Ravi Shankar, Executive Director
Ravi Shankar is co-Director of the Creative Writing Program at Central Connecticut State University and the founding editor of Drunken Boat. He has published four books of poems, including Seamless Matter, Voluptuous Bristle, Wanton Textiles, and Instrumentality. Along with Tina Chang and Nathalie Handal, he edited Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from Asia, the Middle East & Beyond (W.W Norton & Co.), called “a beautiful achievement for world literature” by Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer. He has won a Pushcart Prize, been featured in The New York Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education, appeared on the BBC and NPR, and has performed his work around the world. He is currently on the faculty of the first international MFA Program at City University of Hong Kong. Norah Jones is not among his daughters.
Sarah Clark, Managing Editor & Web Editor
Sarah Clark has half of a Master’s degree in literature, and a BA in English and Global Art from Virginia Commonwealth University. She has worked with a number of literary publications, including Open City, The Paris Review, The Del Sol Review, and Blackbird, and edited DB11’s sound art folio. She’s been published here and there, but you’ll have to prise her CV from her cold dead hands to find out where. Sarah is completing her MA in modernist literature at Queen Mary, University of London, or will expat trying. You can see her tweet for Drunken Boat here.
Leslie McGrath, Former Managing Editor
Leslie McGrath’s poems have appeared in Agni online,
Beloit Poetry Journal,
Black Warrior Review, DIAGRAM, Poetry Ireland, and Alimentum, and have been anthologized both in the US and India.
You can read some of her work at From the Fishouse. She won the Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry in 2004.
Together with Ravi Shankar, McGrath has edited and published the posthumous poetry collection of Reetika Vazirani, Radha Says (Drunken Boat Press, 2010.) McGrath’s first collection of poetry, Opulent Hunger, Opulent Rage, won the 2009 Main Street Rag Poetry Book award.
Rob Ray, Art Editor
Rob Ray examines technology in public and outdoors spaces. This examination results in interactive public artworks, experimental films and audio works.
His most recent interactive work, GETLOST! was commissioned by the Abandon Normal Devices Festival in Cumbria and Lancashire, UK. His video game disguised as ATM, Bucky’s Animal Spirit, was selected for the art.tech exhibition at The Lab (San Francisco), and the (re)load exhibition at Antena (Chicago). Other recent exhibitions include the Without You I’m Nothing show at Green Lantern Gallery (Chicago) and the Squirrel! exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Center at Woodside (Troy, NY).
Recent filmworks include Canaries in the Coalmine, exhibited at the Onion City Fim Festival (Chicago) and winner of the DIGIT 2009 Excellence in Cinematography prize.
Rob also collaborates with Jason Soliday and Jon Satrom as a member of the Chicago-based circuit-bent multimedia noise trio I Love Presets.
From 1999 to 2008, Rob was founder and head curator of DEADTECH electronic arts center in Chicago, IL. DEADTECH’s unique curatorial vision, residency facilities, and exhibition and workshop spaces were all created to cater to the specific needs of the electronic artist and performer. DEADTECH exhibited artists from across the globe including the Beige Programming Ensemble, Trevor Paglen, Norman White, Kevin Drumm, T.V. Pow and Kazuyuki K. Null.
Rob is currently attending Rensselear Polytechnic Institute’s Electronic Arts MFA program in Troy, NY.
Deborah Poe, Fiction Editor
Deborah Poe is assistant professor of English at Pace University. She is the author of the poetry collections Elements (Stockport Flats Press 2010) and Our Parenthetical Ontology (CustomWords 2008), as well as chapbooks from Furniture_Press and Stockport Flats Press. She has received several literary awards including three Pushcart Prize nominations for her poetry and the Thayer Fellowship of the Arts (2008) for her poetry and fiction.
Deborah’s writing is forthcoming or has appeared in Colorado Review, Sidebrow, Ploughshares, Filter Literary Journal, Denver Quarterly, Copper Nickel, Drunken Boat and other journals as well as in the anthologies Fingernails Across the Chalkboard: Poetry and Prose on HIV/AIDS From the Black Diaspora (Third World Press 2007) and A Sing Economy (Flim Forum 2008). Deborah is also co-editor of the short fiction anthology, provisionally entitled “Between Worlds,” with her colleague Ama Wattley.
