About

DC based Texas writer, Elizabeth Bruce’s debut novel, And Silent Left the Place, won Washington Writers’ Publishing House’s Fiction Award, ForeWord Magazine’s Bronze Fiction Prize, and was one of two finalists for the Texas Institute of Letters’ Steven Turner Award for Best Work of First Fiction. Bruce has published prose in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Malawi, India, Yemen, and The Philippines, including in: FireWords Quarterly, Pure Slush, takahē magazine, Spadina Literary Review, The Bangalore Review, Literally Stories, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Atherton Review/Academy Press, Attic Door Press, Inklette, The Elixir Magazine,  The McKinley Review, Lines & Stars, ‘Merica Magazine, Olive Press, The Remembered Arts, The Nthanda Review, ppigpenn, Eos: The Creative Context, Human Noise Journal, Degenerate Literature, BareBack Magazine, and The Washington Post. She has had work published in the following anthologies: Paycock Press' Gargoyle 64, Gravity Dancers, Gargoyle 73 (upcoming); Weasel Press’ How Well You Walk through Madness: An Anthology of Beat; Vine Leaves Literary Journal: A Collection of Vignettes from Across the Globe; and Washington Writers’ Publishing House’s This Is What America Looks Like. She is also a fiction editor and treasurer of the cooperative literary press, WWPH.

She has long worked as a teaching artist at the bilingual, multicultural organization CentroNía, which published English and Spanish editions of the Theatrical Journey Playbook: Introducing Science to Early Learners through Guided Pretend Play, a PreK curriculum enhancement that details the hands-on, constructivist drama program Bruce created. The Playbook won the 2019 First Prize in the Education Category of the Next Generation Indie Book Contest and was a Finalist in the 2018 International Book Awards, 12th Annual National Indie Excellence Awards, and the 9th Annual IAN Book of the Year Awards. A co-founder of DC’s Sanctuary Theatre, Bruce has written/co-written scripts for Sanctuary Theatre, Capital Fringe Festival, Adventure Theatre, and the Washington Ethical Society. Her script, “Sheila’s Iron,” won Carpetbag Theatre’s W.F. Lucas Playwrighting Competition. As an actor, she performed widely in Colorado and DC.

Bruce has been awarded a number of fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, Poets & Writers, and the McCarthey Dressman Education Foundation. With Atlanta-based novelist Debra Bowling, she has been accepted for an A.I.R. Studio Paducah Residency in Kentucky. Bruce’s one-dollar story, “Dolores” was nominated for the 2018 Pushcart Prize by the Canadian Spadina Literary Review. She has workshopped fiction with Richard Bausch, the late Lee K. Abbott, Janet Peery, John McNally, Lisa Schamess, and Liam Callanan. Bruce and her husband, writer/educator Robert Michael Oliver, have long lived in NE DC where they raised their two now-adult children.

Website: www.washingtonwriters.org/the-wwph-team/

Facebook: @Elizabeth-Bruce

LinkedIn: @Elizabeth-Brice

Ira Joel Haber is a Brooklyn based sculptor, painter, writer, book dealer, photographer and teacher. His work has been seen in numerous group shows both in the USA and Europe and he has had 9 one man shows including several retrospectives of his sculpture. His work is in the collections of The Whitney Museum Of American Art, New York University, The Guggenheim Museum, The Hirschhorn Museum & The Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Since 2007 His paintings, drawings, photographs and collages have been published in over 184 on line and print magazines. He has received three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, two Pollock-Krasner grants, the Adolph Gottlieb Foundation grant and, in 2010, he received a grant from Artists' Fellowship Inc. He currently teaches art to retired public school teachers at The United Federation of Teachers program in Brooklyn

