Issue 1 Contributors:

KENDRA ALLENBY is a cartoonist for the New Yorker and other magazines, and teaches drawing and creative practice to adults. Her work has appeared in several books and anthologies and she often draws cartoons for the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations where she uses humor to make difficult topics approachable. If she’s not drawing, she’s probably outside. Work work can be found on her website and on Instagram.

DONNA BARR is an American comic book creator. She is best known for The Desert Peach, and Stinz. She has been recognized as a pioneer in creating books in the comics art for that are intelligent, mature, and amusing. Her website is donnabarr.com

IASON ROBERT BELLEROPHON is based in New York City. He is a direct descendant of Dr. Joseph Bell, the original Sherlock Holmes, and has been painstakingly editing his ancestors manuscript on tobacco ash for the last 10 years, the the profit of all humanity. The Final Edited Edition will be available this Fall. tetragrammatron.com

REGINA BERG is a Black emerging poet from Chicago currently living in Pflugerville, Texas. Her current work centers on the ways grief shapes us, we shape grief, and allow ourselves to become more human. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in: Sybil, Bar Bar, Pictura Journal, The Bluebird Word, and What the House Knows: A Poetry Anthology.

ERIC BLAND writes poetry and theatre; he lives in northern New England and used to live in the New York of the aughts.

COURTNEY BUSH is a poet and filmmaker from Mississippi. You can find more of her work at courtneybushgreatartist.com.

JEREMY P. BUSHNELL is the author of three novels (The Weirdness, The Insides, and Relentless Melt, each published by Melville House). He is currently at work on a collection of poetry. His occasional zine, Packet of Noises, is mailed a few times a year from a ZIP code that locates him either in Chicago or the Greater Boston Area.

HOPE CARTELLI enjoys lots of things.

STEFANIE CATERER is from Aurora, Illinois and various other midwestern villages. She is a children’s library assistant and a poet focusing on human tensions and minute observances. Her work can be seen in Porter House Review and in her upcoming chapbook as well as https://open.substack.com/pub/stefcatwhat. Otherwise, she can be found practicing a half moon pose in her living room.

CLAY McLEOD CHAPMAN writes books, comic books, YA/middlegrade books, as well as for film and television.

MAGGIE CINO is a producer, director, playwright, and coach. Playwrighting: Warm Enough for Swimming (FringeNYC Encore Series, Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Playwrights Conference semi-finalist, Smith & Krause Best Men’s and Best Women’s Monologue series), Decompression (FringeNYC Overall Excellence Award for Playwrighting, Chain Theater Minor Variations Series, published by Indie Theater Now). Directing: Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters (winner two NYIT awards, one nomination for Outstanding Revival of a Play), Lost Adult: Answers to Any Name (NYIT nomination Outstanding Performance Art Production), Scars (Women In The Arts and Media Coalition Collaboration Award). Former Senior Producer for The Moth. maggiecino.com

JESSICA COLES (she/her) is a poet from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, where she lives with her family, a tuxedo cat named Miss Bennet, and a tarantula named Miss Dashwood. Her work has appeared in print and online at Prairie Fire, Moist Poetry Journal, Full Mood Mag, atmospheric quarterly, Stone Circle Review, CV2, The Fiddlehead, Capital City Press Anthology, Ghost City Review, and elsewhere. Her two self-published chapbooks are available through Prairie Vixen Press. Find her on Bluesky: @prairievixen.bsky.social

JAMES COMTOIS is an award-winning author and journalist who co-founded Nosedive Productions, a New York-based theater company where he wrote more than 20 plays over 14 years. His work has been compared to Conor McPherson and Tracy Letts by The New York Times, while Time Out NY noted his writing “mines in Gogol’s vein.” His published plays include The Adventures of Nervous Boy, Infectious Opportunity, Suburban Peepshow, and A Room with No View. His latest audio drama, an adaptation of Poe’s The Mystery of Marie Roget, is available on NPR. He lives in Brooklyn with his cat, Simone.

