Biographies of Contributors:

Jeffrey C. Alfier lives in Tucson, Arizona.  His publication credits include Broken Bridge Review, Blue Earth Review, Forge Journal, Red Wheelbarrow, and Santa Clara Review, among many others.  He is the author of two chapbooks, Strangers within the Gate (2005), and Offloading the Wounded (forthcoming).  He is the founding co-editor of San Pedro River Review <http://www.sprreview.com>.

With an M.A. in Ancient Iranian Culture and Languages, Alireza Taheri Araghi is a 29-year-old writer and translator.  He has translated three collections of short stories (into Persian) and he has also published his own collection.  He is a member of the editorial advisory panel of two magazines that are published for learners of the English language.  He lives in Tehran, where he teaches English and practices amateur photography.


Brad Bisio grew up in Cleveland, Ohio.  He studied engineering at Syracuse University and English Literature and Creative Writing at Humboldt State University.  He has recent work in Paradigm, Pequin, Boston Literary Magazine, Six Sentences, Mad Swirl, Ex Cathedra, and Word Riot, with work forthcoming in Gutter Eloquence, CommonLine, and Dogzplot.  He won the Advisor’s Award for the story, “Still No One, but Returning Different” as published in Toyon.  He lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife, his young daughter, and their coon hound.


Michael Buckley’s fiction has appeared in The Best American Non-Required Reading 2003, The Southern California Review, and numerous times in The Alaska Quarterly Review, and also in many regional journals.  His poetry was recently anthologized in In the Shadow of the City of the Angels, coming soon from World Parade Press.  He is co-founder and editor of Transcurrent literary journal, and an instructor at UCLA extension.  This is his third publication with Spot Lit.


Steven Carey is a freelance graphic designer/visual artist living in Long Beach, California, where he’s just received his double-major BA degree in both Graphic Design and Creative Writing.   His poetry can be found most recently in Chiron Review, RipRap, and Transcurrent.  His paintings can be seen hanging in his living room and in his bathroom.


A long trip through Latin America convinced a. paul cartier to become a photographer.  What was difficult about that trip became also what was inspirational to him, which subsequently led him to many forms of image-making.  Out of the thousands of images he has made, he selects the few that stick with him, the ones he thinks others should see.  In a world now saturated, no, besotted, with images, it is not easy to find ones that hold our attention for longer than two seconds.  He hopes his images will last with his viewers, and that his viewers will see the world differently through them.


Tobi Cogswell is a co-recipient of the first (2008) annual Lois and Marine Robert Warden Poetry Award, which means that her book of poems, Poste Restante, is now available from Bellowing Ark <http://www.bellowingark.org>.  Her works can also be read most recently in Penumbra, Newport Review, Essence (U.K.), Seven Circle Press, Forge Journal, Northridge Review, Poetic Diversity, and Spoon River Poetry Review.  She has three chapbooks – Sanity Among the Wildflowers, Hostage Negotiation in Negative-Land, and Carpeting the Stones (2008).  In addition, she is the co-editor of San Pedro River Review <http://www.sprreview.com>.


Shelagh Davis is a freelance writer and editor.  She lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  Shelagh’s poetry and non-fiction pieces have been published in BlazeVOX, The Mad Poets Annual Review, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and in local publications.  She holds an M.A. in Liberal Arts from the University of Pennsylvania.


Dennis Duncan is completing a PhD on translation and the avante-garde at Birkbeck College, University of London, where he also teaches a course on the Novel in English.  He is an occasional contributor at the Other Writers’ Group at Shakespeare and Company in Paris, France.


Michael Estabrook writes:  "Over the years I have published a few chapbooks and appeared in some terrific poetry magazines, but you are only as good as your next poem and like the surfer searching for that perfect wave I am a poet on the prowl for that perfect poem.  Right now I am looking for that perfect poem in my wife, who just happens to be the most beautiful woman I have ever known.  If I find it anywhere, I'll find it in her."


