I moved over to the edge of the roof, hearing the sibilant whisper of the traffic below. And above it, a familiar voice, half-forgotten. Come, the wind said. Come and be free.
I reached out my arms to embrace it, and jumped. Above me, the sky was the bright turquoise blue of freedom.
Dreamcatcher by Bartlomiej Jurkowski
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Contributor Biographies
Jim Pascual Agustin was born in the Philippines. His early years were spent in a communal house, where he struggled to remember all the names of his numerous cousins. His family was forced off their land to make way for the construction of a highway named after the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos. With the help of an Irish Jesuit, Fr. James O'Brien, Jim was able to enter Ateneo de Manila University. He is a Fellow of the University of the Philippines National Writers Workshop and the Iligan National Writers Workshop. In October 1994, he moved to Cape Town, South Africa.
Nick Antosca's fiction has appeared in Nerve, The Barcelona Review, New York Tyrant, Opium Magazine, and Identity Theory. His nonfiction has appeared in The New York Sun, The Huffington Post, and Hustler. His first novel, Fires, was published in 2006 and a novella, Midnight Picnic, will be released this fall by Impetus Press.
Traci Brimhall lives in New York City. Her work has been a finalist for the Rita Dove Poetry Award and the Black Warrior Review Poetry Contest. Some of her poems have appeared in Harpur Palate, Kalliope, Slipstream, Poet Lore, and DMQ Review.
Idan Cohen: Born 1986, quiet hospital, Jerusalem, after labor induced by rose garden. Became handsomest boy alive, according to sources (mother), has since been soldier, sous-chef, journalist, drunk. Main internet presence is a LiveJournal, of all things (idan-cohen.livejournal.com). Promises to love you in a very specific and meaningful way, if you'd like him to.
Tina Connolly is an actor and writer in Portland, OR. Appeared or forthcoming: poems in Strange Horizons and Asimov's Science Fiction; stories in Son and Foe and Heliotrope. She is a graduate of Clarion West 2006. Her website is at tinaconnolly.com.
Jennifer Crow's poetry and fiction has appeared in a number of print and electronic venues, most recently in the Sporty Spec and Ruins Extraterrestrial anthologies, Goblin Fruit, Illumen, Star*Line, and Mythic Delirium. Several of her poems received honorable mentions in the latest edition of the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. You can go to jennifer-crow.livejournal.com if you'd like to learn more about her work.
Matt Dennison was born in Crawfordsville, Indiana. After a rather extended and varied second childhood in New Orleans (psych tech, steamboat worker, street musician, legal secretary, house painter, and door-to-door poetry peddler), he completed his undergraduate degree at Mississippi State University, where he won the national Sigma Tau Delta critical essay competition (judged by X.J. Kennedy). Dennison currently lives in Columbus, MS, where he continues to write and publish poetry and fiction in journals such as Cider Press Review, Natural Bridge, Main Street Rag, and Rattle.
Ivan Dorin's work has appeared on CBC Radio's Alberta Anthology and in On Spec, Vox, and the online high-school English course of the Government of Saskatchewan. Partway through writing the story, he discovered that the house in which he had grown up had features characteristic of Mennonite architecture.
For the last five years, Christian A. Dumais has been living in Poland, where he is an English lecturer at the Wroclaw University of Technology and is currently working toward a PhD. His most recent academic article, “Burst or Die: The Rise of Burst Culture and the Decline of Print,” was published in Systems. He is currently working on other pieces with shorter titles. Christian can be reached at [email protected] and found at www.myspace.com/puffchrissy.
Keesa Renee DuPre knew she wanted to be a writer when she was six years old. Her work has appeared in The Sword Review, Dragons, Knights, & Angels, Gryphonwood, and AlienSkin Magazine. She has also worked as an editor for Dragons, Knights, & Angels and as a reviewer for Tangent. She enjoys reading and writing, and collects rejection slips.
