L.M. Browning grew up in a small fishing village in Connecticut. A longtime student of religion, nature, art, and philosophy these themes permeate her work. Browning is the author of numerous award-winning titles. In 2010, she debuted as a writer with a three-title contemplative poetry series: Ruminations at Twilight, Oak Wise, and The Barren Plain. These three books went on to garner several accolades including a total of 3 pushcart-prize nominations and the Nautilus Gold Medal for Poetry in 2013. In 2011, Browning opened Homebound Publications—a rising independent publishing house. She currently divides her time between her home in Connecticut and her work in Boston. Her latest poetry collection, Vagabonds and Sundries: Poetic Remnants of Lives Past, is now available. To learn more go to www.lmbrowning.com
Jamie K. Reaser’s writing explores themes at the interface of Nature and human nature. In addition to more than 100 professional publications in the fields of biology and environmental policy, she is the author of four collections of poetry and the editor of two anthologies. Jamie currently serves as an Editor for The Wayfarer journal and is a member of the International League of Conservation Writers.
Theodore Richards is a poet, writer, and religious philosopher. He has received degrees from various institutions, including the University of Chicago and The California Institute of Integral Studies, but has learned just as much from practicing the martial art of Bagua; from traveling, working or studying all over the world; and from the youth he has worked with on the South Side of Chicago, Harlem, the South Bronx, and Oakland. He is the author of Handprints on the Womb, a collection of poetry; Cosmosophia: Cosmology, Mysticism, and the Birth of a New Myth, recipient of the Independent Publisher Awards Gold Medal in religion and the Nautilus Book Awards Gold Medal; the novel The Crucifixion, recipient of the Independent Publisher Awards bronze medal; and Creatively Maladjusted: The Wisdom Education Movement Manifesto, which radically re-imagines education. Theodore Richards is the founder of The Chicago Wisdom Project and teaches world religions at The New Seminary. He lives in Chicago with his wife and daughters. His next novel, The Conversions, is now available.
FEATURE ARTIST • Jena Leake is an artist, registered expressive arts therapist and educator who is passionate about supporting others in becoming artists of their lives. Over the past 15 years, she has been designing and facilitating contemplative arts programs, expressive arts therapy trainings and retreats in a variety of settings, including universities, mental health agencies, public schools, art galleries, and through her studio located in Charlottesville, Virginia. Jena received her Ph.D. in Expressive Arts Therapy at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. You can find out more at: www.jenaleake.com Jena’s work is featured on pages: 8, 33, 56, 59, 60, and 61.
FEATURE PHOTOGRAPHER • Devon photographer Duncan George has had a passion for photography from an early age. His insatiable curiosity and alert eye lead him across fog bound moors and deserted night-time city streets with a photographic style that errs toward the mysterious and melancholic. Duncan’s images have appeared extensively on book covers, in journals and blogs, on the website of the BBC, the Guardian, Popular Photo, Earth Shots, the Sussex Wildlife Trust and others. He is a supplier to Getty images. His work has been exhibited in galleries in Singapore and the UK. He is currently working on a long-term project shooting the remote moorlands and coastal landscapes of the UK’s South West. www.duncangeorge.com Duncan’s work is featured on the front and back cover and on pages: 6, 20, 22-23, 46-47, 48-49, 52-53, and 54.
Byron Metcalf is a drummer, percussionist, recording artist, and record producer, as well as transpersonal therapist and shamanic practitioner. He makes his home in Arizona’s Prescott Valley. www.byronmetcalf.com/music
Wallace J. Nichols (‘J’) is a conservation biologist, ocean advocate, educator, and New York Times bestselling author. He makes his home on California’s ‘Slow Coast.’ www.wallacejnichols.org
Malinda Gosvig is finishing up her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota. She is working with writer Nynke Passi to set up The Luminous Writer literary center, which offers workshops in creative writing as a tool for personal transformation. Malinda is also working on a memoir about the three years she spent with an Eastern monastic group and the unexpected experiences that ensued.
Brendan Myers is the author of fifteen books in fiction and nonfiction, including The Other Side of Virtue, Loneliness and Revelation, and Fellwater. Originally from small town Ontario Canada, he has a Ph.D in philosophy from the National University of Ireland, Galway, and he now serves as professor of philosophy and humanities at Heritage College, Gatineu Quebec. Find him on the web at www.brendanmyers.net, and on twitter @Fellwater.