Lorene V. Garrett lives in Southern California.  Her poetry has been featured in Black American Literature Forum, Expressively Black:  The Cultural Basis of Ethnic Identity, and The Haraka Reader.  She is currently working on a memoir about flying.


Susan Hansell’s Little Kings appeared in its earliest form first in Oasis.  Her complete biography, synopses of her plays (many of which have been produced throughout the U.S.), plus excerpts from her works, can be viewed at <http://www.susan-hansell.net>.  In her Susan Hansell’s Oil Spot Blog <http://blog.susan-hansell.net> you can find her writing about writing and about living in Tucson, Arizona.


Werner Low’s stories have appeared in about twenty publications, including The Journal of Ohio State University, Muse Marquee, Lily Literary Review, The Literary Review of Trinity College, The Pedestal Review, Pinehurst Journal, Slow Trains, The Square Table, Taj Mahal Review, and Void Magazine.  He is currently seeking an agent for his novel, The Prophet of Essaouira.  Werner lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and earns his keep as a free-lance writer.


Christian Hanz Lozada has, with this publication, officially added Struggling Poet to his resume.  He spends his never-ending commute thinking of new poems, stories, novels, and zombie apocalypse survival tips for both zombies and non-zombies alike.  He is a graduate of the MFA program in Creative Writing at California State University, Long Beach, and he is currently teaching all over creation.


Donal Mahoney is a native Chicagoan who resides in St. Louis, Missouri.  The son of Irish Immigrants, which explains the missing “d” from the end of his first name, he has worked as an editor for The Chicago-Sun Times, Loyola University Press, McDonnell Douglas Corporation, and Washington University in St. Louis.  Between 1969 and 1972 – and since June, 2008 to the present, when he returned to writing poetry after a thirty-five year hiatus – he has had poems published in or accepted by numerous journals throughout the world, including The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, Orbis, Commonweal, The Christian Science Monitor, Revival, The Beloit Poetry Journal, The Istanbul Literary Review, and Public Republic, among many others.


Lisa Manning was born and has spent most of her life in Northern California.  Her poetry, short stories and essays have been appearing in numerous journals, zines, and anthologies for over twenty-five years.  She recently finished writing a novel.   She lives in Oakland, CA, where, after making her living working in print shops and watching them fail, she is now, as a result, losing her hearing, and trying not to be too bitter.


Clint Margrave has published work in New York Quarterly, 3AM, Pearl, Chiron Review, Heeltap, and Spillway, as well as in the anthologies So Luminous the Wildflowers and Incidental Buildings and Accidental Beauty from Tebot Bach Press.  Currently, he teaches English and Creative Writing at California State University, Long Beach.


Stephen Mead is a writer/artist living in northeastern New York.  Thanks to the wonders of the internet, his paintings, poems, and essays have been published internationally.  Please feel free to google his name for links to his books and merchandise.


Bill Mohr’s writing has appeared in dozens of magazines, including Antioch Review, Blue Mesa Review, Chicago Review, Invisible City, New Review of Literature, OR, Ribot, Santa Monica Review, Sonora Review, Wormwood Review, and ZYZZYVA.  His most recent book of poetry is Bittersweet Kaleidoscope (If Editions).  His book Backlit Renaissance:  Los Angeles Poets During the Cold War will be published by the University of Iowa Press in 2010.  He teaches literature and creative writing at California State University, Long Beach.


Greggory Moore lives in Long Beach, CA, doing such things as reading and occasionally writing. Versions of his wordsmithery (writing, editing, proofreading) can be found as far afield as NPR’s Story Corps archive and K-12 lesson books at a school near you, promo material for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and the HOA minutes of a variety of Long Beach properties, in his articles for The District Weekly and his LBPost.com column -- and, of course, in the occasional literary journal.  He is planning to publish his first novel, The Use of Regret, shortly.


Kyle Moreno is a surf journalist living in Los Angeles.  If Mr. Moreno dies peacefully, in bed, without any awful wounds to the head or without having fallen badly or been shot first, he asks that you set him in a chair somewhere by the window until the people from the funeral home can come and get him.  He’d like to be in the sun, by some flowers, if it’s possible.


