Our brave artist-types don't get enough credit slaving away in their offices/closets/caves of creativity, sending out semaphore signals and waving down passing cars by the side of the freeway. We will wave for them, until our arms get tired and fall off, because we still like everyone on this list:
Gina Caciolo is 22 and in the process of finishing six dreaded MFA applications. Sometimes she's Cacia Y. Pepe, who wrote for Stranded In Stereo, mainly reviewing reality television shows. Otherwise, her work has been featured in Mirage#4/Period(ical), Fast Forward, Volume 2, and Ophelia Street; and she was the editor of Dinner is Foreplay for City Folk, a now defunct online review mag. In her spare time, she's a waitress at a crappy restaurant, stares at the sky for long periods of time and writes songs with her boyfriend for his band Pleasant Corners.
Sarah Ciston likes scuba diving, even though she gets seasick, and geography, even though the world is a really big place. Her forthcoming novel is called Fuck Everyone But Us, but don't worry, she doesn't mean you.
Poet Rick D'Elia should not be confused with the comedian of the same name, nor his father who had the name first. He is originally from Massachusetts, just like both his father and the comedian, but currently resides in San Francisco, far from those other Rick D'Elia's. Now, he is strangely being confused with his doppleganger and believes any confrontation may cause "a disaster of biblical proportions. Like Old Testament, real wrath of God type stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies, rivers and seas boiling, forty years of darkness, the dead rising from the grave, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!" or maybe not.
Bradford Earle is a newly minted [adjective] person. He was previously an idea on the East Coast in the wasteland commonly known as [proper noun]. He spends most of his time composing mediocre [noun] and painting marginal works of [noun] in a valiant (albeit ineffective) attempt to impress the woman he [verb]s. His history is a [noun], as ideas are [adverb] difficult to examine. In his new [adjective] form he is likely to be found [verb]ing small bears or imitating [noun] in his free time.
Jacob I. Evans currently lives in Vietnam where he teaches English and eats street food, which is not the same thing as eating food off of the street. A recent email collaboration and exchange with Matt L. Rohrer, the middle initial is important, can be found at Digital Artifact.
Kathleen Nye Flynn works for the Huntington Post and lives in Los Angeles, California.
Kathleen Nye Flynn works for the Huntington Post and lives in Los Angeles, California.
Like a chess prodigy or a member of New Edition, Tupelo Hassman has never quite recovered from having a bridge graffiti'd in her honor at seventeen. Her attempts to supplant the memory of "I (heart) Tupelo" six-feet-tall in white housepaint over Highway 17 have been published in a few literary magazines and continue in her current project: Uh-uh-uh—uh-uh-uh-uh-uh: The Anatomy of Mickey Spillane. They just don't write 'em like that anymore. Her first novel, girlchild, will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux before the end of the Mayan calendar. You've been warned.
When Dustin Heron grows up, he will be dangerously unqualified for his job. Scrubbing toilets. No disgrace in that, not for Dustin Heron. But he can't move his arm clockwise, and he doesn't like to go counter to anything. He likes to go with the herd. Staring down into the blue bubbly toilet bowls of his future, he will have no choice but to go down. His work has appeared in Ashcan, Watchword, The Sand Canyon Review and Transfer. His first book, Paradise Stories, is available from Small Desk Press.
Jedediah Johnson is a photographer/singer/songwriter/author who lives and works in basements in or around Altadena, California. Most of his free time these days is spent trying to figure out how to tell that one special lady that he has always loved her and doing a little amateur astronomy. He comes from Indianapolis, one of the top five most romantic cities in the great state of Indiana.
Chris Pedler likes to drink beer and make fun of the Oakland Raiders. He writes poetry about lingerie models, grizzly bears and California. He also helps edit the literary magazine We Still Like, which is better than all other literary magazines, though he realizes that's not saying much. He also finds it awkward to refer to himself in the third-person.
Tye Pemberton graduated from USC with a BA in English-Creative Writing. He is now a fiction candidate in the Master's Program for Writing at Columbia University. His short work has appeared in Versal, Watchword, and on TheRumpus.net. Please, West Coast, let him come home.
Tavia Stewart has volunteered at 826 Valencia's creative writing center, interned for McSweeney's Publishing and ZYZZYVA, and currently runs National Novel Writing Month's Young Writers Program. She's been published in Smokelong Quarterly and curates Whole Story, a new performance model that transforms a conjunctive gallery and theater space into a life-sized, multimedia diorama in reaction to one short story.
Vinh Truong was raised by wolves. He doesn't like talking about himself.
Zulema Summerfield is a writer living and working in San Francisco. She is originally from a little place called Redlands, California. She's been published here and there.
Zulema Summerfield is a writer living and working in San Francisco. She is originally from a little place called Redlands, California. She's been published here and there.
