Contributors

SUPPORT OUR CONTRIBUTORS!

Yewande Akinse (Adebowale) is a Nigerian poet and author of two collections of poetry. Her books are available to buy on her website.

Simon Alderwick is originally from Surrey, England, and currently lives in Pembrokeshire, Wales. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Magma, Anthropocene, Dust, and Ink Sweat & Tears, among others.

Sandra Aliandy is a writer from Indonesia, now in Vancouver. She’s trying to block off her next section of “alone time.” Her works are found/forthcoming in Daily Drunk, Sledgehammer, the tide rises, and more. Find her @tinycpr.

Wendy Allen has had poems published in Atrium, Re-Side, Northern Gravy, Selcouth Station, and has a Legitimate Snack from Broken Sleep. She is studying Creative Writing at Oxford Brookes.

Ben Ambrazaitis was born and raised in Billingham, Teesside. In this smoggy background he spent most of his teens looking for a hobby without any real success. However, the smog dispersed and he found something that intrigued his creativity – writing. This interest led him to study Creative Writing at York St John University, getting his first job in York working at McDonald’s.

Colin Bancroft has completed a PhD focused on placing Robert Frost as an Ecopoet. He lives in the North Pennines and his pamphlet Impermanence came out with Maytree Press in October 2020.

Amy Bobeda holds an MFA from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics where she founded Wisdom Body Collective, an artist collective rooted in the sacred feminine. Her work can be read in Humble Pie, Vol 1. Brooklyn, and elsewhere. @AmyBobeda on Twitter.

Petra Bódig (she/her) is an eighteen year old sapphic, originally from Hungary, but currently living in Scotland. Her writing deals with many social concerns, such as xenophobia, misogyny, and homophobia, as well as personal issues: mental health, relationships, and her identity as a queer woman.

Dale Booton is a twenty-six year old queer poet from Birmingham. His poetry has been published by Verve in their Diversity anthology, Untitled: Voices, Re-Side, and The Poetry Society. Most recently, his poetry has featured in Ligeia Winter 2020 Issue and on Queerlings.

Helen Bowie (she/they) is a charity worker, writer, and performer based in London. Helen is Editor of tattiezine, a potato themed litmag, and has writing featured or upcoming in streetcake magazine, Untitled: Voices, and Queerlings, among others. Helen writes about carbs, kitschy camp goodness and catastrophizing.

Andy Breckenridge has four poems on The Common Breath blog and four more have recently appeared in the Zoo anthology, published by Dreich. A pamphlet Liquid Air is due to be published soon, also by Dreich. Poems have appeared in the Shoreham Wordfest Anthology, Nutmeg Magazine, and on the Poetry Map of Scotland. Twitter handle: @drbafc.

Carl Burkitt likes to tell tales. He tells long tales, short tales, silly tales, sad tales and likes to tell them online, behind a mic, in books, in schools, or on the sofa with his young family in Manchester. His debut collection, What Does A Baby Think It Is? And Other Questions, was published in 2020 by Enthusiastic Press. Read more of Carl's work at www.carltellstales.com.

Sonia Burns (she/her) is a Derby based poet, performer and Community Development Worker. She is a member of the Wise Talk Collective, as well as Nottingham’s Paper Crane Poets and World Jam.
Her work has featured on BBC Radio Derby, the Dead Darlings Podcast and the People’s Poetry Podcast, been published in various anthologies and magazines and set to music by Open Collab. She was recently longlisted for the Dead Cat Poetry prize. Sonia’s debut chapbook, Umbra:philia, was published by the Bearded Badger Publishing Company in October 2021.

David Butler’s second poetry collection, All the Barbaric Glass, was published in 2017 by Doire Press, who are to bring out his third collection, Liffey Sequence, in 2021. His poem “Dockers, 1930” was shortlisted for the Anthony Cronin Award and the Hungry Hill ‘Poetry meets Politics’ Prize. It was highly commended in the Welsh Open Poetry Contest, appearing in print in the Irish working class anthology, The Children of the Nation, and the Welsh journal, Red Poets.

