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Derek Alger

essays

Derek Alger is a graduate of the Columbia University MFA writing program and serves as Editor-at-Large of PIF Magazine. His fiction has appeared in Confrontation, The Literary Review, Del Sol Review, and Night Train, to name a few. He has worked as an editor and reporter for newspapers in the Bronx for over 20 years.

Aaliyah Bilal

fiction

Aaliyah writes fiction and memoir. She lives in Shanghai China with her cat, Bakerloo.  She’s working on a book about her experience as a black woman in China.

Devyani Borade

essays

Devyani writes on the humor and pathos of everyday life. Her fiction, nonfiction, and art have been published in magazines all across the world.  When not being a wordsmith, she is devouring comic books and chocolates  alike. Visit her website Verbolatry at http://devyaniborade.blogspot.com to read more of her work.

Susana H. Case

poetry

Susana is a professor at the New York Institute of Technology. Her many chapbooks include The Scottish Café (Slapering Hol Press), which was re-released in a Polish-English version, Kawiarnia Szkocka, by Opole University Press in Poland. She is the author of two books of poetry: Salem In Séance (WordTech Editions) and Elvis Presley¹s Hips & Mick Jagger¹s Lips (Anaphora Literary Press). Please visit her online at: http://iris.nyit.edu/~shcase/

Jhoanna Lynn B. Cruz

fiction

Jhoanna is a Palanca award-winning writer who teaches linguistics, literature, and creative writing in the University of the Philippines Mindanao. She completed her Master of Arts in Language and Literature and Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, both with high distinction, at De La Salle University-Manila. She was a fellow at the 1996 National Writers Workshop in Dumaguete and at the 1999 UP National Writers Workshop in Baguio City. She is a member of the Davao Writers Guild.  Her first book, Women Loving. Stories and a Play (2010) was published by De La Salle University and Anvil Publishing, Inc.

Walter Cummins

essays

Walter’s fifth story collection, The Lost Ones, was published in 2012.  Over the years, more than 100 of his stories and essays have appeared in magazines and literary journals. He is co-publisher of Serving House Books and currently teaches in Fairleigh Dickinson University’s MFA in creative writing program.

Lucille Lang Day

fiction

Lucill’s (http://lucillelangday.com) short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in more than 100 literary magazines, including The Cincinnati Review, The Hudson Review, Passages North, The Threepenny Review, and Willow Review. She is also the author of a children’s book, Chain Letter, and eight poetry collections and chapbooks, including The Curvature of Blue, The Book of Answers, and Infinities. Her memoir, Married at Fourteen: A True Story, will be published by Heyday in 2012.

Darren C. Demaree

poetry

Darren’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous magazines/journals, including the South Carolina Review, Meridian, The Louisville Review, Cottonwood, The Tribeca Poetry Review, and Whiskey Island.  A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, he is the author of As We Refer To Our Bodies (2013) and Not For Art Nor Prayer (2014), both from 8th House Publishing House. He lives and writes in Columbus, Ohio, with his wife and children.

J.C. Elkin

essays

J.C. is the founder and facilitator of The Broadneck Writers’ Workshop, as well as a theater critic and essayist for the Bay Weekly.  She has won awards from the Maryland Writers’ Association, Poetry Matters, and the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. Elkin works as a language teacher, singer, and handwriting analyst.

Madeline Felix

humor

Madeline is a writer and performer. She lives in New York City and is currently finishing her MFA in Creative Writing at Columbia.

Becki Fuller

art gallery

Becki is a Brooklyn based photographer and co-founder of the street art & graffiti blog The Street Spot.  Her interest in the urban arts has taken her all around the five boroughs of New York and beyond, searching for beauty and inspiration in city landscapes.  Her photography has been featured in numerous books and exhibited in shows at Pandemic Gallery, Mighty Tanaka, Fresthetic, Mishka, Phantom Audio, and most recently as part of the Billboard Art Project in Atlanta, GA.  She is a strong advocate for people taking back public space from corporate America and making it their own once again.

Alice Graves

memoir

Alice holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University and an MLIS from the University of South Florida. She has taught English composition and worked as a freelance journalist. Currently she’s a museum librarian in St. Petersburg, FL.

Khanh Ha

fiction

Khanh’s debut novel is FLESH (June 2012, Black Heron Press). He graduated from Ohio University with a bachelor’s degree in Journalism.  He is at work on a new novel. His short stories have appeared in 2013 February Outside in Literary & Travel Magazine, and Red Savina Review (RSR)in its 2013 Spring inaugural edition and Cigale Literary Magazine in its 2013 March issue.  Visit author’s website at: www.authorkhanhha.com.

