winner of the Governor General’s Award for poetry in 2006 and the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize in 2012), in a house they built and where they raised their 3 children. She has published 16 books, most recently Euclid’s Orchard, a collection of essays about family history, botany, mathematics, and love (Mother Tongue Publishing, 2017); a novella, The Weight of the Heart (Palimpsest Press, 2020), in which a young graduate student attempts to create a feminist cartography with the works of Ethel Wilson and Sheila Watson; and Blue Portugal and Other Essays (University of Alberta Press, 2022), a collection of lyrical essays. Her books have been nominated for many awards, including the Hubert Evans Award and the Ethel Wilson Prize; her essay collection, Phantom Limb, received the inaugural Readers’ Choice Award from the Creative Nonfiction Collective in 2008. Her memoir, Let a Body Venture At Last Out of its Shelter, will be published in 2026.

Anson Leung is a graduate of the University of Alberta’s Bachelor of Commerce program. He is an Alberta-based writer who loves all forms of writing, including poetry and article writing. In his spare time, he loves playing tennis and board games.

For twenty years (2004-2024), Craig Loomis taught English at the American University of Kuwait in Kuwait City. Over the years, he has had his short fiction published in such literary journals as The Iowa Review, The Colorado Review, The Prague Revue, The Los Angeles Review, The Prairie Schooner, Yalobusha Review, Fiction International, Critical Pass Review, The Owen Wister Review, Juxtaprose Literary Magazine, Cumberland River Review, REVUE, Consequence Magazine, SAND, and others.

In 1995 his short story collection, A Softer Violence: Tales of Orient (London: Minerva Press) was published; and in 2013, Syracuse University Press published another collection of his short stories entitled The Salmiya Collection: Stories of the Life and Times of Modern Day Kuwait. In October 2021, his novel This is a Chair: A Lyrical Tale of Love, Death and Other Curriculum Challenges was published by Sixty Degrees Publishing. His short story collection Where the Clouds Begin: Tales from the California Foothills (Sixty Degrees Publishing) was published in Nov. 2022.

Sumaiya Matin is a writer living in Alberta, Canada. She is the author of the literary memoir The Shaytan Bride: A Bangladeshi Canadian Memoir of Desire and Faith (Dundurn Press, 2021). A Master of Fine Arts (in Creative Writing) candidate at the University of British Columbia, Sumaiya is passionate about exploring the intersection of literature and mental health. Follow her writing journey on her website or on Instagram @sumaiya.matin.

Marcie McCauley's work has appeared in Room, Other Voices, Mslexia, Tears in the Fence and Orbis, and has been anthologized by Sumac Press. She writes about writing at marciemccauley.com and about reading at buriedinprint.com. A descendant of Irish and English settlers, she lives in the city currently called Toronto, which was built on the homelands of Indigenous peoples—Haudenosaunee, Anishnaabeg, Huron-Wendat and Mississaugas of New Credit—land still inhabited by their descendants.

Jérôme Melançon writes and teaches and writes and lives in oskana kâ-asastêki / Regina, SK. His third chapbook, Bridges Under the Water (2023), follows Tomorrow’s Going to Be Bright (2022) and Coup (2020), all with above/ground press, as well as his most recent poetry collection, En d’sous d’la langue (Prise de parole, 2021). He has also published two books of poetry with Éditions des Plaines, De perdre tes pas (2011) and Quelques pas quelque part (2016), as well as one book of philosophy, La politique dans l’adversité (Metispresses, 2018). He has edited books and journal issues, and keeps publishing academic articles that have much to do with some of this. He sometimes translates poetry for periodicities as well as other text in other places, and is currently working on translations of books by Denise Desautels and Phyllis Webb. He is on various social media under variations of @lethejerome.

Shane Neilson (mad; autistic) is a poet, physician, and critic from New Brunswick. His poetry has appeared in Poetry Magazine, Literature and Medicine, Prairie Schooner, and Verse Daily. In 2023, he published The Suspect We (Palimpsest Press), a book of poetry concerning disabled lived experience during the pandemic, with fellow disabled poet Roxanna Bennett. Also in 2023, he published Canadian Literature and Medicine: Carelanding with Routledge.

