NewPages Reviewer Bios

Aimee Nicole is a native Rhode Islander who recently finished up a YA manuscript and received a BFA in creative writing. She has been published in a variety of journals and is the lead editor for the 22 Magazine.

 

Allyson Hoffman is a Michigan native. Currently, she is pursuing an MFA in fiction at the University of South Florida.

Alyse Bensel, a native of York, received her MFA in poetry from Penn State in 2012. Her poetry has appeared in Cider Press Review, MAYDAY Magazine, and Word Riot, among others. She now lectures in English at Penn State, volunteers for a cat rescue, and participates in a work-share program at a local CSA farm in State College. Her first chapbook, Shift, was published in Fall 2012 from Plan B Press.

Andre Demers is a graduate of Saint Anselm College who lives in Southern Maine.   He has been published in Northwind Magazine and The Café Review. He is currently working on his first collection of poetry.   He is grateful for the understanding of his wife while he tries, like a fool, to do everything at once.

 

Ann Beman earned her MFA from the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts: Whidbey Writers Workshop. She is nonfiction editor for The Los Angeles Review, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in DIAGRAM, Bombay Gin, Stymie, and Canoe Journal, among others. A Duke grad, Beman kayaks, skis, and runs in California’s Kern River Valley, where she lives with her husband and two whatchamaterriers. Only recently has she become a small dog convert; it's still a little weird.

Anne Graue lives and writes in Mahopac, New York. Her poetry has been published in literary journals including The Westchester Review,  Ginosko Literary Journal, The Fem, Random Sample Review, Yellow Chair Review, and The 5-2 Crime Poetry Weekly. Her chapbook, Fig Tree in Winter, is forthcoming in 2017 from Dancing Girl Press. 

 

 

Brian McKenna is a poet, native Michigander, and former poetry editor of the literary journal, Temenos. He received his MA in creative writing from Central Michigan University and is currently working on a chapbook, The Trades. He has been reviewing for NewPages since January 2014.

 

Cara Bigony is a Cape Cod native who has been reviewing for NewPages since 2011. Her writing has been published in FutureClaw magazine and Forty-Three North among others. She is head fiction editor for Red Weather, has worked at Langton’s International Literary Agency in NYC and Pearson Publishing in Boston. A senior at Hamilton College, she is majoring in Comparative Literature, concentrating on French and Russian literature.

Cheryl Wollner is an asexual feminist whose writing has appeared in Unbuild Walls, Polychrome Ink, GNU, Voices and Visions, The Best of Loose Change Anthology, and others. She is Fiction Reader for Five on the Fifth, as well as the Blog Managing Editor for Luna Station Quarterly, a journal dedicated to emerging female writers of speculative fiction. Most recently, she has become an editor for Polychrome Ink, a journal featuring diverse voices. Follow her asexual feminist blog here. 

 

Cheyanne Gustason is a writer and artist living in Los Angeles, California. She has written for Backstage Magazine and is currently working on her first children’s book. She has Bachelor of Arts degrees in Film & Media Studies and History, and recently earned a Juris Doctor.

 

 

Courtney McDermott earned her MFA in creative writing from the University of Notre Dame. She has written book reviews for NACADA Journal, Warscapes, and Literary Laundry. Her fiction and essays have appeared in various journals, including the Berkeley Fiction Review, Daily Palette, Little Village Magazine, A Few Lines Magazine, and Italy from a Backpack anthology. Currently, she is an English lecturer at Tufts University.

Craig Ledoux is a writer and visual artist from Keene, New Hampshire. He earned his MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. His work has appeared in Cosmonauts Avenue, Perigee, LUMINA, Black Heart Magazine, and The Onion River Review. He is the Editor in Chief of Madcap Review.