Lily Holloway, (born in 1998, she/they) is a queer writer and postgraduate English student. While she mostly writes poetry, she also has tried her hand at non-fiction, fiction, and playwriting. You can find her work in places like Starling, Midway Journal, Scum, The Pantograph Punch, and The Spinoff, amongst various other literary nooks and crannies. In 2020 she was honored to receive the Shimon Weinroth Prize in Poetry, the Kendrick Smithyman Scholarship for Poetry, and second place in the Charles Brasch Young Writers’ Essay Competition. In her spare time she enjoys op-shopping, letter-writing, visiting small towns, and collecting vintage Teletubbies paraphernalia. She is passionate about survivor advocacy and taking up space. She is an executive editor of Interesting Journal, has a chapbook forthcoming in AUP New Poets 8 and probably wants to be your penpal.

Lily is based in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa.

Website: www.lilyholloway.co.nz/

My Linh Mac, is a multi-media artist, visual designer and art educator based in Chicago. Mac is originally from Vietnam and pursued her art education in Singapore, Australia, and the United States. Mac received her Bachelor of Art in Digital Media & Painting from Valparaiso University, her Master’s in Art Education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC)and her 2nd Master in Entrepreneurship for the Creatives from Columbia College of Chicago (CCC). Mac’s multi-media artworks are represented in galleries, institutional art museums and in many private collections across the United States and over 8 different countries around the world. Mac is currently a member of National Oil and Acrylic Painting Society (NOAPS) Oil Painting of America (OAP) and jury committee member of International Biennial of Contemporary Art & Design for Lorenzo Il Magnifico Award & The Leonardo Da Vinci Award in Florence Biennale, Italy; Creative Communication Award (C2A) in LA, Davey Award in New York, Creativity International Award and Guest Curator at Brightness Illustration Award.

Website: www.mylinhmac.com/

Instagram: @millie_d_mac

Chris Kok, is an enigma, wrapped in a contradiction, stuffed inside an éclair. He teaches songwriting but prefers to write fiction, himself. He is Dutch but writes mainly in English. Chris lives in Amsterdam, The Netherlands with his wife, their newly acquired puppy, and two suddenly grumpy cats.

Website: www.chriskok.net

Mary Mazziotti, is a self-taught visual artist working primarily in hand embroidery with a special interest in “memento mori”, a genre that reflects on the impermanence and fragility of life, nations and human endeavors. Since the presidential election of 2016 I have also produced series of Resistance Art in protest of the current regime.

She began her career as an artist in the late 1990’s after working for many years as an Advertising Copywriter/Creative Director. Much of her work is influenced by that background, and textual elements appear frequently.

She lives in a city neighborhood of Pittsburgh with her architect husband, Keith, and their tailless three-legged cat, Stumpy McTripod. She have previously lived and worked in Bermuda, the Middle East and Singapore.

Website: www.mazziottiart.com

Verónica Jarrín Machuca, (born in 1977, in Quito, Ecuador) has a Master’s degree in Literatura española e hispanoamericana. Her short story Andromeda was published in Revista Bichito (2018), her poetry and essays has been published in literary magazines like El Búho (Ecuador), Elipsis (Ecuador), Página Salmón (México). Has written and published introductory studies for classic literature collections and for academic publications.

