Iris Literary Journal Contributors
VOlume I, Issue 1, SPring 2020
Photo by Josh Marten
Nava Gidanian-Kagan
Cover artist and Visual Art contributor
Nava Gidanian-Kagan is an Iranian-Israeli artist based in Long Island City. The nature of impermanence and its manifestation in our daily lives is the core subject of her work. Nava exhibits both nationally & internationally, with her recent solo show at The Jewish Museum of New Jersey titled Unfolding. She received numerous awards including The Terra Foundation for American Art, The Elisabeth Greenshields Foundation, Eileen S.Kaminsky Foundation Award and Nava is featured in New American Painting Magazines. Keep up with this artist by visiting her website: https://www.navagidanian.com
Daniel L. Garner
Visual Art contributor
While at the University of Virginia, Daniel spent several years working collaboratively with other artists at Eunoia, a creative community he helped develop in Charlottesville, Virginia. Daniel now lives on a family farm, runs a wedding venue named Mead Lake, and teaches piano with his visual pattern method. His works have appeared in Allegory Ridge, Streetlight Magazine, Ponder Review, and others.
Alan Gann
Poetry contributor
Alan Gann facilitates after-school programming and writing workshops at Texans Can Academy and wrote DaVerse Works, Big Thought’s performance poetry curriculum. A multiple Pushcart and Best-of-the-Net nominee, Alan is the author of two volumes of poetry: That’s Entertainment (Lamar University Literary Press 2018), and Adventures of the Clumsy Juggler (Ink Brush Press 2015). His nonexistent spare time is spent outdoors: biking, birding, and trying to capture some of his outdoor experience in photographs.
Buffy Aakaash
Poetry contributor
Buffy Aakaash grew up around the hills and lakes of New Jersey north and west of New York City. He has lived in both big cities and small remote towns throughout the US since then. In addition to poetry, he writes plays and essays. His work has been published in The Write Launch, Main Street Rag, Avocet, Georgetown Review, Oberon, Tributaries, and others. Currently, he lives at 7300 feet in the Zuni Mountains of New Mexico, where he works locally doing healing work, farming, local food distribution and social media management.
Joseph Hardy
Poetry contributor
Joseph Hardy is one of a handful of writers that live in Nashville, Tennessee, that does not play a musical instrument; although a friend once asked him to bring his harmonica on a camping trip so they could throw it in the fire. His wife says he cannot leave a room without finding out something about everyone in it, and telling her their stories later. His work has been published in: Griffel, Gyroscope Review, Inlandia, Penultimate Peanut, Structo, and the tiny journal among others.
Joseph’s book of poetry The Only Light Coming In is forthcoming.
Judith Kalman
Creative Nonfiction contributor
Judith Kalman is a Toronto writer whose collection of linked short stories, The County of Birches, was published by Douglas & McIntyre in 1998 and St. Martin’s Press in the U.S. in 1999. It was a co-winner of the Danuta Gleed Award and a finalist for the U.S. National Jewish Book Award. Several stories in the collection received individual awards. Not for Me a Crown of Thorns appeared in the Journey Prize Anthology. Flight won the Tilden Canadian Literary Award for non-fiction, a National Magazine Award, and the President’s Medal for overall best magazine publication, and was broadcast on CBC’s Between the Covers. Other stories from the collection have been anthologized in The Oxford Book of Stories by Canadian Women, and Contemporary Jewish Writing in Canada, as well as in other anthologies.
Rubin Hardin
Poetry contributor
Rubin Hardin is a multi-disabled, multi-disciplined artist; they are Jewish and trans, and they live in Saint Paul, Minnesota. They competed in the 2018 Rustbelt Competition. Rubin has performed in a large variety of shows, including the Gender Unbound Arts Festival, Controlled Burn, The Great Twin Cities Poetry Read, and Patrick’s Cabaret. They founded a literary journal dedicated to non-speaking and semi-speaking disabled writers and visual artists called Explicit Literary Journal. They have work published in Rising Phoenix Review, What Are Birds, Runestone, Crab Fat Magazine, Voicemail Poems, and Can’t Somebody Fix What Ails Me. Rubin is the co-creator of the one-act play The Golems Protect Themselves, which made its debut at the Final Frontier Festival. They wholeheartedly believe that dragons are real.
Owen Smith
fiction contributor
Owen Smith is from New York, but is currently living abroad. He studied Anthropology at NYU and is presently working on a suspense/thriller novel. His other works appear in The Broadkill Review and Cosumnes River Journal.
Gregory Stephens
Fiction contributor
Gregory Stephens is Associate Professor of English, University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez. He is the author of On Racial Frontiers: The New Culture of Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, & Bob Marley (Cambridge UP), and Three Birds Sing a New Song: A Puerto Rican trilogy about Dystopia, Precarity, and Resistance (Intermezzo 2019). His fiction and literary nonfiction works appear in many journals and magazines. Since 2014, Stephens has taught Creative Writing to STEM students in Puerto Rico.
Publications: https://uprm.academia.edu/GregorioStephens
Jerome Berglund
Drama contributor
A graduate of the University of Southern California’s Cinema-Television Production program, Jerome Berglund spent a picaresque decade in the entertainment industry before returning to the midwest where he was born and raised. Berglund has published short stories in Paragon Press’s Veisalgia, the Stardust Review, the Watershed Review, and poetry numerous places including Abstract Magazine, the Dewdrop, Wild Roof, Lychee Rind, deLuge, GRIFFEL, Cathexis Northwest Press, and Ulalume Lighthouse. He recently interviewed the author of Bird Box for the small independent journal he edits, which has published original poetry and writing from a poet laureate, a Green Party presidential candidate, and a world renowned citizen journalist.
https://flowersunmedia.wixsite.com/jbphotography/blog-1/
Gerard Sarnat
Poetry contributor
Gerard Sarnat won the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize and has been nominated for a handful of recent Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards. Gerry is widely published in academic-related journals, as well as national and international publications. He is author of Homeless Chronicles: From Abraham to Burning Man (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014), Melting the Ice King (2016). Gerry is also a physician who’s built and staffed clinics for the marginalized as well as a Stanford professor and healthcare CEO. Currently, he devotes energy and resources to deal with climate change justice. Gerry’s been married since 1969 with three kids plus six grandsons and is looking forward to future granddaughters.
ALlison Riddles
Poetry Contributor
Dr. Allison Riddles teaches English and Creative Writing at Indian River State College in Ft. Pierce, FL. She likes to spend time with her cat and her family (preferably in that order).
Nicholas Roberts
Poetry Contributor
Nicholas Roberts is a poet and writer based in Boston, Massachusetts. He is a graduate from the University of Massachusetts