Dan Schell is originally from Saginaw, Michigan. His award-winning poetry has been published in several literary journals and his first novel, The Road to Fluffer, was published in 2012. He currently lives in Bay City, Michigan. His author page on Amazon is: http://amazon.com/author/dschell and his published poetry is collected at: http://www.scribd.com/dan_schell

Dana Johnson graduated from Central Michigan University with her Bachelor's Degree in Creative Writing. When she's not working silently in her cubicle, you can find her reading, writing, or hiking. Very occasionally she blogs about books at https://danaljohnson.wordpress.com/. Her other writing can be found at https://danaljohnson.contently.com/.

Daniel Klawitter is the lead singer/lyricist for the indie-rock band Mining for Rain, and currently works as an Admissions Counselor at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, CO. He is the author of two full-length poetry collections: A Poet Playing Doctor (2015) and Plato Poetica (forthcoming, 2017), both published by White Violet Press.

 

 

David is a high school English teacher and a writer of short fiction. His work has appeared in Confettifall magazine, From the Depths, and the Midnight Diner. You can reach David either on Twitter (@DMatteri) or at .

David Morgan O'Connor is from a small village on Lake Huron but keeps his Irish passport proudly updated. He has lived nomadically since finishing his BA at King's College in Halifax, Nova Scotia. After nine years as an actor in New York, followed by a five year layover in London where he completed a MA at RADA (The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art), he has worked in nine countries as a jobbing actor and TEFL teacher and visited more than 40. His current writing base is Rio de Janeiro and he is delighted to be a MFA candidate in Fiction at The University of New Mexico. Writing has been published in: The Write Practice, Collective Exiles, Bohemia Journal, BlueStem, The Story Shack, The Literary Yard, Fiction Magazine, StrayLight Magazine, Electric Windmill Press, The New Quarterly and The Guardian.

 

 

Elizabeth O'BrienElizabeth O’Brien lives in Minneapolis, MN. Her creative writing has appeared in more than 30 literary journals, including New England Review, Diagram, Sixth Finch, Whiskey Island, decomP, PANK, CutBank, Ampersand Review, Swink, and Versal.

 

Evgeniya Monico is currently an MA student at Salisbury University, graduating this coming May. Evgeniya also teaches English 103 Composition and Research at Salisbury University. Born and raised in Ukraine and Russia, she now lives on the Eastern shore.

 

H. V. Cramond is the Poetry Editor for and a Co-founder of Requited Journal for Innovative Art. She holds an MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, lectures at Loyola University Chicago and has received grants from the Illinois Arts Council and the City of Chicago's Community Arts Assistance Program. She currently reads for XYZ Festival of New Works at About Face Theatre and for Pegasus Players' Young Playwrights Festival. Recent work can be found in Soundless Poetry, Keep Going, Wunderkammer, Ignavia, death hums and in the anthology Pandora's Box (Southport Press 2011). You can read more of her writing on her website.

 

Jenifer Butler is a graduate student at Coastal Carolina University in the Master in the Art of Writing program. She serves as an assistant editor for the Waccamaw Online Literary Journal.

Jenny Mark is a graduate of California State University of San Bernardino and lives in Southern California. She is an adjunct professor for Baker College and an associate professor for the University of Phoenix, teaching composition, creative writing, and essential college skills. Follow her blog at: http://jennysuemark.com

Jodi Paloni’s short stories appear or are forthcoming in Whitefish Review, R.kv.r.y Quarterly, Carve Magazine, upstreet, Monkeybicycle, Spartan, and The Lascaux Review. She placed second in the 2012 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest. She lives and writes in southern Vermont and holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Jodi curates the forum 365 Short Stories in 2013 in which she reads and comments on one short story a day at Rigmarole.

John Palen's Open Communion: New and Selected Poems was published by Mayapple Press in 2005. Since then he has had poetry chapbooks out from March Street Press and Pudding House, and has recent work in Sleet, Citron Review, Poydras Review Blog and elsewhere. His first collection of short fiction, Small Economies, came out from Mayapple Press in January 2012. A Michigander for more than 35 years, he is now living and writing in Central Illinois.

 

Jordan Serviss is in the M.F.A. program at the University of San Francisco where he writes fiction. Originally from Northern New York, he recently completed his M.A. in Writing from Coastal Carolina University where he spent two years living in Myrtle Beach and assisting Waccamaw: a journal of contemporary literature as an Editorial Assistant. He is currently an intern at Hobart: another literary journal.