Bryn Homuth

poetry

Bryn is working on a series of narrative poems that focus on observations of familial relationships with people, food, and even the environment, particularly involving his father. His poems have been published in Catfish Creek, The Meadow, and Mosaic. He currently serves as poetry editor for the publication Touchstone at Kansas State University, where he also teaches composition.

Anthony Jacobson

memoir

Anthony is a 2013 graduate of the Creative Writing program at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida. He is currently at work on his first full-length work, a memoir chronicling his experiences in the notorious Miami club scene.

Deborah Johnstone

memoir

Deborah is in pursuit of her MFA in Creative Writing at Goddard College in Vermont. She is contributing editor to the Pitkin Literary Review and Artist Portfolio Magazine. She also maintains a blog at, deborahj.wordpress.com[http://deborahj.wordpress.com/]  She is hard at work on her first novel, which means there will be three thousand more rewrites before it is complete.

Matthew Keefer

fiction

Matthew is a part-time music reviewer currently editing his first book.

Svetlana Kitto

humor

Svetlana is a writer, teacher and oral historian living in New York City. Her fiction and nonfiction have been featured in the book Occupy! Scenes from Occupied America, published by Verso Books, The New York Times, Surface Magazine, Kirkus Reviews, Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood, Put A Egg On It, and Kiosk Paper. She has contributed oral histories to the Museum of Arts and Design, the Jewish theological Seminary, the Brooklyn Historical Society and the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center.

Christopher P. McManus

art gallery

Christopher is a sculptor and video artist. He created Hair and Diamonds to experiment with video, animation, and puppetry. Contact Christopher: hairanddiamonds@gmail.com.

Corey Mesler

poetry

Corey has published in numerous journals and anthologies. He has published seven novels, three full-length poetry collections, and three books of short stories. He has also published a dozen chapbooks of both poetry and prose. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize numerous times, and two of his poems were chosen for Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. His fiction has received praise from John Grisham, Robert Olen Butler, Lee Smith, Frederick Barthelme, Greil Marcus, among others. With his wife, he runs Burke’s Book Store in Memphis, Tennessee. He can be found at www.coreymesler.wordpress.com.

Julie L. Moore

poetry

Julie is the author of Particular Scandals, forthcoming in The Poiema Poetry Series by Cascade Books. Her other books include Slipping Out of Bloom and Election Day. A Best of the Net and two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Moore has had her poetry published previously in ducts.org as well as in Alaska Quarterly Review, American Poetry Journal, Atlanta Review, CALYX, Cimarron Review, The Missouri Review Online, The Southern Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Verse Daily. You can learn more about her work at www.julielmoore.com.

Kara Panzer

humor

Kara is a student at Georgetown University, but she would definitely drop out for a book deal. See more of her work in Word Riot, Punchnel’s and written on the back of receipts that she loses. If found contact @karacpanzer.

Michael Rectenwald

fiction

Michael has taught writing and cultural history at New York University since 2008. He received a B.A. in English from the University of Pittsburgh, an M.A. from Case Western Reserve University, and a Ph.D. in Literary and Cultural Studies from Carnegie Mellon University. At age twenty, Michael was an apprentice poet to Allen Ginsberg at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado.  In addition to contributing numerous essays to his fields of cultural studies, the history of science, and writing pedagogy, he writes occasional poetry, fiction, screenplays, and political commentary. In 1991, he published the Eros of the Baby Boom Eras (poetry) and in 2013 The Thief and other Stories, a collection of short fiction, and Breach, a collection of poems.  Academic Writing, Real World Topics (Pearson Education) is scheduled to appear in 2013. His website is at http://www.michaelrectenwald.com. His political commentary can be found at http://www.legitgov.org.

Lori Schafer

essays

Lori is a part-time tax practitioner and part-time writer, residing in North Carolina. Her writing has appeared in The Springfield Journal, The Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette, Every Day Fiction, and Vine Leaves Literary Review, among others.

Gerry Schramm

humor

Gerry is a freelance pharmaceutical advertising editor. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, two children, and an unmanageable number of comic books.

Jacqueline Xu

fiction

Jacqueline immigrated from Shanghai, China to Southern California at the age of three and has been living in the United States ever since. Many of the ideas in “The Following Story is about a House” are drawn from her experiences and the experiences of those her. She is currently an undergraduate UC Berkeley, where she serves as an editor of the Berkeley Fiction Review.

STAFF

Jonathan Kravetz

editor-in-chief

Jonathan is best known for his ability to scratch his forehead and squint his eyes simultaneously.  He is a playwright, editor and some time trumpet player who spends too much time reading long feature stories on the world wide web.  He is a co-founder of ducts and founder of the New York based reading series, Trumpet Fiction, held each month at KGB Bar in the east village.  His plays have been produced in New York, Dallas and Brighton, England.  He teaches creative writing in New York and literature at FIT SUNY.  He has an MFA from Queens College CUNY.