Wayne Connolly lives in the North East of England. His first short story appeared in The Middle of a Sentence: a short prose anthology, published by The Common Breath in December 2020. He was longlisted for the Short Fiction/University of Essex International Short Story Prize in 2021. He tweets as @KeeperOfPybus and usually regrets it soon afterwards.

Hailing from West Dorset, Jonah Corren is a poet and singer-songwriter. His work has been published in Ink Sweat & Tears, SPOONFEED, and others. He is an alumnus of BBC New Creatives (2019/20) and The Apples & Snakes Writing Room (2021) as well as an assistant editor at Seek Poetry.

Hélène Demetriades joint won the Hedgehog Press Full Fat Poetry Collection competition last year, and will have her debut collection The Plumb Line published in 2022. She is a practising psychotherapist. Her poetry has been published in numerous magazines and webzines. Many years ago she studied English at Leeds University.

RC deWinter’s poetry is widely anthologized, notably in New York City Haiku (NY Times, 2/2017), Now We Heal: An Anthology of Hope (Wellworth Publishing, 12/2020) in print: 2River, Event, Gargoyle Magazine, Genre Urban Arts, the minnesota review, Night Picnic Journal, Plainsongs, Prairie Schooner, Southword, The Ogham Stone, Twelve Mile Review, York Literary Review, among many others and appears in numerous online literary journals. She’s also a winner of the 2021 Connecticut Shakespeare Festival Sonnet Contest, with anthology publication forthcoming.

Josh Ellis is a Welsh writer and poet living in Wales. His work has appeared in the Welsh independent arts and culture publication, Santes Dwynwen Magazine, and concerns identity and how it relates to ancestry and Celtic mythology with an emphasis on decay. His writing tends towards both the mythic and sublunary treatment of the Welsh landscape, whilst incorporating genealogical nuances of Welsh culture.

DW Evans lives in Jersey. He has won the Alan Jones Prize (2019 & 2021), been shortlisted for Ó Bhéal’s Five Words (2020 & 2021) and the Wells Open Poetry Competition 2021, highly commended by Acumen (2020 competition) and Segora (2021). His poems have appeared in various publications including Frogmore Papers, Acumen, The Honest Ulsterman, Epoch, A3 Review, Madrigal, and Driech.

Teo Eve is a poet and short story writer based in Nottingham. Teo's poetry has been published in issues of streetcake magazine, Babel Tower Notice Board, 404 Ink Magazine, -algia, DIY Poets' Zine, and anthologised in Nottingham C.A.N.'s I Come From series, World Jam's Us vs Virus anthology, and 1010 Press' upcoming Working Class: Language anthology. Teo was part of the GOBS Collective 2021 cohort, and has edited the second issue of Nottingham Poetry Exchange’s Voices anthology. Teo’s debut short story won Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature’s 2020 MyVoice competition.

Brianna Ferguson is a writer from the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia. A current MFA candidate at the University of British Columbia, she also holds a BA in Creative Writing and a B Ed in Secondary Education from UBC. She has been a contributing writer with Vancouver Weekly since 2018. Her poems and stories have appeared in various publications across North America and the UK. Her debut poetry collection, A Nihilist Walks into a Bar, will be released by Mansfield Press in November 2021.

N.J. Foley has worked in the service industry for a decade and began to write about his experiences after being inspired by authors such as Henry Miller, Charles Bukowski, and Hunter S. Thompson. He finds writing about the ridiculousness of real life can equal and even surpass the wildest imaginings and stories from fiction authors across the globe. He is currently working as a freelance writer for various non-fiction entities and studying English Literature and Creative Writing at university.

Lara Frankena lives in London. Her poems have appeared in publications such as Poetry News, Ink Sweat & Tears, and Shot Glass Journal and were longlisted for the 2021 Erbacce Prize.

Franco Gabriel is a poet based in the Northwest of England. In his spare time, he enjoys exploring new cultures, sport & fitness, and travelling across the UK by air as a private pilot.