Deborah was born a military brat in Del Rio, Texas and has lived throughout the United States and abroad. After her undergraduate studies, she worked in various positions including hostel clerk and bartender in Paris, environmental activist in Austin, a waitress in Taos, engineering assistant at Oregon Steel Mill in Portland, editor and international program manager in Seattle and educator in Washington and New York.
She has taught at Western Washington University, where she received her Master of Arts, and at Binghamton University, SUNY, where she received her doctoral degree. She has also taught as afternoon faculty at the Port Townsend Writer’s Workshop in Washington.
More information can be found at DeborahPoe.com, including upcoming readings and audio/video of past performances.
Holly Wendt, Assistant Fiction Editor
Holly Wendt is an English Instructor at Casper College in Casper, Wyoming. She teaches and has taught creative writing, composition, and medieval literature at Casper College, at Binghamton University, where she received her doctoral degree, and at Ohio University, where she received her Master of Arts degree.
Previously, she has served as the book review editor and as a reader for Quarter After Eight and as managing editor for Harpur Palate. Her short fiction has appeared in Gray’s Sporting Journal, and she is currently at work on several novel projects. Holly is the co-director for the 2010 Equality State Book Festival.
Heather Bryant, Nonfiction Editor
Heather Bryant is the Spring 2010 Emerging Writer-in-Residence at Randolph College. She won the 2009 Southeast Review Narrative Nonfiction Contest. A fellow of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and a Visiting Artist in writing at the American Academy in Rome in 2009, she has taught writing at the Youth Action Coalition and the Girl Scout Scholars Program. Her fiction and non-fiction have appeared or are forthcoming with The Southeast Review, Women Writers, and Seal Press.
Elizabeth Edmonson, Assistant Nonfiction Editor
Elizabeth Edmonson is a graduate of Wellesley College and received her MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars in 2007. She was awarded the Charlotte Paul Reiss ‘38 Memorial Prize for Creativity in Writing in 2004 and the Lucy Grealy Scholarship in 2005. She is finishing a memoir about growing up in a high-demand Christian community on Cape Cod, and hopes to find a publisher in the not-too-distant future. She lives in an apartment filled with sun and books twenty minutes outside of Boston.
Tamiko Beyer, Poetry Editor
Tamiko Beyer’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in little red leaves, diode, Sonora Review, OCHO, Copper Nickel, The Progressive, and other journals and anthologies. She has received several fellowships and grants, including a Kundiman fellowship, a grant from the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund, and a Chancellor’s Fellowship from Washington University in St. Louis where she is currently an M.F.A. candidate. She is the poetry co-editor of Arch Literary Journal, and a founding member of Agent 409: a queer, multi-racial writing collective in New York City. Tamiko has lead creative writing workshops through the New York Writers’ Coalition where she worked with homeless LGBT youth and other communities whose voices have been historically silenced.
Michelle Brown, Assistant Poetry Editor
Michelle Chan Brown’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Missouri Review, Prism Review, Tampa Review, KNOCK, Gertrude, Broken Bridge Review, The Concher, Yemassee, and textsound. She earned her MFA at the University of Michigan, where she received the Michael R. Gutterman prize. She lives in Pomfret, Connecticut, where she is the Writer-in-Residence at Pomfret School. Her chapbook The Clever Decoys is now available from Love Among the Ruins press.
Robert Dowling, Contributing Editor (Celtic Twilight)
Robert M. Dowling is associate professor of English at Central Connecticut State University and a member of the editorial board of The Eugene O’Neill Review, the Board of Directors of the Eugene O’Neill Society, and Irish American Writers and Artists. He is author of Slumming in New York: From the Waterfront to Mythic Harlem (2007) and the two-volume Critical Companion to Eugene O’Neill: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work (2009). His latest projects include a critical anthology on O’Neill’s bohemian and radical influences, co-edited with Eileen Herrmann, and American Contemporary Reviews: Eugene O’Neill, co-edited with Jackson R. Bryer. He is currently writing a biography on O’Neill for Yale University Press.
