Iris Literary Journal Contributors
Volume I, Issue 4, Winter 2020
Serge Lecomte
Cover art and Visual Art contributor
Serge Lecomte is a published novelist, poet, playwright and painter, born in Belgium. He attended Tilden H.S. in Brooklyn, joined the USAF, and was a medic flying helicopter rescue. He graduated from Vanderbilt with a Ph. D. in Russian literature with a minor in French. He earned a degree in the Spanish language from the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, where he taught Russian and Spanish for 20 years. He lived on the Kenai Peninsula and now resides in Bellingham, WA.
Terese Brasen
Creative Nonfiction CONTRIBUTOR
Terese Brasen is a Canadian writer whose Viking feminist novel, “Kama,” was published by San Francisco publisher OutPost19 in 2016. She is currently completing a collection of creative nonfiction titled The Thing That’s Wrong With Me. The stories deal with growing up in a Danish immigrant family, with parents who converted to Catholicism and a mother who had a mental illness. She writes about the many failed relationships that followed from that beginning. Stories from work have appeared in “The Write Launch” and “Ravensperch” and have made prize lists with Room Magazine and Fish Publishing. Terese has an MFA from Cedar Crest College’s Pan-European MFA in Creative Writing.
Michelle Brooks
Visual Art contributor
Michelle Brooks has published three collections of poetry, Make Yourself Small, (Backwaters Press), Pretty in A Hard Way (Finishing Line Press), and The Pretend Life (Atmosphere Press), and a novella, Dead Girl, Live Boy, (Storylandia Press). A native Texan, she has spent much of her adult life in Detroit.
Hillary Chapman
Poetry contributor
Hillary Chapman is a writer, guitarist, and songwriter who currently lives in Washington DC. He has a BA in History from Haverford College, an MS from the U. of Pennsylvania, and various other papers from the U. of Paris and other schools. Hillary has done extensive community service for the Baha'i Faith in Russia and French Polynesia. His books include Foreigner: The life story told in vignettes of an Iranian immigration to the United States (George Ronald, Oxford, UK, 2019), Awakening: The story of religious turmoil and development in the town of Nayriz, Iran (Baha'i Publishing, Wilmette, IL, 2012) Abdu'l-Baha in New York: The story of Abdu'l-Baha's visit to New York City in 1912 (Juxta Publishing, London, UK, 2012), and The Calling: Tahirih of Persia and the Women of the Great Awakening (George Ronald, Oxford, UK, 2016). His songs for the Nashville and other markets which numerous local and regional artists have recorded: www.reverbnation.com/hillarychapman.
Martha Clarkson
Creative NonFiction contributor
Martha Clarkson has two notable short stories in Best American Short Stories. Her writing and photography can be found in monkeybicycle, F-Stop, Clackamas Literary Review, Seattle Review, Portland Review, Black Box Gallery, Tulane Review, Mothering Magazine, Feminine Rising, and Nimrod.
Nancy Cook
Poetry contributor
Nancy Cook serves as flash fiction editor for Kallisto Gaia Press. She also runs “The Witness Project,” a program of free community writing workshops designed to enable creative work by underrepresented voices. In March 2020, she organized the Pandemic PenPal Poets Project to serve residents in congregate housing with poems, prompts, postcards, chalk poems, and poetry serenades. Some of her newest work can be found in The Tangerine, decomp journal, and the Michigan Quarterly Review.
Terry Cox-Joseph
Poetry contributor
Terry Cox-Joseph divides her time between writing and painting, but more often, the division is an inspiring overlap. She is a member of the National League of American Pen Women, President of the Poetry Society of Virginia, and a former newspaper reporter.
Winston Derden
Poetry contributor
Winston Derden is a poet and fiction writer residing in Houston, Texas. His poetry publications include Big River Poetry Review, Barbaric Yawp, Soft Cartel, Plum Tree Tavern, Backchannels, New Reader Magazine, and numerous anthologies. He holds a BA and an MA from the University of Texas, Austin.
Hugh Findlay
Poetry contributor
Hugh Findlay writes a lot, sometimes publishes, and would instead be caught fishing.
He cooks a pretty good gumbo but can’t sing or dance.
He’s colorblind but can smell like a bloodhound.
He feels funny in suspenders.
He likes beer.
Briana Gervat
visual art contributor
Briana Gervat is a New York-based poet, photographer, and author who spends more of her days outside than in.