Sylvia Eastman received her MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia in 2005. Her thesis, feature-film script Forgetting Edie, was short-listed for the Praxis Fall 2005 screenwriting workshop and was a semifinalist in the Ninth Annual American Screenwriters Association International Screenplay Competition. Due to an unabated desire to avoid finding a real job, Sylvia's currently developing two TV comedies, Brain Freeze and Stretchy Pants. In her spare time, Sylvia pens nonfiction about light, humorous topics, like aging and death. Sylvia and her man live in Vancouver, where they breed dust bunnies for fun, but never for profit.
Despite a million visitors to his groundbreaking, hilarious blog (EvilEditor. blogspot.com), and despite making the careers of almost as many best-selling authors as he's destroyed, and despite attaining the status of world's most famous editor in less time than most editors spend creatively editing their résumés after getting fired, Evil Editor remains the same humble fellow he was when God hired him to edit the Bible (which he found unreadable and riddled with stilted prose—and for which, by the way, he has yet to see a dime). Trailers for EE's own books may be viewed at EvilEditor.net.
Author and entertainment critic Gabrielle S. Faust is the author of Before Icarus, After Achilles and the techno-horror vampire trilogy Eternal Vigilance (Immanion Press), the first volume of which was released in April 2008. Her work, as both an author and illustrator, has appeared in The Lightning Journal, The Open Vein, Darkened Horizons, Doorways Magazine, The Bloodied Quill, KotaPress Loss & Compassion Journal, and now GUD, as well as on the websites FearZone and FatallyYours. More information about Gabrielle S. Faust can be found at www.gabriellefaust.com.
Jéanpaul Ferro is a poet, short-fiction author, and novelist from Providence, Rhode Island. A four-time Pushcart-Prize nominee, his work has been featured in The Columbia Review, Connecticut Review, The Providence Journal, Hawai'i Review, Review Americana, Identity Theory, Birmingham Arts Journal, Barrelhouse, and others. His work has been featured on WBAR radio in NYC and on NPR's This I Believe series. He will also be the featured author in the August 2008 issue of Contemporary American Voices.
Michael Greenhut was born on July 7, 1978. He currently resides in Westchester County, NY and daylights as a game developer in Stamford. He attended Clarion South in 2007, where he wrote the first draft of “Think Fast,” and his skill at the Mafia game earned him the nickname “The Patternless Man” among his fellow Clarionites. He also has fiction coming out in Fantasy Magazine in the summer of 2008. He can be reached at [email protected].
Frank Haberle ([email protected])'s stories have appeared in The Adirondack Review, Cantaraville, 34thParallel, Birmingham Arts Journal, Taj Mahal Review, Broken Bridge Review, hotmetalpress.net, The Melic Review, Johnny America, The East Hampton Star, SmokeLong Quarterly, and 21 Stars Review. Frank is on the Board of Directors of the NY Writers Coalition, a community writing program for disenfranchised New Yorkers.
Chad Brian Henry lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His work can be found in Shimmer and Outercast.
Tania Hershman (www.taniahershman.com), a former science journalist, grew up in London and now lives in Jerusalem, Israel. Her stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio and published, or are forthcoming, in The Cafe Irreal, Southword, The Ranfurly Review, Mad Hatters’ Review, Vestal Review, Entelechy: Mind & Culture, Riptide, Transmission, and Riffing on Strings, an anthology of fiction inspired by String Theory. Tania is founder and editor of The Short Review (www.theshortreview.com), a site dedicated to reviewing short-story collections and anthologies. Her own story collection The White Road and Other Stories will be published by Salt in September 2008.
As a painter and designer, Jessica Nicole Hill is most interested in shape, color, layout, and fun. She went to school in Philadelphia, where she got a BFA in Graphic Design. She had the great pleasure of working for a skateboard company while there. She has always loved painting things that she thought were amusin
g or interesting, but uncomplicated and affordable. She likes her work to be approachable. Although the work looks simple, a lot of thought goes into each piece. You can see more of her work at www.jessicahillart.com.
Jessica C Hoard is a writer and photographer who lives in Memphis, Tennessee. She received her MA in Creative Writing from the University of Memphis, where she taught and was Editorial Assistant for the literary journal River City. You can view more of her photography at www.myspace.com/jchoard.