Christopher Mulrooney has written poems in Caesura, The Broadkill Review, Drunken Boat, Moloch, and The Delinquent.


Luisa Peña studied at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Wales in Swansea, completing her degree in English Literature at California State University, Long Beach.  She currently lives and writes in Long Beach, CA.  Check out her participatory blog/website about writing and art topics:  <http://themeaningyoumake.com>.


Katrina Prow is currently working on her MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) at California State University, Long Beach.  She's been previously published in RipRap, and was the 2009 recipient of The William T. Shadden Memorial Award for her poetry.  Lately, she’s been full of restless energy and hopes it leads only to greatness:  a professional career, a European Vacation, or at the very least, a good happy hour.


Joseph Reich has had poems in a variety of journals such as Poesy, Dispatch Detroit, Juked, The Oak Bend Review, Sein Un Werden, Denver Syntax, Burning River, The Philosophical Society of England, The Iguana Review, The Delinquent, SALit, and the Ottowa Arts Review, among many other places.  His first chapbook, If I Told You to Jump off the Brooklyn Bridge has been published by Flutter Press; a second, A Different Kind of Distance, will soon appear from Skive Magazine Press; and a first book of poems, The Derivation of Cowboys & Indians, will appear this winter from Poets Work Press.


Brooks Roddan was born in 1950 and began making poems in 1972.  His books and chapbooks include The Second Dream (Momentum Press, 1985), The Light of the Light (Blue Earth, 1986), The Frog Club (Readymade, 1990), and The Days By Themselves (Blue Earth, 2006).  He lives in Los Angeles and in Wyoming.


John G. Rodwan, Jr.’s writing has been published by The Mailer Review, The Oregonian, California Literary Review, Blood & Thunder, Logos, Slow Trains, Shaking Like a Mountain, The Brooklyn Rail, The Second Pass, American Writer, Free Inquiry, and The Humanist, among others.


Joan Jobe Smith, founding editor of Pearl magazine and the Bukowski Review, has published seventeen books of poetry and two cookbooks.  She’s a Pushcart Prize recipient and her PowWow Café was a Forward Prize finalist.  Ambit has published chapters from her memoir Tales of an Ancient Go-Go Girl, a James Jones First Novel Fellowship finalist.  A chapbook from Chance Press, Sequin Soul, and a poetry collection, Burning Alive in a River of Stars (World Parade Books), will be published in 2010.


Suejin Suh is originally from Long Island, New York.  She studied English Literature and Creative Writing at New York University.  Her works have been recently published in such literary magazines as Lungfull, Shampoo, and The Battered Suitcase.  She is currently working as a teacher in Seoul, South Korea.


Macrae Sutherland is getting her MFA in poetry from CSULB and will graduate in May 2010.  She coaches competitive gymnastics in La Habra, and she’s getting married in July 2010.


Gerald Uyeno makes his living as an engineer:  writing science fiction and creating graphic images of the future.  He also enjoys creating visual artwork with pencil, pen, or computer, and in the past few years, he has taken to writing haiku poetry.


Fred Voss has been a machinist for thirty years and a poet for twenty-two years.  He has twice been the subject of feature programs on BBC Radio 4, and he has done six reading tours of Great Britain.  He has published three books with the U.K.’s Bloodaxe Books (Dufour Editions, U.S.), the latest of which is Hammers and Hearts of the Gods, which was published in June, 2009.


Christa Westaway is a graduate from the MFA program in Creative Writing at California State University, Long Beach.  Aside from continuing her writing, she hopes to learn “Great Balls of Fire” on the piano, to learn to speak fluent Spanish, and to build a greenhouse where she will tend to her garden.  “Pill Bugs” is her first published work.


Jennifer Woo is an artist living in Torrance, California.  She is a studio art major concentrating on photography and drawing.  A licensed bartender, she can usually be found around the city rocking out to her own internal playlist.  This is her second publication with Spot Lit.