Jordana Landsman is an award-winning author, poet, reader, and working mom of three small children. Her work appears at http://www.jordanalandsman.com.

 

Justin Brouckaert's fiction, non fiction and poetry has appeared in The Rumpus, Passages North, Hobart, Gigantic Sequins and Amazon's Day One, among other publications. He serves as fiction editor at Yemassee and Banango Lit. A Michigan native, he's currently a James Dickey Fellow at the University of South Carolina. Find him at jjbrouckaert.tumblr.com or on Twitter @JJBrouckaert.

 

 

Kelly Sauvage Angel is the author of Om Namah... (published under Kalyanii), a collection of poetry, two stage plays, dozens of short stories and hundreds of articles. She enjoys wiling away her free time within the kitchen, the dance studio and the great outdoors.

 

 

Kimberly is the author of White Goat Black Sheep (FLP) and her poetry has appeared in several literary journals including The 3288 Review, Temenos, Storm Cellar, Borderlands: The Texas Poetry Review, The West Texas Literary Review, Windhover, Ruminate Magazine, Relief, RiverSedge and The Berkeley Poetry Review. She is an MFA graduate of New England College, a book reviewer for NewPages, an editor for the Nimrod International Journal of Poetry and Prose and an Assistant Professor of First-Year Writing at Michigan State University. Her writing explores trauma, sexuality, violence against women, motherhood, and displacement. To read more of her work visit kimberlyannpriest.com.

Kirsten McIlvenna served as literary magazine review editor for NewPages for three years. She has also served throughout the years in many capacities for Hell's Half Mile Film & Music Festival, the film festival in Bay City, MI. As she now moves to the other side of the state, she looks forward to new creative endeavors.

Lâle Davidson teaches writing at SUNY Adirondack and blogs for The Times Union. Her stories have appeared in The North American Review, Eclectica, Big Lucks, and The Collagist. Her fabulist story “The Opal Maker” was named top fifty of 2015 by Wigleaf, and her fiction chapbook, Strange Appetites won the Adirondack Center for Writing People’s Choice Award. More at Laledavidson.com. 

Lesley Dame is co-founder of and poetry and nonfiction editor for damselfly press. Author of the poetry chapbook Letting Out the Ghosts, her poems have also appeared in many online and print journals. Dame happily lives, writes, and edits in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. For more information, visit her website, www.wix.com/lesleydame/poet

Lydia Pyne is a writer and historian of science based in Austin, TX. (http://pynecone.org @LydiaPyne)

Mary Florio, pictured here in Telluride, has written for NewPages for more than two years. She currently lives in Birmingham, Alabama with her husband John. She has won local and regional awards for her writing and has been published in newspapers, magazines and literary journals. She is grateful to the talented writers and editors of the journals she reviews and to her colleagues at NewPages.

Matt Weinkam’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in TINGE Magazine, Monkeybicycle, Jaded Ibis Press, and The Rumpus. He is currently in the MFA program at Northern Michigan University where he is a managing editor at Passages North and co-editor of Threadcount, an online journal of hybrid prose.

 

 

 

 

 

Patrick James Dunagan lives in San Francisco and works at Gleeson Library at USF. He is the author of “There are people who think painters shouldn’t talk”: A GUSTONBOOK (Post-Apollo, 2011). Recent writings of his have appeared in: Amerarcana, Barzakh, Big Bell, The Critical Flame, Fulcrum, Galatea Resurrects, House Organ, The Poetry Project Newsletter, Polis, and Rain Taxi. In addition to his own poems and book reviews, he’s currently working with Persian poet Ava Koohbor co-translating her work from Farsi.

Pia Aliperti is a poet from Atlanta, who lives in New York City. Her poems and reviews appear in THEthe Poetry Blog and the Best American Poetry blog, among others. She was a finalist for the 2011 RATTLE Poetry Prize.

