Dominika Bednarska’s writing has or will appear in A Different Art, The James Joyce Quarterly, Wordgathering, The Bellevue Literary Review, Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity, The Culture of Efficiency: Technology in Everyday Life, What I Want From You: An Anthology of East Bay Lesbian Poets, Ghosting Atoms, and Cripping Femme, and her poetry manuscript, Smothered Breath, is forthcoming. She teaches at U.C. Berkeley, where she completed her PhD in English and Disability Studies. Her full-length solo show, My Body Love Story, recently kicked off the 2012 National Queer Arts Festival at the Garage Theater in San Francisco. She has also performed at Girl Talk, the Marsh, CounterPULSE, Queer Open Mic, Femme Con, Butch Voices, the Society for Disability Studies Annual Conference, and the Knitting Factory in NYC. For more information, visit her blog site (dominikabednarskaspeaks.blogspot.com) or Facebook page.

Philip Belcher is the Vice President for Programs of The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina in Asheville, NC and the author of a chapbook, The Flies and Their Lovely Names, from Stepping Stones Press. A graduate of Furman University, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and the Duke University School of Law, he also has an MFA in Poetry from Converse College. Belcher’s poems have appeared in numerous journals, including The Southeast Review, Shenandoah, Passages North, and Fugue. New poetry is forthcoming in Southern Humanities Review. Belcher’s critical prose has appeared recently in The Southern Quarterly and in Shenandoah, where he serves as an Advisory and Contributing Editor.

Diann Blakely has been published in Best American Poetry.com, Chapter 16, Harvard Review, Plath Profiles, Pleiades, Smartish Pace, and Village Voice Media, among others.

A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm now lives and works in Lima, Peru. Two novels and a poetry collection (TANGENTS) have been published in the UK. Her latest poems have appeared – or are forthcoming – in US poetry reviews. Among others: Toe Good Poetry, Poetry Breakfast, Burning Word, Muddy River Review, Pale Horse Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Other Rooms, Requiem Magazine, Full of Crow, Poetry Quarterly, Punchnel’s, and Verse Wisconsin.

Valentina Cano is a student of classical singing who spends whatever free time she has either reading or writing. She also watchesover a veritable army of pets. Her work has appeared in numerous publications and her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best Of the Web. Website: http://carabosseslibrary.blogspot.com

Robert Caporal lives and writes in Massachusetts. Recent publications include Flashquake, The Café Irreal, A Twist of Noir, Lacuna, LITRO, and Still Crazy Literary Magazine. Robert received a favorable review from Rich Horton in the August 2009 issue of LOCUS magazine for his story entitled “Fataway,” which ran in the 2009 issue of ZAHIR.

Sarah Carleton writes, plays music and home-schools her son in Tampa, Florida. She recently rediscovered poetry after a 20-year hiatus, and now she is truly hooked. Her poems have appeared in Burning Word and Houseboat, and she has work forthcoming in Poetry Quarterly.

Jan Carroll’s work has appeared in Cider Press Review, Artemis Journal, California Quarterly, and Borderlands. She is interested in (and working on a book about) the idea of writing poetry as a spiritual practice, enjoys leading and participating in community poetry circles, and is always excited to see people find their own voice and the voices of others through the experience of poetry. She works as a massage therapist and a copyeditor/proofreader.

R.T. Castleberry is a widely published poet and social critic. He was a co-founder of the Flying Dutchman Writers Troupe, co-editor/publisher of the poetry magazine Curbside Review, an assistant editor for Lily Poetry Review and Ardent. In 1999, his work was chosen for the Metro Downtown Transit Streets Project “Texts In Context.” The “Texts In Context” project uses historical documents, poetry and prose from authors with a Houston or Texas connection to illuminate Houston history. The 100 texts chosen were engraved on 2ft X 2ft. granite paving stones and placed at sites in downtown Houston, TX in 2004. His work has appeared in Santa Fe Literary Review, Comstock Review, Green Mountains Review, The Alembic, Paterson Literary Review, Silk Road and Argestes. This is his second appearance in Avatar Review. He was a finalist for the 2008 Arts & Letters/Rumi Prize for Poetry. His chapbook, Arriving At The Riverside, was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2010. An e-book, Dialogue and Appetite, was published by Right Hand Pointing in May, 2011.

