The Avalon Literary Review
Contributors Winter 2023
Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in a dozen countries and has authored three books of poetry. He has taught tertiary English courses in the US, PR China, and Palestine.

Nawal Ali has a passion for storytelling. She loves to explore the refugee narrative in fiction. She holds two master’s degrees from Gothenburg University. After more than two decades in Sweden, where she was born and raised, she decided to move to the Netherlands. She works as a general dentist in Amsterdam, where she resides with her husband and baby boy. She is currently working on a novella. Cotton Candy is her first published piece.

Scott Blackwell Mitchell is a former resident of San Francisco and an MFA graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute. He is an award-winning poet, a Pushcart Prize nominee and has most recently had poetry published in Iconoclast, Talking River, Coal City Review and others. He lives with his wife Barbara in an old fixer-upper in Champaign, Illinois, always trying to get back to that poetry and novel thing.

Rick Blum has been chronicling life’s vagaries through essays and poetry for more than 30 years during stints as a nightclub owner, high-tech manager, market research mogul, and, most recently, old geezer. His writings have appeared in more than 50 print magazines, literary journals, and poetry anthologies, as well as in numerous online publications. He is also a frequent contributor to the Humor Times.


Tom Cartelli is a recently retired Emeritus Professor of English & Film Studies at Muhlenberg College. Recent publications include a book, Reenacting Shakespeare in the Shakespeare Aftermath: the Intermedial Turn & Turn to Embodiment (Palgrave, 2019), an essay on Liz LeCompte and New York’s Wooster Group, and poems and transcriptions in the online journals Politics/Letters and The New Verse News.

Holly Day’s writing has recently appeared in Analog SF, The Hong Kong Review, and Appalachian Journal. Her hobbies include kicking and screaming at vending machines.


Milton P. Ehrlich, PhD is a 91-year -old psychologist and a Korean War veteran who began writing poems after the age of seventy. He has had many of his poems published in periodicals such as the Toronto Quarterly, Wisconsin Review, Red Wheelbarrow, Christian Science Monitor and the New York Times.

Jenny Falloon studied English Literature at UC Berkeley and, years ago, wrote articles for San Francisco Bay Area sailing magazines. She has lived in Canada, the US, the Bahamas, England and, currently lives in Spain. She writes satire, memoirs, flash fiction, and short stories. Since retiring, her writing has won prizes in the U3A Javea and Xabia Book Circle and has appeared in The Writing Disorder, Belle Ombre, Tales From a Small Planet, CafeLit, CommuterLit, Eclectica Magazine and fictionjunkies.

Short fiction by V.J. Hamilton has been published in The Penmen Review, The First Line, and Litro Online, among others. She won the EVENT Speculative Fiction prize. Most recently, her work appears in Amsterdam Quarterly. She lives and works in Toronto.

Linda Hughes has a BA in Advertising/Journalism. A native of Oklahoma she now lives in Florida where she writes poetry on her lanai as the palm fronds blow. Her poems have been published in The American Journal of Nursing's (AJN), Art of Nursing, Plainsongs, Humana Obscura, Door is A Jar, Halcyon Days, and others.


Jennifer B. Kahnweiler, PhD is a non-fiction author and poet based in Atlanta, GA. She discovered her passion for the genre when her favorite aunt gave her a book of Edna St. Vincent Millay poems. The Atlanta Writers Club awarded her the 2022 Natasha Trethewey prize in poetry. She will be published in the upcoming MacQueen's Quinterly. 

Lenny Levine's short stories have been widely published in literary magazines and journals. He received a Pushcart Prize nomination for short fiction. His mystery novel Diehard Fan is available in print, Nook, and Kindle at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com.

When he is not busy selling sugar, xanthan gum, or fd&c yellow no. 5 by day, or challenging his kids to Pokemon battles by night, Jimmy Lis can be found reading, writing, or sneaking in the occasional crossword puzzle. His work can be found in Bright Flash Literary Review and Spank the Carp, with forthcoming publications in Apocalypse Confidential and The Other Journal.

Juan Pablo Mobili was born in Buenos Aires, and adopted by New York. His poems have appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, Hanging Loose, Impspired (UK), and The Wild Word (Germany), among others. He has received multiple nominations for the Pushcart Prize, and his chapbook, Contraband, was published in 2022.  https://thepoetrybox.com/bookstore/contraband

Rebecca Monroe lives in Montana in a log cabin by a river and has been writing for most of her life. She has had over 100 stories published. Reaching Beyond, a collection of short stories, was published by Bellowing Ark Press. In addition to writing, she volunteers at the local animal shelter.

Joseph Natalicchio, who is currently retired, worked for thirty years for the federal government and ten years as a high school guidance counselor.  He writes both fiction and nonfiction. 


Adnan Adam Onart, a Turkish-American poet, lives in Cambridge, MA. His work appeared in Prairie Schooner, Massachusetts Review, among others. His first poetry collection, The Passport You Asked For, has been published by The Aeolos Press. He is one of the winners of the 2011 Nazim Hikmet Poetry Competition.


Cathy Porter’s poetry has appeared in Plainsongs, Homestead Review, California Quarterly, Hubbub, Cottonwood, Comstock Review, and various other journals. She has had chapbooks published by Dancing Girl Press and Maverick Duck Press. Her chapbook Bodies Of One Breath is forthcoming in 2023, also from Dancing Girl Press. Cathy has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes. She lives in Omaha, NE.

Marah Reinoso Vega has a BA in English/Creative Writing from Florida International University. She resides in Miami, Florida. She writes poetry, short fiction, and creative non-fiction about travel, education, and women’s empowerment.

Fran Schumer writes fiction, poetry, journalism and memoir. Her work has been published in The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Nation and other publications. Her chapbook, Weight, was published by Choeofpleirn Press in 2022 and is available on Amazon. She lives and teaches in New Jersey and on Martha's Vineyard. 

Maximilian Speicher ⟨https://maxspeicher.substack.com⟩ is a designer who writes mostly sitting on his balcony in Barcelona watching his orange trees grow. His poetry was or will be featured in The Disappointed Housewife, Impspired Magazine, and The Magnolia Review, among others. Much to his surprise (and excitement), he received a 2023 Pushcart Prize nomination.

Dillon Stearnes is a creative writer residing in the Pacific North West. His stories call upon a tumultuous life of trauma and grief. Now sober, healthy, and happy, he uses writing to inspire others and keep himself upright. More can be found at Stearnes-dillon.squarespace.com