Relief: A Quarterly Christian Expression

Authors for Issue 2.3!

Written by Coach Culbertson

Saturday, 26 July 2008

You have to see Issue 2.3 to believe the amount of amazing work we've packed into it! Pre-Sales are now open--click here to pre-order your copy now at a special low price!

And now, click here to see who you'll be reading!

	Stacy Barton When I was Twelve Fiction These days Stacy is primarily a short story author and playwright. Her debut collection of short stories, Surviving Nashville, was released in 2007. Her stories and poetry have appeared in a variety of literary magazines like Potomac Review, Relief, Ruminate, and Stonework and her fifth stage play, an adaptation of Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales, premiered in Orlando, Florida last year. In addition to short stories, plays, and poetry, Stacy is the author of a children's picture book and an animated short film. She is currently a free-lance scriptwriter for the Disney Company.
	Justin Ryan Boyer American Dream Poetry Justin feels like he is in an episode of Seinfeld when writing about himself in the third-person. Random creativity, redemption, a good chai, and sincere friendships are some of his favorite things (he doesn't like whiskers on kittens). Naomi, his wife, is the most important person in his life, even if he doesn't realize it all the time. Writing is communal, therapeutic, and prophetic - Justin started a little online writing group to learn more about those avenues (www.silhouettewords.com). He thinks orthodoxy and mystery are essential and hopes to know who he really is before he hits the afterlife.
	David Breeden Being Somewhere Chaplain Notes Poetry Dr. David Breeden has an MFA from the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, a PhD from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi, and a Master of Divinity from Meadville Lombard Theological School. He has published four novels and nine books of poems. He is a Unitarian Universalist minister.
	Zachary Davis The Pegasus Landing Fiction Zachary Davis lives in Oregon's Willamette Valley. He received his bachelor's degree in Liberal Arts from Gutenberg College. Presently, he lives in Portland Oregon and works for a small winery.
	Lynn Domina Antique Shop Apostate's Challenge First Morning in Heaven Two of Every Kind Poetry Lynn Domina is the author of a collection of poetry, Corporal Works, and the editor of a collection of essays, Poets on the Psalms. Her recent poetry appears in Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, The Green Mountains Review, and several other periodicals. She currently lives in the western Catskill region of New York.
	Shelly Drancik Faces Fiction Shelly Drancik is attaining her MFA from Queens University. She lives in Batavia, Illinois, with her husband and three children. This short-short is her first publication.
	Mike Duran The Ark Creative Nonfiction Mike’s stories have appeared in Relief Journal, Coach’s Midnight Diner, Fear and Trembling, Forgotten Worlds, Alienskin, Infuze Magazine, and Dragons, Knights, and Angels, with articles in The Matthew’s House Project, Relevant Magazine and 316 Journal. Mike is currently part of the editorial team for the Midnight Diner’s second edition and contributes monthly commentary at Novel Journey. He and his wife Lisa live in Southern California, where they have raised four children. You can visit him at www.mikeduran.com.
	Ryan Graudin Waiting Creative Nonfiction Although she has been struck with a hopeless case of wanderlust, Ryan remains for a twenty-second year in her hometown of Charleston, SC as she finishes her BA in English at the College of Charleston. Since the writing of this essay her wonderful boyfriend David proposed and she said yes. They got married on May 17th, 2008 and have been living the newlywed dream. (And yes, it is worth the wait!).
	Melanie Haney The Last Thing Before Dirt Fiction Melanie Haney lives in the woods of Southern NH with her husband and two small children. She holds an MFA from Lesley University and was the winner of the 2006 Family Circle Fiction Competition and the 2007 Ann Arbor Book Festival Short Story Competition. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in, Family Circle Magazine, Quality Women’s Fiction, Eureka Literary Magazine, Fifth Wednesday Journal, elimae, The Summerset Review, and more. She can be found online at http://melaniehaney.blogspot.com