MARIE COONS is an Illustrator and pattern designer based out of Philadelphia, PA.

Our society looks at the world through data, but data doesn’t have to live in a dusty database. THE DATA VANDALS turn data into captivating art in cities, galleries, museums, and parks. Our work sparks conversations that encourage people to see and engage with their world in new ways. datavandals.com

COLIN DODDS is an award-winning author and filmmaker, whose works include The Reign of the Anti-Santas, Ms. Never, and The 6th Finger of Tommy the Goose. He’s made his living as a creative director, journalist, copywriter and video producer. Colin is the co-creator of Forget This Good Thing, a first-of-its-kind literary and philosophical experience that’s slowly transforming the world’s seven billion mobile devices into real-time oracles He lives in New York City, with his wife and children.

TIJANNA O. EATON (Tə-zha-na; she/her) is a Black butch writer whose work appears in Panorama Journal, Honey Literary, Noyo Review, and Yellow Arrow Vignette. She is a 2024 Soros Justice Fellow, was the nonfiction judge for the 2024 Best of the Net contest, was a 2023 Rooted & Written Fellow, and received the 2021 Unicorn Authors Club Alumni award. Tijanna is Board Chair of Five Keys Schools and Programs and also served on the board of the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project. Please visit bolt-cutters.com for more information.

ABIGAIL FINCH is writer and teacher who will wax poetic about the Midwest to anyone who will listen. She has been published in VERDANT Journal, and elsewhere. Find her online @itmebugail.

KELLY JEAN FITZSIMMONS is a Queens-based writer, college essay writing instructor, and storyteller. Her nonfiction work has appeared in HiLoBrow, Marie Claire, Hippocampus Magazine, and numerous anthologies. She is the creator and producer of No, YOU Tell It!, a nonfiction series that brings storytellers together to trade tales, speak each other’s words, and empower voices on the page and stage. Kelly Jean is also the editor of the No, YOU Tell It! Ten-Year Anthology, available from Palm Circle Press. Visit kellyjeanfitzsimmons.com and follow @kjfitzsimmons.bsky.social for more.

J. FLANDERS is a 1960s newspaperman from North Carolina who writes poetry from beyond the grave.

JESSICA HARVEY is an artist and writer exploring the fractures of bodies, place, and history. A Fulbright recipient to Iceland, she’s attended residencies at ACRE, Ox Bow, The Luminary, Wassaic, MASS MoCA, Anderson Ranch, LATITUDE, Byrdcliffe, Sala Diaz, and Vermont Studio Center. Her work has been exhibited at Kunsthall Trondheim (Trondheim, NO), The Franklin (Chicago, IL), Coop Gallery (Nashville, TN), Camayuhs (Atlanta, GA), Heaven Gallery (Chicago, IL), The Luminary (St. Louis, MO), Good Weather (Little Rock, AR & Chicago, IL), and Sala Diaz (San Antonio, TX). Fellowships include Winterthur Museum, gener8or Arts, and Tulsa Center for the Humanities, University of Tulsa.

Emmy and Ringo Award-winning cartoonist DEAN HASPIEL is best known for creating Billy Dogma and The Red Hook, collaborating with Harvey Pekar and Jonathan Ames, and illustrating for HBO's Bored to Death. His published work includes writing and drawing for Marvel, DC/Vertigo, Archie, Image, and Webtoon on comics such as The Fox, Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, X-Men, Deadpool, Superman, Batman '66, Wonder Woman, and Godzilla. In addition, Haspiel is an accomplished playwright and Yaddo fellow. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

AMY JUNE is a writer from Kentucky-ish. She grew up in Cincinnati in a family that emigrated from the Tennessee region of Appalachia then, from 18 years onward, became herself in the good ole state of Kentucky. She has been writing since youth when she wrote her first “book” in the 6th grade during a time when she, admittedly, was the nerdiest horse girl on this side of the Ohio River. Now her writing style features dreamscapes and reality-scapes, delving into nostalgic memories with a focus on the tangible and palpable. Two words that she overuses constantly in her writing. She has also been playing with characterization, creating short and sweet vignettes focused on the quirky attributes and goings-on of her oddish characters. 