Catherine Daly, Contributing Editor
Catherine Daly has run several reading series in LA, including one with the Electronic Literature Organization at the UCLA Hammer Museum. Her most recent book is Vauxhall (Shearsman, 2008). Among her forthcoming books is OOD: Object-Oriented Design (on Cracked Slab). She is publisher of i.e. Press. A former technical architect and software developer, she has taught creative writing, literature, critical theory, women’s studies, and history of mathematics. Her website can be found here.
Jean-Jacques Poucel, Contributing Editor at Large
Jean-Jacques Poucel is a poet, translator, and literary critic. Jean-Jacques Poucel teaches French language and literature at Yale University. He is the author Jacques Roubaud and the Invention of Memory (UNC Press, 2006) and has completed studies on several members of the Oulipo, some of which appear in Yale French Studies and Poetics Today, both of which he co-edited. He is a member of the collective Double Change. His is currently working on a study of French lyric poetry from the early nineties to the present.
Sina Queyras, Contributing Editor
Sina Queyras is the author of most recently of Unleashed, a collection of early writing from her blog, as well as Lemon Hound, which won a Lambda Literary Award, and Expressway, both from Coach House Books. She edited Open Field: 30 Contemporary Canadian Poets for Persea Books. When she is not writing, editing, or pawing the latest arts and literary news on Lemon Hound, she likes to wear a cape. She now lives in Montreal and teaches creative writing at Concordia University.
Claire Zoghb, Graphic Designer
Claire Zoghb’s collection, Small House Breathing, won the 2008 Quercus Review Poetry Series Annual Book Award. A chapbook, Dispatches from Everest, is forthcoming from Pudding House Press. Her poems have appeared in Connecticut Review, CALYX, Mizna: Prose, Poetry and Art Exploring Arab America (The Lebanon Issue), Natural Bridge, Through A Child’s Eyes: Poems and Stories About War, and Eating Her Wedding Dress: A Collection of Clothing Poems. She holds an MALS from Wesleyan University. A freelance graphic artist/book designer, Claire lives in New Haven’s Morris Cove neighborhood and works across the harbor as Graphics Director at Long Wharf Theatre.
Ann Bogle, Fiction Reader
Ann Bogle writes short works of fiction, nonfiction, and prose poetry in Minnesota. Her short stories have appeared in The Quarterly, Fiction International, Gulf Coast, Black Ice, Big Bridge, Submodern Fiction, and other journals. Her prose poem chapbook, XAM: Paragraph Series, was published by Xexoxial Editions in 2005. Her poetry chapbook, Dog barks up a tree at the apple left in it under a deerslim moon, was published by Orium Press for the Dusie Kollektiv in 2008. She studied writing at University of Wisconsin at Madison with Lorrie Moore, at Binghamton University with Larry Woiwode and Jerome Rothenberg, and at University of Houston with Rosellen Brown and James Robison. Her M.F.A. is from University of Houston in 1994. She edits creative nonfiction and book reviews at Mad Hatters’ Review and fiction at Women Writers: a Zine. She published her weblog, >Ana Verse, as a b-l-o-o-k in 2009. Some of her new and reprinted work appears at Fictionaut.
Mary-Lou Brockett-Devine, Fiction Reader
Mary-Lou Brockett-Devine holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College and currently teaches English at a Connecticut public high school. Her poems and short stories have been published in various literary magazines.
Jill Di Donato, Fiction Reader
Jill Di Donato holds an MFA in fiction from Columbia University, where she has also taught writing. Her stories and essays have been published in various journals and magazines. She is an editor at the web journal Sex in the Public Square, and currently teaches writing at the City College of New York. She likes to read about sexual politics, complex morality, and darkly comic nuances of life.
Stephanie King, Fiction Reader
Stephanie received her MFA in Writing & Literature from Bennington College, where she was the editor of the Bennington Review. Her novella Ghost Bite was the winner of the 2005-06 Quarterly West Novella Prize. She currently lives in Philadelphia and on the web at StephanieKing.net.