	Marc Harshman Candlemas The Puzzle of Names Poetry Raised in rural Indiana, Marc Harshman has lived his adult life in West Virginia where, for many years, he was a grade school teacher. Periodical publication of his poems include The Georgia Review, Rock & Sling, Tusculum Review, Shenandoah, and The Progressive. He is the author of three chapbooks of poetry including most recently Local Journeys (Finishing Line, 2004). He is also the author of eleven children's picture books including The Storm, a Smithsonian Notable Book for Children, Parent’s Choice Award winner, and Junior Library Guild selection. He holds degrees from Bethany College, Yale Divinity School, and the University of Pittsburgh.
	Lyn K. Hawks Midrift Fiction Lyn Hawks taught high school for several years and now develops curriculum for gifted youth. She is co-author of The Compassionate Classroom: Lessons that Nurture Wisdom and Empathy and Teaching Romeo and Juliet: A Differentiated Approach. She also writes for FacultyShack, an online journal for teachers. She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with her husband, Greg Hawks, a bluegrass musician, and her orange tabby, Sonny. She is chronicling her writer's journey at www.lynhawks.com
	Natasha Lynn Heller Marriage After War: A Fruitful Question Poetry First, I want to offer up thanks to the Lord for giving me poems after I had sworn them off. I have a B.A. in creative writing and have been published in GreenPrints and Critique. I am currently working on a novel so that I can look mysterious and broody in coffee shops.
	Deanna Hershiser Memorial Day Creative Nonfiction Deanna Hershiser writes essays and lives with her engineer husband, Tim, in Eugene, Oregon. Tim listens to her as she processes life for the page, and Deanna watches TV with him whenever there’s a new episode of Dr. Who.
	Ed Higgins Daylite Savings Time Poetry Ed Higgins and his wife and three whippets live on a small farm south of Portland, OR where they remain unrepentant holdovers from the early 70’s “back-to-the-land” movement. They raise a small menagerie of chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, pigs, Jersey cows, Nubian goats, an emu named To & Fro and a rescued potbelly pig named Odious. He teaches creative writing and literature at George Fox University and his poems and short fiction have appeared in Monkeybicycle, Pindeldyboz, and Bellowing Ark, as well as the online journals Lily, CrossConnect, The Centrifugal Eye, Mannequin Envy, and Red River Review, among others.
	Ann Iverson After Painting Love Solstice Nearing Sunflowers Wheat Field With Crows Poetry Ann Iverson is the author of Come Now to the Window published by Laurel Poetry Collective in 2003 and Definite Space published by Holy Cow! Press in 2007. Her writing has been featured on The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor and has appeared or is forthcoming in The Oklahoma Review, Margie: American Journal of Poetry, WaterStone Review, Poetry East and others. A visual artist, Ann takes interest in the intuitive and cyclical exchanges made between language and image. Her first art exhibit, peaking Image debuted at the Undercroft Gallery in St. Paul. This work portrays the language within image and the image within language. She currently is the Director of Arts and Sciences at Dunwoody College of Technology in Minneapolis. She and her husband live in East Bethel, Minnesota.
	Jill Noel Kandel Letters Home from Sunshine Mountain Creative Nonfiction Jill Noel Kandel grew up in North Dakota listening to prairie stories. She has lived in Zambia, Indonesia, England, and in her husband's native Netherlands. After working abroad for ten years she returned to the U.S. and currently lives with her husband and children in Minnesota. Jill has been published in Image: A Journal of Arts and Religion, Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction, and in Appalachee Review. This is her second publication in Relief: A Quarterly Christian Expression.
	Eliza Kelley Story of a Tree Poetry Portrait artist and writer Eliza Kelley teaches Creative Writing, Human Rights Discourse and American Minority Literature at Buffalo State College in New York. Recent work appears in Conte, Common Sense 2, and Tonopah Review.
	Amy Letter On Earth Fiction Amy Letter is a writer and visual artist living in South Florida, where she teaches literature and creative writing to undergraduates at Florida Atlantic University. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Louisiana Literature, storySouth, Fringe Magazine, Cutthroat, Aced Magazine, Specs, and Perigee, among others. Learn more about Amy at http://amyletter.com.
	Gina Marie Mammano V. A Lenten Meditation Poetry Gina Marie Mammano V. is a poet, assemblage artist, teacher, alternative worship leader and musician. She is passionate about communities gathering, entering into sacred spaces, and helping people find places of beauty and healing. She lives in San Juan Capistrano with her amazing husband and children, and loves to wander into the interiors of things.