Sara Clancy graduated from the Writer’s Program at the University of Wisconsin long ago. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in various journals such as The Smoking Poet, The Madison Review, Untitled Country, Poetry Breakfast, Owen Wister Review and Houseboat, where she was a featured poet. She is a transplant from Philadelphia to the Desert Southwest where she lives with her husband, their dog and a 21 year old goldfish named Darryl.

Esteban Colon is a writer and an experiential educator who lives and works out of the Chicago-land area. One of the founding members of the Waiting 4 the Bus Poetry Collective, he co-hosts a poetry open mic,and a poetry feature showcase. His works have appeared in a variety of publications including Rhino, After Hours, along with his chap books Edgar Avenue, and Between Blue Lines. He is the Editor in Chief of Exact Change Only and is currently working on a series of semi-autobiographical short stories.

Daniela Cortés del Castillo is a Bolivian writer and journalist. Her life is spent reading, writing and migrating compulsively. She has won several writing competitions for her poetry and young adult fiction, including the English-Speaking Union National Writing Competition 2009. She is currently studying the Masters of Creative Writing, Publishing and Editing at the University of Melbourne with a full scholarship from the Chilean government.

Tara Deal is the author of two books from small presses: Wander Luster is a poetry chapbook from Finishing Line Press, and Palms Are Not Trees After All is the winner of the 2007 Clay Reynolds Novella Prize from Texas Review Press. Her writings have appeared in Alimentum, Blip, failbetter, Sugar House Review, and West Branch, among others. Her shortest story can be found in Hint Fiction (Norton). She lives in New York City.

Annie Diamond recently completed her sophomore year at Barnard College, where she studies English and creative writing. Her work has been published in Apt and The Columbia Review, and this year she won first prize in The Lyric College Poetry Contest. Her favorite writing spot is the Hungarian Pastry Shop on 111th Street, and her number one life ambition is to appear on Jeopardy.

Paul Dickey’s They Say This is How Death Came Into the World was published by Mayapple Press in January, 2011. A second book, Wires Over the Homeplace will be published by Pinyon Publishing this fall. Dickey’s poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction has appeared recently in 32 Poems, Pleiades, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Potomac Review, Memoir (and), The Laurel Review, Prairie Schooner, among many other online and print venues. More work is forthcoming in the Bellevue Literary Review and The Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Evgeni Donev is a semi-professional photographer and professor in faculty of physics, Sofia University, Bulgaria. Website: http://photo.net/photodb/user?user_id=1348047

Bruce Ducker’s work has appeared in The New Republic, the Yale, Southern, Sewanee, Missouri and Hudson Reviews, PEN/America Journal, Shenandoah, and Poetry Magazine. He has won the Colorado Book Award (Lead Us not into Penn Station) and the Macallan Story Prize, and his novels have been nominated or short-listed for the James Thurber Award for American Humor, American Library Association Best Book Award (Penn Station), and the Pulitzer (Marital Assets). He lives in Colorado, and is currently at work on his ninth novel.

Glenn Halak started writing poetry and painting very early, inspired by his great-grandmother’s poetry and paintings. Recently he has also been translating German poets, Celan, Trakl and Anne Duden’s sequence of poems, Rockslide. A new sequence of poems, Literary Fictions, came after the translation period this summer. He’s had a book of poems published by an online publisher back in 1998 and has had poems published over the years. Three children’s books, some plays produced and lately two one-acts published, some short fiction as well, are out in the world. He’s had many shows of his paintings. Now writing away on a new young adult novel.

Kyle Hemmings is the author of several chapbooks of poetry and prose: Avenue C, Cat People, Anime Junkie (Scars Publications), and Tokyo Girls in Science Fiction (NAP). His latest e-books are You Never Die in Wholes from Good Story Press and The Truth about Onions from Good Samaritan. He lives and writes in New Jersey.

Bernard Henrie administered federal employment programs in Los Angeles and indulged his penchant for foreign travel and peach cobbler; publication credits include Apple Valley Review, Asian Cha, Boston Literary Magazine, Cortland Review, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Shampoo, and Soundzine; four of his poems appear this month in Black Manifold, the magazine published by Cambridge University, England. He earned three Pushcart nominations and Mark Doty selected one of his poems as second best for the year in the IBPC competition. Like Derek Walcott, he claims to have never met a metaphor he didn’t like.

Courtney Johnston lives in Wellington, New Zealand where she is the director of The Dowse Art Museum. She blogs at Best of 3 and tweets at http://twitter.com/auchmill.

