Contributors
Omotola Ajibade is a photographer and recent transplant to the Jersey Shore. Prior to moving to New Jersey, he worked primarily on portraits. However, since the start of the pandemic, he has branched into more into photographs of the various beaches along the shore. His work explores the environment and its relationship to both the presence and absence of humans. You can find more of his work at https://instagram.com/mythicvoice/.
Anissa M. Bouziane was born in the United States to a Moroccan father and a French mother. She is an English language novelist, filmmaker and educator, whose debut novel, Dune Song has been published to critical acclaim in the U.S. by Interlink Publishing, in the U.K. by Sandstone Press, and in France by Les Editions du Mauconduit. Dune Song was awarded the Special Jury Prize in 2017 for the Prix Littèraire Sofitel Tour Blanche. Anissa is a graduate of Columbia University’s School of the Arts, with a Masters of Fine Arts in Fiction Writing, and also holds a Bachelors Degree in Political Science from Wellesley College, and a Certificate in Film from New York University. She lives and teaches in Paris, and is currently completing a doctorate in Literary Practice and Creative Writing at the University of Warwick and working on her next novel.
Melodie Corrigall is an eclectic Canadian writer whose work has appeared in Halfway Down the Stairs, Bethlehem Writers Roundtable, Corner Bar Magazine, Blue Lake Review, S/tick, Subtle Fiction, Blank Spaces, Toasted Cheese, and The Write Place at the Write Time. Check out www.melodiecorrigall.com.
Sofie Rosalien Deen is a self-taught visual artist and writer from Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Photography, painting and poetry are a means for her to study the subconscious. Inspired by the surreal, she is currently working on her second photography and poetry book. More information about her work can be found at www.sofierosalien.nl and at her instagram page @sofierosalien.
Sève Favre is a visual artist based near Lausanne, Switzerland. Passionate about the concept of integration, she concentrates on transcending the classical boundary between the artwork and the viewer. The main feature of her art is interactivity. The key words that support her concept are interaction (to be together), variation (to be different), and activity (to be active). Her name for this experience is “intervariactivity”. She wants to integrate the viewer into her art in a direct and tactile way. She combines this experience with a strong digital (virtual) focus and physical (real) way, through works on canvas, in installations, performances, happening or digital works and projects. Her interactive artworks engage the public in the artistic process in order to have an impact on their way of thinking about art and concepts. Her goal is to enable the viewer to understand the research and questioning that an artist asks themself during the process of experimentation and creation. Her artworks included in this issue are evocations of the obstacles that women experience on a daily basis, obstacles to their rights, obstacles to their education, social obstacles about their appearance, etc. The red bonds mark how much they suffer in their blood. This blood that defines the relationship to the body but also the transmission and the slow evolution of their rights despite the generations that succeed one another.
Alyssa Greenberg has been living in Brooklyn and working full-time as a copywriter for most of the last decade. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence with a concentration in creative writing, and has since completed several workshops with writers including Rebekah Frumkin and Peyton Burgess. She has been published in Quail Bell, Birch Gang Review, and elsewhere.
Neilay Khasnabish is a fiction writer from India. His writings were published in Finding the Birds, The New North, The Assam Tribune, and The Sentinel. "The Poacher" and "The Agony of Love" are his published novels. He writes for a cause.
Danielle Klebes is a multidisciplinary artist from North Adams, Massachusetts. She has exhibited at notable galleries and museums across the United States and in Canada. She has been spending much of 2019-2021 participating in domestic and international artist residencies, and is currently the Programming Fellow at Wassaic Project in Wassaic, NY. Danielle received her MFA in Visual Arts from Lesley University College of Art and Design in Cambridge, MA, in 2017. Her current body of work explores and disrupts ideas of social expectations and gender norms by presenting queer bodies in utopic settings. ‘Utopia’ was coined in 1516 by Sir Thomas More from the Greek ‘outopos,’ which literally translates to ‘no place’ or ‘nowhere.’ A ‘perfect place’ is subjective and has a multitude of facades, but definitions are decided by those who have the power to write history. The figures in her work are often captured in moments of uncertainty and isolation, close in proximity but emotionally distant.