	Amanda McQuade Grace Poetry Amanda McQuade studied American literature in Ohio. Her poetry and short-fiction have recently appeared in Mississippi Crow and Ruminate. Currently, she writes and terrorizes the region of Charlotte, NC.
	Darren J. N. Middleton Japanese Pilgrimage Sext, February 25, 2007 Poetry A native of the U.K., Darren J. N. Middleton now serves as Associate Professor of Theology and Literature at Texas Christian University, which is located in Fort Worth, Texas, USA. He has published six books, the most recent of which is Theology after Reading: Christian Imagination and the Power of Fiction (Baylor UP, 2008). His poems have appeared in Epworth Review.
	Jay Rubin Fruit of the Vine Tumors Poetry Jay Rubin teaches writing at The College of Alameda in the San Francisco Bay Area and publishes Alehouse, an all-poetry literary journal, at www.alehousepress.com. He holds an MFA in Poetry from New England College and lives in San Francisco with his wife and son.
	Martha Serpas Epithalamia Now Hill Paradis Martha Serpas has published two collections of poetry, Côte Blanche (New Issues, 2002) and The Dirty Side of the Storm (Norton, 2006). Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times Book Review, The Christian Century, and Southwest Review. She has taught at Yale Divinity School, the University of Houston, and the University of Tampa, where she is currently an associate professor of English. She is poetry editor of Tampa Review.
	Brian Spears Hall Raising Poetry Brian Spears is not related to the singer, but he does have a teenaged daughter named Brittany. He hopes she will forgive him one day. His work has appeared in many journals including The Southern Review, Louisiana Literature, and Measure. He was a Stegner Fellow from 2003-2005 and currently teaches at Florida Atlantic University. He is the founder and chief blogger at Incertus (http://incertus.blogspot.com), and lives with the writer Amy Letter and their two cats, Wally and Eliot.
	Jennifer G. Stewart All Saint's Day, Istanbul Walking Back to the Ferry, Buyukada Poetry Jennifer Stewart recently returned to northern Colorado after 3 years teaching composition and literature at LCC International University in the Baltic port town of Klaipeda, Lithuania. Before teaching in Lithuania, she earned degrees in rhetoric, composition and literature from Colorado State University and Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota. She has published previously in Phantasmagoria, and The Priscilla Papers. She loves words in all their forms, the Rocky Mountains, and Lithuanian Å¡altibarÅ¡Äai (cold beet soup).
	Juned Subhan Hiding Fiction An English Literature graduate from Glasgow University, Juned Subhan has been published in numerous journals including The Critical Quarterly, Ontario Review, North American Review, Cimarron Review, Indiana Review, Louisiana Literature, Marginalia, Bryant Literary Review, Descant, Westerly, and Southerly. The story, here, is taken from a complete collection titled, "Will You Remember Me?" He is currently working on his first novel.
	Larry D. Thomas Daffodils He Clothes Them In Sin So Craftily Mortal Larry Thomas is a "non-institutional" Christian, very tolerant of other religious persuasions, and has published nine collections of poems, most recently New and Selected Poems (TCU Press 2008). His tenth poetry collection, The Circus, is forthcoming from Right Hand Pointing in 2009. For many years, he has been a regular contributor of poetry to Windhover: A Journal of Christian Literature, and a number of other national literary magazines. In April 2007, he was appointed by the Texas Legislature as the 2008 Texas Poet Laureate.
	Don Thompson Pater Noster Poetry Don Thompson and his wife live on her family cotton farm in the southern San Joaquin Valley, and their adopted Chinese baby girl just graduated from college. He has taught for many years at a nearby prison. A chapbook about the sixties, Sittin' on Grace Slick's Stoop was published by Pudding house last year. Turning Sixty just came out from March Street Press, which published Been There, Done That a few years ago. Check them out, please. Where We Live is scheduled by Parallel Press (Univ. of Wis.) for next spring.
	Shanna Powlus Wheeler Whistler Poetry Native to central Pennsylvania, Shanna Powlus Wheeler studied poetry at Penn State University, where she received her MFA in 2007. Poems from her first-book manuscript, Lo & Behold have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, North American Review, The Evansville Review, The Christian Century, Christianity and Literature, Mezzo Cammin, and other journals. Her book reviews have appeared in The Missouri Review and The Southeast Review. She directs the writing center and teaches composition at Lycoming College in Williamsport, PA.