Founder and former Editor in Chief of Lit Pot Press and Ink Pot literary journal, Beverly A. Jackson is a poet/writer and abstract artist living in the mountains of North Carolina. Beverly's work can be found in over sixty venues online and in print, including Rattle, The Melic Review, The Absinthe Literary Review, In Posse Review, Vestal Review, and Zoetrope: All-Story Extra. Her poetry chapbook Every Burning Thing was issued by Pudding House in 2008 and her flash “The Dead” was nominated for BASS and appears in the anthology You Have Time for This.
Blog: beverlyajackson.com.
Art Shack Studio: artshackstudio.com.
Zak Jarvis is an artist and writer living in San Diego. The ordering of Writer versus Artist is a daily struggle. He attended Viable Paradise X and learned how to work on his writing as hard as he does on his art. While he has worked professionally as a web designer, a game designer, and a mailorder clerk, it's art and writing that really get him going. His artwork has appeared in Spectrum, (Not Only) Black + White, The World's Greatest Erotic Art of Today, and other publications. He is currently starting work on an eight-bit cyberpunk novel.
Bartolomiej Jurkowski was born in Poland in 1970. He began to draw when he was a child. He has been working with computer graphics for seventeen years as a prepress graphic designer. He has had some formal training, having attended a fine arts school. He draws sketches and does black-and-white graphics, comics, paints, etc. In computer graphics, he has always learned everything on the run for work. His favorite type of art is photomanipulation. He likes every piece of artwork to have mood—mysterious and with as much story behind it as possible.
Nicole Kornher-Stace was born in Philadelphia in 1983, moved from the East Coast to the West Coast and back again by the time she was five, and currently lives in New Paltz, NY, with one husband, three ferrets, a brandnew baby boy, and many, many books. Her short fiction has appeared in Best American Fantasy, Fantasy Magazine, Ideomancer, Zahir, and Rhapsoidia, is forthcoming in a yet-to-be-named anthology from Prime Books, and was nominated for the 2007 Pushcart Prize. Her first novel is due out in July 2008 from Prime Books. She can be found online at www.nicolekornherstace.com or wirewalking.livejournal.com.
heather lam is a high-school student, smart, artistic, and outgoing.... technically, a normal person. —;; ^^
Beth Langford knows how to read dichotomous keys, but she flips burgers with no close relatives. Poems of hers can be found in Goblin Fruit, Star*Line, elimae, and Electric Velocipede.
Alex Dally MacFarlane works on the edge of London, England, proofreading military specifications. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Electric Velocipede, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Shimmer, Sybil's Garage, Farrago's Wainscot, Kaleidotrope, The Pedestal Magazine, and Goblin Fruit, and she regularly contributes flash fiction to the Daily Cabal. In 2007, she guest-edited the “Five Senses” issue of Behind the Wainscot. For more information, visit alankria.livejournal.com.
Darja Malcolm-Clarke holds master's degrees in Folklore and in English and is a PhD candidate in the latter at Indiana University. A graduate of Clarion West, her fiction appears in Clarkesworld, Fantasy Magazine, Ideomancer, and elsewhere. Her short story “The Beacon” (Clarkesworld Issue 11) was nominated for the 2007 British Science Fiction Association award for short fiction. Her nonfiction article “Tracking Phantoms” appears in the VanderMeers’ anthology The New Weird. Academically, she studies monstrosity in relation to gender in post-World-War-II speculative literature. She lives in numinous southern Indiana, where there are many thunderstorms, which suits her just fine.
J M McDermott's first novel Last Dragon came out this February from Wizards of the Coast's new Discoveries imprint. His short fiction appears in places like WEIRD TALES, Fantasy Magazine, and Coyote Wild. He blogs regularly at jmmcdermott.blogspot.com.