Nathan Kotecki lives in Durham, North Carolina. His debut novel, The Suburban Strange, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2012. The sequel, Pull Down the Night, will be published in October 2013. Find out more at www.thesuburbanstrange.com

c. 2013 by Mr. Gates

William Leet recently returned to the U.S. after almost thirty years in Japan and is now living in Florida. The experiences, travel and journal notes of the years living as an expatriate in Tokyo have become fodder for a book he is currently writing. He has written and translated for the UCLA Journal of Asian Studies, with other work appearing in American Athenaeum, The Rusty Nail, Literary Orphans, Shadows Express and Fat City Review. Most recent is a story now featured in the June issue of Blue Lake Review.

Sean J. Mahoney lives with his wife, her parents, an Uglydoll, and three dogs in Santa Ana, CA. He has been there almost a year and a half now after stints in Los Angeles, Ukiah, Santa Cruz, and those formative years spent in Fresno. California is a big place. He works in geophysics after studying literature and poetry in school. The palateras frequent his street and ring their bells. They ring their bells quite often. With the help of aspirin and water he recovers to write again. After he’s eaten of course.

Kent Maynard teaches anthropology at Denison University; as a result, many of his poems are set in places like Great Britain or Cameroon where he has lived and worked. He received an MFA from New England College, and has published poems most recently in Cold Mountain, Comstock Review, The MacGuffin, South Carolina Review, and Southern Literary Review. A chapbook, Sunk Like God Behind the House, which confronts his experiences with the Kedjom people in Cameroon, received the Wick Prize for Ohio Poets, and was published by the Wick Program at Kent State University.

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa. The author of more than twenty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, he won the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2011, and his most recent titles are the poetry collections Songs for little sleep, (ObviousEpiphanies, 2012), grief notes: (BlazeVOX [books], 2012), A (short) history of l. (BuschekBooks, 2011), Glengarry (Talonbooks, 2011) and kate street (Moira, 2011), and a second novel, missing persons (2009). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, Chaudiere Books (with Jennifer Mulligan), The Garneau Review (ottawater.com/garneaureview), seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics (ottawater.com/seventeenseconds) and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater (ottawater.com). He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com.

Photo credit: Christine McNair

Craig McVay lives in Columbus, Ohio. He has poems in Blue Unicorn, Everything Stops and Listens, Icon, Pudding Magazine, The Teacher’s Voice, War*Peace*The World, and others. He holds two master’s degrees, in English and in Classics and has taught in high schools, community colleges, and prisons; currently, he teaches English to Somali immigrants.. For many years, he was co-coordinator of the Columbus reading series, Peripatetic Poets. Most recently, he has completed a cycle of poems reflecting on the Lenten Season.

Catherine Moore is a freelance writer and poet.  After graduating from the Florida State University with a degree in English Literature she worked in education and public relations fields.  Catherine is an avid traveler and has visited fourteen different countries, including living overseas as a young child.  Some of Catherine’s publications include short stories and poems in Six Little Things, MaMaZina Magazine, and Ars Medica Journal. She is an MFA in Poetry candidate at the University of Tampa.

Steve Mueske is the author of Slower than Stars (forthcoming mid-2013) and A Mnemonic for Desire. His poems have been published in The Massachusetts Review, Crazyhorse, Fulcrum, Third Coast, Court Green, Hotel Amerika, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. He can be reached at www.facebook.com/steve.mueske.

Ben Nardolilli currently lives in Arlington, Virginia. His work has appeared in Perigee Magazine, Red Fez, Danse Macabre, The 22 Magazine, Quail Bell Magazine, Elimae, fwriction, THEMA, Pear Noir, The Minetta Review, and Yes Poetry. He has a chapbook, Common Symptoms of an Enduring Chill Explained, from Folded Word Press. He blogs at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com and is looking to publish his first novel.

Seeds of Jay Patel’s appreciation for beautiful places were planted early in his childhood on numerous trips to some of the most breathtaking locations on the Indian subcontinent. His passion for such magnificent places now manifests itself in a continuous search to capture nature’s majestic beauty with his camera. Jay’s career in photography began in the summer of 2001 when he purchased his first digital SLR. In subsequent years, he spent much time reading photographic magazines and Internet articles and studying the styles of great landscape photographers. He has had no formal education or training in photography.

