ISSUE 15: Roots, Wings, and Everything In Between

Kluane Lake

Kersten Christianson is a raven-watching, moon-gazing Alaskan. When not exploring the summer lands and dark winter of the Yukon, she lives in Sitka, Alaska. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Alaska Anchorage and recently published her first poetry collection, Something Yet to Be Named (Aldrich Press, 2017).

Walking Pregnant in the Bluebells, and The First Tooth

Guinevere Clark lives in Wales, United Kingdom, and is completing a creative writing PhD in poetry at Swansea University, studying themes of birth, motherhood, love, single parenting, and her beautiful city-coast location. She has a published collection titled Fresh Fruit & Screams (2006) and a self-published book titled The Belly Dancers Treasure Pack (2011). Visit www.guinevereclark.com.

Elegy for Thomas Berry

Suzannah Dalzell lives on Whidbey Island north of Seattle, Washington, where she divides her time more or less equally between writing and land conservation. Her poems have appeared in Pilgrimage Magazine, Adanna, Flyway, About Place, and The Raven Chronicles. She is currently working on a poetry collection that explores the places where her family history bumps up against race, class, and environmental devastation.

Opening Remarks

Jenny Davis is a career educator with experience in middle and high school English classrooms. With a passion for literature and the difference that education makes in students’ lives, she believes that education empowers students by giving them the critical thinking skills to accomplish their goals.

A native of Mississippi, Davis received her bachelor of arts in English and master of arts in teaching from the University of Memphis. She also earned a master of arts in English from Austin Peay State University with a focus on early American literature, and her thesis won the department’s Dogwood Award for Literary Criticism. She currently serves as organizer of the Women’s Leadership Network, a member of the Arkansas Shakespeare Theater Event Planning Committee, and a board member of the Conway Symphony Orchestra and C.D. Wright Women’s Writers Conference.

Jenny Davis lives in Conway, Arkansas, with her husband, Houston, who serves as president of the University of Central Arkansas. They have three children, Polly, Whitney, and Josh.

Mother’s War

Carol Dine has published Orange Night and Van Gogh in Poems, and a memoir, Places in the Bone. Her work appears in the anthologies Poems Against War: Bending Toward Justice, Liberation: New Works on Freedom, and Forgotten Women. For her manuscript, “Resistance: The Canvas of War,” she received a grant from the Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund.

Lineage

Kara Dorris’ poetry has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Puerto del Sol, and Crazyhorse, among others, as well as the anthology Beauty is a Verb (Cinco Puntos Press, 2011). She has published three chapbooks: Elective Affinities (2011), Sonnets from Vada’s Beauty Parlor & Chainsaw Repair (2018), and Night Ride Home (2012).

Off the Grid

Home is not a portable thing for me. I don’t have that zen wherever-I-go-there-I-am equanimity. When I left Chicago, where my family has been anchored for four generations, I discovered my native habitat was not just about the communities I’d inherited but about the physical place itself: the smells, vistas, the natural environment. Its loss literally made me sick. My key question: What do you gain when forced to adapt?

I’ve had both fiction and nonfiction published in literary journals, including Chautauqua Literary Journal, The Mississippi Review, Quarter After Eight, Crab Orchard Review, and The Sycamore Review, which nominated my essay for a Pushcart Prize. I live in Dallas with my husband and teach writing at various arts institutions.

The Dreaming Tree

I am an artist and writer from Brighton, United Kingdom, and am passionate about the natural world. Having won mentoring with Amy Liptrot, I have been published in anthologies and journals and am writing a book about my encounters with wildlife during dusk, night, and dawn. Visit www.alexifrancisillustrations.co.uk and www.alexifrancis.co.uk.

Arcadia

The woman in “Arcadia” raised her son to be independent, even if he left her behind. This will be my fifth published story; one was the finalist for the John Gardner Fiction Prize. I have completed a novel loosely based on my experiences running an organic farm.

Roots and Shadows in the Cotswolds, Toadstools and Tree Roots, and Hyacinth Roots

Sandra Fry is a writer, photographer, traveler, retired computer analyst, and lifetime art student. She has been published in Minerva Rising, Number One, and The Longleaf Pine, and has published an essay, titled “My Turn,” in the AARP Bulletin.

Her blog, HoarderComesClean.wordpress.com, tracks adventures in art, travel, and downsizing.

Cancer Rules

Carolyn Gretches is a writer and filmmaker based in Southern California. Currently, she is an MFA candidate at the University of California, Riverside, with a focus in screenwriting. Before going back to school, Getches worked as a producer of creative educational videos for companies such as Craftsy, Interweave, and iQuilt. In addition, she has published essays through Adios Barbie, The Manifest-Station, and Art Files of the Flatlanders. Getches is originally from West Newbury, Massachusetts.