Adesiyan Oluwapelumi, TPC XI, is a medical student, poet, essayist & Poetry Editor of Fiery Scribe Review from Nigeria. An Unserious Collective, Adroit Journal Summer Program, HUES Foundation & SprinNG Writers' Fellow, his works are featured in The Republic, Electric Literature, 20.35 Africa, Poet Lore & elsewhere. His chapbook Mouthful with Cinders was selected by Chris Abani and Kwame Dawes for the APBF New-Generation African Poets Chapbook Box-set Series (Akashic Books, forthcoming 2025).

James Owens's newest book is Family Portrait with Scythe (Bottom Dog Press, 2020). His poems and translations appear widely in literary journals, including recent or upcoming publications in Channel, Poetry Ireland Review, Queen's Quarterly, Dalhousie Review, and Atlanta Review. He lives in a small town in northern Ontario.

Natalie Rice is the author of Nightjar, Gaspereau Press (2025) and Scorch, Gaspereau Press (2023.) Her poems have appeared in journals such as Grain, Queen’s Quarterly, Event Magazine, The Malahat Review, Contemporary Verse 2, Terrain.org and several others. She lives in Nova Scotia, Canada.

Ben Robinson is a poet, musician and librarian. His first book, The Book of Benjamin, an essay on naming, birth, and grief was published by Palimpsest Press in 2023. His poetry collection, As Is, was published by ARP Books in September 2024. He has only ever lived in Hamilton, Ontario on the traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee, and Mississaugas. You can find him online at benrobinson.work.

Jaric Sarmiento is a multi-genre MFA candidate at the University of Alabama and co-creator of 108webnovel.com, an interactive multimedia digital novel. His writing is featured in No Contact, The Other Side of Hope, Southword, and A Velvet Giant. You can find him on Instagram: @anflowcrat

Mike Sloane (They/Them) teaches at Fanshawe College in so-called London, Ontario. Since completing their PhD on American Modernist poetry and ecological objects at Western University, they have published scholarly articles and book chapters on topics ranging from trash to veganism. Mike has published creative work in The Goose. More recently, they self-published an experimental book called new radish. Also, Mike is involved with a number of musical projects, one of which is called genius genius. Since 2023, genius genius has released over 20 albums. Other musical projects include mountain gator, robert, catnip, and tarantula. Mike also runs the Gears concert series, Inputs listening events, and Please Please Help, an anti-poverty project that has all proceeds going to the London Food Bank.

Ava Ugolini (she/her) is from small-town Southern Ontario, although she currently resides on the traditional territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋən Peoples as she completes an English Honours BA at the University of Victoria. She serves as Deputy Editor for the English undergraduate journal The Albatross, in which her essay “‘Life During Wartime’: How New Wave Music Echoed William Blake” is forthcoming.

Veronica Wasson (she/her) is a trans author living in the Pacific Northwest. Her work has appeared in smoke + mold, en*gendered, Apogee, Your Impossible Voice, Spectrum, and elsewhere. You can find her writing at veronica-wasson.com.

Carl Watts holds a PhD in English from Queen’s University and currently teaches at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, in mainland China. He has published two poetry chapbooks, Reissue (Frog Hollow, 2016) and Originals (Anstruther, 2020); a short monograph, Oblique Identity (Frog Hollow, 2019); and a book of essays, I Just Wrote This Five Minutes Ago (Gordon Hill, 2022).

Nicole Yurcaba (Нікола Юрцаба) is a Ukrainian American of Hutsul/Lemko origin. Her poems and reviews have appeared in Appalachian Heritage, Atlanta Review, Seneca Review, New Eastern Europe, and Ukraine’s Euromaidan Press, Lit Gazeta, Chytomo, Bukvoid, and The New Voice of Ukraine. Nicole holds an MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University, teaches poetry workshops for Southern New Hampshire University, and is the Humanities Coordinator at Blue Ridge Community and Technical College. She also serves as a guest book reviewer for Sage Cigarettes, Tupelo Quarterly, Colorado Review, and Southern Review of Books. Her poetry collection, The Pale Goth, is available from Alien Buddha Press.

Atticus Yus is a Latina writer living in Vancouver, but always finding herself elsewhere. Her work has also been published in Counterflow Magazine and Decomp Journal. She most enjoys challenging herself in strange ways and reading fanfiction.

Yoko Zhu is a writer and journalist based in the Boston area.