Hazzel Yen is a poet and plastics artist from Mexico.  She has participated in numerous exhibitions throughout Mexico and she is an active member of the Independent Writers Society in Durango, Mexico.  She writes in both Spanish and English, and her visual works are hand drawn, digitally manipulated, and scanned creations.



Order Contents of SLM 3.2 (Fall 2009) "Families" Issue:

Alireza Taheri Araghi (untitled photo)
Christian Hanz Lozada “The Falcon 500” (poem)
Stephen Mead “Rise” (poem)
Katrina Prow “Portrait of My Parents, 1983” (poem)
Christopher Mulrooney “the ward of my six wives” (poem)
a. paul cartier “Carnaval 80” (photo)
Brooks Roddan “Mirror” (poem)
Suejin Suh “Long After Some” (prose poem)
Joan Jobe Smith “Good Wives Don’t Drive” (poem)
Kyle Moreno “Sisters” (poem)
Werner Low “The Other Daughter” (story)
Dennis Duncan “Chronograms” (poem)
Hazzel Yen “Imagination Creation Digestion” (mixed media)
Christa Westaway “Pill Bugs” (story)
Joan Jobe Smith “The Most Miserable Go-Go Girl
     of Them All” (poem)
Shelagh Davis “That Which Hath Wings Shall Tell the Matter”
     (prose poem)
Joseph Reich “The Family Tree and the Roots and the Weeds” (poem)
John G. Rodwan, Jr. “The Banana Eater” (essay)
Gerald Uyeno “Bonehead Therapy” (cartoon)
Jeffrey C. Alfier “Prayer for Winsett Street” (poem)
Shelagh David “Predator” (poem)
Donal Mahoney “An Irish Christening” (poem)
Jennifer Woo “Welcome Home” (drawing)
Brad Bisio “Someone I Used to Know” (story)
Michael Estabrook “Majestic Beneath Her Umbrella”  (poem)
Bill Mohr “The Decanter” (poem)
Fred Voss “Turning Frank into Fred Astaire” (poem) 
Alireza Taheri Araghi (untitled photo)
Lorene V. Garrett “City on the Edge of Forever” (poem)
Michael Buckley “In the Summer We Eat Roses” (story)
Stephen Mead “The Movie of Our Lives” (poem)
a. paul cartier “Gold Coast” (photo)
Tobi Cogswell “Landlady #5” (poem)
Tobi Cogswell “Holding Pattern” (poem)
Fred Voss “Rolling Dice from the Shoulder” (poem)
Christian Hanz Lozada “What You See in Hawaii When
     Married to a Hawaiian” (story)
Jeffrey C. Alfier “The Beachcomber” (poem)
Luisa Peña “A white ceiling yields no answers” (poem)
a. paul carter “Weddings, Lake Tahoe” (photo) 
Macrae Sutherland “Her Side of the Bed” (poem)
Kyle Moreno “King-sized Mattress” (prose poem)
Clint Margrave “My Father’s Brain” (poem)
Steven Carey “Belly Lint” (poem)
Hazzel Yen “Cyber Love” (mixed media)
Greggory Moore “Internal Affairs” (story)
Lisa Manning “Fathom” (poem)
Susan Hansell “Little Kings” (play)
a paul cartier “Merida PM #3” (photo)


PLEASE NOTE:  Due to website formatting considerations and the organizational limitations of the internet as a medium, the hardcopy versions of SLM issues vary significantly from the website versions.   Works on the website are organized by genre; hardcopy contents, on the other hand, are organized by a sensibility set down by the editor and cannot be approximated here.  In addition, each hardcopy issue contains several visual art pieces per issue which cannot be displayed here.  Moreover, the hardcopy issues are able to present the textual pieces in the exact form that the authors intended:  Some web browsers distort the formatting of complex or intricate texts, so not all of the pieces that exist in the issue's hardcopy version can be represented accurately; therefore, at any author's specific request, some included works do not appear on the site at all.  The hardcopy issue of SLM is the only definitive representation of the magazine, and 3.2 will be available in early November of 2009. 

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