Jeff Gallagher is a poet and playwright from Sussex, England. His poems have appeared in a number of magazines including One Hand Clapping, The Journal, and Spellbinder. He has had numerous plays for young people published and performed in various locations nationwide. He has also appeared in an Oscar-winning movie.

Doctor Galvanic was born in Italy. After completing a degree in Anthropology, he moved from the Mediterranean to the Pacific, looking for love and adventure. He's been stuck there ever since. To pass the time, he writes short stories, some of which have been published in print and online.

Ryan Gibbs is an English professor who lives in London, Canada. His over forty published poems have appeared in journals and anthologies in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Malta, and Saint Pierre and Miquelon. His children’s poetry has been included in the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness.

Charlotte Goodger studied Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham and writes prose in a variety of genres. She is a freelance writer and digital marketing associate currently based in Birmingham and working on social media projects for heritage and education. Her freelance work focuses on opinion pieces on student-oriented blogs and magazines. Previous contributions include a profile of US physicist Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski for The F-Word, and “The River of Life” for environmental magazine, Louder Than The Storm. She is currently working on her first novel-length work.

Mark Grainger was born in Sussex, where his grandfather and great-grandmother wrote poems before him. He now lives in Frankfurt, Germany, where he translates financial reports for a living. Inspired by his grandfather, he began writing poems to share with his family in 2018. When his output ballooned under the coronavirus lockdown, he began sharing ‘lockdown poetry’ on Twitter.

HLR (she/her) writes poetry and short prose about mental illness, grief and trauma. Her work has featured in The Hellebore, Constellate Literary Journal, In Parentheses, Anti-Heroin Chic, streetcake magazine, and many others. Her debut prosetry book, History of Present Complaint, was published by Close To The Bone in February 2021. HLR lives in north London, where she was born and raised. Find her on Twitter @HLRwriter.

E. Hartley Smith is a York St John University graduate of Creative Writing. She has been published in the Pondweed anthology from Greenteeth Press and is the founder and Chief Editor of Forge Zine. A low-key adrenaline junkie and lover of the seaside, she has lived in Amsterdam and cannot wait to go back, exploring this beautiful world we have (in the most eco-friendly way possible).

Alyson Hasson grew up in New Brunswick, Canada, where she obtained her biology degree and a love for nature-based horror. Her interest in horror movies, combined with her background in biology, spurred a curiosity that led to the drafting of her own stories. She currently spends her days forecasting beer sales and her nights conjuring new monsters.

Alastair Hesp is a poet from Yorkshire currently living in Copenhagen. Although often tense and paradoxical, his writing is concerned with what is affirming of existential realities. Often dark and witty, he likes his poetry to operate on the borders between the elusive edge of reason and the unknown. Currently studying an MA in Poetry at The Manchester Writing School, he has appeared in anthologies and journals such as The Verve anthologies, The Cannon's Mouth, and The French Literary Review. Twitter: @AHespPoet website: www.alastairhesp.co.uk

Mike Hickman (@MikeHicWriter) is a writer from York, England. He has written for Off the Rock Productions (stage and audio), including 2018's "Not So Funny Now" about Groucho Marx and Erin Fleming. He has recently been published in EllipsisZine, Dwelling Literary, Bandit Fiction, Nymphs, Flash Fiction Magazine, Brown Bag, and Safe and Sound Press. His co-written, completed six-part BBC radio sitcom remains unproduced but available to interested producers!

Georgia Hilton is an Irish poet and fiction writer living in Winchester, England. Her poem, “Dark-Haired Hilda Replies to Patrick Kavanagh” won the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize in 2018, and she has a pamphlet, I went up the lane quite cheerful, and a collection, Swing, both published by Dempsey and Windle. Her short fiction has appeared in Lunate Fiction, Fictive Dream, and the Didcot Writers anthology. Georgia tweets sometimes at @GGeorgiahilton.

