The Avalon Literary Review
Summer 2019
Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Plainsongs, The Long Islander, and The Nashwaak Review. Her newest poetry collections are In This Place, She Is Her Own (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press), A Wall to Protect Your Eyes (Pski’s Porch Publishing), Folios of Dried Flowers and Pressed Birds (Cyberwit.net), Where We Went Wrong (Clare Songbirds Publishing), Into the Cracks (Golden Antelope Press), and Cross Referencing a Book of Summer (Silver Bow Publishing). 

Mark G. Dziak is a Pennsylvania-based writer who pays the bills with educational writing and, after work, takes on a wide variety of fiction projects, nonfiction narratives, and short-film scripts. He also enjoys travel, history, and archaeology. 

Penny Friedrich finds poetry in nature and nature in poetry. Both ask us to simply pause, to notice, appreciate, and to savor the moment. She is delighted to oblige.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in That, Muse, Poetry East and North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Thin Air and the Dunes Review.

Betinna Hansen was born and grew up in Denmark. After graduating from Aarhus Business College, she travelled the world. Hansen has lived and worked in Australia, England, Kenya, and the United States. She currently lives in New York City with her husband and their three children and holds a BA in creative writing from Columbia University. Her writing has been published in 34th Parallel Magazine, Connotation Press, Wilderness House Literary Review, among others. 
Carol Harada is a healing practitioner at Deep River Healing and a member of Laguna Writers in San Francisco. She incorporates awareness of healing and creative processes into her writing. Her work has appeared in Gravel, Fickle, Muses, The Saturday Evening Post and Bryant Literary Review among others. www.carolharadacreates.com.

Robert Hasselblad of Tacoma WA has been writing poetry since his college days, half a century ago.  Newly retired from 43 years in the lumber industry, he devotes time to writing, walking, reading and speculative napping.  Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in riverbabble, Saxifrage, Door=Jar and K’in.

Michael Howard's essays and short stories have appeared or are upcoming in a wide variety of print and digital publications. He lives in Vietnam.

Dennis J. Kafalas is the author of several short stories, two novels, Whale and An Obvious Life, and a text for teachers, Inspired Learners, Active Minds: A Guide for The English Classroom. Please visit denniskafalas.com.


At 83, Nan Mykel belongs to two writing groups, has self-published two books, maintains a blog with 14 separate pages at nanmykel.com, and makes and hangs collages on the walls that visitors strenuously avoid commenting on. A retired clinical psychologist, she has journaled and recorded her dreams for years. 

William Norine studied law and music. He has been a professional jazz drummer and composer, a college music teacher, a Boston cab driver, a Wall Street lawyer, and served 10 years as a District Attorney. His poems have or will appear in The Kansas Quarterly, The Antioch Review, the Lyric, The Coe Review, the GW Review, The Pacific Review (wherein he was featured poet) and numerous other journals.  He won the Nassau Review’s “Best Poem of the Year” award in 2005, and has been the featured poet in other journals.  

Kimberly Rivers is a Business Systems Analyst who has happily landed in Kent, Ohio. She is currently studying creative writing at Kent State University and her poetry has appeared in About Place Journal, Stonecrop Magazine, Dime Show Review, Kingdoms in the Wild, and other places. 

Lorna Roberts is from Perth, United Kingdom.

David Sapp, writer, artist and professor, lives along the southern shore of Lake Erie in North America. A Pushcart nominee, his poems appear widely in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. His publications also include chapbooks Close to Home and Two Buddha and a novel, Flying Over Erie.

Reed Venrick is from Tampa Florida.

Edward Vidaurre, the 2018-2019 McAllen, Texas Poet Laureate and author of six collections of poetry: JAZzHOUSE (Prickly Pear Publishing 2019) is his latest with When a City Ends, forthcoming from King Shot Press. He writes from the front lines of the Mexican-American borderlands of the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas and is the Publisher/Editor of FlowerSong Books.

Clay Waters has had short stories published in The Santa Barbara Review, The J.J. Outre Review, Morpheus Tales, Hello Horror, and Three-Lobed Burning Eye. His website is claywaters.org, featuring his self-published cozy mystery novel Death in the Eye.

Elisabeth Weiss teaches writing at Salem State University in Salem, MA. She has taught poetry in preschools, prisons, and nursing homes, as well as to the intellectually disabled. Her chapbook, The Caretaker’s Lament, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2016.