Get to know our Issue VI contributors!
Lee Shanahan
Shanahan’s work is an exploration of the human being and the environment in which one is set. The artist’s work focuses on interaction and relationship. Drawn to communication and narrative in their most basic forms, it is imagery without embellishment or unwanted distraction. Shanahan takes inspiration from writers such as Cormac McCarthy and Raymond Carver, admiring their minimal, heavily charged approach to the written word. This is something he tries to replicate in visual terms. Most recently, Lee was awarded the Kilkenny Emerging Artist Award 2022 by Kilkenny Arts Office.
Claire Gleeson
Claire Gleeson is from Dublin, where she lives with her young family and works as a GP. Her stories have been published by The Ogham Stone, Lunate, Storgy and JMWW, who nominated “We Are Approaching The Next Station” for Best Small Fictions 2022. She was runner-up in the Highlands & Islands Short Story Competition 2021, and her stories have been shortlisted for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Prize, the Anthology Magazine Short Story Competition, and the Benedict Kiely Short Story Competition. In 2021 she was awarded a Words Ireland literary mentorship.
James McNaney
James McNaney is a writer from Belfast. He works as a journalist. He believes all good pieces of writing should mention crows. His work has been published in Honest Ulsterman, Abridged, the Spotlong Review and more. You can keep up to date with his output on twitter @JamesMcNaney1 and on his blog paper-sail.blog.
Alan McCormick and Jonny Voss
Alan McCormick lives in Wicklow. His writing has won prizes and been widely published, including in the recent A Wild and Precious Life – A Recovery Anthology, Best British Short Stories, Litro, Found Polaroids, The Quietus, The Bridport and Fish Prize Anthologies, Popshot and Confingo magazines. Alan collaborates with the prize-winning London based artist Jonny Voss. Jonny normally draws first, then Alan writes, and their work has featured on Époque Press e-zines, 3:AM Magazine, Fictive Dream, Words for the Wild and Dead Drunk Dublin. Their book ‘Dogsbodies and Scumsters’ was long-listed for the Edge Hill Prize. http://www.alanmccormickwriting.wordpress.com & http://www.jonnyvoss.com
Rikki Santer
A recipient of six Pushcart and three Ohioana and Ohio Poet book award nominations as well as a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Rikki Santer’s eleventh poetry collection, Stopover, which is in conversation with the original Twilight Zone series, was just published by Luchador Press. Please contact her through her website: rikkisanter.com
Mark Stewart
Writing with a social and environmental conscience; hoping to redress the balance in favour of Mother Nature. Often found deep in the woods of magical realism, in the company of wolves and other metamorphic creatures, or in the literary edgelands not far from the sea. My literary roots are firmly Celtic, having their home in both Scottish and Irish soil.
Katie Oliver
Katie Oliver is a writer based on the west coast of Ireland, whose work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions and Best Microfiction. Her debut short story collection, I WANTED TO BE CLOSE TO YOU, will be published in December 2022 with Fly on the Wall Press, and she is a first reader for Tiny Molecules. She can be found on Twitter @katie_rose_o
Anna Kisby
Anna Kisby is a poet, archivist and author of the pamphlet All the Naked Daughters (Against the Grain Press, 2017). She won the Binsted Arts prize 2019, BBC Proms Poetry competition 2016, and was commended in Faber’s New Poets scheme. Her poetry appears widely in magazines, including Magma, Under the Radar, Butcher’s Dog, Mslexia, and anthologies including The Forward Book of Poetry. She has tutored a Poetry School course on writing from historical sources, co-written a textbook on creative history and a play about historical magical practitioners. Originally from London, she lives in the rural south-west of England.
Kerry Louise Nesbitt
Kerry Louise Nesbitt is a writer and teacher who lives in Belfast. She is currently studying Creative Writing at the Open University and is working on completing a collection of short stories.
James Esler
James Esler is a writer and actor based in London. He’s had stories published in Creatures magazine and Sonder. He studied English & Related Literature at the University of York and then as an actor at the London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art (LAMDA).