Kathryn Lester-Bacon is a pastor and poet from southeastern Pennsylvania, currently living and working in Richmond, VA. She discovered Emily Dickinson at age seven and has depended on poetry to illuminate life’s connective filaments ever since. Her writing is published in Presbyterian Outlook, Red River Review, and Fidelia’s Sisters.
Kristin Berger writes poetry and essays and lives in Portland, Oregon, where she hosts a summer poetry reading series at the local farmers market. She is the author of For the Willing (Finishing Line Press, 2008), and has been awarded residencies at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, StarAkey Experimental Forest and Range, and Playa at Summer Lake. Kristin’s current work appears in Heron Tree, MiPOesias, Poecology, Terrain.org, and Written River.
Patti See’s work has appeared in Salon Magazine, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Journal of Developmental Education, The Wisconsin Academy Review, The Southwest Review, as well as other magazines and anthologies. She is the co-author of Higher Learning: Reading and Writing About College with Bruce Taylor, and a poetry collection Love’s Bluff (Plainview Press, 2006). She also wrote the award-winning blog “Our Long Goodbye: One Family’s Experiences with Alzheimer’s Disease” www.ourlonggoodbye.wordpress.com. She is a Distinguished Student Services Coordinator at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.
Heather Derr-Smith is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is the author of two books, Each End of the World (Main Street Rag Press, 2005) and The Bride Minaret (University of Akron Press, 2008). She lives in Iowa with her husband and three children.
Lynn Hoffman has been a merchant seaman, teacher, chef and cab driver. He’s the author of The New Short Course in Wine and The Short Course in Beer. His poem has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
S. Babin holds a BA in English Literature from the Ohio State University, and a JD from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. One in each hand. He carries them everywhere. He lives with his family, and works in Columbus, Ohio. His upcoming work will be featured in Spark: A Creative Anthology; After the Pause; Rust & Nail, Boston Literary Review, Bop Dead City, Decades Review, 34th Parallel, and Star 82 Review.
Sue Swartz is a writer, visual artist, social activist, Jewish communal leader, and all-around good egg living in Bloomington, Indiana. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Poetica, Lilith, Referential, 5 a.m., Drash, and elsewhere. We Who Desire, her tentatively titled book of Torah commentary, is forthcoming in 2015 from Ben Yehuda Press.
Eric D. Lehman is a travel and history writer, and director of creative writing at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut. He writes fiction, travel stories, reviews, history shorts, and essays, which have been published in a wide variety of journals and magazines, from the International Henry Miller Journal to Antiques Trader. His books Bridgeport: Tales From the Park City, Hamden: Tales from the Sleeping Giant, A History of Connecticut Wine, and A History of Connecticut Food are available from the History Press. His comprehensive travel manual, The Insiders Guide to Connecticut, was published by Globe Pequot Press. A memoir/natural history, Afoot in Connecticut, was published in May 2013 by Homebound Publications, and Becoming Tom Thumb: Charles Stratton, P.T. Barnum, and the Dawn of American Celebrity from Wesleyan University Press.
J.K. McDowell is an artist, poet and mystic, an Ohioan expat living in Cajun country. Always immersed in poetry, raised in Buckeye country by a mother who told of Sam I Am, Danny Deaver and Annabel Lee and a father who quoted Shakespeare and Omar Khayyam. In the last decade a deepened study of poetry and shamanism and nature has inspired a regular practice of writing poetry that blossomed into the works presented in this collection. Lately, mixing Lorca and Lovecraft, McDowell lives twenty miles north of the Gulf Coast with his soul mate who also happens to be his wife and their two beautiful companion parrots. He is the author of Night, Mystery & Light.
Jason Kirkey is an author, poet, and the founder of Hiraeth Press. He grew up in the Ipswich River-North Atlantic Coast watershed of Massachusetts. Inspired by the landscapes in which he has lived—the temperate forests and old mountains of New England and the Eastern Piedmont, the red rocks and high desert of Colorado, Irish hills and sea—his work is permeated with an ecological sensibility. Whether poetry or prose, Jason’s words strive towards consonance with the ecosystem. He has written four volumes of poetry, including Estuaries and a nonfiction book, The Salmon in the Spring: The Ecology of Celtic Spirituality. Jason is now working on his second nonfiction book and a graduate degree in conservation ecology. He now lives near Boston.