Daniel Hinds lives in Newcastle, UK. He won the Poetry Society’s Timothy Corsellis Young Critics Prize 2018 and his prose poem review of Jay Bernard’s Surge was one of the winners of the Shortlist Book Review Competition 2020, held in celebration of the Dylan Thomas Prize by Swansea University. He was shortlisted for the Streetcake Experimental Writing Prize 2019 and the Terry Kelly Poetry Prize 2018. Two of his poems were highly commended in the Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts Water Poetry Competition, judged by W. N. Herbert and John Burnside. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming in The London Magazine, The New European, Wild Court, Stand, The Best New British and Irish Poets 2019-2021, Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, Blackbox Manifold, The Honest Ulsterman, Fly on the Wall Press Magazine, Finished Creatures, Rewilding: An Ecopoetic Anthology, Newcastle University’s One Planet Anthology, Amethyst Review, Perverse, Streetcake Magazine, Riggwelter, Orbis, The Seventh Quarry, The Wilfred Owen Association Journal, Selcouth Station, Nightingale & Sparrow, Black Bough Poetry, Cardigan Press’s Byline Legacies anthology, and BFS Horizons. He has also had an essay published in Pre-Raphaelite Society Review. He was part of a panel of judges for the Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts Belonging Poetry Competition. He graduated from Newcastle University with a first class degree in English Literature, and a Distinction in his English Literature 1500-1900 MA, for which he won two prestigious scholarships, the School Bursary Award and Excellence Scholarship. He has been commissioned by New Creatives, a talent development scheme supported by Arts Council England and BBC Arts and delivered by Tyneside Cinema, to produce an audio piece based on his poetic sequence The Stone Men of Newcastle. Twitter: @DanielGHinds

Jessica Hopsicker lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, and is employed full-time in a cemetery as a grounds technician. She finds that riding around all day on a zero-turn mower and occasionally burying people is a far more rewarding experience than slaving away third-shift at a gas station. Not to mention she is paid nearly double than what she was there. She is currently writing her forthcoming novel, Dark Days on the Dixie Highway: Diary of a Third Shift Zombie, a memoir about the whole dismal experience. She was recently published in the anthology, Hunter S. Thompson: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations, for having obtained that last interview.

Arden Hunter is an aroace agender writer, artist and performer. Originally from the UK, they now live and work in Jakarta, Indonesia. With an eclectic range of interests from the horrific to the whimsical, the theme tying all of their work together is an inexplicable and unconditional love of the ridiculous beast that is called 'human'. Arden has words and art hosted and upcoming with Cinnabar Moth, The Bear Creek Gazette,
and MASKS Literary Magazine, among other places. Find them on Twitter: @hunterarden.

Julie Irigaray is a French Basque poet living in the UK. Her début pamphlet, Whalers, Witches and Gauchos, was published by Nine Pens Press in April 2021. Her poems have appeared internationally (US, UK, Ireland, Mexico, Canada, Singapore, and South Korea) in Ambit Magazine; Magma; Stand and Mslexia. She was commended in the 2020 Ambit Magazine Poetry Prize; shortlisted for The White Review Poet’s Prize 2019, and selected as one of the 50 Best New British and Irish Poets 2018 (Eyewear Publishing), among other prizes.

Christopher James is a poet from Birmingham. He is the co-editor of The Utopia Project and has had work published in Lumpen Journal and Amethyst Review. His current writing focuses on class, upbringing, and urban life.

Arun Jeetoo is a English teacher from North London. His words appear in The London Reader, a gallery in Cardiff with LUMIN Journal, Civic Leicester’s Black Lives Matter Journal, and The Best New British and Irish Poets 2019-2021. He was a participant in Waterloo Press' LIT UP: Poets of Colour mentoring scheme where his debut pamphlet, I Want to Be the One You Think About at Night, was published by Waterloo Press (2020).

