GUD Magazine Issue 1 :: Autumn 2007
Page 22
Gini Hamilton writes both fiction and nonfiction and has published articles and essays in regional newspapers and magazines. She has recently returned to her birthplace near the Gulf Coast of Alabama after more than thirty years in New York, where she worked as a fashion editor/photo stylist. The short story in this issue is her first fiction publication.
Tammy R. Kitchen lives in Michigan with her daughter and three cats. Her work has appeared in Twisted Tongue, juked, Me Three, Zygote In My Coffee. may be contacted at tammyr.k@gmail.com.
Darby Larson has had literature published at McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Opium Magazine, Eclectica, 3:AM Magazine, Barrelhouse, Eyeshot, Bullfight Review, .ISM quarterly. lives in Northern California with his wife Sarah. Reach him by email: darbylarson@sbcglobal.net or on MySpace: www.myspace.com/darbylarson.
David Lenson is editor of the Massachusetts Review; he plays saxophone with Ed and with the Reprobate Blues Band.
Sean Melican has published in Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet Fictitious Force. is currently an editor and book reviewer for Ideomancer (www.ideomancer.com).
Caleb Morgan's work is surrealist in content, yet has many expressionistic and abstract qualities to it. The artist's influences range from H.R. Giger and Chet Zar to Salvador Dali and M.C. Escher. Morgan wields the graphite medium superbly, bringing out disturbing yet beautiful images of dreams, figures, and nightmarescapes. He uses his views on politics and organized religion to induce images that are as thought-provoking as they are visually stunning. Mr. Morgan considers himself a progressive artist, a Modern Surrealist. Visit him at his website: manticon2002.boundlessgallery.com.
Cami Park's fiction and poetry can be found in publications such as SmokeLong Quarterly, Opium Magazine, No Tell Motel, Ghoti Magazine, edifice WRECKED, FriGG, Forklift, Ohio.
Mike Procter lives in Calgary, Alberta with his wife Cheryl and their two laptops. People who know him wonder what he does all day. He writes about life, and stuff. Mostly stuff.
Jordan E. Rosenfeld is author of Make a Scene (Writer's Digest Books, November 2007) and, with Rebecca Lawton, Write Free! Attracting the Creative Life, (Kulupi Press, Summer 2007). She is a book reviewer for The California Report NPR Affiliate KQED Radio and for the San Francisco Chronicle. is a contributing editor/columnist for Writer's Digest Magazine. fiction has appeared in The Pedestal Magazine, Void, juked, Pindeldyboz, SmokeLong Quarterly, more. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Bennington College. She edited the anthology Zebulon Nights (Word Riot Press). Visit her at: www.jordansmuse.blogspot.com and learn more about Write Free : www.writefree.us.
Ali Al Saeed is a writer from Bahrain, born in 1978. He wrote (and drew) his very first story—a sci-fi comic book—at the age of ten. He's been writing professionally since 1998, and today contributes to a number of publications and magazines in the Gulf region. His debut novel QuixotiQ (2004) was the winner of the Bahrain Outstanding Book of the Year Award. Ali's short fiction has been featured in several magazines and anthologies. His second book Moments, collection of short stories, was published in 2006. Ali is also a filmmaker and photographer. Visit www.alialsaeed.com.
Nisi Shawl's story “Cruel Sistah” was included in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror #19. Her work has also appeared in So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy both Dark Matter . Recently she perpetrated “The Snooted One: The Historicity of Origin” at the Farrago's Wainscot . With Cynthia Ward, she co-authored Writing the Other: Bridging Cultural Differences for Successful Fiction (Aqueduct Press). A board member of the Clarion West Writers Workshop, one of the Carl Brandon Society's founders, and a guest speaker at Stanford University and Smith College, Nisi likes to relax by pretending she lives in other people's houses.
Oisín Mac Suibhne is a Texan artist, introduced to the craft in November 2004 by a glass artist from Cork, Ireland. Oisín draws his inspiration from various mythologies, most predominately Irish. His fluid style attempts to capture the rich imagery and deep currents of the Celtic culture while at the same time seeking to create an individual approach in a field often trapped in its own history.
