Contributors
Featured Artist
STUART CAMERON VANCE creates colorful, rhythmic, and lyrical abstract landscape paintings inspired by an eclectic combination of sources, including aerial survey photography, topographical maps, Japanese woodblock prints, the Bay Area figurative movement, and the Pop artists of the 1960s. His work explores the tension and connection between the natural world and epic, human-built structures and systems. Raised in Los Angeles, California, Vance lived and breathed the city’s sprawling freeways, roadways, and cement waterways that later became the focus of his work. Eventually moving to the northern portion of the state, he studied printmaking and painting at the San Francisco Art Institute and graduated with a BFA in 1984. Following a romantic glimmering, Vance moved to New York City to work and study with conceptual provocateur Robin Winters and minimalist painter Pat Steir. Vance’s current work endeavors to humanize how we think about infrastructure and transportation. His paintings continue to explore his belief that, if we are ever to bring our lives into harmony with nature, we must think—and feel—poetically about the environment we design and build.
WEBSITE: https://www.stuartvance.com
Writers and Poets
Kwame Alexander: Kwame Alexander is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of 47 books, including Why Fathers Cry at Night, The Mighty Macy, Black Star, andThe Crossover, his Newbery Medal-winning novel turned Emmy® Award-winning Disney+ TV series. A recipient of the 2025 NAACP Image Award, Kwame is a 2026 Sine 250+ Fellow at American University, the founder of the literacy non-profit One Word at a Time, and the Inaugural Distinguished Fellow at the African American Heritage House at Chautauqua.
Tony Barnstone: Tony Barnstone teaches at Whittier College and is the author of 24 books and a music CD. His new books are Apocryphal Poems (Nirala Press, 2024); a co-translation from the Urdu, Faces Hidden in the Dust: Selected Ghazals of Ghalib; and a creativity tool, The Radiant Tarot: Pathway to Creativity, with artist Alexandra Eldridge. His other books of poetry include Pulp Sonnets; Beast in the Apartment; Buda en Llamas: Antología poética (bilingual); Tongue of War: From Pearl Harbor to Nagasaki; The Golem of Los Angeles; Sad Jazz: Sonnets; and Impure. He is also a translator or co-translator of world literature, primarily Chinese but also Spanish and Urdu. Among his awards are: The Poets Prize, the Strokestown International Prize, the Pushcart Prize in Poetry, The John Ciardi Prize, The Benjamin Saltman Award, and fellowships from the NEA, NEH, and California Arts Council. He has also co-edited the anthologies Republic of Apples, Democracy of Oranges: New Eco-Poetry from China and the United States; Dead and Undead Poems; and Monster Verse. His forthcoming critical book is The Cyborg Modernism of William Carlos Williams: Technoscience and the Arts. He is currently working on a libretto for an opera.
Finnian Burnett: Finnian’s work appears in Writer’s Digest, Geist Literary, Pulp Literature, CBC books, and more. Finnian’s novellas-in-flash, THE PRICE OF COOKIES and REDSHIRTS SOMETIMES SURVIVE are available from Off Topic Publishing. Finnian lives in British Columbia and enjoys walking, Star Trek, and cat memes.
Joys Chow: Joys Chow, trained as an architect, relishes manipulating space for 30+ years. She is in transition to wrestling with words on paper. Ever since she immigrated from Hong Kong to Canada as a child, she has had a foot in each world. She lives with her husband and three children in Vancouver, Canada.
Alexis Rhone Fancher: Poet/photographer Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Rattle, The American Journal of Poetry, Spillway, Plume, Diode, The Pedestal Magazine, Duende, and elsewhere. She’s authored eleven poetry collections, most recently, TRIGGERED, (MacQueens) and BRAZEN. (NYQ). A multi Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis recently won Best MicroFictions, 2025. She calls the Mojave Desert home. www.alexisrhonefancher.com.
Sandra Giedeman: Sandra’s poetry has been published in Poetry, Critic, Cortland Review, Bellevue Literary Review (NYU School of Medicine), Paris/Atlantic, Fiera Lingua, and others. She was awarded the Mudfish Poetry Prize by Charles Simic. She has two Pushcart Nominations and her short stories were performed by the L.A. New Short Fiction Series. Green Tara Press published her collection.
Ann Hackman: Ann Hackman is a writer based in Pomona California. She loves experimental writing. Ann is thrilled to publish in The Journal of Radical Wonder. In the 90’s, known to gather friends at truck stops to play hackeysack, as a touring violinist, she’s since kicked the habit. She can be reached at: annietstk@yahoo.com
Carrie Lynn Hawthorne: Carrie Lynn Hawthorne is a freelance writer, editor, and teacher whose work has appeared in The MacGuffin, Reckon Review, and elsewhere. She holds a MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles.
Tammy Iralu: Tammy Iralu lives in New Mexico with her husband and daughter. She enjoys backpackng, hiking, and breaking bread with family and friends. Her poetry is published or forthcoming in Amethyst Review, Mukoli: The Magazine for Peace, The Ekphrastic Review, Cowley Magazine, The Other Side, and elsewhere. Her work is supported by YoungArts, Millay Arts, and the San Juan National Forest Artist-in-Residence Program: Aspen Guard Station in Mancos, Colorado. You can find her at www.terimuso.com and https://substack.com/@tammyiralu.
Peter Jastermsky: A New England native, Peter Jastermsky lives among the Joshua trees in Southern California. The author of twelve books of haiku-based work, Peter’s mind is a storehouse of vast and useless information. To date, he’s never forgotten a song lyric. To learn more, please go to peterjastermsky.com.
Judy Long: Judy Long was a kindergarten teacher before she retired to raise five children. In 1980, she earned two masters degrees in English and Special Education and taught in early intervention programs through the COVID Pandemic. She has been a journalist and has been writing poetry all her life.
