Compose Journal’s Spring 2014 Contributor Lineup

You’ll be pleased to know that we at Compose are working hard to publish our third issue by the end of April.

Our editing phase is now complete, and we’re laying out the issue, uploading everything to our website, and preparing to send out galleys so we can make final corrections.

If you haven’t already, be sure to catch up on all the inspiring prose, poetry, and artwork we published in Fall 2013 and Spring 2013. And, because we’re always reading for future issues, don’t forget to send us your best work for consideration.

Now, we’re excited to share with you our lineup of accomplished contributors for Spring 2014:

Poetry

Ian Duhig

Ian Duhig has written six books of poetry, most recently Pandorama (Picador 2010). He has won the Forward Best Poem Prize, the National Poetry Competition twice, and three times been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. A chapbook of work from his Digressions project based at Shandy Hall will be published this year.

Bobbi Lurie

Bobbi Lurie’s work has been published in Fence, American Poetry Review, and New American Writing, among others. She is the author of four poetry collections, most recently the morphine poems (Otoliths, Australia).

Simon Perchik

Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, Poetry, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. His most recent collection is Almost Rain, published by River Otter Press (2013). For more information, including free e-books and his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities,” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.

Jed Myers

Jed Myers is a Philadelphian living in Seattle. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Nimrod International Journal, Barely South Review, Atlanta Review, Jabberwock Review, The Quotable, Grey Sparrow, Crab Creek Review, Off the Coast, and elsewhere. Among his recent awards is the 2012 Mary C. Mohr Editors’ Award from Southern Indiana Review. Jed is a psychiatrist with a therapy practice, and he teaches at the University of Washington. He hosts the long-running poetry-and-music open-mic cabaret NorthEndForum.

Elizabeth Kerlikowske

Elizabeth Kerlikowske is strictly Midwestern and likes to write outside in the sun when there is any. She’s the author of five books of poetry, and her work appears in many journals. She is also the president of Friends of Poetry, a nonprofit in Kalamazoo, Michigan, dedicated to poetry.

Roy Guzmán

Roy G. Guzmán’s poems have appeared in Drunken Boat, Red Savina Review, The Acentos Review, and BorderSenses. He is a native of Honduras, and is currently a Miami resident and English instructor. You can witness his musings over on Twitter (@dreamingauze) and his blog (rgman.wordpress.com).

Leonore Wilson

Leonore Wilson received her B.A. and M.A. in English and Creative Writing at UC Davis, and has taught at various colleges in the Bay Area for over twenty years. She has been the recipient of various grants and fellowships through Villa Montalvo Center for the Arts and the University of Utah. Her work has been featured in magazines such as California Quarterly, Quarterly West, Madison Review, Trivia: Voices of Feminism, Nimble Spirit, and Third Coast. Her most recent book, Western Solstice, was released in 2011. She resides in Napa with her family.

Emily Rose Khan-Sheahan

Emily Rose Kahn-Sheahan lives in Chicago where she hosts and curates the Mental Graffiti poetry series and Real Talk Live, when she’s not converting coffee drinkers to the amazing world of loose tea. Her work has recently appeared in Columbia Poetry Review, After Hours, Jet Fuel Review and Time Out Chicago. Her chapbook, Cigarette Love Songs and Nicotine Kisses, was published by Cross+Roads Press.

Kirsten Hemmy

Kirsten Hemmy was a Fulbright Fellow for the 2012-2013 academic year, studying border and migration narratives in West Africa. She is currently teaching at the Centre de’Etudes Avancees et de Researche En Management de Projet, Programme, et Portefeuille, Dakar.  When she is not in Senegal, Hemmy is an Associate Professor of Literature at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina. She is the author of The Atrocity of Water, published by Press 53 in 2010.

Fiction

Julie Paul

Julie Paul’s first book of short stories, The Jealousy Bone, was published in 2008. Stories, poems and essays have appeared in many literary journals, including The Dalhousie Review, The Fiddlehead, Event, PRISM International and The Rusty Toque. Her second collection of short stories, The Pull of the Moon, will be published by Brindle & Glass this year. She lives in Victoria, BC, and at www.juliepaul.ca.

Chris Yamashita

Chris Yamashita lives in Portland, OR, and teaches writing at Chemeketa Community College. He’s been published in Weave, won a DeFilippis-Rosselli Award for Writers of Color, and was named Semi-Finalist in Dzanc Books’ International Literature Awards. He holds an MFA from Oregon State University.

Suzannah Showler

Suzannah Showler’s collection of poems, Failure to Thrive, is out April 2014 from ECW Press.

Tom Halford

Most of Tom Halford’s writing is set in Saint John, New Brunswick. He lives elsewhere, but he likes to go back to the port city in his head. In February of 2013, he became a proud new papa. Now he writes between diaper changes and of games of peek-a-boo. His last publication was with The Broken Social Scene Story Project: Short Works Inspired by You Forgot It In People by Anansi Press. He publishes videos under the online persona of Cyril Trout.

Robyn Goodwin

Robyn Goodwin holds an MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University, where she won the highest prize for fiction, The Heritage Award. Her story, “Watershed,” was later selected by Sherman Alexie to appear in Scribner’s “The Best of the Writing Workshops.” She’s been published in Five Points, So To Speak, Outside In, The Texas Review, and numerous other literary magazines. She’s currently shopping a comedic novel and a memoir called “Sweeping Beauty,” about her commercial cleaning business.