T. L. Morganfield's fiction has appeared in many small-press publications, such as Dark Recesses Press, Atomjack, and Paradox. She's a graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop, and she lives in Colorado with her husband and two children. She spends her days writing, and devouring every book she can find on Mesoamerican history and mythology. You can learn more about her at her website, www.tlmorganfield.com.
Kiriko Moth is an up-and-coming illustrator based in San Francisco. Her work is influenced by art nouveau, pop surrealism, and Japanese art. Her art has been published by magazines and small presses and she's working to break into the highly-competitive but very satisfying field of sci-fi and fantasy art.
Shweta Narayan is a writer, artist, academic, and cultural crazy quilt. She was born in India and lived in Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, the Netherlands, and Scotland before moving to California. She has a longstanding obsession with serpentine forms and a current steampunk obsession, so a mechanical dragon was sort of inevitable. Shweta draws a fair amount and posts stuff at shwetambari.deviantart.com, but this is the first time she has actually sold art. Shweta has a short story in the February 2008 issue of The Journal of Mythic Arts (endicottstudio.typepad.com/jomafiction) and a sonnet in the February 2008 Coyote Wild (coyotewildmag.com).
C. Nelson is a thirty-two-year-old mother of three. She cut her teeth on books like Caddie Woodlawn and Look Homeward, Angel (Yes, at the same time!) and fell in love with English early. That childhood love affair's outlived all the others in her life thus far, but she did discover room in her heart for fractal art much later on. These days, it's equally likely that she'll be found poring over a swirl of color as scrutinizing a sentence. A smattering of both words and art can be found at www.tears-of-gold.org.
Jon Radlett will photograph anything, and if it's got wings, will photograph it repeatedly! Until recently Jon specialised in candid photography, but he is presently experimenting with still-life and tableau work. When not hiding behind bushes with a camera, Jon is a teacher and psychologist in Kent, England, happily married with one cat.
Learn more about Joseph Jason Roger at www.joeroger.com.
Rohith Sundararaman is a twenty-three-year-old writer based out of Bombay, India. He has been successful in talking his way into magazines like elimae, Eclectica Magazine, Ghoti Magazine, The Orange Room Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, GUD, right hand pointing, Word Riot, and other places. Much of his success could be attributed to his craft, or to the wonderful people he workshops with at Scrawl and The Gazebo.
Kelley A. Swan lives with her family in New Hampshire, because, frankly, if it's good enough for Donald Hall, then it's good enough for her. As a writer, she's obsessed with the slipperiness that's flash fiction. To her, there is simply nothing more beautiful than brevity, especially in fiction. Read more of her and her writing at www.kelleyaswan.com.
Michelle Tandoc-Pichereau grew up in Manila, greased elbows in Los Angeles, and currently lives in Bretagne, with the best husband in the world and a spoiled cat. She was a finalist for the 2008 Kathy Fish Fellowship sponsored by SmokeLong Quarterly and has had work published recently in elimae, Chronogram, Contemporary Rhyme, Raving Dove, Brink Magazine, and flashquake.
S A Tranter is thirty-seven years old. Scottish male. Some stories published. UK small presses. Cadenza, Staple, Midnight Street, some others. He is currently working on a Novel. Email address: [email protected]. That's it, that's all; end Copy.
Matthew Chad Weinman is a junior at Emporia State University. His favorite musicians are Gregory E. Jacobs and The Kansas City Bear Fighters.
Jason D. Wittman lives and works in Minnesota, USA. His story “Femme Fatale” was published in the har
dcover anthology The Best of Baen's Universe, and his story “A Game of Knight Court” got an Honorable Mention in the nineteenth Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. His website is at www.sff.net/people/jasondwittman. Jason would like to thank S.N. Arly (who read the story when it took place in Germany and Olga was two characters), Corey Kellgren, Douglas Texter, Marc Drummond (who tolerated much during this story's gestation), and the Twin Cities Speculative Fiction Writers Network for their contributions to this story's success.
Steam Bat Assembly Instructions by Zak Jarvis
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Visit www.gudmagazine.com for information on additional titles by this and other authors.
GUD Magazine Issue 3 :: Autumn 2008 Page 21