Facebook: @Vero Jarrín

Maurice Moore, is currently a doctoral Performance Studies student at the University of California-Davis. He recently completed his Master’s in African American Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the spring of 2018. His upcoming fictional and visual works will appear in Harbor Review, Rigorous, Wicked Gay Ways, Storm Cellar Journal, Communication and Critical Cultural Studies, Strukturriss Quarterly Journal, HIVES Buzz-Zine, and As Loud As It’s Kept Magazine between summer 2020 and spring 2021. The arts scholar also has a couple of creative non-fiction critical essays published in Unlikely Stories Mark V and Confluence. From 2011 to 2021, he has exhibited work and performed at the Pending: Calabar Gallery in New York, the Medford Arts Center in New Jersey, Memorial Union Gallery in Fargo North Dakota, the International House Davis (I-House) in Davis California, The Center for Visual Artists in Greensboro North Carolina, Christina Ray Gallery in Soho New York, the Lee Hansley Gallery in Raleigh North Carolina, the Gallery 307 + Orbit Galleries in Athens Georgia, Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro North Carolina, and performed with Rios/Miralda for the Garbage Celebration in Madison Wisconsin. Throughout his career he has been awarded residences, fellowships and scholarships at the Penland School of Crafts, Ox-Bow, the Rios/Miralda Garbage Celebration Residency, Pending: The Verge Residency of The Ali Youssefi Project (AYP) at the Verge Center for the Arts in Sacramento California happing in January 2021 through March 2021 cohort, the Herbert & Virginia H. Howard Scholarship, the Helen, Thrush Scholarship, Milo and Virgil’s Fabulous Fund Scholarship, the Advanced Opportunity Fellowship for the College of Letters & Science at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the Provost’s Fellowships in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences for your first year of study during the 2018-2019 academic year at the University of California-Davis, and the 2019 Margrit Mondavi Graduate Fellowship for the summer of the academic year 2019-2020 at UC Davis Humanities Institute. Lastly, Moore has and been part of numerous conferences such as Pending: HIVES Spring Panel 2021 HIVES Buzz-Zine Vol 1 Human Animal Relations HIVES Research Workshop and Speaker Series on Disability and Animal Studies in Popular Culture, Pending: Temporal Drawing Queer Traces panel for the TRACEY Drawing Research Network Conference February 2021 through July 2021 at Loughborough University in Loughborough Leicestershire in the East Midlands of England, and the WTF Performance Studies?-Mini Conference in the Della Davidson Studio at the University of California-Davis in Davis California.

Website: www.maurice-moore-mkx7.squarespace.com/

Instagram: @maurice_moore_art

Yu-Hsuan Wu, is the creator of cross-field art and is from Taiwan. She lives all over the world for literature, photography and dance creation. She was selected as a writer in residence by the Santa Fe Art Institute in the United States. She has published seven books: Exchanging Lovers’ Ribs, Decaying Anywhere: 99 Love Letters from a Movie Fan, The World Without Names, Living in Nowhere, Escaping life, The Forgetting of Form: Sketches from my residency at Santa Fe, Death Is Dying. She is currently studying singing, rituals, planting, and hunting in the aboriginal tribes of Taiwan in the aboriginal language that is about to be lost. Her ideal life is to be in love without naming love.

Website: www.the-world-without-names.tumblr.com/

Facebook: @qffwffq

Jeffrey Q. Guanlao a.k.a JickJick, (born 1985) is a self taught Filipino fine artist who focuses on paintings drawings and sculptures. Before his full-time emersion into the fine arts, he was an accomplished tattoo artist, transformative face painter for PH festivals, and musician. Over the past decade, he transitioned his creative passion to explore complicated life experiences from childhood to adulthood in an often confused world. His feelings about our ever changing societal move towards present modernity, where many move away from family and community and toward isolation.

Website: www.behance.net/jeffreyguanlao

Instagram: @jickjickartist

Facebook: @jickjickartist

Scotia Gilroy, holds a BA in English literature (First Class Honours) from Simon Fraser University. Originally from Vancouver, Canada, she has been living in Kraków, Poland, for over a decade, where she works for numerous publishing houses as a translator of Polish literature. She has also taught English at the Jagiellonian University, in the Department of American Studies. Her literary translations have been published by Asymptote, B O D Y Literary Journal, Widma, Comma Press, Indiana University Press and Terra Librorum. She divides her time between Europe and the off-grid wilderness of Northern California.

Instagram: @scotia_victoria_gilroy

Cheolyu Kim grew up in a small rural village that was embraced by layer of mountains in South Korea. Kim studied Sculpture at Chungang UNIV in Korea and received a M.F.A from Brooklyn Collage.

Instagram: @cheolyuk