Julian Leung is a freelance marketer and photographer residing in Hong Kong. He started pursuing photography as a hobby in 2006, but it didn’t become a passion until 2018 when he bought his first film camera. Julian enjoys shooting landscapes, portraits, lifestyle, street, and documentary photography.
Vanessa Leung received a BFA in Product Design from Parsons School of Design and an MFA in Interior Design from Pratt Institute, where she received an excellence in academic achievement award and The Pratt Circle Award. Her work explores how the composition between light and dark within the same boundaries can change the atmospheric and emotional qualities within a space, affecting the perception of depth and space. She has shown furniture pieces in New York City at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, Gowanus Open Studios, Pratt Institute, and the Invisible Dog Gallery. She believes in creating well-crafted, responsible products that last longer than a lifetime by taking a slow and intentional design and manufacturing process. Learn more at: VLStudiosDesign.com
Joseph Lezza is a writer in New York, NY. Holding an MFA in creative writing from The University of Texas at El Paso, his work has been featured in The Pointed Circle, The Hopper, Stoneboat Literary Journal, Still: The Journal, Fearsome Critters, Rio Grande Review, and Cleaning Up Glitter with pieces forthcoming in West Trade Review, The Canopy Review and Santa Fe Writers Project. When he’s not writing, he spends his time worrying about why he’s not writing. His website is www.josephlezza.com and you can find him on the socials @lezzdoothis.
Heather Nguyen’s writing has appeared in UCF’s Cypress Dome and has been selected to be featured in the San Miguel Writer’s Contest as runner-up for non-fiction. She is a Florida native and earned her B.A. in English from UCF and is currently completing M.F.A. coursework at the University of Arkansas at Monticello. She is a high school English and journalism teacher in Pinellas County, Florida.
Leah Oates’s “Transitory Space” series was featured from 2016-2017 as part of the MTA Arts and Design Light Box Project at 42nd Street in New York City. Her work has been in group shows in New York City and NY state at the Schweinfurth Art Center, Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, Nurture Art Gallery, Metaphor Contemporary Art, Denise Bibro Fine Art, Yale University, The Pen and Brush and at The Center for Book Arts and nationally at Bob Rauschenberg Gallery in Florida, Unsettled Gallery in New Mexico, The Southeast Center for Photography in South Carolina and at Nave Gallery in Massachusetts. Learn more at: http://leahoates.com.
Sid Sibo lives and writes on the west slope of the Rocky Mountains. They recently won the Neltje Blanchan Memorial Writing Award and an Honorable Mention in the Rick DeMarinis Short Story contest. They have been published in Cutthroat, Brilliant Flash Fiction and Artscapes; several poems are anthologized in Small Beautiful Things. A day job in environmental analysis seeds a variety of creative work.
Jeremy Siedt is an artist, painter, and creator from the Philadelphia region in Pennsylvania. He has had both a formal and informal education in the creative endeavor. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Tyler School of Art and a Masters from University of the Arts Philadelphia. He grew up in a blue collared family, working with his hands was all he knew. Everything from carpentry, welding, sports, landscaping and auto mechanics formed his methodology on creating raw visceral works that embrace impermanence and the recording of the bodies gesture through color and texture. He heads the Fine Art Department at a local college in Pennsylvania where he teaches Painting, Drawing, 2-D Design, Art History and Sculpture. His studio is a place of risk and possibility where process takes charge which allows reaction and alchemy to merge as one. His work explores the boundaries and potential of corrosive metals in painting.
KP Vogell is an artist, musician, writer, and Californian. KP’s fiction has been published in PANK and The Good Life Review and is forthcoming in Cheat River Review and Digging Through the Fat. Follow KP on Instagram @komischevogell.
Jacob R. Weber is a translator living in Virginia. He has published fiction in The Bellevue Literary Review, New Letters (Robert Day Award for Fiction), The Baltimore Review, Another Chicago Magazine, The Chattahoochee Review, and other journals. His book of short stories, "Don't Wait to Be Called," won the 2017 Washington Writers' Publishing House Award for Fiction.
Ashley Yu is an emerging fiction writer in Brooklyn, New York. As a Chinese-Vietnamese woman born in Hong Kong, her writing boldly navigates the transnational impact that neo-colonial society has on both interpersonal and inter-generational relationships. She has a Bachelor's in English/Creative Writing from New York University and is currently working on her first manuscript.