Jul/Aug 2024

Tom Dooley co-founded Eclectica in 1996 and serves as its Managing and Fiction Editor. In the 12 years between earning a BA in English literature from the University of Chicago and a MPA in municipal management from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, he taught middle and high school English in Alaska, Arizona, and Wisconsin, amassing fond memories, dubious experiences, and debt. Two careers post-teaching later, he now creates spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides for the man by day, edits Eclectica by night, and feels very grateful for the blessings he has received—chief among them being married to the sweetest gal and the best poet he knows. He and said gal reside in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with enough rescued lapdogs to field a diminutive Iditarod racing team and the empty-nest echoes of two amazing Haitian-American children who have flown the coop.

Marko Fong is Eclectica's Nonfiction Coeditor. A former Spotlight Author, he lives in North Carolina with his wife, dog, and two cats. He's written fiction and non-fiction for many years, and publications include Solstice, Prick of the Spindle, RKVRY, and Volleyball Magazine.

Rick Adang was born in Buffalo, New York and graduated from Indiana University with a BA in Psychology and English and a Creative Writing Honors thesis. He taught English as a foreign language for many years and is now living in Estonia. He has had poems published in Paris Review, Chicago Review, Seattle Review, and many other literary magazines, most recently Willawaw Journal and Closed Eye Open.

Lydia C. Buchanan has appeared in BLAST, the Ilanot Review, Meat for Tea, and other publications. Her essay "Maximalism" was named Notable in the Best American Essays 2022. She has an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and lives in Boston.

Claudia Buckholts has appeared in Minnesota Review, New American Writing, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, VerseDaily, and elsewhere. She received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Artists Foundation, and the Grolier Prize. Travelers on Earth, her third collection of poems, was published by Main Street Rag in 2023.

Barbara De Franceschi refers to herself as an arid zone poet living as she does in the Australian outback town of Broken Hill. Besides four collections of poetry, her work has been published widely in Australia, in other countries, on-line and featured on national and regional radio.

Tina Harrach Denetclaw is a clinical pharmacist by trade. New to the world of poetry writing, her poetry has appeared in Eclectica Magazine and Silver Birch Press's Spices and Seasonings series and All About My Mother series; another is forthcoming in Synkroniciti. A flash nonfiction story is homed with Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine. She lives in California's San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and five cats. About the poem in this issue, she says, "My husband is Diné (Navajo), raised on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico. Beulah was both his step-grandmother (Nálí) and his great aunt. She wove rugs in the Crystal style. We are fortunate to have the last rug she made."

Stewart Engesser is a runner-up for this issue's Spotlight Author. A writer and musician living in Maine, his recent work has appeared in upstreet, The Forge, great weather for MEDIA, Whiskey Tit Journal, JAKE, and The Barcelona Review. He roams the US with a guitar and his dog, George, not posting about any of it.

Jonathan Focht has appeared or is forthcoming in The Antigonish Review, CAROUSEL, Circe, Encore Poetry Project, EVENT, The Maine Review, Quibble Lit, Vallum, Variant Literature, and The Walleye. He lives in Montréal.

Kristina Garvin is a runner-up for this issue's Spotlight Author. A researcher and writer in Philadelphia, originally from Ohio, she earned a Ph.D. in American literature. Her essays and stories have appeared in Sky Island Journal, Cultural Critique, Novel Slices, Windmill, 34th Parallel, PopMatters, and elsewhere.

Gloria D. Gonsalves is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Even Flowers Know That Water is Useless Without Roots, which received 2023 Gold Winner for Literary Titan Book Award. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Brittle Paper, Kalahari Review, Galway Review, The Mantelpiece, Consilience, Collateral, Wordpeace, Mediterranean Poetry, Tiny Seed, and other literary magazines, journals, and anthologies in Africa, Europe, and the USA. She is also the founder of WoChiPoDa.com, an initiative to instill the love of poetry in children. Born and raised in Tanzania, she migrated to Ireland to study and now lives in Germany.

Eric Hadley is a poet when he feels like it. The rest of the time he looks at birds, makes improvised music, and works as a music therapist.

Thomas J. Hubschman is a regular contributor to Eclectica's Salon and is the author of Look at Me Now, My Bess, Billy Boy, Father Walther's Temptation, Song of the Mockingbird, and The Jew's Wife & Other Stories, as well as three science fiction novels. His work has appeared in New York Press, The Antigonish Review, The Blue Moon Review and many other publications. Two of his short stories were broadcast on the BBC World Service. He has also edited two anthologies of new writing from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean, and he was the founding editor of the pioneering online publication Gowanus. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, which remains his chief inspiration.