Invisible Strings

Ashley teaches English to immigrants in Columbus, Ohio. More than an English teacher, she sees language and stories as a way to build compassion for the human inside everyone. Life has taught her that creativity is a door to the spiritual self, and in the simplest and truest sense, she writes to remember herself back home.

Our House

Magin LaSov Gregg lives with her husband, Carl, and four rescue pets in Frederick, Maryland.

She spends her days teaching the best community college students in the world. Her essays have appeared in the Washington Post, Bellingham Review, The Rumpus, Full Grown People, Under the Gum Tree, and elsewhere.

Arise

Larissa Monique Hauck is a visual artist who received her bachelor of fine arts with distinction from the Alberta College of Art & Design in 2014. Since graduating, she has been exhibiting both locally and internationally, and her artwork has been featured in multiple publications worldwide.

Coyote Talks to Me

I have deep roots in the Pacific Northwest. Our farm on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington has reunited pieces of a pioneer homestead. I regularly record my observations of the wildlife, plants and trees, and changes in the creek. This connection transfers into my writing. As a poet I am self taught and continuously seek opportunities to improve my skills.

In addition to Minerva Rising, my work has been published in New Plains Review, Rainshadow Anthology, Spindrift, and Tidepools.

Montserrat

Akua Lezli Hope is a creator who uses sound, words, fiber, glass, and wire to create poems, patterns, stories, music, adornments, and peace. She has won fellowships from the NewYork Foundation for the Arts, Ragdale, and the National Endowment for the Arts. A paraplegic, she founded a paratransit nonprofit. Her new poetry collection is Them Gone (2018).

Eurydice

Tiffany Hutton is a professional writer in financial services, who writes poetry and short stories for the pleasure of it. She is also a teacher (sometimes) who has lived in Sydney, Australia, since she was eighteen, but grew up in South East Asia.

Thred

Jeanne Julian’s chapbook is Blossom and Loss (Longleaf Press). Her poems appear in Prairie Wolf Press Review, Poetry Quarterly, Lascaux Prize 2016 Anthology, pacificREVIEW, The RavensPerch, and other journals, and have won awards from The Comstock Review, Naugatuck River Review, The North Carolina Poetry Society, and the Asheville Writers’ Workshop.

Growth

Julia Kadlec-Wagner lectures in academic and creative writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University where she is alsothe director of the Metro Writing Studio.Her work has recently appeared in The Solitary Plover, Bacopa Literary Review, and Minerva Literary Review, as well as in her book Aegis. For a full description of her biography and work, visit wagnerjulia.com.

Purse/Uterus

Julia Caroline Knowlton is Professor of French at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta. An Academy of American Poets College Prize recipient and a Pushcart nominee, her first chapbook of poems will be published in the fall of 2018 by Alice Greene & Co. You may find more of her work at juliacarolineknowlton.agnesscott.org.

St. Kildrie’s Guard

Elizabeth Kuelbs writes and mothers at the edge of a Los Angeles canyon. She holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. You can find more of her work in The Timberline Review, Plum Tree Tavern, Every Day Fiction, Cricket, Poets Reading the News, and elsewhere.

Muzungu Purple

Marjorie Schratz McNamara’s first two children were born “in the bush” in Malawi. Her poems have been in nine years of NC Pinesong Awards, some store windows, and one UN Dirt exhibition. One was nominated for a Pushcart by Flying South. She teaches adult ESL in Burlington, North Carolina.

Boneyard, When My Mother Begins to Forget Me, and Phantom Rain

Megan Merchant is an editor at Comstock Review. Her most recent book, Grief Flowers (Glass Lyre Press), will be coming into the world this summer. You can find her work at meganmerchant.wix.com/poet.

Origins

A Pushcart Prize Nominee, Grace C. Ocasio is a finalist of the 2016 Aesthetica Creative Writing Award in Poetry. She is also a recipient of the 2014 North Carolina Arts Council Regional Artist Project Grant. Her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Court Green, and The Chaffin Journal.

All That We Have Shared

Julia Poole writes fiction and nonfiction. Her work has appeared in The East Bay Review, Dime Show Review, Dime Show Anthology, and The MOON Magazine. She lives in Rockford, Michigan.

The Past Slid Back and Ancestors

Laura Potts, two-time recipient of the Foyle Young Poets Award, became one of the BBC’s New Voices last year. She was listed in The Oxford Brookes International Poetry Prize and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In 2018, Laura received a commendation from The Laureate’s Competition and The Poetry Society.