Although Jay produces most of his work in rich vibrant colors, he also enjoys the creativity and latitude offered by B/W photography in digital format. His photographs try to capture both the physical and emotional nature of light. “Light in nature takes on astonishingly diverse shapes, forms and colors that allow us to interact with the world around us. The calm deep blue of twilight, the dynamic fiery red glow of lava, the piercing beams of sun breaking through the clouds and the soft romantic moonlight reflected in a glacial lake all affect our mood, our feelings and our very outlook on life”. It is this physical and emotional nature of light that he passionately struggles to capture through his photographs. He is well aware, however, that his photographs can convey only so much of the wonder as it is beyond his abilities to replicate the awe and magnificence of the natural world. He is not sure his efforts will endure the test of time, but he certainly hopes they will provide inspiration for others who may also try to capture the nature of light. Homepage: www.jaypatelphotography.com

Garth Pavell began publishing in 2010. His work can be found in over a dozen publications, most recently in the anthology, American Society: What Poets See. Garth was a finalist in Bellingham Review’s 2013 49th Parallel Award for Poetry and has additional work forthcoming in Main Street Rag. He also writes stories and songs and lives in Brooklyn. You can hear a few of his tunes at https://soundcloud.com/garth-pavell

Athar C. Pavis lives both in Maine and in France where she teaches at the University of Paris. She has published her poetry in magazines in England in New Poetry and Candelabrum (Red Candle Press), as well as in the United States in Explorations, Measure, The Eclectic Muse and The Comstock Review. She is currently working on a collection of poetry to be entitled The Power to Revoke.

Cully Perlman’s short story, “Glennville”, was recently published in Real South Magazine, and he was on the short list of finalists for the 2012 William Faulkner – William Wisdom Competition for his novel, THE LOSSES. He has been a finalist in Glimmer Train’s Very Short Story Contest, won the Writer’s Digest Dear Lucky Agent contest for the novel, and received an honorable mention in Glimmer Train’s Fiction Open.

Cully holds a BA in English Literature, an MA in Literature in English, an MBA in Market Strategy and International Business, and is currently an MFA candidate in creative writing at the University of Tampa. He lives in Mableton, GA, with his wife and daughter.

Birte Person is a dane living in Australia, passionate about the environment. Through her photography she hopes to make people aware of the desperate need to protect the natural world. Her work has been published in many digital photography magazines around the world, newspapers and magazines, and numerous text books for the North American, Asian and African markets. She has also done many posters for environmental causes. Website: http://photo.net/photodb/user?user_id=958446

Diego Ravalico was born in Trieste in 1959, and lives there still. During his adolescence he spent a lot of time with his aunt who was a painter and she greatly influenced his artistic career. His passion for photography dates back to when he was 15, but it got stronger when he bought his first reflex. In 1987 his photos were published by a national monthly. He worked in a bank and in his free time he loved spending hours in the photo lab of a relative. Later he was offered the opportunity to move to Milan and work in the field of fashion photography, but he decided, though sadly, to refuse the proposal not to lose a safe job. Photography, then, remained a hobby till his wife Marina persuaded him to make it his primary job. In 2008 he subscribed to Photo-net. Since then he has had several magazine publications. In 2009 a French journalist contacted him with the proposal to exhibit his works in a well known gallery in Paris; he accepted and the exhibition was a success. He has exhibited his works in Trieste as well, both at the Comunale d’Arte and at the Chamber of Commerce. Wesbite: http://www.diegoravalico.it/

Miriam Sagan is the author of twenty-five books, including the poetry collection MAP OF THE POST (University of New Mexico Press.) She founded and directs the creative writing program at Santa Fe Community College. Her blog is Miriam’s Well (http://miriamswell.wordpress.com). in 2010, she won the Santa Fe Mayor’s award for Excellence in the Arts.

Samantha Seto is a writer. She has been published in various anthologies including Ceremony, The Screech Owl, Nostrovia Poetry, Blue Hour, Coffee Table Poetry, Soul Fountain, Ygdrasil, and Black Magnolias Journal. Samantha studies creative writing and is a third prize poet of the Whispering Prairie Press.

Kim Shuck is a writer, editor and visual artist of Tsalagi and Polish ancestry. She holds an MFA in Fine Arts from San Francisco State University. Her first solo book of poetry Smuggling Cherokee won the 2005 Diane Decorah award from the Native Writer’s Circle of the Americas and was published by Greenfield Review Press in 2006. She has three manuscripts working their way through the publishing process, in particular Rabbit Stories, a book of prose that involves the Tsalagi trickster figure which is on schedule to come out in January of 2013 from Poetic Matrix Press.

