Chapbook & Micro Chapbook Poets & Writers (Alphabetically)
Sara Adams (Poems for Ivan, 2016) is a Montessori teacher in Portland, Oregon. She has work in literary magazines such as tNY Press’s Electronic Encyclopedia of Experimental Literature, and/or, Shampoo Poetry, and DIAGRAM. She co-wrote a full-length New Translation of Twilight with Greg Petrovic, which is available at www.fredwardbound.com. Links to publications and contact info at www.kartoshkaaaaa.com.
Eloisa Amezcua (Mexicamericana, 2017) is an Arizona native. She is the author of the chapbooks On Not Screaming (Horse Less Press) and Symptoms of Teething, winner of the 2016 Vella Chapbook Prize from Paper Nautilus Press. Eloisa is the founder/editor of The Shallow Ends: A Journal of Poetry. You can find her at www.eloisaamezcua.com.
E. Kristin Anderson (PRAY, PRAY, PRAY: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night, 2015) is a Pushcart-nominated poet and author who grew up in Westbrook, Maine and is a graduate of Connecticut College. She is the author of five chapbooks of poetry: A Guide for the Practical Abductee (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014), A Jab of Deep Urgency (Finishing Line Press, 2014), PRAY, PRAY, PRAY: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (Porkbelly Press, 2015), Acoustic Battery Life (ELJ Publications, forthcoming) and 17 DAYS (ELJ Publications, 2015). She blogs at EKristinAnderson.com is currently trying to trick someone into publishing her full-length collection of erasure poems based on women’s and teen magazines.
Kelly Lorraine Andrews (My Body is a Poem I Can’t Stop Writing, 2017)
Ariana D. Den Bleyker (Strangest Sea, 2015 & The Peace of Wild Things, 2015) is a Pittsburgh native currently residing in Upstate New York, a wife, mother of two, a writer and an editor. When she’s not editing or writing, she’s spending time with her family and every once in a while sleeps. She is the author of several poetry chapbooks and collections, including Wayward Lines, Strangest Sea and Beautiful Wreckage, the novelette, Finger : Knuckle : Palm and the experimental memoir, prosthesis. She is the founder and publisher of ELJ Publications, home of Emerge Literary Journal, scissors & spackle, Amethyst Arsenic and other fine journals. She can be found at http://www.arianaddenbleyker.com.
Sarah B. Boyle (What’s pink & shiny / what’s dark & hard, 2015) is a poet, mother, high school teacher, and activist. Her poems and essays have appeared in VIDA, Menacing Hedge, Entropy, and elsewhere. Following the rapes and assaults that ripped through multiple literary communities this past year, she edited a series of essays for Delirious Hem on rape culture and the poetics of alt lit. She has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Find her online at impolitelines.com.
Tina Mozelle Braziel (Rooted by Thirst, 2016), a graduate of the University of Oregon MFA program, directs the Ada Long Creative Writing Workshop at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her poems have appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Poetry South, Main Street Rag, and The Raleigh Review among other journals. She and her husband, novelist James Braziel, live and write in a glass cabin that they are building on Hydrangea Ridge.
Kristi Carter (Daughter Shaman Sings Blood Anthem, 2017)
Doug Paul Case (College Town, 2015) works as a salon receptionist in Bloomington, where he recently received his MFA from Indiana University. He is the poetry editor of Word Riot and the publisher of Gabby. His poems have appeared in Salt Hill, Rattle, Washington Square, and Court Green, and his debut chapbook, Something to Hide My Face In, won the 2013/14 Robin Becker Prize from Seven Kitchens Press.
Chen Chen (Set the Garden on Fire, 2015) holds a BA from Hampshire College and an MFA from Syracuse University, where he was a University Fellow. He has also received fellowships from Kundiman and the Saltonstall Foundation. New work has appeared/is forthcoming in Poetry, Narrative, The Massachusetts Review, Crab Orchard Review, and The Best American Poetry 2015, among others. Chen is the winner of the Matt Clark Editors’ Choice Award, from New Delta Review, and the Joyce Carol Oates Award, selected by Ishion Hutchinson. A 2015 finalist for the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships, he is currently a PhD candidate in English & Creative Writing at Texas Tech University and lives in Lubbock, TX with his partner, Jeff Gilbert. Visit him at chenchenwrites.com.
