Editors: Allison Dalton & Gretchen Henderson
Contributors (in alphabetical order):
Margaret Bentley (Texas), Women’s Work
Traci Evadne Currie & Danielle De La Mare (Michigan), Continuing In Thy Footsteps
Allison Dalton (California), Mourning Square, 2016
Alana de Hinojosa (California), what you already know
Mireidys Garcia (Massachusetts), exIst
Gretchen Henderson (Washington, DC), Heart—Hear—Earth
Kim Henderson (California), [Untitled]
Amaris Feland Ketcham (New Mexico), A Hole in the Breast
David B. Marshall (Illinois), Angels of Our Natures
Sarah Minor (Ohio), Portrait of a Woman, After Wislawa Szymborska
Kirsten Ogden (California), Cage
Monica Ong (Connecticut), The Glass Larynx
Jan Pfeifer (Kentucky), What is this moment asking of us?
Kerry Tepperman Campbell (California), Downpour Expected
Katy Santa Maria (Pennsylvania), Anonymous
Ellen Sheffield (Ohio), Elemental Errors: Air
Sue Sommers (Wyoming), Empathy Flower-Reciprocity Clock
Alison Stein (New York), The Terrible Thing Has Happened
Emily Troia (Ohio), Mental Coordinates
Darrell E. Ward (Ohio), A Formula for the Universe
Nanette Yannuzzi-Macias (Ohio), Venus Trapped
and for Mimi Chiang, MemorIaM In
Margaret Bentley is a writer working in Austin, Texas, where she is part owner of a honky tonk and a beer garden. She has been an associate editor on the last four Sudden Fiction and Flash Fiction anthologies published by W. W. Norton. She guides workshops using multi-media journaling for combat veterans, therapists, and others working through trauma.
Traci Evadne Currie & Danielle De La Mare both teach at the University of Michigan-Flint in the Department of Communication Studies, where they incorporate Mindful Holistic Health and Wellness into their teaching. A veteran spoken word artist, Traci also co-facilitates spoken word workshops with young women in the juvenile detention system.
Allison Dalton is an Associate Professor at Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, where she teaches project-writing and supports students’ writing and research practice in studio art and design classes. She is also an ordained reverend of the Los Angeles branch of the Church of Craft. She has a fiction MFA from Columbia and BA in Creative Writing from UC Santa Cruz. allisonlaytindalton.com
Raised in northern California, Alana de Hinojosa earned a B.A. from Hampshire College and is currently a doctoral student at UCLA’s César E. Chávez Department of Chicana/o Studies. As a poet pursuing an ethnic and cultural studies dissertation concerned with histories of migration, displacement and erasure, her methodology considers how various texts and materials, across form, genre and language(s), imagine alternative poetic geographies. She centers oceans and rivers throughout her work to privilege water as a source of diasporic histories. alanadehinojosa.wordpress.com
Born in Cuba and raised in Miami, FL, Mireidys Garcia writes to draw constellations across immigrant experiences. Her two books: Letter to the Immigrant’s Child and Split the Red Earth Open have won awards at The New England Book Show. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Duende, Open Letters Monthly, DISfunkshion, and The Reader. Copies of her collections can be found in the Benson Latin American collection at UT Austin and at Hampshire College.
Gretchen Henderson writes across genres, visual arts, and music. Her publications and performances include award-winning novels, creative nonfiction, poetry, libretti, art and cultural criticism (most recently Ugliness: A Cultural History). She teaches at Georgetown University and has taught workshops at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop for writers and artists who contributed to this collaborative quilt. bookunbound.wordpress.com
Kim Henderson is the author of The Kind of Girl (Rose Metal Press 2013). Her stories have appeared in The Kenyon Review, Tin House Open Bar, Flash Fiction Online, Cutbank, River Styx, The Southeast Review, and elsewhere. Originally from New Mexico, with an MFA from the University of Montana, she now lives on a mountain in Southern California and chairs the Creative Writing Department at Idyllwild Arts Academy. kimnhenderson.com
Amaris Feland Ketcham is an honorary Kentucky Colonel and assistant professor at the University of New Mexico. She occupies her time with open space, white space, CMYK, flash nonfiction, long trails, f-stops, line breaks, and several Adobe Programs running simultaneously. Her work has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, the Los Angeles Review, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, the Utne Reader, and is forthcoming in The Kenyon Review. amarisketcham.com
David B. Marshall is an English and history teacher in Chicago. In addition to making visual art, he writes a daily haiku blog and is the author of an illustrated book-length haibun called The Lost Work of Wasps: An Essay with 243 Titles. He holds an MA in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University and an MFA in Writing from Bennington College. dmarshall58.wordpress.com
Sarah Minor is from Iowa, received her MFA from the University of Arizona, and is pursuing her doctorate in Creative Nonfiction at Ohio University. She runs the Visual Essays series at Essay Daily and is the author of The Persistence of the Bonyleg: Annotated (Essay Press). Her essays have appeared in The Normal School, Passages North, Conjunctions, Black Warrior Review, Seneca Review, Territory, and other journals and exhibitions. sarahceniaminor.com
Kirsten Ogden is Associate Professor of English at Pasadena City College and lives in Los Angeles. She grew up in Hawai'i, received her MFA from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and her PhD in Theater from Louisiana State University. Ogden is a former Peter Taylor Poetry Fellow for the Kenyon Review, a two-time judge for the Flannery O'Connor Short Fiction Prize, and during summers teaches in the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshops. kirstenogden.com
Monica Ong is a visual artist and poet living in New Haven, Connecticut. Her debut collection, Silent Anatomies, received the Kore Press First Book Award. She has been exhibiting artwork for over a decade nationally and internationally. An MFA graduate in Digital Media at the Rhode Island School of Design and Kundiman poetry fellow, Monica currently serves as the User Experience Designer at the Yale Digital Humanities Lab. monicaong.com
Jan Allen Pfeifer is an architect who works from a creative design process applied to physical forms that emerge within and between people as they come together in new and different ways. She has worked on projects across different states. A native of Kentucky, she now lives and writes in Woodstock, New York.