Michael Loveday: Michael Loveday lives in Hertfordshire, England. His poetry pamphlet He Said/She Said was published by HappenStance Press (2011). His craft guide Unlocking the Novella-in-Flash: from Blank Page to Finished Manuscript (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2022), won a Best Indie Book Award and the 2024 Independent Press Award for Writing and Publishing. Website: www.michaelloveday.com.
Peggy Grant Minckler: Peggy Grant Minckler resides in the undulating hills of western New York. Gardener, teacher, mother of two and ardent supporter of her local library, she enjoys playing piano, long woodland walks and relaxing in the pasture with her dog.
Ammanda Selethia Moore: Ammanda Selethia Moore (they/elle) is a non-binary poet and writer who also teaches English at Norco College. They have had dozens of publications in venues such as Synchronized Chaos, Literary Yard, and The Journal of Radical Wonder. They live with their partner in sunny southern California. Follow their exploits @prof.ammanda on Instagram.
Meg Pokrass: Meg Pokrass has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including New England Review, Wigleaf, Electric Literature, Five Points, Plume, RATTLE, The Best Small Fictions 2025, and Flash Fiction America (W.W. Norton, 2023). She has published 10 books of fiction and prose poetry. Her newest full collection First Law of Holes: New and Selected Stories is from Dzanc Books. Meg currently lives in the Scottish Highlands, where she judges The Edinburgh Award for Flash Fiction, and serves as Founding/Managing Editor of Best Microfiction.
Brett Ramseyer: Brett Ramseyer recently retired from 25 years of teaching high school English and history in Hart, Michigan. There he owns Ridges - Hike & Ski Tours <https://www.ridgesmi.com/> to share his ardent love of his land, nature, and conservancy with the world. Brett is a published writer and photographer with more at <https://bramseyer.wordpress.com/>. He produced many student and contest anthologies, has written a novel (COME NOT TO US), and a collection of short stories (Waiting for Bells).
Kareem Tayyar: Kareem Tayyar’s writing and photography has appeared in a variety of journals and magazines, including Poetry Magazine, Colorado Review, Prairie Schooner, San Pedro River Review, and Alaska Quarterly Review, and his most recent collection, Keats in San Francisco & Other Poems, was published by Lily Poetry Review Books in 2022.
Philip Terman: Philip Terman’s poems include My Blossoming Everything (Saddle Road Press), Our Portion: New and Selected Poems and, as co-translator, Tango Beneath a Narrow Ceiling: The Selected poems of Riad Saleh Hussein. A selection of his poems, My Dear Friend Kafka, has been translated into Arabic. His poems and essays appear in many journals and anthologies, such as Poetry Magazine, The Kenyon Review, Poetry International, The Sun, The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish Poetry, and Extraordinary Rendition: American Writers on Palestine. Terman directs The Bridge Literary Arts Center and conducts poetry workshops and coaches writing hither and yon. He’s collaborated with composers, visual artists, and performs his poetry with the jazz band Catro. https://philipterman.mycanva.site
Thomas R. Thomas: Thomas R. Thomas publishes the small press Arroyo Seco Press. Publications include Carnival, Chiron Review, and Silver Birch Press. His books include the art of invisibility, Star Chasing, three on a wire, Missing Shaun, and If Wishes Had Wings and other stories. His website is thomasrthomas.org.
Michael Torres: Michael Torres was born and brought up in Pomona, California. His debut collection, An Incomplete List of Names (Beacon Press, 2020) was selected by Roque Raquel Salas Rivera for the National Poetry Series. He teaches in the MFA program at Minnesota State University, Mankato and through the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. Visit him at: michaeltorreswriter.com
Debbi Voisey: Debbi has stories in print and online in several places and is Pushcart and Best Micro Fictions nominated. She had two novellas-in-flash published in 2021, Only About Love, and The 10:25. Her novel, In the Dark, was published in 2025 by Bloodhound Books. Visit her website: www.debbivoisey.co.uk
John Wheway: John Wheway’s publications include A Bluebottle in Late October, V Press (2020); Poems in New Measure, Stand, Magma, Warwick Review, Poetry Review, the Yellow Nib, Poetry Quarterly, Compass Magazine, South Word, Agenda, McQueens Quinterly, High Window, And Other Poems, three Templar anthologiesand The Echoing Gallery from Redcliffe Press; flash fiction in Flash Flood, Ad Hoc Fiction anthologies, Fictive Dream and Ellipsis-Zine; The Green Table of Infinity, pamphlet from Anvil Press; Poborden, a novella, from Faber. He has a Creative Writing MA with distinction from Bath Spa University. Website: John Wheway.com
Alison Woodhouse: Alison Woodhouse is a writer and teacher, based in the UK. Her stories are published widely, both in print and online, including most recently in Mslexia, where she won the 2025 flash fiction competition. Her novella The House on the Corner, was published by AdHoc Fiction (2020) and collection Family Frames, by V Press (2021). She is in the third year of a funded PhD in Creative Writing at Bath Spa.
Fred Zirm: Fred Zirm spent decades teaching English and drama at an independent boys’ school. Since his retirement, he has continued to direct plays but has also focused on writing poetry. His work has been published in over a dozen literary magazines and anthologies. He is the author of three poetry chapbooks: Object Lessons, Rescue Dogs, and Cycling at Sunrise.
Clark Zlotchew: Clark Zlotchew is the author of 19 books, among them two thriller novels, a poetry collection, and three collections of short stories. His fiction, poetry, author interviews (including Borges) and CNF have appeared in Crossways Literary Magazine, The American Poetry Review, and many other journals in the U.S. as well as abroad.