Nina Badzin

Nina Badzin is a freelance writer living in Minneapolis with her husband and four children. Her essays are published regularly in Brain, Child Magazine, and her fiction has appeared in The Drum Literary Magazine, Literary Mama, Midwestern Gothic, Monkeybicycle, The Pedestal Magazine, The Potomac: a Journal of Poetry and Prose, and elsewhere.

Mitchell Welch

Mitchell Welch is a writer and researcher from Melbourne, Australia. He has recently completed a Master of Arts in writing and his work has been published in a range of literary journals. Over the long Australian summer he sweated it out in Canberra at the Museum of Australian Democracy where he researched a forthcoming suite of poems.

Nonfiction

Jessica Barksdale

Jessica Barksdale is the author of twelve traditionally published novels, including Her Daughter’s Eyes and When You Believe. Her short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in or are forthcoming in Salt Hill Journal, The Coachella Review, Carve Magazine, Mason’s Road, and So to Speak. She is a professor of English at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, California and teaches online novel writing for UCLA Extension. You can read more at www.jessicabarksdaleinclan.com

Aileen Hunt

Aileen Hunt is an Irish writer and editor, and lives in Dublin. She is working on her first book, a collection of short essays based on the lives of pioneering women. One of her essays will be published shortly in the Lindenwood Review. She has many great memories of the years she spent living in Ohio and California and has promised herself she’ll return to visit soon.

Terry Barr

Terry Barr’s essays have appeared in Hamilton Stone Literary Review, Wilderness House Review, Red Fez, and Tell Us A Story, and are forthcoming in Sport Literate, Blue Lyra Review, and Melange Press. He lives in Greenville, SC, with his wife and two daughters.

Susannah Clark

Susannah Clark teaches creative writing and freshman composition at Emerson College, where she earned her MFA in 2013. She proudly lives in the Inman Square neighborhood of Cambridge, Mass., and is mostly likely the only living print subscriber of the New York Times under the age of 45. Her essays and journalism have appeared in publications such as CQ Weekly, Popmatters, The Inman Review, and are forthcoming in Rock & Sling. 

Hayley Solomon

Hayley Solomon (M.A.) is a New Zealand writer. She has written sixteen novels in three genres and is a Romantic Times ‘Top Pick” awardee, as well as a University of Maine at Machias Honoree. “Under African Shadows,” published in 2013, was her debut into the literary short story genre. When she is not writing, she is singing. She has pink hair and a truly wonderful family.

Lee Olsen

Lee Olsen is an English master’s student at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA. Growing up in the mountains of northern Utah, he learned early to appreciate rugged landscapes and stories of the people who inhabit them. He is pleased to call the Pacific Northwest his current home.

Jim Krosschell

Jim Krosschell divides his life into three parts: growing up for 29 years, working in science publishing for 29 years, and now writing in Massachusetts and Maine. His essays are widely published. See Saving Maine and One Man’s Maine for other work.

Features

Susan Breen

Susan Breen is the author of the novel The Fiction Class, which was published by Plume/Penguin. Her stories have been published in Best American Non-Required Reading 2009, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, anderbo.com and many other literary journals. She teaches at Gotham Writers’ Workshop.

Marion Roach Smith

Three weeks out of college, Marion went to work for The New York Times. Four books and countless magazine and radio essays later, the lessons learned at that great newspaper—getting it right and making it short—inform every piece she writes. Most of her work is now in the form of memoir writing, including her most recent book, The Memoir Project, A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text on Writing & Life, released by Grand Central Publishing in 2011.

Her first book, Another Name for Madness (Houghton Mifflin 1985), described the devastating effects of her mother’s battle with Alzheimer’s Disease in an era, not so long ago, when no one had heard of it. She has also written The Roots of Desire: The Myth, Meaning and Sexual Power of Red Hair (Bloomsbury 2005). Her writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Prevention, Vogue, Good Housekeeping, The Los Angeles Times, and NPR’s All Things Considered.

Jenny Rough

Jenny Rough is a lawyer-turned-writer whose essays, features, and profiles have appeared in publications ranging from Salon, The Washington Post, and Yoga Journal, to More, Writer’s Digest, and AARP, where she is also letters editor for AARP Bulletin. Her work has been included in a number of popular anthologies, and she blogs about nurturing the creative spirit at www.jennyrough.com.

Debra Eve

Debra Eve is a former archaeologist who now writes about midlife creativity at LaterBloomer.com. She published her most popular essays in Later Bloomers: 35 People Over Age 35 Who Found Their Passion and Purpose. She often conducts author interviews for Write It Sideways. You can also find her on Twitter.

Artwork

V.A. Smith

V.A. Smith is a writer and photographer who masquerades as a corporate drone during banking hours. She feels lucky to live and work in Portsmouth, NH. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Gravel Magazine, Star 82 Review, Down In The Dirt, Connotation Press, Scissors & Spackle, Petrichor Review, and Driftwood Press.

Stephen Mead

A resident of NY, Stephen Mead is a published artist, writer, maker of short collage-films and poetry/music mp3s. His latest project-in-progress, a collaborative effort with composer Kevin MacLeod, is entitled “Whispers of Arias“, a two volume download of narrative poems sung to music. His latest Amazon release, “Weightless”, a poetry-art hybrid, is a meditation on mortality and perseverance.

K. Carlton Johnson

K. Carlton Johnson lives in the Northern Peninsula of Michigan. Her work has been featured in Diner, Pacific Review, Rattle, Nassau Review, The Connecticut Review, MacGuffin, and Barley South. She is both poet and artist. Her latest book of poems is called Doors and Windows.