Katie Jenkins is in the final throes of a Creative Writing diploma at Oxford University. Her poem “Raise a drink” was published by Everyman's Library in their Pocket Poets collection of villanelles. Her writing on shark diving in Fiji has featured in the Guardian newspaper. She lives in Gloucestershire and moonlights as a civil servant. She's pretty confident her boss isn't into poetry.

Alan Kissane is a teacher of English and lives in the Midlands. His poetry is due to be published in forthcoming issues of Allegro, Dust Poetry, Emerge Literary Journal, and Fahmidan. Read his poem “Thirteen Long Weeks” here.

Angela Lavelle is a writer from New York. She began writing poetry during college and has since traveled to the UK, where she studied in York and London.

Naomi Marklew is a writer based in Durham in the North East of England. Her work has appeared online and in print in various places, including -algia, streetcake, Selcouth Station, The Aesthetic Directory, Sledgehammer and Dear Damsels, and also in anthologies published by MumWrite, Nine Pens Press and Broken Sleep. She has a PhD in contemporary poetry and tweets @NaomiMarklew. Her website is https:// naomimarklew.wixsite.com/website.

Sadie Maskery lives in Scotland by the sea with her family. Her writing can be found in 2021 in various places, including British Fantasy Society Horizons, Star*Line, Red Planet Magazine, Odd Magazine, Green Ink, Night Sky Press, Seaborne Magazine, Badlung Press, Cross Crow Keys, The Minison Project, Anser Journal, Dreich, 8DPress, Fevers of the Mind, Not Very Quiet, Nightingale and Sparrow, Runcible Spoon, Aequitas Victoria, Edinburgh Literary Society, and Glasgow University, amongst others. She is on Twitter as @saccharinequeen.

cathryn mccarthy is a writer of queer romantic fiction and a lover of poetry, who has studied and worked in theatre, arts, and heritage for over a decade. She has also spent much of that time supplementing her wage with jobs in customer services.

James McDermott’s plays, published by Samuel French, include Rubber Ring and Time and Tide. Their poetry collection, Manatomy, is published by Burning Eye. James’s poems have been published in various magazines including The Gay and Lesbian Review, The Cardiff Review, Popshot Quarterly, Ink Sweat and Tears, and Dawntreader. 

Zara Meadows is a poet from Belfast, Northern Ireland. Her poem “Treehugger, Summer 2005” was highly commended in the Tower Poetry Competition in 2020. She is also co-editor of the new zine for young Northern Irish writers, Terrier. Read her poem “The Ice Bucket” here.

Zach Murphy is a Hawaii-born writer with a background in cinema. His stories appear in Reed Magazine, The Coachella Review, Maudlin House, BODY, Ruminate, Wilderness House Literary Review, Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, and more. His debut chapbook, Tiny Universes (Selcouth Station Press, 2021), is available in paperback and e-book. He lives with his wonderful wife Kelly in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Laura Newberry is a poet working as a chartered accountant. She grew up in Hull and has also lived in Leeds, where she gained her BSc in Physics, and York, where she works for an insurance company. She is currently studying part-time for an MA in Creative Writing at York St John University. This postgraduate degree is her first official creative foray, as her previous education and professional life have revolved around science and finance. Her writing has been published by the website Another North and in physical print in Beyond the Walls 2020 (Valley Press). You can read her poem “Leaning In” here.

Niall M Oliver lives in Ireland, and is the author of My Boss, published by Hedgehog Poetry. His poems have featured in Acumen, Atrium, The Honest Ulsterman, Fly On The Wall Press, Ink Sweat & Tears, and others.

Kat Payne Ware is a poet from Bristol, UEA MA Creative Writing graduate, and founder and editor of SPOONFEED, an online literary magazine for creative and experimental food writing. Her writing can be found in various magazines and anthologies, most recently Rewilding: An Ecopoetic Anthology and PERVERSE. Her debut pamphlet, THE LIVE ALBUM, is forthcoming from Broken Sleep Books in July 2021. You can follow her work on Twitter @katpayneware and @SPOONFEEDmag. Read her poem “Resignation” here.