 

Renee Emerson, the mother of four daughters, wife to a Presbyterian music minister, was born in Tennessee and resides in Arkansas. She has published poems in magazines such as Perspectives, Still, and Valley Voices, and currently teaches online courses for various universities. She is the author of Keeping Me Still (Winter Goose Publishing 2014) and Threshing Floor (Jacar Press 2016), and is online at www.ReneeEmersonPoet.com

Rhonda Browning White resides near Daytona Beach, FL and works as a ghostwriter, editor, adjunct professor, and Realtor (she’ll do most anything to support her writing habit). Her work has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Steel Toe Review, Ploughshares Writing Lessons, South85 Journal, WV Executive, Mountain Echoes, Gambit, Justus Roux, Bluestone Review, and in the anthologies Appalachia’s Last Stand and Mountain Voices. Rhonda blogs at Read. Write. Live! found at www.RhondaBrowningWhite.com , and about the craft of fiction writing at www.WhyTheWritingWorks.com. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Converse College in Spartanburg, SC.

 

Ryo Yamaguchi’s first collection, The Refusal of Suitors, will be published by Noemi Press in spring 2015. He lives in Chicago, where he works at the University of Chicago Press.

Sarah Carson was born and raised in Flint, Michigan but now lives in Chicago with her dog, Amos, who has recently learned to swim. She is the author of the chapbooks Before Onstar (Etched Press, 2009), Twenty-Two (Finishing Line Press, 2010), and When You Leave (H_NGM_N, forthcoming in 2012).

 

Scott Russell Morris is a student at Texas Tech University, where he also teaches nonfiction literature and creative writing. He is currently working on a memoir of food, family, and travel. His essays have recently appeared in Brevity, Proximity, and Assay.

 

Shannon Smith has a BA from Columbia University in New York and an MA in English and an MLIS in Library Science and Information Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She plays music under the name Pataphor.

Reviewer Bio: Sheelonee Banerjee is Editor of Propel, the YA imprint of Pulse. Her poems have appeared in Indian dailies as well as in literary journals of USA. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she is a confirmed bookworm and writes from San Diego.

 

Tamara Miles teaches college English in South Carolina and works on her doctoral dissertation when she isn’t writing poems. Her writings and art work have appeared in Fall Lines; O’Bheal Five Words; Love is Love; Auntie Bellum; Pantheon Magazine; UnLost Journal; Subprimal Poetry Art; The Tishman Review; and Apricity. She is a proud member of Irish writer Jane Barry’s online creativity salon known as That Curious Love of Green and a 2016 contributor at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.

Travis Laurence Naught is an author who happens to be a quadriplegic wheelchair user. He has received his bachelor's degree in psychology (2005) and completed coursework for a graduate degree in sports psychology (2007), both at Eastern Washington University. Full-length volumes of his confessional style poetry, The Virgin Journals (ASD Publishing, 2012) and Still Journaling (e-book, 2013), are widely available. Other individual pieces of work by Travis are available online and in print. Basketball and outdoor sporting activities of all kind are counted among his passions, with coffee topping the list!

Trena Machado's interest is writing prose and poetry that experiments with language to develop content in new ways, especially writing that constructs the various territories of subjective identity (imaginative and factual). She is always interested in how grammar can be bent/fragments formed making new structures capturing awareness to relay meaning. She is a small press publisher and is involved in the San Francisco Bay Area writing community.

Valerie Wieland’s poetry, fiction and nonfiction have been published in Buffalo Spree Magazine, Hawaii Review, Cape Cod Life, Seems, Eureka Literary Magazine, Key Horizons, Illinois Magazine, Vietnam, Kaleidoscope, Hiram Poetry Review, Grasslimb, Iconoclast (forthcoming), and others. Her book of poetry, The Language of Snow and Ice was published in 2007 in Tunisia by Calamus.

Wendy Breuer's prose and poetry have appeared in CALYX, Inkwell Journal, Pirene's Fountain, Rattle, The Battered Suitcase, Literary Mama, Noö Journal, and other sites. She lives in Berkeley, CA.