Erika Girard
Poetry contributor
Erika B. Girard is currently pursuing her M.A. in English and Creative Writing with a Poetry concentration through SNHU. She graduated from Saint Leo University in Florida in 2019 with her B.A. in English Literary Studies and a minor in Hospitality Management. Originally from Rhode Island, she derives creative inspiration from her family, friends, faith, and fascination with the human experience. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Alembic, Delta Epsilon Sigma Journal, Edify Fiction, Sandhill Review, Wild Roof Journal, and more.
Rosalind Goldsmith
Fiction contributor
Rosalind Goldsmith lives in Toronto. She has written radio plays for CBC Radio Drama and a play for the Blyth Theatre Festival. It has also translated and adapted short stories by the Uruguayan writer Felisberto Hernandez for CBC Radio. Her short stories have appeared in journals in the UK, the USA, and Canada, including Burningword Literary Journal, Litro UK, Filling Station, the Blue Nib, Fairlight Books, the Chiron Review, Into the Void (2021 Pushcart nominee), and Fiction International. New stories will appear in 2021 in Stand, Bookends and others.
Duane L. Herrmann
Poetry contributor
Duane L. Herrmann, a reluctant carbon-based life-form, was surprised to find himself in 1951 on a farm in Kansas. How did that happen??? He’s still trying to make sense of it but has grown fond of grass waving in the wind, trees, and the enchantment of moonlight. He aspires to be a hermit but would miss his children, grandchildren, and a few friends. He has published in many real places and online, even in languages he can’t read (English is complicated enough!). He is known to carry baby kittens in his mouth, pet snakes, and converse with owls, but is careful not to anger them! All this, despite a traumatic, abusive childhood (first suicidal at age two) embellished with dyslexia, ADHD (both unknown at the time), cyclothymia, and now, PTSD. He’s still learning to breathe and perform human at the same time.
Jennifer Hildebrandt
creative nonFiction contributor
Jennifer Hildebrandt is an author and movement teacher living in southern Minnesota. Inhabiting, abandoning, rediscovering one's body and one's world, and finding connections to seemingly random things are themes often explored in her work. She is a 2019-2020 Loft Literary Center Mentor Series fellow and 2018 Minnesota State Arts Board grant recipient in prose. Her essay, “Jacket,” won Honorable Mention in Bellevue Literary Review’s nonfiction prize in 2017 and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Kimberly Horg
Creative Nonfiction Contributor
Kimberly Horg received her Master of Fine Arts from California State University, Fresno, in 2019. During the three years in the M.F.A. program, she emphasized Publishing and Editing by working as the online nonfiction editor at the university’s literary magazine, The Normal School. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Journalism with a concentration in News/Editorial. She has had hundreds of articles published on a wide variety of topics. She is the recipient of the 2020 Investigative Reporters & Editors Diversity Fellowship, and her essay “Cursed,” which was published in the summer edition of Dove Tales, Writing for Peace Literary Magazine, as well as "Protect Me From Evil," was just published in the December edition of Abstract Elephant Magazine.
Ann Howells
Poetry contributor
Ann Howells, author of Painting the Pinwheel Sky, edited Illya’s Honey for seventeen years, first in print and then four years online. Named a “Distinguished Poet of Dallas” by the city in 2001, she has received seven Pushcart nominations and taken first place in several local/state competitions. She served as President of Dallas Poets Community (501-c-3) for four years and as Treasurer for many more. She also serves on advisory boards and panels, judges poetry competitions, participates in taking poetry into schools -- elementary through college -- and presents her work at festivals and conferences. Over 600 of her poems have appeared in small press and university publications in the United States and Europe—including Spillway, THEMA, Little Patuxent Review, Magma (England) and Crannog (Ireland).
Sandra Kacher
Poetry contributor
Sandra Kacher comes to writing poetry after years of hearing about the inner lives of hundreds of therapy clients. She brings the same compassion and sense of irony to her poetry as she got to listen to hundreds of therapy clients. Touched by Mary Oliver and heartened by Billy Collins, Sandra brings a heart for beauty and an ear for music to her writing. She hopes poetry shares how she is moved by nature, human life, and all the debris that catches her eye. As an older poet, she is shaped daily by intimations of mortality, and most of her work is touched by loss—past or to come. Poetry keeps her open, fights off cynicism in a world that leaves her listless these days.