A. KING McCARTY is an artist/performer from NYC known for her original stories, songs and artwork. She lives in Queens with two charming gentlemen (a kid and a kid-at-heart) and often incorporates her community into her work. You can visit her on Instagram @akingmccarty or akingmccarty.weebly.com

BOB LAINE is an actor, poet, and playwright. He has been performing in NY for three decades. @madkingbob CURRENT PROJECTS | Madkingbob

LAURA LARSON is a photographer and writer based in Columbus, OH. She's exhibited her work extensively, at such venues as Bronx Museum of the Arts, Centre Pompidou, Columbus Museum of Art, The Getty Center, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Wexner Center for the Arts. Her books include Hidden Mother (Saint Lucy Books, 2017), City of Incurable Women (Saint Lucy Books, 2022), and a forthcoming collaboration with writer Christine Hume, All the Women I Know. Larson is a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow in Photography. For more information, her web site is lauralarson.net

KRISTEN LEIGH (b. 1976) is a multidisciplinary artist, whose principal discipline is literature. Focused in nonfiction and poetry, formal elements of classical music and dance, textiles and fiber craft inform her writing practices. Her arts-based research approach explores both the hostile and appreciative relationships humans have with the natural world. Although her current interest lies in the diverse landscapes and ecosystems of the North American continent, her work has found support in residencies and fellowships throughout South America and Western Europe. Her writing has appeared in The EcoTheo Review, The Los Angeles Review, Figure-1 Journal, among others, and she is cofounder of slips slips print journal of literature and art. She is represented by Susan Canavan at Waxman Literary Agency in New York City. kristenleigh.space  

DASH LEWONCZYK is a student, a Pizza Wizard, and ein Taubenmann.  

JEFF LEWONCZYK has caused enough trouble already. But if you’re thirsty for more, you can research him at jeffisaweso.me and read his weekly ramblings at jeffisawesome.substack.com.

KEVIN MAHER is the author of the book Santa Doesn’t Need Your Help and the host of the variety show Kevin Geeks Out. See why Tiger Beat called him “funny!” LoveKevin.com

WHITNEY MATHESON is a Brooklyn-based writer whose work includes essays, comics, children's books, short films, plays, and the award-winning blog Pop Candy. Follow her work at whitneymatheson.substack.com.

JUSTIN MAXWELL teaches playwriting in the Creative Writing Workshop at the University of New Orleans and this year’s Drama Judge for the Tennessee Williams and New Orleans Literary Festival. His playwriting book The Playwright’s Toolbox is out from Applause Books. Currently, he’s adapting the Tennessee Williams novel Moise and the World of Reason. His play An Outopia for Pigeons is out from Original Works Publishing, and Your Lithopedion is out from Next Stage Press. His prose appears in numerous journals, including the Fourth River, Midway, Theatre/Practice, Contemporary Theatre Review, American Theatre Magazine, and others.

Once when he was five years old, ADAM McGOVERN dreamed he was full grown, reeling down some labyrinthian nighttime city staying one step ahead of an unseen figure who meant him harm. Ducking into an all-night deli niched into the unending granite facade, he saw people sliding plastic cards into a small frame atop the cash-register where his waking self had only ever seen slots for metal coins. This was in 1969. Thirty years later when credit-card checkouts had appeared but his pursuer had not, he decided this wasn’t his future. But you can follow him at hilobrow.com/author/amcgovern/

EMILY MENEZ has written for The New Yorker, CBS, Funny or Die, and McSweeney’s, amongst others. Her original plays and shows have been performed throughout NYC, including Slackjaw: LIVE, which runs at Caveat. Emily is an alumna of NBC’s Late Night Writers Workshop and St. Nell’s Humor Writing Residency. She’s an editor at Slackjaw. You can follow her @theemilymenez.

