The Avalon Literary Review
Winter 2018 Contributors
Don Bartell lives in north Idaho, next door to the great state of Montana, where several generations of his family have their roots. He was born and raised and graduated college in southern California, where his and his stories’ roots are firmly planted. He’s working on a linked collection connecting all three states.

Mike Faran lived in Ventura, CA as a retired factory worker. He is the author of We Go To A Fire (Penury Press) and his work has appeared in The Midwest Quarterly, Coal City Review, Atlanta Review, The Listening Eye, and others. He has been twice nominated for The Pushcart Prize. Regretfully, Mike passed away in December 2017.

Having recently retired from technical writing, Barbara Fredin Fiorini is finding more satisfaction writing poems that reflect the natural world, memory, yearning, and loss. She recently won the William Redding Poetry Competition and has published in the journal of the Ohio Poetry Association, Common Threads. She lives in Columbus, Ohio. 

Alan Fleishman has previously published three novels, a novella, and six short stories. An historical novel, A Fine September Morning, has been his most successful work to date. Prior to becoming an author, Fleishman was a senior corporate executive, a strategic marketing consultant, and an officer in the U.S. Army. Today he and his wife Ann live with their Siberian cat, Pasha, high on a hill overlooking San Francisco Bay. For more information, visit: www.alanfleishman.com.

Christina Kachinoski holds an MFA in creative writing from Hofstra University. While she has had some success publishing her poetry in journals such as Northwell Hospital and Hofstra Medical School’s joint venture Narrateur, she considers her favorite poetry that which sparks her fiction. This is her first fiction publication.  

Beth Kress wrote her first poem in an Illinois cornfield when she was 10. She later raised a family in coastal Maine before moving to the Boston area. She has done several public readings and recently won an award in a poetry contest. Her work has been published in the Snowy Egret.

Virginia Marybury read Russian and French at university, and wrote her M.A. dissertation on late Soviet corruption and power, so you may imagine the sort of people she writes about.vmarybury.wordpress.com

Rachel McInturff is a wife, mother, reader, and poet from Arizona. Her work can be found at rachelmcinturffpoetry.wordpress.com.

A resident of Minnesota, Roger McKnight has lived and worked in Chicago, Sweden, and Puerto Rico. In Sweden he saw the value of human rights at work; in Puerto Rico he viewed the dignity of Puerto Ricans in their homeland before Hurricane Maria and US neglect of the island. Roger has published one book of creative non-fiction, a novel, and short fiction in literary journals, mainly about individuals on society’s margins. www.facebook.com/RogerMcKnightFans/
B.C. Nance is a writer who hasn’t given up his day job. A native of Nashville, Tennessee, by day he works for “the man” as a historical archaeologist (actually a fun job). In the evening after wandering the neighborhood looking for his lost waistline, he writes fiction and poetry. Several of his works have been published in print and online.

Lubna Safi is a Syrian American poet and student completing her doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley. Her poetry emerges from the deep-seated intersections of her bilingual upbringing. Her work has also appeared in the Gravel Literary Journal and Jaffat El-aqlam.  

Frank Scozzari lives on the California central coast. He is an avid traveler and once climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, the highest point in Africa. A multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, his award-winning short stories have been widely anthologized and featured in literary theater.

M. Stone is a bookworm, birdwatcher, and stargazer who writes poetry while living in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in San Pedro River Review, SOFTBLOW, Calamus Journal, and numerous other print and online journals. She can be reached at writermstone.wordpress.com. 

Lisa J. Sullivan is a Massachusetts native who holds an MFA in Poetry from the Solstice Low-Residency MFA Program at Pine Manor College, where she was a Kurt Brown Fellow. Her work has appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, The Comstock Review, Puckerbrush Review, and elsewhere. She is currently working on her first, full-length poetry manuscript. 

Marc Swan is a retired vocational rehabilitation counselor. His poems have recently been published or forthcoming in Scrivener Creative Review, Gargoyle, Crannóg, Midwest Quarterly, Ropes, Nuclear Impact Anthology, among others. He lives with his wife Dd in Portland Maine. 

Alan Swyer is from Santa Monica, California.

For thirteen years John Zedolik taught English and Latin in a private school. Eventually, he wrote a dissertation that focused on the pragmatic comedy of the Canterbury Tales, thereby completing his Ph.D. in English. His iPhone is now his primary poetry notebook, and he hopes his use of technology in regard to this ancient art form continues to be fruitful. 

Karen Zlotnick teaches high school English about an hour north of New York City, where she lives with her husband, Craig, and their Newfoundland dog. When she's not in the classroom, she writes both fiction and non-fiction. 

Jim Zola is a photographer and poet living in North Carolina. He currently works as a children's librarian. His publications include a chapbook titled One Hundred Bones of Weather (Blue Pitcher Press) and a full-length collection titledWhat Glorious Possibilities (Aldrich Press).