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T/W: the issue contains traumatic & mature content in parts
issue 87
issue 87, featuring:
cover: lisa berley
jane ayres
laura besley
seth crook
lewis wyn davies
beatriu delaveda
m f drummy
pauline mccarthy
réka nyitrai
heather ann pulido
jp seabright
jess smith
bobbie sparrow
ann christine tabaka
grzegorz wróblewski & marcus silcock slease
cover: lisa berley
jane ayres
laura besley
seth crook
lewis wyn davies
beatriu delaveda
m f drummy
pauline mccarthy
réka nyitrai
heather ann pulido
jp seabright
jess smith
bobbie sparrow
ann christine tabaka
grzegorz wróblewski & marcus silcock slease
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biographies - issue 87
Lisa Berley
Visual artist and poet Lisa Berley began her career as art director at KQED TV in San Francisco after receiving a BFA in painting and photography from the San Francisco Art Institute. At the intersection of art and media Berley began her pioneering work as an artist for Aurora Systems, developing one of the first computer graphics and animation systems for television. After returning to New York she raised a family, wrote a blog, and exhibited mixed media/collage works in galleries across Long Island culminating in a one-woman show in Geneseo, New York. In 2016 Berley moved to Boulder, Colorado and after her son’s accidental death from a fall, began using methods similar to her collage paintings to create hybrid erasure poetry/collage. Her nonlinear approach to poetry/collage, redacting found words to create new reductive fragments, mirrors her journey of profound grief.
Jane Ayres
UK based neurodivergent writer Jane Ayres re-discovered poetry studying for a part-time Creative Writing MA at the University of Kent, which she completed in 2019 at the age of 57. In 2020, she was longlisted for the Rebecca Swift Foundation Women Poets’ Prize. In 2021, she was nominated for Best of the Net, shortlisted for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award and a winner of the Laurence Sterne Prize. Her first collection edible was published by Beir Bua Press in July 2022. Her micro-chapbook my lost womb still sings to me is published by Porkbelly Press in October 2023.
Website: janeayreswriter.wordpress.com https://www.youtube.com/@slowgallop451
Twitter: @workingwords50
Laura Besley
Laura Besley is the author of 100neHundred and The Almost Mothers. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, twice nominated for Best Micro Fiction and she has been listed by TSS Publishing as one of the top 50 British and Irish Flash Fiction writers. She is an editor with Flash Fiction Magazine and is currently a Creative Writing MA student at the University of Leicester. Having lived in the Netherlands, Germany and Hong Kong, she now lives in land-locked central England and misses the sea.
Seth Crook
Seth Crook lives loves sea slugs. His poems have appeared in such places as The Rialto, Magma, Pennine Platform, Northwords Now, Poetry Salzburg Review, Gutter. In e-zines such as Snakeskin, Streetcake. In recent anthologies such as The SHOp: An Anthology (Liffey), A470 (Arachne), The Centenary Collection (Speculative), Places of Poetry (One World). He has a pamphlet of visual poems Chalked On The Path (Dreich).
Lewis Wyn Davies
Lewis Wyn Davies is a writer from an impoverished upbringing in Shropshire who possesses a deep-rooted drive to shine a light on those less fortunate in society and to encourage more of his peers to embrace poetry. His words have been published (or are forthcoming) in Dreich, Broken Sleep Books and VAINE Magazine, while he's also featured on local radio as part of BBC Upload.
Beatriu Delaveda
Beatriu Delaveda is the pseudonym of a Chester expat who has written five books as well as two chapbooks of visual poetry. The poetry, fiction, and non-fiction of BD have been published in, among others, the Guardian, Atlantic, New York Times, McSweeney’s, Sugar House, fleeting, Mobius, 3 am, Mudlark, Pennine Platform, Plume, Storm Cellar, Mercurius, morphrog, mono, Tupelo Quarterly, The Bamboo Hut and Clapboard House, where they won a short story prize.