PATRICE MILLER is best known for her interdisciplinary theater and performance making that includes Off-West-End musicals, feminist performance art in Buenos Aires, and works for spaces and places that range from museums to nautical culture centers to Off Broadway theaters in her hometown of NYC. Patrice studied dance, anthropology, and poetry at CUNY Hunter College. As a writer, they were a regular curator, host, and reader in various and sundry downtown venues (many lost to the ravages of corporate gentrification) in the early part of the 21st century. She is also a lazy witch, crazy cat lady, and death doula. patricemillerperformance.com

DESIREE MORALES’s debut poetry collection, big future, is available now from dancing girl press (2023). Her work has been published in Conflict of Interest and the anthology Level Land: Poems For and About the I35 Corridor (Lamar University Press, 2022), which was a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award for Poetry. Desiree is a teacher, learner, and equitable design strategist who has led education initiatives for some of the largest philanthropies in the world. She is building a bridge to the future from her home in what is currently Los Angeles, California, where she hopes to rematriate land one day.

MORPHIC ROOMS is a collaborative collage laboratory founded in 2021 by allison anne (they/them) and Jeremy P. Bushnell (he/him). They produce layered, abstract work that utilizes systematic parameters, creative rulesets, chance operations, and collaborative interplay as tools for radically reimagining a collection of images, texts, ephemera, and detritus, drawn from centuries of cultural accretion and mechanical reproduction. More of their work can be seen at morphicrooms.com or at @morphicrooms at Instagram.

RYAN MURRAY-RUDEGAIR has a BA in Russian and Eurasian Studies from Bard College and an MS in Information Science from the University at Albany, State University of New York. He is the Children’s Lead at a little mom-and-pop bookstore in Minneapolis called Barnes & Noble, although he also appreciates books intended for grownups. His “writing” has previously been inflicted mainly upon friends, family, and classmates, but now sees its way to a wider world through slips slips.

MINH-TRIET NGUYEN is an author of short genre fiction. He lives in Connecticut with his family and Theo, their teddy bear of a dog. His stories can be found on his subreddit, reddit.com/r/stickfistwrites, where he writes about space, humor, and love.

ALLY NICK is a self-proclaimed woodsy witch hermit currently living in Jackson, Mississippi, where she reads a lot, writes sometimes, and teaches college students. She researches and teaches topics like women and queer writers from the interwar period, gender and sexuality in literature and pop culture, and political writing. She is trying her best to write the things she wants to read: mainly essays about writers no one has heard of and stories about space and magic and friendship and resistance. Her weird writing scraps can be found at femininedread.blogspot.com.

JENNY PARROTT is a writer who’s a dancer (or the other way around). After spending over 20 years as an arts educator, she now writes children’s books for the young-at-heart. She also writes Vera Monstera on Substack which finds movement in every little thing. It’s a place to step out of your brain and into a different intelligence–an embodied world where life springs from the power of play. Jenny lives in Delaware with her husband, daughter, and a plethora of plants.

HEATHER QUINLAN is a writer and filmmaker who has lived in all five boroughs and now makes her home in New Jersey. Her latest work, American Graveyard, is a documentary-in-progress about a 19th-century African-American cemetery that was illegally seized by NYC in 1954 and is now a strip mall. Her previous films were about the New York accent and bikes in the city. Heather also hosted the podcasts 86’d about her disastrous attempt at directing a documentary on the 1986 New York Mets, and Cold Storage which covered the life and suspicious death of ice cream kingpin Tom Carvel.

