Contributor Biographies
Jeffrey C. Alfier is a 2009 Pushcart Prize nominee. His work has appeared recently in Kestrel, New Madrid, Rhino, and The Saint Ann’s Review. He is author of two chapbooks, Strangers Within the Gate (2005), and Offloading the Wounded (2010), and serves as co-editor of San Pedro River Review <http://www.sprreview.com>.
Suzanne Allen is the Creative Writing and Literature Program Director for WICE—a non-profit organization that provides cultural and educational programs for the international community in Paris, France. She holds an MFA from California State University, Long Beach, and her poems can be found in The Translator’s French Quarter, Nerve Cowboy, Pearl, California Quarterly, Cider Press Review, and in Not a Muse: the inner lives of women, a world poetry anthology (Haven Books 2009). She is a Pushcart Prize nominee. Find her musings at <http://expatchats.blogspot.com>.
A 29-year-old English teacher, Alireza Taheri Araghi holds an M.A. in Ancient Iranian Culture and Languages, and a B.A. in Mechanical Engineering. He is a translator from English to Persian of works such as Samuel Beckett’s Texts for Nothing and Richard Brautigan’s Revenge of the Lawn. He has published his own collection of short stories, I Am an Old Abacus. He also writes children’s stories and enjoys an interest in photography. He lives in Tehran.
Brad Bisio grew up in Cleveland. He studied at Syracuse University and graduated with a B.A. in Literature from Humboldt State. He has lived in New York and California, and in places in between, where he has worked numerous jobs to support his writing habit. He has recent work in Six Sentences, Mad Swirl, Word Riot, Ex Cathedra, CommonLine, and Dogzplot. with work forthcoming in Boston Literary Magazine. He won the Advisor’s Award for the story, “Still No One, but Returning Different” as published in Toyon. He lives in Nashville with his wife, his young daughter, and their two dogs.
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 fourth publication with Spot Lit.
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 the 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 Pushcart Prize nominee and co-recipient of the first annual Lois and Marine Robert Warden Poetry Award from Bellowing Ark Press. Her work can be read in SPOT Lit(erary) Mag(azine), Penumbra, Spoon River Poetry Review, Illya’s Honey and Blue Earth Review among others, and is coming in Rhino, Slab, and Decanto (UK). She has three chapbooks and her full-length poetry collection “Poste Restante” is available from Bellowing Ark. She is co-editor of San Pedro River Review <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.
Lorene V. Garrett’s poems have appeared in Black American Literature Forum, Expressively Black: The Cultural Basis of Ethnic Identity, The Haraka Reader and in Spot Literary Magazine. A recipient of the PEN USA 2010 Emerging Voices Rosenthal Fellowship, Lorene lives in Southern California where she is currently working on a memoir about flying.
Jesse Goldberg-Strassler serves as the director of media relations and the radio broadcaster for the Lansing Lugnuts, a minor league baseball team in the Toronto Blue Jays’ system. In 2008, Jesse was named runner-up for Ballpark Digest’s prestigious Broadcaster of the Year Award. A native of Greenbelt, Maryland, Jesse graduated from Ithaca College. This is his first published piece.
Mike Guardabascio was born and raised in Long Beach, California, and has been published in The District Weekly, Long Beach Magazine, The Long Beach Post, and in Everything Long Beach. He has had recent fiction in Like Water Burning and Book by Authors, and he is currently paying the bills as a full-time sportswriter. He loves what he does.
Susan Hansell’s plays have been produced throughout the U.S. Read her complete biography at <http://www.susan-hansell.net>.
Andrew Hilbert lives and works in Orange County, California. He holds a degree in history from California State University, Long Beach. Most recently, his poems have appeared in Chiron Review, Pearl, The New Verse News, and in The Delinquent (UK).
Stephen Ira makes poems and works as a teaching associate at the Areté Preparatory Academy in West Los Angeles. He had his first featured reading in 2008 at the Unurban Coffeehouse's Velvet Guerilla Cabaret. Once a week, he teaches poetry to seven-year-olds in an establishment flanked by a falafel restaurant, an ice cream parlor, and a graveyard.
Curt Last earned a B.A. in Pre-Law from UC Santa Barbara and an MFA in Poetry from California State University, Long Beach. His publications include but are not limited to The Chiron Review, Pearl, The California Quarterly, and SpotLit Magazine. He is currently a Hospital Corpsman in the United States Naval Reserves, and he will be in the Far East serving aboard the hospital ship USNS Mercy this summer.
Lori Lubeski’s latest chapbook, Undermined, was published by Carve Press. She is the author of Dissuasion Crowds the Slow Worker, STAMINA, eyes dipped in longitude lines, as well as Sweet Land and Trickle, collaborations with Bay Area artist Jakub Kalousek. She teaches at Boston University and Curry College.
Lisa Manning has been writing poems, fiction and essays for about forty years now, because she can’t help it. Her work has been appearing in a variety of journals, magazines, and anthologies for most of the past thirty years. She has published three books of poetry, and has recently completed a novel that needs publishing. She lives in Oakland, California.