Roisin Coyle
I am a writer with a background in theatre work. I have developed my work on the Royal Court’s Young Writers’ Programme and with the Abbey Theatre. I have had several plays produced and my most recent play, FLICKER, was read as a Druid Debut in 2021. This year, I took part in Gap Day in Draiocht Theatre and I am currently developing a new play with Axis Theatre, as part of their Axis Assemble programme. My writing has been shortlisted for the PJ O’Connor award and longlisted for the Bruntwood Prize. This will be my first published short story.
Anisha Bhaduri
Anisha Bhaduri is an award-winning journalist from Kolkata, India who lives and works in Hong Kong. Her debut crime novella ‘Murders in Kolkata 26’ was published by Juggernaut Books in 2020. Anisha has been longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and her work of literary fiction was first published by Random House India in a bestselling anthology. She has won the first prize in a national literary contest held by the British Council in India. In 2022, her short stories have appeared or are forthcoming across four countries in Joyland Magazine, Touchstone Literary Magazine, the other side of hope and Kitaab.
John Paul Davies
John Paul Davies, southpaw, born in Birkenhead, UK. His work appears in Banshee, Southword, Abridged, Apex, The Deadlands, Manchester Review, Channel, Pseudopod and Short Edition’s dispensing machines. A former winner of the RTÉ Guide/Penguin Ireland Story competition, he’s been placed in the Waterford Poetry Prize and TU Dublin Story Contest. An emerging crow tamer, he is based (trapped) in Navan, County Meath.
Thomas Nicholson
Thomas Nicholson is a teacher and designer originally from Essex in the UK. Since graduating from Edinburgh University in 2014 with a degree in Psychology, he has spent time living in Spain, Colombia, and Vietnam. His short stories have appeared in anthologies and magazines around the world, including publications from Madhouse Books, Thuggish Itch, and Scare Street. He is currently in the process of finalising his first novel and is actively seeking representation. When not working on this, he spends his free time thinking up new darkly comic horror stories while trying not to lose his grip on everyday reality.
Chinedu Gospel
Chinedu Gospel, Frontiers IV, is an emerging Nigerian poet. He stays in Anambra where he also attends school (@UNIZIK). He plays chess & tweets @gonspoetry. Some of his works have appeared or are forthcoming in various online and print magazines as Hoax Publications, Fiyah Magazine, Absynthe, Foglifter Press, Agbowo arts, Habour Review, The Deadlands, Blue Marble Review, Aster Lit (winner of the StarLit Award, winter issue 2021), Temz review, Savant Garde, Icefloe Press, Roughcut Press, Roadrunner Review, Kissing Dynamite Poetry & elsewhere.
Kate Lawlor
Kate is a writer from Dublin. She completed the Stinging Fly Fiction Workshop in 2020, an MA in Creative Writing at UCD in 2022, and was a recipient of the Ireland Chair of Poetry Student Award. She is currently working on a collection of short fiction.
Yetti Frenkel
In 1989 I was twenty-nine, and had just finished my degree in art history. Restless from time spent studying and writing papers, I craved adventure and a focus for my interest in documentary art. When I saw an ad for a cook wanted by the Big Apple Circus, I called and said, “I can’t cook, but I’ve worked with horses. Do you need a groom?”
I spent six months on the road with the circus, taking care of horses for equestrienne Katje Schumann. It was wonderful, and my love for the circus is expressed in The Beast that Ate My Family.
Eóin Condon
Eóin Condon writes out of Killorglin, Co.Kerry, where he lives with his girlfriend and their cat, Rhubarb. Eóin has previously been published in Sonder, An Capall Dorcha, and shortlisted in the Ó Bhéal five words competition.
Stuti Sinha
Stuti is an Indian writer from Dubai, the United Arab Emirates who writes about the human condition and emotions in poetry and prose. In 2022, she won the Westmoreland Award for short fiction and was also longlisted for the Erbacce Poetry Prize. She previously has an honourable mention in the 2021 Annual Haiku Competition by The Society of Classical Poets and has been published by them, by Sky Island Journal, Celestite Poetry, and Moss Puppy Magazine amongst others.
Kristen Olson
Hailing from Austin, Texas, Kristen Olson has lived in Dublin since 2019. In 2022, she completed her M.A. in contemporary art theory at NCAD, and she now works at a publishing house as a publicist. This is her literary magazine debut.
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