Bernard Pearson is a published poet and prize-winning short story writer. His poems have appeared in the Edinburgh Review, Aesthetica Magazine, FourXFour, amongst other publications, and his collection, Free Fall: A Selection of Poems, was published by Leaf by Leaf Press in 2018. In 2019, he won second prize in The Aurora Prize for Poetry.

James Rance is a poet, novelist, and collage artist based in York, North Yorkshire. His poems have appeared in Pondweed and Unhomely anthologies (Greenteeth Press), Forge Zine, and his debut poetry pamphlet Bagworm. Twitter: @jrancewriter Instagram: @james.rance48

Rebecca Riddell is a content creator by day, and a poet/wannabe novelist by any time past 4:30pm. Born and bred in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, she can usually be found writing feminist, queer, and working class poetry, struggling to finish her first novel, or wondering where it all went wrong. You can find her on Instagram @r.a.riddell or @rebecca.asx.

Katherine Shirley is a native Londoner and constant scribbler. Katherine’s poems have appeared in The Best New British and Irish Poets Anthology 2016; the Snakeskin e-zine; the Gold Dust calendar; Soul Vomit; and her work The Water Way was lock no. 87 on the Rochdale Canal Festival Poetry Trail. Katherine has featured at the Stockwell Festival and the Ashmolean Museum’s ‘Poetry in the Galleries’ series. Katherine’s short stories, “Madeleine” (Infectious Theatre) and “Ernie’s Story” (The Ashtray Project for Colour House Theatre), have been adapted for the stage. Katherine’s poetry blog can be found at www.katherineshirley.wordpress.com.

Gerry Stewart is a poet, Creative Writing tutor, and editor based in Finland. Her poetry collection, Post-Holiday Blues, was published by Flambard Press, UK. Totems is to be published by Hedgehog Poetry Press in 2021. Her writing blog can be found at www.thistlewren.blogspot.fi and @grimalkingerry on Twitter.

Matthew Stewart works in the Spanish wine trade and lives between Extremadura and West Sussex. Following two pamphlets with HappenStance Press, he published his first full collection, The Knives of Villalejo, with Eyewear Books in 2017.

Pramod Subbaraman is a dentist by profession. He has also been a parliamentary candidate and a race equality campaigner. He has loved poetry of all eras since early childhood and is discovering that love again. He moved from Bangalore, India to the UK in late 2005 where he has lived ever since. He lives in Hull with his wife and his 4 year old son. Read his poem “Ah! Beautiful Edinburgh” here.

Plum Urquhart is a queer poet living and writing in St Andrews, Scotland.

Robin Vaughan-Williams is a poet who ended up in London. He enjoys bouncing off other people's words and making tiny leaps into the void. He is the author of The Manager (Happenstance Press).

Angharad Williams (She/Her) is a poet and charity worker living in Manchester, UK. She has most recently appeared in Forge Zine and Green Ink Poetry's collection, Pyres. You can find her on twitter @angharadsays.

Addison Williams is a poet, musician, and writer from Canterbury. His writing achievements include being shortlisted for Thanet Writers 2020 short story competition and longlisted for Dissonance Magazine’s 2020 Non- Fiction competition. He has also had spoken word pieces commissioned by the Marlowe Theatre, a poem published in Firewords Magazine, and received radio play for his music.

Alexander Williamson is a writer and photographer based in the Scottish Highlands. You can find more of his work at www.alexander-williamson.com.

Nicole M. Wolverton's undergraduate student years were spent at Temple University, and she is a current graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania — both located in Philadelphia, PA. Her short fiction has appeared in magazines such as Aji, The Molotov Cocktail, and Jersey Devil Press, as well as in anthologies from Dark Ink Books and Sliced Up Press, among others. Her creative nonfiction has been published by The Hungry Ghost Project. She is the author of The Trajectory of Dreams (Bitingduck Press) and editor of the upcoming Bodies Full of Burning anthology (Sliced Up Press). Find her at www.nicolewolverton.com or on Twitter at @nicolewolverton.