M F Drummy
M F Drummy holds a PhD in historical theology from Fordham University. He is the author of numerous haiku, articles, essays, reviews, poems, and a monograph on religion and ecology (Being and Earth). His work has appeared, or will appear, in Allium, Amethyst Review, Feral, Frogpond, Main Street Rag, and many others. He and his wife of nearly 20 years enjoy splitting their time between the Colorado Rockies and the rest of the planet. He can be found at: X @mdrummy56 Instagram @miguelito.drummalino Website https://bespoke-poet.com
Pauline Mccarthy
Pauline is a self-taught artist who discovered the joy of painting late in life. She works mainly with acrylics as she loves the easy going nature of this medium. Yearning for home is sparce in detail, as it is not a place her character belongs. He’s looking into the distance, longing for family he has been separated from.
Réka Nyitrai
Réka Nyitrai is a spell, a sparrow, a lioness’s tongue — a bird nest in a pool of dusk. She is the recipient of a Touchstone Distinguished Books Award for 2020 for her debut haiku volume “While Dreaming Your Dreams” (Valencia Spain: Mono Ya Mono Books, 2020).
Heather Ann Pulido
Heather Ann Pulido is an indigenous and bisexual author from Baguio City, Philippines. A freelance journalist and content writer, she is a returning poet. Her poetry is in Moss Puppy and Sage Cigarettes. She has a BOTN-nominated poem published by JAKE. Her debut poetry chapbook "Coming Home to Myself" (Naked Cat Publishing) was released in September 2023.
JP Seabright
JP Seabright (she/they) is a queer disabled writer living in London. They have four solo pamphlets published and two collaborations, encompassing poetry, prose and experimental work. More info at https://jpseabright.com or via Twitter @errormessage and @jpseabright everywhere else.
Jess Smith
Jess Smith (she/her) is an author and screenwriter based in Glasgow, Scotland. In 2022, she graduated from the University of Strathclyde with a first class BA in Creative Writing and English Literature and was the recipient of several academic awards. She also came runner-up in the UK Film Festival’s 2022 Short Script Competition. She enjoy writing about class, capitalism, gender, identity and human connection.
Bobbie Sparrow
Bobbie Sparrow is a widely published poet both in significant journals and anthologies. She has been placed in various competitions but is not excited about comparison. Her first collection is due for publication Spring 2024. She swims in the lake all year round, bless her daft heart.
Ann Christine Tabaka
Ann Christine Tabaka was nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize in Poetry; nominated for the 2023 Dwarf Stars award of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association; winner of Spillwords Press 2020 Publication of the Year. Her bio is featured in the “Who’s Who of Emerging Writers” 2020 and 2021.
Grzegorz Wróblewski & Marcus Silcock Slease
Grzegorz Wróblewski was born in 1962 in Gdańsk and grew up in Warsaw. Since 1985 he has been living in Copenhagen. English translations of his work are available in Our Flying Objects (trans. Joel Leonard Katz, Rod Mengham, Malcolm Sinclair, Adam Zdrodowski, Equipage, 2007), A Marzipan Factory (trans. Adam Zdrodowski, Otoliths, 2010), Kopenhaga (trans. Piotr Gwiazda, Zephyr Press, 2013), Let's Go Back to the Mainland (trans. Agnieszka Pokojska, Červená Barva Press, 2014), Zero Visibility (trans. Piotr Gwiazda, Phoneme Media, 2017), Dear Beloved Humans (trans. Piotr Gwiazda, Lavender/Dialogos Books, 2023) Asemic writing book Shanty Town (Post-Asemic Press, 2022).