Hal Sirowitz is the co-winner of the Noir Con 2012 Poetry Contest, selected by Robert Polito, Director of the creative writing program of The New School. He’s the author of a new book from Backwaters Press in Nebraska.

Lee Slonimsky’s work has appeared in Atlanta Review, Best of Asheville Poetry Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Connecticut Review, Measure, The New York Times, New Ohio Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Poetry Daily, 32 Poems, and Valparaiso Poetry Review, and has received seven Pushcart Prize nominations. His fourth collection of poems, Logician of the Wind, was published in 2012 by Orchises Press. Lee is the co-author, along with his wife, Hammett Prize winning mystery writer Carol Goodman, of the Black Swan Rising trilogy (Tor Books), which has been translated into Czech, German, Polish, Russian, and Turkish. As a day job, he manages Ocean Partners LP, an investment partnership that takes a special interest in companies with hiring programs for the developmentally disabled.

Charles Springer has degrees in anthropology and is an award-winning painter, having lived much of his life in Cincinnati, Philadelphia and New York. He currently eats, sleeps, bicycles and writes from the family homestead in Pennsylvania where he earns a living in advertising and is constantly trying to keep his barn from falling down. Over the years Charles has enjoyed publishing in the small presses. This marks his second appearance in Avatar Review.

Brendan Sullivan is a lifelong beach bum who has turned from acting to poetry, as he finds it a more remarkable muse. He also enjoys surfing, sailing and diving. His work has been published at Wordsmiths, The Missing Slate, Every Writer’s Resource, Gutter Eloquence, A Sharp Piece of Awesome, After Tournier, Bareback Magazine and Bare Hands.

Don Thompson was born in the southern San Joaquin Valley and has lived there for most of his life, publishing poetry for the past fifty years. He retired from teaching in a nearby prison; his wife Chris and he live on her family’s cotton farm. Publications in this century include Been There, Done That (2002), Sittin’ on Grace Slick’s Stoop (2006), Turning Sixty (2008), Where We Live (2009), and Everything Barren Will Be Blessed (2012). Back Roads won the Sunken Garden Poetry Prize for 2008. Allan M. Jalon’s profile, “Planted in the San Joaquin,” appeared in the LA Times and remains available online.

John Thornburg is a residential treatment counselor in Westminster, Colorado. In his spare time he writes poetry, flash fiction, and short stories. Occasionally he poses as a novelist. The universe has thoroughly cursed John with an allergy to gluten that prevents him from eating almost (nay, all) of his favorite foods.

Patrick Vincent Welsh is the author of Hard Times Galore, a collection of one hundred dark and sometimes humorous stories concerning the modern American condition. Selections from the collection have recently been published in or are forthcoming from Harpur Palate, Euphony, The Journal of the University of Chicago, apt, Connotation, Busk, The Rusty Nail, The Literary Underground, Danse Macabre, The Dirty Napkin, Cactus Press, Black Heart Magazine and Juked. A story has also been nominated for a 2012 Pushcart Nomination. He lives in the greatest city in the world, Chicago.

Lesley Wheeler’s books include The Receptionist and Other Tales (2012) and Heterotopia, winner of the Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Subtropics, Prairie Schooner, Poetry, and Slate. She teaches at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia and blogs on poetry’s possible worlds at http://lesleywheeler.org/blog/.

Pushcart Prize and Kentucky Poet Laureate nominee, Sheri L. Wright is the author of six books of poetry, including the most recent, The Feast of Erasure. Her works of poetry appear in numerous journals including New Southerner, Out of Line and Chiron Review. She has been a volunteer editor for This I Believe. Ms. Wright has taught poetry workshops for Women in Transition, the Kentucky Young Writer’s Connection and The Kentucky State Poetry Society. Ms. Wright is the founder and host of the Stone Soup Poetry Series.

Changming Yuan, 4-time Pushcart nominee and author of Allen Qing Yuan, holds a PhD in English and works as a private tutor in Vancouver, where he edits Poetry Pacific (poetrypacific.blogspot.ca). Yuan’s poetry appears in 649 literary publications across 25 countries, including Asia Literary Review, Barrow Street, Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, LiNQ, London Magazine, Poetry Kanto, Paris/Atlantic, Poetry Salzburg, SAND and Two Thirds North. Poetry submissions welcome at yuans@shaw.ca.