Shane Joaquin Jimenez is the author of the novel Bondage, and holds an MFA from the Jack Kerouac School. His writing has appeared in Shotgun Honey, Roi Fainéant Press, Punk Noir Magazine, and elsewhere. A longtime Las Vegan, he now lives in Canada.

Alex Keegan began writing seriously in 1992, publishing five mystery novels before switching to serious short fiction. He has been published widely in print and on the web and been awarded more than a dozen first prizes for his fiction as well as three Bridport Prizes. Born in Wales with an Irish mother, he now lives and writes in Newbury, England, where he lives with his second wife and two teenage children. These are his 27th and 28th pieces and 15th appearance in Eclectica. He runs a tough internet writing school called "Boot Camp Keegan," many of the alumnus of which have appeared in Eclectica as well, individually and as part of a feature dedicated to raising money for needy children.

Pramod M. Lad was born in India, educated at King's College UK and completed his Ph.D. in Biophysical Chemistry at Cornell University. He was a scientist at the National Institutes of Health In Bethesda, Maryland, and was member of the scientific team led by Martin Rodbell that elucidated the molecular basis of hormone action, work for which Martin Rodbell was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine. He has published over one hundred research articles in various peer reviewed science journals and received several awards and grants for his research. Some of his poems have been published in an anthology published by the Washington Writers Group.

C.L. Liedekev is a New Jersey expatriate living in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, with his real name, wife, and children. He is a two-time nominee for Best of the Net, with his poem "November Snow. Philadelphia Children's Hospital" being a finalist in 2021. His poem, "The Hungry," was a 2023 Inaugural Plentitudes Prize finalist. His work has appeared in numerous print and online journals, including Humana Obscura, Red Fez, River Heron Review, Marrow, American Writers Review, In parentheses, Bindweed Magazine, Feral, Hare's Paw, Alien Buddha, Marrow Magazine, Poppy Road Review, Tiny Seed, The Schuylkill Valley Journal, and many others.

Joseph Mills is a faculty member at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. He has published several collections of poetry with Press 53, most recently Bodies in Motion: Poems About Dance.

Meg Pokrass is the author of nine collections of flash fiction and two novellas in flash. Her work has been published in three Norton anthologies of flash including Flash Fiction America, New Micro, and Flash Fiction International; Best Small Fictions 2018, 2019, 2022, and 2023; Wigleaf Top 50; and hundreds of literary journals including New England Review, Electric Literature, McSweeney's, Washington Square Review, Split Lip, and Passages North. Her new collection, The First Law of Holes: New and Selected Stories by Meg Pokrass, is forthcoming from Dzanc Books in late 2024.

Christine Potter is this issue's Spotlight Author. She has now appeared in Eclectica a dozen times, and beginning with the Oct/Nov 2024 issue, she will be our Poetry Editor. She lives with her husband and two spoiled cats in a very old house in the Hudson River Valley. Her poetry has also appeared in Grain, The McNeese Review, Rattle, Roi Fanéant, Does It Have Pockets, ONE ART, SWIMM, and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily as well as having been featured on ABC Radio News. Her latest collection of poems, Unforgetting, is on Kelsay Books, and her young adult time travel novels are published by Evernight Teen. Regarding her work in this issue, she has the following to say: "The Joy Harjo one, 'On Perhaps The World Ends Here,' has a cool origin story. I'm a poet in her 70s who taught creative writing in the public schools for a long time. Once a year, I go back to the high school where I worked to be part of Sticky Notes, a day of workshops and readings that some of my students started 20 years ago. I usually read poems with them and have them write back to what we've looked at, and this year it was the Joy Harjo poem because I love her and also because kitchen tables and dining tables are such rich sources of memory. I always write along with the kids and this—with pretty substantial revision after the fact—was what I came up with. The Alexei Navalny poem was straight from my heart. It really was very windy the day I found out Navalny had died. I am inspired by his faith and sacrifice."

Jessy Randall has appeared in Asimov's, Nature, and Scientific American. Her most recent book is Mathematics for Ladies: Poems on Women in Science (MIT, 2022). She is a librarian at Colorado College.

Ann Skea lives in Australia. She is the author of Ted Hughes: The Poetic Quest (UNE Press, Australia) and has been contributing reviews to Eclectica Magazine since our very first issue back in October of 1996.

Adam Spiegelman is a NY based writer. He can be found online on Instagram @goaskadam

Jessica D. Thompson has appeared on Verse Daily, in ONE ART, Gyroscope Review, and the Southern Review (among other journals and anthologies). Her poetry collection, Daybreak and Deep, was a Finalist for Narrative Poetry in the 2022 American Bookfest Best Books Awards. Her newest book, The Mood Ring Diaries, will be released in 2025.

Steve Vermillion is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. He has had many works of short fiction published in both online and print magazines as well as Eclectica Magazine itself. He has also been nominated for a "Best of the Net" award.

 

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