Judy Yu, Fiction Reader
Judy Yu has an MFA in writing fiction from Sarah Lawrence College. She has taught writing workshops to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth; domestic violence survivors; and at after school programs. Judy is a member of Agent 409, a multi-racial, queer writing group that has performed and presented workshops in New York City; Washington D.C.; Boston, MA; and Atlanta, GA. She has been a featured reader at the blogger reading and performance showcase, WYSIWYG, at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City in June 2006. She has two essays in Visible: A Femmethology, published in 2009 by Homofactus Press. Judy is currently working on a novel about the first Chinese woman on record to come to the United States who was put on display as a “living curio” in New York City.
Ann Fine, Poetry Reader
Ann M. Fine’s book of poems, A Nest This Size, was published by Shearsman Books in November of 2009. Her poems have appeared in the journals Diner, Nocturnes Review of Literary Arts, Sonora Review, Cue, on-line at NoTell Motel, La Fovea, and The Drunken Boat, Moria, Action, Yes! and elsewhere. She is an MFA graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars in Vermont, where she studied poetry and architectural history and theory. She has been the director of two community writing centers, Casa Libre en la Solana in Tucson, Arizona (which she also co-founded), and InkTank World Headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio. She currently teaches college English and Poetry courses in Tucson, Az.
Daniel Lin, Poetry Reader
Daniel Lin is a NYC poet with a chapbook, TINDER, from Nightboat Books. He publishes Love Among the Ruins, a small press.
PF Potvin, Poetry Reader
PF Potvin teaches writing, serves as Writing Center faculty
consultant, and chairs the Writing Awards at the University of
Michigan-Dearborn. He is the author of The Attention Lesson by No Tell
Books (2006). His poetry and fiction have appeared in the Boston Review,
Born Magazine, MiPOesias, Slope, Sleepingfish, Sentence, No Tell
Motel, An Introduction to the Prose Poem, (Firewheel Editions) and
elsewhere. His manuscripts have been finalists for the New Issues
Press Competition and the Poetry Center Prize. He has received
residency scholarships from the Vermont Studio Center and Casa Libre
en la Solana. He has run marathons and ultramarathon races in Iceland,
Germany, New Zealand, and throughout the U.S.A. He currently resides
in Ann Arbor and can be spied at www.pfpotvin.com.
Christina Rizzo, Poetry Reader
Christina Rizzo was born in Hartford, Connecticut. She is a graduate of the MFA program at Bennington College and is the author of the chapbook No Such Person is Likely to Appear (Finishing Line Press 2008). She works as a behavioral consultant in the field of applied behavior analysis serving children with developmental disabilities. She lives and writes in Vermont.
Hayden Saunier, Poetry Reader
Hayden Saunier’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in 5 A.M., Beloit Poetry Journal, Margie, Nimrod, and Rattle. Her first collection of poetry, Tips For Domestic Travel, was just published by Black Lawrence Press. Also an actress, her film and television credits include The Sixth Sense, Philadelphia Diary, The West Wing, and Hack and her most recent voice-over adventure finds her as the voice of an aging, burnt-out oven for Ikea. More can be found at her website.
Kendra Tanacea, Poetry Reader
Kendra L. Tanacea, an attorney in San Francisco, holds an MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington College, where she completed her first poetry collection, If You’re Lucky Nobody Gets Hurt, a finalist for the Starrett Prize. Kendra’s poems have appeared in 5AM, Rattle, Pearl, and other literary journals and she frequently performs public readings of her work. She has a BA in English from Wellesley College.
Jeff DeLargey, Nonfiction Reader
Jeff DeLargy is a software engineer and writer residing in Austin, Texas. He recently completed an MFA in nonfiction at Bennington College and his work has appeared in Sorin Oak. A long journey on foot—The Roads to Sata, for example—is his current passion.