Derek Alger

essays editor

Derek Alger is a graduate of the Columbia University MFA writing program, and serves as Editor-at-Large to PIF Magazine. His fiction has appeared in Confrontation, Del Sol Review, The Literary Journal, and Night Train, to name a few. He has worked as an editor and reporter for newspapers in the Bronx for over 20 years.

Lisa Kirchner

memoir editor

Lisa is the producer and host of New York’s only reading and improv series, The Next Chapter. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Salon.com, BUST Magazine, The New York Post, Budget Travel, Kirkus Reviews and TheHuffingtonPost.com, among numerous others. Before moving to the Persian Gulf, she was the religion editor for Pittsburgh’s gay and lesbian newspaper, the bridal editor for its society rag, and an alt newsweekly dating columnist. Her flash essay, “My Husband: My Moto,” appeared in the compilation Learning to Love You More (Prestel Publishing, 2007). Her solo show, CRANKY WHITE GIRL IN QATAR, is the basis for her memoir. She currently lives in New York City.

Amy Lemmon

poetry editor

Amy is the author of two poetry collections: Fine Motor (Sow’s Ear Poetry Review Press, 2008) and Saint Nobody (Red Hen Press, 2009) and co-author, with Denise Duhamel ofABBA: The Poems (Coconut Books, 2010) and Enjoy Hot or Iced: Poems in Conversation and a Conversation (Slapering Hol Press, 2011). Her work has appeared in Rolling Stone, New Letters,Prairie Schooner, Verse, Court Green, The Journal, Barrow Street, and many other magazines and anthologies. Amy is associate professor of English at the Fashion Institute of Technology and lives with her two children in Astoria, Queens.

Anne Mironchik

assistant

Anne is much more renowned for her songwriting, which reaches back to capture the classic brilliance of favorite hits by Carole King and Laura Nyro.  She blurs the lines between jazz, country, rock and R&B, weaving melody and rhythm together in masterful ways. Her rich alto voice leads listeners from one genre to another as she explores the struggles, loves, fears and joys of everyday heroes.  When she’s not writing great music, Anne is busy crunching numbers for ducts!  Anne’s new CD “Find Me” is now available and can be found at www.annemironchik.com.  4newsongs@earthlink.net.

Cindy Stockton Moore

art gallery editor/illustrator/contributor

Cindy is a Philadelphia based artist whose recent shows include ‘Toward Futility’ a solo project at Artspace Liberti (Philadelphia) and the two person exhibitions: ‘An Island Now Peopled’ at Chashama Chelsea Project Space (New York) and ‘Water/Line’ at The Center for Contemporary Art (Bedminster, NJ.) Her writing on art has appeared in ArtNews, NYArts Magazine, The New York Sun, in addition to university and web publications. She is a part of the artist-curatorial team behind Grizzly Grizzly gallery in Philadelphia.  http://www.cindystocktonmoore.com

Kat Rodies

humor editor

Kat Rodies is a nurse practitioner, medical writer, and short fiction enthusiast who has been called the ideal person to have with you in a POW camp.

Tim Tomlinson

fiction editor

Tim’s fiction has appeared in The Missouri Review, North American Review, Libido, and elsewhere.  He’s published haiku in Modern Haiku, Time Haiku, and Black Bough.  He’s an occasional journalist, and a full time teacher, working at both NYU and the New York Writers Workshop.

Illustrators

Daniella Batsheva

Daniella is an illustrator and designer born and raised in Philadelphia, working in Los Angeles.  Brought up in a clash of cultures from various different countries, her work subtly reflects the frenzy of her home and family.  She graduated from The University of the Arts with a BFA in Illustration in May, 2011. Inspired by bad horror films, eastern culture, and candy, Daniella concocts edgy pieces with color palettes brighter than your mom’s 80’s jumpsuit.

Chris Frost (humor section)

When not reminiscing about life in the old New York, Chris Frost designs and crafts handbags. His illustrations have appeared in Ducts and Santa vs. Satan: The Official Compendium Of Imaginary Fights. He currently resides in Bushwick, but dreams of a move to Puerto Varas.

Yuliya Kashapova

Yuliya has been working in the design field for past 6 years as a graphic artist and illustrator. In 2005 she received BA in Design and Studio Art from UVA, and went on working on various projects in TV, film, and music industries in NYC, San Francisco, LA, and New Jersey. Her illustration works have been published in The New Yorker, and various literary magazines.  www.kashapova.com)

Natalie Lerario

Natalie has been working as a graphic artist since 2005 and has recently completed a web design certificate program in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Along with graphic design, Natalie also enjoys creating digital illustrations. www.NatalieLerario.com.