Currently based on occupied and unceded Coast Salish territories (Vancouver, Canada), Christina Cooke‘s (l’appel du vide, 2014) prose appeared in Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society (CA) and Sou’wester (US); her creative non-fiction appeared in HYSTERIA: A Collection of Feminisms (UK); her poetry is forthcoming from Matrix Magazine (CA). She is also an editorial collective member of the feminist literary journal Room Magazine (CA). To learn more about her writerly endeavours, follow her on Twitter, @cjctlc, or her blog: Of That Close Kerning, So Splendiferous, Repletes.
Chella Courington (Love Letter to Biology 250, 2014) is Professor of Creative Writing at Santa Barbara City College. Her prose and poetry have appeared in numerous journals including The Los Angeles Review, lo-ball magazine, Gargoyle, The Tusculum Review, and Danse Macabre. In 2011 Courington published Paper Covers Rock, a flipbook of lined poetry, Indigo Press; Girls & Women, a chapbook of prose poetry, Burning River; and Talking Did Not Come Easily to Diana, an e-book of linked microfiction, Musa Publishing. Her work has been honored by Camroc Press Review, The Collagist, Qarrtsiluni, and Main Street Rag, and nominated for Best of the Net and Best New Poets Anthologies.
Amber Edmondson (Lost Birds of the Iron Range, 2017)
M. Brett Gaffney (Feeding the Dead, 2017), originally from Houston, Texas, holds an MFA in Poetry from Southern Illinois University and is the art editor for Gingerbread House. Her poems have appeared in Exit 7, Rust+Moth, Permafrost, Devilfish Review, museum of americana, BlazeVOX, Rogue Agent, Apex Magazine,and Zone 3, among others. She currently works as a library associate in northern Kentucky and lives in Cincinnati with her partner and their dog, Ava.
Laura Garrison (Skeleton Keys, 2014) is creeping slowly southward like an unstoppable fungus that subsists on caffeine and gummy bears. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in several online and print literary magazines. Her hobbies include skulking under bridges, freeing horrors chained in castle dungeons, and wandering through cemeteries in her best nightgown.
Sarah Gzemski (Centralia, 2015) is a poet and nonfiction writer originally from Pennsylvania. Currently living in Mesilla, New Mexico, she is the Managing Editor of Noemi Press and is working toward her MFA in Poetry at New Mexico State University. Some of her work has appeared recently in The Adirondack Review and Bone Bouquet.
Amorak Huey (A Map of the Farm Three Miles from the End of Happy Hollow Road, 2016) is author of the poetry collection Ha Ha Ha Thump (Sundress, 2015) and the chapbook The Insomniac Circus (Hyacinth Girl, 2014). After more than a decade as a newspaper journalist, he teaches writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. His writing has appeared in The Best American Poetry 2012, The Cincinnati Review, The Collagist, Menacing Hedge, Brevity, and many other journals.
Angela Just (Everything I Own, 2016) grew up surrounded by quiet cemeteries and tiny woods dark and deep. That, along with her Italian-American and Catholic upbringing, encouraged introspection, observation, and alternating seizures of guilt and rapture. She writes lakeside in Chicago from the 10th floor of a distinctively pink building.
Patrick Kindig (Dry Spell, 2016) is a dual MFA/PhD candidate at Indiana University, where he writes poems and studies American literature. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Beloit Poetry Journal, Court Green, BLOOM, FUGUE, and elsewhere.
Anita Olivia Koester (Apples or Pomegranates, 2017)
Lindsay Lusby (Blackbird Whitetail Redhand, 2017)
Suzanne Rogier Marshall (Blood Knot, 2015) taught English and language arts to middle school students for nearly forty years in Virginia, Washington DC, and Japan. She has retired with her husband to the mountains of New Hampshire, where she draws inspiration for her writing. In addition to poetry, Suzanne has published professional articles and a book on teaching poetry (A Falling Leaf and Other Poetry Activities). Her poems have appeared recently in the Aurorean, contemporary haibun, Freshwater, Off the Coast, The Sow’s Ear, and other journals.
Recently chosen as artist-in-residence for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park for its 2014-2015 season, Kentucky poet Sarah McCartt-Jackson (Vein of Stone, 2014) has spent decades developing her craft, dedicating her art to exploring the natural and cultural world that encompasses all who share in planet life. Her work has been published by and received honors from the Academy of American Poets, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, Copper Nickel, Indiana Review, Journal of American Folklore, Tidal Basin Review, and others.