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 University of Iowa Press in 2010. He teaches literature and creative writing at California State University, Long Beach.
Eric Morago has been a featured poet all over Southern California. His work has appeared in numerous on-line and in-print journals, as well as in Carving in Bone, an anthology of Orange County Poetry published by Moon Tide Press. He also has poems appearing in a forthcoming anthology of Long Beach poetry published by World Parade Books. Most recently, Eric received his MFA from CSULB, and he is currently working on his first full-length collection of poems to be published by Moon Tide Press in 2011.
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.
Luisa Peña studied at the University of Texas at Austin and at 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 blog/website about writing and art topics: <http://themeaningyoumake.com>.
Jonathan Rapp lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
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, San Francisco, and Wyoming.
John G. Rodwan, Jr.’s Fighters & Writers, a collection of essays (including one, “Ink,” that first appeared in Spot Literary Magazine), is forthcoming from Mongrel Empire Press in the summer of 2010. His 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. He currently resides in Portland, Oregon.
Luke Salazar: Thwarting Your Efforts Since 1972. This is one hoopy frood who really knows where his towel is. His works have appeared in past Spot issues, and in lesser entities such as The Ledge, Chiron Review, and Re)verb. His “Black Friday” won the 2009 Working People’s Poetry Contest by Partisan Press. He loves flowers and puppy dogs, but never in the same recipe; his hobbies include yoga, drug abuse, Karaoke, and narcissism. He graduated in 2009 with an MFA from CSULB and still hasn’t a job. If anyone is hiring Poet Laureates, please email to <beachpoetry@gmail.com>.
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, Dancing in a River of Stars (World Parade Books), will be published in 2010. In July of 2010 she will read in the city of Hull, at the Philip Larkin Arts Festival in England.
Gerald Uyeno makes his living as an engineer: writing science fiction and creating graphic images of the future. He also enjoys creating visual art with pencil, pen, or computer, and writing haiku.
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, Hammers and Hearts of the Gods, was selected as one of the Top 7 Books for 2009 by the UK newspaper Morning Star. In July of 2010 he will read in the city of Hull, at the Philip Larkin Arts Festival in England.
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 third publication with SpotLit.
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.
Christy Wise is co-author of A Mouthful of Rivets: Woman at Work in World War II. Her essays have appeared in Bayou Magazine, Sigurd Journal, Tiny Lights, and Oasis Journal, among other places. Several of her essays have received awards. A native Californian, she currently lives in Washington D.C. where she’s working on a collection of essays and completing a master’s degree in liberal studies at Georgetown University.
SLM 4.1 (Spring 2010) Contents:
Jennifer Woo “Flowers - a Study” (drawing)
Jonathan Rapp “Meadow” (poem)
Shelagh Davis “Girl Talk” (poem)
Curt Last “C.B.’s” (poem)
Brad Bisio “Poolside Zen” (poem)
Lori Lubeski “Toy Soldier” (poem)
Kyle Moreno “Lines” (photo)
Christy Wise “Close to the Wind” (essay)
Jesse Goldberg-Strassler “Almost a Love Story” (story)
a. paul cartier “Art Grant” (photo)
Lorene V. Garrett “Coming Undone” (poem)
Lorene V. Garrett “Boredom IV” (poem)
Suzanne Allen “Sticky” (poem)
Joan Jobe Smith “Microwave Love Songs” (poem)
Fred Voss “Teatime at the O.K. Corral” (poem)
Brooks Roddan “On Poetry Boulevard” (poem)
Kyle Moreno “everything that happens will happen
today” (photo)
Susan Hansell “Waiting for Two” (new play excerpt #2)
Alireza Taheri Araghi (untitled photo)
Bill Mohr “The Laughter of the Damned” (poem)
Stephen Ira “Rosie” (poem)
Andrew Hilbert “iguana kelley’s” (poem)
Jeffrey C. Alfier “Toward the Obsolescence of Kissing
Booths” (poem)
Tobi Cogswell “Everything Good about Paris” (poem)
a. paul cartier “Merida PM #1” (photo)
Mike Guardabascio “In the Cracks” (story)
a. paul cartier “Stern Grove” (photo)
Michael Buckley “Human Hair Wig” (story)
Hazzel Yen “Lightness” (mixed media)
Lori Lubeski “Star without Sky” (poem)
Lori Lubeski “Pale song” (poem)
Lisa Manning “They Might Let You Go but They Cannot
Clean the Madness out of You” (poem)
Eric Morago “Icarus” (poem)
Luke Salazar “Almost Empty” (poem)
Hazzel Yen “Inner War” (mixed media)
John G. Rodwan, Jr. “Detroit Undead” (essay)
Alireza Taheri Araghi (untitled photo)
Brooks Rodden “Above Santa Barbara” (poem)
Luisa Peña “The Life of the Modern Fruit” (poem)
Lisa Manning “Down” (poem)
Gerald Uyeno “Magic Cactus” (drawing)
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 4.1 will be available in early May of 2010.
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