Ilona Taube was born in Moscow in 1983. She attended art school for eleven years, then entered the Graphic Arts Department of the Moscow State University of Printing and graduated with a BA. Ilona works in Moscow as an illustrator for several publishing houses that produce different genres and styles: Ventana-Graf, Titul, Prosveshcheniye, Avanta+, AST, Rosman, and Terra, and the journal Romangazeta. regularly exhibits her work and likes to create paintings that mix reality and fantasy. Her favorite styles are realism, modern art, surrealism, and fantasy. Ilona can be reached at ilona@ilona-taube.com and at www.ilona-taube.com.
Lavie Tidhar grew up on a kibbutz in Israel, has lived in South Africa and London, and has travelled widely in Africa and Asia. He currently lives on a remote island in Vanuatu, in the South Pacific. He won the 2003 Clarke-Bradbury Prize (awarded by the European Space Agency), edited Michael Marshall Smith: The Annotated Bibliography A Dick & Jane Primer for Adults, is the author of An Occupation of Angels. stories appear in SCI FICTION, Strange Horizons, ChiZine, Postscripts, Clarkesworld Magazine, FLURB, many others, and in translation in seven languages.
Leslie Claire Walker hails from the lush bayous and concrete-and-steel canyons of the Texas Gulf Coast, where she lives with dogs, cats, and harps. She is thrilled to have “Max Velocity” appear in GUD. short fiction has been published in Fantasy Magazine, Hags, Sirens, & Other Bad Girls of Fantasy, Cosmic Cocktails. is hard at work on a novel about a runaway and a rock star who ride the L.A. skies with the Wild Hunt. Her website is www.leslieclairewalker.com.
Lesley C. Weston loves character-driven stories, loves words more than food. Her stories have appeared or will appear in SmokeLong Quarterly 9, Gator Springs Gazette, FlashFiction.net, AlienSkin Magazine, UR-Paranormal, Ars Medica, and Pisgah Review, others.
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Cover Art: An Bradán Feasa—(The Salmon of Knowledge). by Oisín Mac Suibhne
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In Irish mythology, the first thing to ever come into Creation was the Hazel tree, within whose branches flowed all the knowledge of the Universe. Beneath this tree, a great well formed, and within that well, a great Salmon slept. From time to time, the Hazel tree would drop its acorns into the well below, and the Salmon would awaken and eat them, one after another, until it too knew all the Universe's secrets. As time went on and the world unfurled, men came in search of the Salmon, seeking to capture it in their nets and swallow its secrets. But the Salmon knew whose net it was promised to, and stayed below.
A couple of thousand years ago, a poet named Finnécas came to the well, thinking that he would be the one to finally hook the Salmon, for it was prophesied that a man named Finn would be the one to do so. For seven years, he sat at the edge of the well, casting his nets and baiting his lines, waiting for the moment when he would outguess his quarry and claim his reward. But the Salmon was all-knowing (something the stories ignore), and so waited for its time to come.
One day, a young boy named Demne came to Finnécas and flattered him, saying that in all of Ireland there was no man better suited to teach him the ways of the poet, and begging to be taken on as his apprentice. Finnécas agreed, and Demne became his pupil. Within days, the Salmon was hooked, and the poet gave it to Demne to cook, warning him not to eat even a bite of it. And so the Salmon and the boy were left alone. Demne put the fish over the fire, but almost immediately, its skin began to blister. The boy pressed down on the blemish with his thumb in an attempt to keep his master's meal from being ruined, but the blister popped and Demne burned his finger. Immediately, the boy thrust his thumb into his mouth to ease the pain. When Finnécas returned and Demne presented the fish to him, the poet noticed an odd light burning in the boy's eyes that he hadn't seen before, and immediately knew that the prophesy hadn't been meant for him, but the child. What the old poet hadn't known was that Demne had anoth
er name, given to him by his mother: Fionn, her fair-haired one.
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Visit www.gudmagazine.com for information on additional titles by this and other authors.