Caitlin Leffel, Nonfiction Reader
Caitlin Leffel is a writer, editor, and co-author of The Best Things to Do in New York: 1001 Ideas (2006) and NYC: An Owner’s Manual (2008). This year she officially became a bicoastal writer with the publication of Flair, an entertaining guide she wrote with Los Angeles interior designer Joe Nye. She has written for Blackbook , Time Out New York , Fashion Week Daily , and Mademoiselle , and was recently named as a runner-up in the Southeast Review’s 2010 nonfiction contest. She’s a founding member of the online literary happy hour “Five on Friday,” a graduate of Amherst College, and a very recent graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing program.
Christina Saraceno, Nonfiction Reader
Christina Saraceno received her MFA degree from Columbia University. She lives in New York and is at work on a collection of short stories titled From the Same Place.
Brett Haymaker, Illustrator & Proofreader
Brett Haymaker recently graduated from Drexel University with a B.A. in English Literature and a Certificate in Creative Writing and Publishing. He studied poetry in Prague with Poet James Ragan in 2008, won the attention from Electricidad de Portugal—Europe’s 4th largest energy producer—with his business concept entry in MIT’s Clean Energy Prize competition in 2009, and has since mobilized The Saucon Valley Community Gardens Association, a non-profit in his hometown that spearheads urban farming and community supported agricultural infrastructures intended to smooth the transition of a post-peak oil economy. Brett’s non-fiction and poetry have seen publication in Maya, Philadelphia’s CITYPAPER, and Willows Wept Review, among others, and has been, in one instance, anthologized in The 33rd. He is currently developing book cover art for novelist Peter Damian Bellis’s THE CONJURE MAN and gardening daily.
Joseph Pascale, Editorial Assistant
Joseph Patrick Pascale is a fiction writer from New Jersey. His work has been published or is forthcoming in South Jersey Underground, Thaumatrope, 365 Tomorrows, Tweet the Meat, PicFic, Off The Rocks, and Prism literary journal. He is currently studying toward his Master of Arts degree in English Literature at Centenary College where he teaches first year writing courses. More information is available at josephpascale.pyraliss.com.
Michael Clark, Editorial Assistant (Celtic Twilight)
Michael Clark is a graduate student at Central Connecticut State University.
Erin Sullivan, Editorial Assistant (Celtic Twilight)
Erin Sullivan is completing her Master’s in English at Central Connecticut State University. She teaches English at Torrington High School (Torrington, CT), where she advises the student press. Sullivan also retains a position as an adjunct professor at Briarwood College, where she teaches Composition, Introduction to Literature, and Contemporary Fiction.
Brian Corrigan, Web Design Assistant (Celtic Twilight)
Brian Corrigan is a Brooklyn-based freelance graphic artist/web designer and the sole proprietor of Watch Your Back, a t-shirt and apparel company. Recent clients have included the NYC Department of Education, the Brooklyn Bridge Park Association, Hunter College, and many others. He serves as the web master for the Irish American Writers and Artists (IAW&A) website and is responsible for the design of author and Celtic Twilight contributor Peter Quinn’s New York Paddy website. He is currently working on T.J. English’s website, another contributor to Celtic Twilight.
Joe Ramelo, Social Media Intern
Joseph Ramelo didn’t really know what to do with himself after studying creative writing at San Francisco State University, so he dipped into politics by working as an elections clerk at City Hall. He also volunteered with Filipinos For Obama, Human Rights Campaign, and local organizations such as LitQuake and the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. While his website at www.frogslife.net undergoes an existential crisis, he is writing Baseball 2.0, a love story for which he fancies himself a gay version of Nicholas Sparks. In his spare time, Joe worships at the church of baseball. Go Giants!
Brent Canle, Editorial Intern
Brent Michael Canle is a poet/writer from Long Island, NY. After a brief stint in the MFA program at The New School, he has since left to make careless mistakes all over the world. He maintains and rambles in a blog at reallysmallprint.blogspot.com. His work has appeared in your Inbox.
Rebecca Padrick, Editorial Intern
Rebecca Padrick is studying English Literature with a minor in Secondary Education at Metropolitan State College of Denver. When she is not obsessing over the written word, she enjoys vegan food and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Xinyi Yu, Public Relations Intern
Xinyi Yu is a graduate student in public relations at Iona College. She completed her undergraduate degree in media management and mass communications at Beijing Normal University in Zhuhai, China.