CAROLYN RASHIP draws pictures and writes stories. linktr.ee/Caviglia_jr

TIMOTHY McCOWN REYNOLDS Timothy McCown Reynolds is a multidisciplinary artist working as an actor, director, designer, poet, playwright, essayist, illustrator, painter, sculptor, and table-top roleplaying game creator and enthusiast. He works on and around the planet Earth. He can be found at timothymccownreynolds.com and on Bluesky (@timothymagick.bsky.social). Empathy is Strength.

A Bay Area native now residing in NYC, CHLOE RODRIGUEZ is a foodie and budding writer who spends her days navigating the brand new journey that is motherhood. In her free time, she enjoys reading thinkpieces on various topics, kickboxing, trying new foods, spending time with her family, and being inspired by her surroundings. You can find her Substack at chloeneenah.substack.com where her general musings on life and what she reads, listens to, or thinks about takes center stage. She is currently working on a poetry book and experimenting with short stories.

HEATHER LEE ROGERS compulsively tells stories as a writer and an actor in Queens, NYC. Her poems have appeared in the following printed and online publications: The Rat’s Ass Review, Harbinger Asylum, Here Comes Everyone (UK), Leopardskin & Limes, El Portal, S/Tick, Adanna Literary Journal, Jersey Devil Press, Mobius Magazine, Eunoia Review, Bombfire Lit, Indolent Books, io Literary Journal, etc. More of her work can be read at heatherleerogerspoetry.com

TRAV S.D. has been presenting crazy monologues, songs, vaudeville productions, and plays in public for over four decades at venues like Joe's Pub, La Mama, The Brick, Theater for the New City, Coney Island USA, and many others. These days he is best known as the workaholic behind the blog Travalanche, and the author of the books No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous (2005), Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to YouTube (2013), Rose's Royal Midgets and Other Little People of Vaudeville (2020), The Marx Brothers Miscellany: A Subjective Appreciation of the World's Greatest Comedy Team (2024) and the upcoming Electric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety (July, 2025).

KAWAI SHEN is a writer based in Canada. kawaishen.com

ELIZA STAMPS is a visual artist and writer based in Brooklyn, NY. Her artistic practice ranges from drawing to sculpture to performance, all with an interest in facilitating introspection and discovery for the viewer. She has exhibited and performed both nationally and internationally, including Von Lintel Gallery and Tiger Strikes Asteroid in the US, The Wand in Berlin, Germany, and the 1961 in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

MATTHEW TRUMBULL is a writer and actor who lives in New Jersey with his wife, the writer and audiobook narrator Stephanie Willing, and their two kids. His solo play The Zebra Shirt of Lonely Children won fringe festival awards in New York and Minnesota. He has been a live storyteller with The Moth, The Soundtrack Series, and No You Tell It! and his flash fiction has appeared in Postcard Shorts.

UPFROMSUMDIRT doesn't art nowhere near enough these days to justify calling himself an artist, but since even being the president requires such little use of knowledge now then, sure, he's an "artist.” He doesn't write poems as much as he should either, but still, following his three previous collections, The Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife comes out Fall, 2025 with University Press of Kentucky.

HAN VANDERHART is a queer writer living in Durham, North Carolina, under the pines. Their second poetry collection Larks, winner of the 2024 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, is forthcoming in April 2025 from Ohio University Press. Han is also the author of What Pecan Light (Bull City Press, 2021) and has essays and poetry published in Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, The Rumpus, AGNI, and elsewhere. Han hosts Of Poetry Podcast and alongside Amorak Huey co-edits the poetry press River River Books.

ERIC WINICK hails from Marblehead, Massachusetts, birthplace of the American Navy. His production company Yarn AudioWorks tells audio-rich stories that reflect the mystery of existence and the delights and dilemmas of modern society. After 25+ years working as a Director of Marketing and CMO at major NY nonprofits, Eric is now a marketing consultant (winickmarketing.com) who writes in his spare time about politics, culture, design, and marketing. He also serves as president of the Brooklyn chapter of the Derrick White Fan Club.