Marcus Silcock Slease is a (mostly) surreal-absurd writer from Portadown, N. Ireland. He is the author of Puppy (Beir Bua Press), Never Mind the Beasts (Dostoyevsky Wannabe), The Green Monk (Boiler House Press), and Play Yr Kardz Right (Dostoyevsky Wannabe), among others. His poetry has been translated into Polish and Danish and has appeared or is forthcoming in various magazines and anthologies, including: Tin House, Poetry, The Lincoln Review, Bath Magg, New World Writing, Tupelo Quarterly, and in the Best British Poetry series. He lives in Sitges, Spain. Find out more at: Never Mind the Beasts (www.nevermindthebeasts.com)
Lisa Berley
Visual artist and poet Lisa Berley began her career as art director at KQED TV in San Francisco after receiving a BFA in painting and photography from the San Francisco Art Institute. At the intersection of art and media Berley began her pioneering work as an artist for Aurora Systems, developing one of the first computer graphics and animation systems for television. After returning to New York she raised a family, wrote a blog, and exhibited mixed media/collage works in galleries across Long Island culminating in a one-woman show in Geneseo, New York. In 2016 Berley moved to Boulder, Colorado and after her son’s accidental death from a fall, began using methods similar to her collage paintings to create hybrid erasure poetry/collage. Her nonlinear approach to poetry/collage, redacting found words to create new reductive fragments, mirrors her journey of profound grief.
Jane Ayres
UK based neurodivergent writer Jane Ayres re-discovered poetry studying for a part-time Creative Writing MA at the University of Kent, which she completed in 2019 at the age of 57. In 2020, she was longlisted for the Rebecca Swift Foundation Women Poets’ Prize. In 2021, she was nominated for Best of the Net, shortlisted for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award and a winner of the Laurence Sterne Prize. Her first collection edible was published by Beir Bua Press in July 2022. Her micro-chapbook my lost womb still sings to me is published by Porkbelly Press in October 2023.
Website: janeayreswriter.wordpress.com https://www.youtube.com/@slowgallop451
Twitter: @workingwords50
Laura Besley
Laura Besley is the author of 100neHundred and The Almost Mothers. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, twice nominated for Best Micro Fiction and she has been listed by TSS Publishing as one of the top 50 British and Irish Flash Fiction writers. She is an editor with Flash Fiction Magazine and is currently a Creative Writing MA student at the University of Leicester. Having lived in the Netherlands, Germany and Hong Kong, she now lives in land-locked central England and misses the sea.
Seth Crook
Seth Crook lives loves sea slugs. His poems have appeared in such places as The Rialto, Magma, Pennine Platform, Northwords Now, Poetry Salzburg Review, Gutter. In e-zines such as Snakeskin, Streetcake. In recent anthologies such as The SHOp: An Anthology (Liffey), A470 (Arachne), The Centenary Collection (Speculative), Places of Poetry (One World). He has a pamphlet of visual poems Chalked On The Path (Dreich).
Lewis Wyn Davies
Lewis Wyn Davies is a writer from an impoverished upbringing in Shropshire who possesses a deep-rooted drive to shine a light on those less fortunate in society and to encourage more of his peers to embrace poetry. His words have been published (or are forthcoming) in Dreich, Broken Sleep Books and VAINE Magazine, while he's also featured on local radio as part of BBC Upload.
Beatriu Delaveda
Beatriu Delaveda is the pseudonym of a Chester expat who has written five books as well as two chapbooks of visual poetry. The poetry, fiction, and non-fiction of BD have been published in, among others, the Guardian, Atlantic, New York Times, McSweeney’s, Sugar House, fleeting, Mobius, 3 am, Mudlark, Pennine Platform, Plume, Storm Cellar, Mercurius, morphrog, mono, Tupelo Quarterly, The Bamboo Hut and Clapboard House, where they won a short story prize.