Learn

Kelsey Anne Rankin is a freelance writer currently nestled in the Pacific Northwest. Her works include creative non fiction, poetry and prose, feature pieces and short stories.

Mississippi: My History

Harriet Riley is a freelance writer focusing on creative nonfiction. She publishes primarily nonfiction pieces in magazines and online publications. She has just moved to New Orleans after living in Houston, Texas, for eleven years. There, she taught creative writing in a variety of settings. Before moving to Houston, Harriet taught undergraduate writing classes at the University of West Florida in Pensacola. She has also worked as a nonprofit director, hospital marketing director, and newspaper reporter. She has her MA in print journalism from the University of Texas at Austin and her BA in English and journalism from the University of Mississippi. She lived the first eighteen years of her life in Meridian, Mississippi.

The Subject is Muses, What Grows Here?, and Muses

A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new. Follow her explorations on the blog she does with her friend Nina at https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/, and see more of her work on her website http://kerferoig.com/.

Cloudscape, Wedding Flowers, and Heaven

Judith is interested in feelings engendered by the natural world. Her medium is oil on canvas, and her works range from expressionist to abstract. She has studied at the Pratt Fine Arts Center and the Seattle Artist’s League under the mentorship of Ruthie V. Shows include The Pratt and Galvanize. Visit jkpaintings.com.

Uprooted

Raised on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Evelyn graduated from Spring Hill College in Mobile and Tulane Law School in New Orleans. After practicing law for twelve years, she moved to Melbourne, Australia, where she couldn’t practice law so she opened a small bookshop. Evelyn’s lived in Houston, Texas, since 2008.

Human Traffic

Julie Stahl is from central California. When her only child was killed in a car accident, she found herself at a loss for how to be in the world. She is currently writing about this ongoing struggle. Her previously published work includes creative nonfiction, personal essay, and a novel.

Accidental Inheritance

Erica Steinweg lives, writes, and wanders the woods in Northeast, Ohio. Her poetry and memoir pieces have been, or will soon be seen, in The Sun, The American Journal of Nursing, Awake in the World, The Mindful Word, and Family Celebrations, an anthology by June Cotner.

Harvest

Diane Stone, a former technical writer-editor, lives on Whidbey Island north of Seattle. Her work has been published in Rattle, Floating Bridge Review, Adanna, The Moon(Outrider Press), Comstock Review, Through A Distant Lens—Travel Poems (Write Wing Publishing), Main Street Rag, and elsewhere.

Starlings in Winter

Rose Strode is an essayist and poet whose work has appeared in Poet Lore, The Gettysburg Review, Little Patuxent Review, and The Delmarva Review.

In the Middle of Absolute Stillness

Ojo Taiye is a young Nigerian who uses poetry as a handy tool to hide his frustration with society. His recent works have appeared in Palette, Vallum, Rattle, Frontier, Stinging fly, and elsewhere. He loves drinking coffee and binging good movies. You can follow him on Twitter @ojo_poems.

If I Must Speak of Potatoes, A Case for Nature Poetry, and Sarah Speaks

Laura Budofsky Wisniewski lives and writes in a small town in Vermont. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hunger Mountain Review, Calyx, Blueline, Confrontation, and other journals. She was a finalist for the 2017 New Millenium Literary Award, 2017 Fear No Lit Fellowship, and 2017 Paper Nautilus Chapbook competition. Her chapbook, How to Prepare Bear, is forthcoming from Red Bird Press.

Roots

Kelly Westhoff eats too much chocolate. However, the chocolate helps her write. Her essays have appeared in Motherwell, The Star Tribune and GoNomad. She is currently working on a memoir about infertility and adoption. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband, her son and two nervous, little dogs. Learn more about her work at KellyWesthoff.com.

Flutter or Plunge and Songbirds

Marika Whitaker comes from a long line of women gone mad, fires locked away and kept secret til they internally combusted. Her compulsion to create is an unabashed attempt to both thwart and honor her genealogy. In spite of herself, she always cries uncontrollably at parades.

Satellites

Elana Wolff is a Toronto-based writer, editor, translator, designer, and facilitator of social art courses. Her poetry and nonfiction pieces have appeared in Canadian and international publications and have garnered awards. Her fifth collection of poems, Everything Reminds You of Something Else, was released with Guernica Editions in 2017.

Separate Worlds

Gretchen Brown Wright lives in northern Minnesota. After more than thirty years as a homemaker, mother, and community volunteer, she earned an MFA in writing at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her essays have appeared in The Fertile Source, Adoptive Families, Literary Mama, and Coldnoon, and the anthology The Chalk Circle.