Katy Santa Maria lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and is the Social Media Specialist for Iridescent, a non-profit that provides STEM education to kids worldwide. She now adds bookmaking, handmade ornaments, and zines to her Etsy shop, whose proceeds go directly to women’s organizations: ArtHelpingWomen.
Ellen Sheffield is a visual artist who explores the relationship between language, materiality, and time through small-scale hand held objects: artist‘s books. She teaches at Kenyon College and maintains a studio in Gambier, Ohio. ellensheffield.com
Sue Sommers is an artist, editor, publication designer, and meddler who lives on a cattle ranch along the Green River near Pinedale, Wyoming. She is a founder of Pipeline Art Project (“Pumping Art from the Energy State of Wyoming”). Her visual art can be found at suesommers.com
Alison Stein is a writer and jewelry artist based in New York City. Her writing has been published widely, including The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, The Toronto Star, Mother Jones, Huffington Post, and Best Women’s Travel Writing. Her freelance assignments have brought her around the world from China to India to Morocco to South Africa. VeryCuriousMind.com
Kerry Tepperman Campbell’s debut collection, Dreaming of France, will be published by Blue Light Press in 2017. Her work won the 2016 New Millennium Award for Poetry. She lives in Northern California and is working on a new book that recently brought her by cargo ship to Pitcairn Island, the second most remote place on earth.
Emily M. Troia studied Physics and Philosophy at Wesleyan University and received her BA in Studio Art from Ursuline College. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Poetry from the NEOMFA Program in Northeast Ohio and works at the Cleveland State University Poetry Center.
Darrell E. Ward is a science writer based in Columbus, Ohio, where he writes about cancer and HIV disease. A Fulbright Scholar, he spent two months each in Botswana, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe, working with Africans fighting the AIDS epidemic. In 2009, he and group of friends founded the nonprofit Better Healthcare for Africa. He wishes to thank Ellen Hoover for creating the final image and adding purple for a deep-space feel.
Nanette Yannuzzi-Macias is a visual artist, writer, educator, and mother, whose creative work is inspired and challenged by the way these identities are constructed, reconciled, misinterpreted, and reinvented. She received degrees from Cooper Union and the University of California, San Diego, and also was a fellow at the Whitney Museum ISP. She is based in Oberlin, Ohio, where she teaches the practice of art at Oberlin College & Conservatory. nymacias.com
Mimi Chiang (in memoriam): In the process of reconnecting with past participants, we learned sad news: a member of our 2013 workshop died from cancer earlier this year. As one of her friends, Audrey Camp, wrote in an online memorial: Mimi was “a bright light; a testament to resilience and strength; a writer; a ballerina; a lawyer; an optimist; a traveler; a champion” and a mom whose spirit implored us “to speak now, hug now, get together now, take pictures now, ask questions now, tell stories now, listen to one another now.” This quilt is offered in memoriam of Mimi.
Since the launch of the quilt, more squares have been added by (in order of submission):
Nina Mukerjee Furstenau (Missouri), Still We Rise
Debra DiBlasi (Missouri & Portugal), So Small, So Brief
Brooke Albrecht (Ohio), Kindness Matters
Lorna Wood (Alabama), What I Want to Know
Nina Mukerjee Furstenau, born in Thailand to parents from India and raised in small-town Kansas, loves to use the lens of food to reveal history, culture and place. Her publications include journalism, fiction and award-winning creative nonfiction (Biting Through the Skin: An Indian Kitchen in America’s Heartland, which received both the M.F.K. Fisher Grand Prize and Les Dames d’Escoffier International Grand Prize, as well as Savor Missouri: River Hills Country Food & Wine, and the upcoming anthology Pie & Whiskey). She teaches food writing and journalism at the University of Missouri. ninafurstenau.com
Debra DiBlasi is an award-winning multimedia, multi-genre author six books. Her literary writing has appeared in many notable anthologies, journals and newspapers, with adaptations to film and radio in the US and abroad. She is a former art columnist, educator, and publisher. Originally from Missouri, Debra now lives in Portugal. debradiblasi.com
Brooke Albrecht is an illustrator based in Columbus, Ohio, who finds wonder in things big and small. Her illustrations and design work have appeared in McGraw-Hill Education, Ohio Magazine, New Hampshire Magazine, and other publications. Her work is inspired by folk art and patterns. brookealbrechtstudio.com
Lorna Wood is a violinist and writer with a Ph.D. in English from Yale. Raised in Oberlin, Ohio, she now lives in Auburn, Alabama. Her poems have appeared in Gnu, Shuf, These Fragile Lilacs, Cacti Fur, Birds Piled Loosely, and Luminous Echoes, an anthology of poems shortlisted in Into the Void’s 2016 poetry contest. Lorna has also published fiction and scholarly articles, and she participated in the Women’s March on Washington. lornawoodauthor.wordpress.com