Beth McDermott (How to Leave a Farmhouse, 2015) has received first place in the Regional Mississippi Valley Poetry Contest and an Honorable Mention for the Associated Writing Programs’ Intro Award in Poetry. Her poems have recently appeared in journals such as DIAGRAM, Harpur Palate, Terrain.org, and Jet Fuel Review. She holds degrees from Hope College, Purdue University, and the University of Illinois at Chicago, and is currently Visiting Professor of English at the University of St. Francis in Joliet, IL.
Melissa Atkinson Mercer (My Own Strange Beast, 2017)
P. Andrew Miller (Bodies in Water, 2014) is coordinator of creative writing at Northern Kentucky University. His stories and poems have appeared in many different publications including Sugared Water, Dragon Magazine, Sword & Sorceress 13 and 18, The MacGuffin, Drawn to Marvel, and many others. His first chapbook, The Legacy of the Turquoise Knight (Finishing Line Press, 2010) is a lyric comic. In Love, In Water and Other Stories (Post Mortem Press, 2014) is his short story collection. He lives in Cincinnati and collects dragons, superhero artwork, and Germans. | Blog
Sarah Nichols (Dreamland for Keeps, 2018)
Nicole Rollender’s (Ghost Tongue, 2016) first full-length collection, Louder Than Everything You Love (ELJ Editions), was published in late 2015. She’s author of the poetry chapbooks Arrangement of Desire (Pudding House Publications), Absence of Stars (dancing girl press & studio) and Bone of My Bone, a winning manuscript in Blood Pudding Press’s 2015 Chapbook Contest. She is the recipient of poetry prizes from CALYX Journal, Princemere Journal and Ruminate Magazine. She earned her MFA in poetry at the Pennsylvania State University, and is the editor of Wearables magazine. Find her online at www.nicolerollender.com.
Billie Tadros (inter: burial places, 2016) is a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and a graduate of the MFA program in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College. She is the author of another chapbook, Containers (Dancing Girl Press, 2014). A poet-scholar with research interests in feminist theory, queer theory, gender and sexuality studies, and disability studies, she is also currently working on a narrative research project exploring the gendered and sexual implications of traumatic injuries to women runners and seeking to articulate a feminist poetics of the injured female body. You can find her at www.BillieRTadros.com and on Twitter at @BillieRTadros.
Robin Turner (bindweed & crow poison: small poems of stray girls, fierce women, 2016) lives, works, and daydreams in Dallas, Texas. She is a teaching artist in museums, youth shelters, and community centers, and serves as an online writing guide for homeschooled teens. Her work has appeared in Anima Poetry, Ilya’s Honey, Nonbinary Review, Red River Review, Referential Magazine, Friends Journal, and in numerous other print and online publications. » robinsmithturner.tumblr.com
Sonya Vatomsky (My Heart in Aspic, 2015) is a Moscow-born, Seattle-raised ghost whose work appears in a good amount of places, many of them with spooky names like Maudlin House, Menacing Hedge, and Bone Bouquet. My Heart In Aspic is their first chapbook; full-length Salt is for Curing (Sator Press) was released in Nov 2015. They haunt the editorial offices of Anthropoid & Fruita Pulp, and you can find them by saying their name five times in front of a bathroom mirror or at sonyavatomsky.tumblr.com.
Donna Vorreyer (The Girl, 2017) is the author of Every Love Story is an Apocalypse Story (Sundress Publications, 2016) and A House of Many Windows (Sundress Publications, 2013). as well as seven chapbooks, most recently Encantado, a collaboration with artist Matt Kish from Redbird Chapbooks and Tinder, Smolder, Bones, and Snow (dancing girl press, 2016). She serves as the reviews editor for Stirring: A Literary Collection and teaches middle school in the suburbs of Chicago. Visit her online at donnavorreyer.com.
James A. H. White (hiku [pull], 2016) earned his M.F.A. in Creative Writing with a concentration in Poetry from Florida Atlantic University. A winner of the 2014 AWP Intro Journals Project award in Poetry, his writing appears in Colorado Review, Gertrude, Hermeneutic Chaos, Cha, and DIAGRAM, among others. Born in Surrey, England, James currently resides in South Florida, where he teaches creative writing and serves as an editor for 3Elements Review.