Lisa Lebduska
Creative Nonfiction Contributor
Lisa Lebduska teaches writing and collaborates with colleagues to incorporate writing into their teaching at Wheaton College in Massachusetts. Her work has been published in Lunch Ticket, The Tishman Review, Writing on the Edge, Adelaide Literary Magazine and College Composition and Communication. Her scholarship appears in such publications as WPA Journal; Technological Ecologies and Sustainability: Methods, Modes, and Assessment; and Composition in the New Liberal Arts, among others. She lives in Salem, Connecticut, not too far from Devil's Hopyard.
Joan Leotta
Drama Contributor
Joan Leotta tells stories on page and stage. Her poems, essays, articles, and short stories are widely published. She has been a Tupelo 30/30 writer and a Gilbert Chappell Fellow. She performs personal and folk tales of food, family, and strong women in libraries, schools, museums, and festivals. She comes up with new stories, walks at the beach, and collecting shells when she desires to relax. She has four poetry books in print (or online). “Languid Lusciousness with Lemon” (Finishing Line Press), “Nature’s Gifts online with Stanzaic Stylings,” “Dancing Under the Moon,” and “Morning by Morning,” mini-chapbooks with Origami Press.
Thomas Mampalam
Poetry contributor
Dr. Thomas Mampalam is a board-certified neurosurgeon in private practice in Northern California. He writes poetry based on his immigration, work, and family experiences.
Christian McCulloch
Visual Art contributor
Christian McCulloch is a prolific Scottish writer with a colorful background in Fine Art. He's been an International teacher in British West Indies, Singapore (Principal), Japan, Hong Kong, and the UK. He now writes full-time. He has written ten novels, 12 novellas, and many short stories. His short stories have found publication in Wordgathering, Rejected Manuscripts, Hip Pocket Press, Mysterious Suspense Stories, Rainfall Records, Red Planet, Piker Press, Bangalore Review, Storgy, Scribble, 101 words, Outlaw Magazine, Dream Catcher, Scarlet Leaf Review, Saint Augustine's Magazine, Beyond Words, Bards & Sages Fiction, Green Light Journal, Grey Sparrow, and Brilliant Flash Fiction. He was runner-up for The Kirrotreeehouse Literary award.
Kenneth Pobo
Poetry contributor
Kenneth Pobo is the author of twenty-one chapbooks and nine full-length collections. Recent books include “Bend of Quiet” (Blue Light Press), “Loplop in a Red City” (Circling Rivers), “Dindi Expecting Snow” (Duck Lake Books), “Wingbuds” (cyberwit.net), and “Uneven Steven” (Assure Press). The opening is forthcoming from Rectos Y Versos Editions. Human rights issues, especially related to the LGBTQIA+ community, are also a constant presence in his work. In addition to poetry, he also writes fiction and essays. For the past thirty-plus years, he taught at Widener University and retired in 2020.
George Stein
visual art contributor
George L Stein is a photographer in the New Jersey/NYC area focused on art, street, and urban decay genres. His work has been published in several literary magazines such as NUNUM, The Dewdrop, and the TOHO Journal.
Jennifer Thal
Poetry contributor
Jennifer Thal is 25 years old. She is from the outside of Philadelphia. She is a current student at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology in Chicago, pursuing her clinical psychology doctorate. Her work has appeared in Allegory Ridge, Cathexis Northwest Press, and Haunted Waters Press. She enjoys reading at open mic nights, advocating for body positivity, and empowering her readers through her writing.
Maya Tobi
Poetry contributor
Maya Tobi has been writing since she was old enough to hold a pencil and loves the limitless creativity that poetry affords. She hopes that all who read her writing see whatever they need to see in it, whether this is the messages she intended or messages more personal to themselves. Poetry is malleable—like unbaked clay—and she hopes her writing takes whatever shape readers need for it to take.
Allen Weber
fiction contributor
Allen Weber lives in Hampton, Virginia, with his wife and two of their three sons. The winner of the 2011 Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Prize, his poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies—including The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Fourth River, Naugatuck River Review, The Quotable, Terrain, Unlikely Stories, Up the Staircase Quarterly, the anthology Changing Harm to Harmony: Bullies and Bystanders Project, and twice in A Prairie Home Companion’s First-Person Series.
Brian Yapko
Poetry contributor
Brian Yapko is a lawyer whose poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Grand Little Things, Society of Classical Poets, Poetica, Chained Muse, Garfield Lake Review, Tempered Runes Press, Auroras and Blossoms, Showbear Family Circus, Sparks of Calliope, and as a first prize winner in The Abstract Elephant. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