M F Drummy
M F Drummy holds a PhD in historical theology from Fordham University. He is the author of numerous haiku, articles, essays, reviews, poems, and a monograph on religion and ecology (Being and Earth). His work has appeared, or will appear, in Allium, Amethyst Review, Feral, Frogpond, Main Street Rag, and many others. He and his wife of nearly 20 years enjoy splitting their time between the Colorado Rockies and the rest of the planet. He can be found at: X @mdrummy56 Instagram @miguelito.drummalino Website https://bespoke-poet.com
Pauline Mccarthy
Pauline is a self-taught artist who discovered the joy of painting late in life. She works mainly with acrylics as she loves the easy going nature of this medium. Yearning for home is sparce in detail, as it is not a place her character belongs. He’s looking into the distance, longing for family he has been separated from.
Réka Nyitrai
Réka Nyitrai is a spell, a sparrow, a lioness’s tongue — a bird nest in a pool of dusk. She is the recipient of a Touchstone Distinguished Books Award for 2020 for her debut haiku volume “While Dreaming Your Dreams” (Valencia Spain: Mono Ya Mono Books, 2020).
Heather Ann Pulido
Heather Ann Pulido is an indigenous and bisexual author from Baguio City, Philippines. A freelance journalist and content writer, she is a returning poet. Her poetry is in Moss Puppy and Sage Cigarettes. She has a BOTN-nominated poem published by JAKE. Her debut poetry chapbook "Coming Home to Myself" (Naked Cat Publishing) was released in September 2023.
JP Seabright
JP Seabright (she/they) is a queer disabled writer living in London. They have four solo pamphlets published and two collaborations, encompassing poetry, prose and experimental work. More info at https://jpseabright.com or via Twitter @errormessage and @jpseabright everywhere else.
Jess Smith
Jess Smith (she/her) is an author and screenwriter based in Glasgow, Scotland. In 2022, she graduated from the University of Strathclyde with a first class BA in Creative Writing and English Literature and was the recipient of several academic awards. She also came runner-up in the UK Film Festival’s 2022 Short Script Competition. She enjoy writing about class, capitalism, gender, identity and human connection.
Bobbie Sparrow
Bobbie Sparrow is a widely published poet both in significant journals and anthologies. She has been placed in various competitions but is not excited about comparison. Her first collection is due for publication Spring 2024. She swims in the lake all year round, bless her daft heart.
Ann Christine Tabaka
Ann Christine Tabaka was nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize in Poetry; nominated for the 2023 Dwarf Stars award of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association; winner of Spillwords Press 2020 Publication of the Year. Her bio is featured in the “Who’s Who of Emerging Writers” 2020 and 2021.
Grzegorz Wróblewski & Marcus Silcock Slease
Grzegorz Wróblewski was born in 1962 in Gdańsk and grew up in Warsaw. Since 1985 he has been living in Copenhagen. English translations of his work are available in Our Flying Objects (trans. Joel Leonard Katz, Rod Mengham, Malcolm Sinclair, Adam Zdrodowski, Equipage, 2007), A Marzipan Factory (trans. Adam Zdrodowski, Otoliths, 2010), Kopenhaga (trans. Piotr Gwiazda, Zephyr Press, 2013), Let's Go Back to the Mainland (trans. Agnieszka Pokojska, Červená Barva Press, 2014), Zero Visibility (trans. Piotr Gwiazda, Phoneme Media, 2017), Dear Beloved Humans (trans. Piotr Gwiazda, Lavender/Dialogos Books, 2023) Asemic writing book Shanty Town (Post-Asemic Press, 2022).
Marcus Silcock Slease is a (mostly) surreal-absurd writer from Portadown, N. Ireland. He is the author of Puppy (Beir Bua Press), Never Mind the Beasts (Dostoyevsky Wannabe), The Green Monk (Boiler House Press), and Play Yr Kardz Right (Dostoyevsky Wannabe), among others. His poetry has been translated into Polish and Danish and has appeared or is forthcoming in various magazines and anthologies, including: Tin House, Poetry, The Lincoln Review, Bath Magg, New World Writing, Tupelo Quarterly, and in the Best British Poetry series. He lives in Sitges, Spain. Find out more at: Never Mind the Beasts (www.nevermindthebeasts.com)