L.B. Williams (The Eighth Phrase, 2014) is the author of the memoir, Letters to Virginia Woolf, (Hamilton Books, 2005). Her poetry has appeared in such publications as Washington Square, The Mom Egg, Sunrise from Blue Thunder (A Pirene’s Fountain Anthology) and For She is the Tree of Life: Grandmothers Through the Eyes of Women Writers. She has also published a poetry chapbook, Sky Studies (Finishing Line Press Fall 2014). She is Professor of Literature at Ramapo College of New Jersey.
Sarah Ann Winn‘s (Haunting the Last House on Holland Island, Fallen into the Bay, 2016) writing has appeared or is upcoming in Five Points, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Little Patuxent Review, Massachusetts Review, and Passages North, among others. Her chapbooks include Field Guide to Alma Avenue and Frew Drive (Essay Press, 2016), and Portage (Sundress Publications, 2015). She holds a Masters in Fine Arts in Creative Writing Poetry from George Mason University, as well as a Masters in Library Science from Catholic University of America. She teaches creative writing workshops and dispenses book recommendations as a free-range librarian in Manassas, Virginia, where she lives with her husband, two lovely beagle/lab mixed dogs, and one bad cat. Visit her at bluebirdwords.com or follow her @blueaisling.
Laura Madeline Wiseman (Threnody, 2014) is the author of more than a dozen books and chapbooks and the editor of Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2013). She holds a doctorate from the University of Nebraska and has received an Academy of American Poets Award, a Mari Sandoz/Prairie Schooner Award, and the Wurlitzer Foundation Fellowship. Her work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Margie, Mid-American Review, and Feminist Studies. www.lauramadelinewiseman.com
In-house artwork
Most of our covers are produced by Nicci Mechler. Nicci splits her time between exploring, telling tales, and painting girls with inky tattoos. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio with a pack of roomies & rescue animals specializing in troublemaking and joy.| portfolio
Freelance Cover Artists
Our chapbook editions are hand-sewn with inkjet printed covers. The original works range from printmaking to painting. Below are the artists who’ve so far lent their evocative works to our press:
Born in 1979 West Virginia, Mary Chiaramonte was raised helping her family live from and farm their land. She had no TV or other distractions, and was encouraged to entertain herself with objects in nature. Left with the workings of her imagination and observations of the world around her, she translated her understanding into paintings and drawings. She continues this practice today, taking much of her momentum from the people that surround and affect her. Hanging between darkness and light, Chiaramonte’s paintings offer a narrative that echoes a provocative daydream, communicating both the human disposition and the mysteries therein. Her unending exploration surfaces in her paintings with an ambiguity that asks the viewer to wonder at our world as she does. | portfolio
Sharmon Davidson has been a graphic designer, a full-time mother, and a teacher, and has exhibited professionally for over 25 years, winning several awards, and appearing in various publications. Davidson’s work originates from a deep belief in the sanctity and interconnection of everything in the universe, which she seeks to communicate through a vocabulary of personal symbols. She is currently represented by the Kentucky guild of Artists and Craftsmen Gallery in Berea, Kentucky. | portfolio
Alexandra Eldridge, born of artist parents, received her BA in Art and literature at Ohio University. She co-founded an establishment for the arts, Golgonooza, based upon the philosophies of William Blake. She has had over 40 solo shows, and has participated in many group shows throughout the U.S. as well as many international exhibitions. | portfolio
Angie Reed Garner is a second generation narrative painter from Kentucky. | portfolio
Ben McNutt’s personal work for the past four years has focused on wrestling through various media such as portraiture, still life, clothing, and sculpture. (His piece featured on the cover is titled “Wrestler.”) | portfolio
Shannon Perry | www.valentinestattoo.com | @shannoneperry on Instagram.
Kathleen Piercefield is a Kentucky-based printmaker & fine artist. | portfolio
Jonathan Rountree is a clay slingin’, tattooed Pokémon enthusiast. He’s dabbled in many things, including a recent interest in bookbinding. His work has appeared on the cover of Sugared Water, Words for Worlds, and Love Letter to Biology 250. His photography has appeared in Licking River Review.
Shannon Smith was born and raised in Kentucky where she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts at Northern Kentucky University. She moved to Tucson, Arizona to attend graduate school at the University of Arizona, home of the Center for Creative Photography. She earned her Master of Fine Arts in 2006 and currently teaches photography courses at a local college preparatory school. | portfolio
Susan Yount lives and works in Chicago. | portfolio
Porkbelly Press 