The Avalon Literary Review
Spring 2025
Rosalinda Alcala is a former competitive runner that has been known to run for miles and miles. She resides with her husband and two teens where suburbia meets the chaparral trails. Rosalinda is currently revising her novel and can be found at: WordBouquet.net.

Les Bohem started out as a songwriter. Emmylou Harris, Randy Travis, Alvin and the Chipmunks and some others recorded his songs. This led to prose and poetry, and his audible novel, Junk, read by John Waters. That somehow morphed into a career writing for the movies and for television, where he wrote Dante’s Peak and the mini-series, Taken, for which he won an Emmy. But what he really loves is a well-turned phrase, and so here he is, back where he started lesbohemswonderfulworldoflesbohem.com

Bonnie Day is a high school English and history teacher, a writer, musician, wife and mother from Ottawa, Canada.  She has been published in Beyond Words international literary magazine and is editing her first historical fiction novel.

Dave Donelson is a freelance writer and artist in New York whose work has appeared in dozens of publications. The author of 18 books of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and memoir, Dave was honored by the NY State Council on the Arts for his collection of graphic poetry, Visions of a Certain Age. An overview can be found at www.davedonelson.com.
Kevin Fisher has had six short stories published and his plays produced in New York and San Francisco. He is a trained epidemiologist who worked in HIV prevention advocacy globally for two decades. He now lives in rural Connecticut and writes for the Cornwall Chronicle. 

B.P. Gallagher holds a Ph.D. in Social/Personality Psychology from the University at Albany and is currently Assistant Professor of Psychology and Culture at Nazareth University. His fiction has appeared in Roi Faineant Press, Flash Fiction Magazine, Meniscus Literary Journal, and elsewhere.

Dubbed “The Princess of Darkness” by her writing mentor, Elizabeth J. Gerard casts a hard eye on the darker aspects women’s and girls’ stories, finding beauty in the shadows. Elizabeth is an award-winning and published author and performer based in Chicago. She’d like to thank her older brother for leaving an illustrated copy of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales lying around where she could find it when she was five years old, starting her on the literary journey she continues to find herself on.

Michael Grigsby has (traditionally) published four novels: Segment of One, Missing Values, Forecasting Error and Independent Variables, all analytic thrillers.  His short fiction has appeared in Children, Churches & Daddies, Down in the Dirt, Conceit Magazine and others.  Find him at michael.grigsby.com.

Holly Guran’s collection, Now Before and Ever, appeared September 2023. Author of Twilight Chorus, River of Bones and two chapbooks, Holly received a Massachusetts Cultural Council award. The popular Boston reading series she helps coordinate encourages new writers to try out their work. Selections from her narrative poems, based on a 19th century correspondence between a mill girl and the editor she married, have been performed at the Lowell National Historic Park. 

Aaron Hennessy is an emerging writer from the West of Ireland. He is working on his first novel, titled Headland, from which the story printed here was extracted.

Evelyn M. Hoyt, born on the rocky coastline of Maine, has always had a passion for writing driven by a deep empathetic nature. Her passion for giving the voiceless a voice started at a very young age when she began rescuing and rehabbing wildlife. With a master’s degree in creative writing and in her role as the editor of Ink Nest Poetry, Evelyn thrives on the opportunity to link readers with stories.

Violeta Ivanova is an international writer who blends the everyday with the almost-possible. She lives in Amsterdam with her partner and a well-behaved imaginary dog. You can read her latest work at letevanoff.substack.com.

SJ Kennedy Scott is a Manchester-based poet. Their work has been published in The Candid Review, the 6ress and The Wellington Street Review, among others. They are a Pushcart Prize nominee. 

Anita Kestin, MD, MPH, is a physician who has worked in academics, nursing homes, hospices, public health, and the locked ward of a psychiatric facility.  She is also the daughter of immigrants fleeing the Holocaust, a wife, a mother, a grandmother, and a progressive activist.  Although she had been writing for many years, she only started to submit non-scientific work during the pandemic when she was 64 years old.

Ben Macnair is an award-winning poet and playwright from Staffordshire in the United Kingdom. Follow him on Twitter @ benmacnair

Brian C. Miller is a Penn State Altoona graduate with a degree in English. His poems have recently appeared in Nebo, Old Red Kimono, and Straylight. He also has 2 chapbooks published by Finishing Line Press as well as a memoir published through Amazon. He is a Paraprofessional for the Altoona Area School District. He resides in Altoona, PA.

Michael Minassian is a Contributing Editor for Verse-Virtual, an online poetry journal. His poetry collections Time is Not a River, Morning Calm, and A Matter of Timing as well as a chapbook, Jack Pays a Visit, are all available on Amazon. For more information: https://michaelminassian.com

Elyse Moretti Forbes is a storyteller whose work has appeared on screen (Minnesota Film Festival, Reel Comedy Festival) and on the page (Adelaide, 3rd Wednesday, Creation Literary Magazine). When she’s not writing, she’s making sensory-based abstract art with her family and community. See more of Elyse’s writing at elyseforbes.com

Ryan Nelson lives in Lincoln, Nebraska and enjoys time spent around the campfire. His poetry has appeared in Hummingbird, The Lincoln Underground, Broad River Review, Blue Unicorn, Haiku Journal, Fine Lines, Lone Mountain Literary Society and in Plainsongs, where Slow Bite was published as an award poem.

Russell Rowland writes from New Hampshire’s Lakes Region, where he has judged high-school Poetry Out Loud competitions.  His poetry books, Wooden Nutmegs and Magnificat, are available from Encircle Publications.  He is a trail maintainer for the Lakes Region (NH) Conservation Trust.

Vera Sandronsky, a retired attorney and political activist, lives in California. Her essays have appeared in Jewish Currents, Wordpeace and The Sandy River Review. She has returned to the writing of poetry, her first creative love, and has a poem in Unbroken. You can find her at verasandronsky.com.

 
Janet Souter has co-authored more than thirty traditionally published nonfiction histories, biographies and fine arts books in partnership with her late husband, Gerry. She worked as a columnist, feature writer and community news coordinator for the Daily Herald Newspapers in northern Illinois. Her short story, Slam appeared in the Off Campus Writer’s Workshop anthology Turning Points, and she is currently working on a historical novel set in Chicago in the early Twentieth Century.

Marc Swan lives in coastal Maine. Poems recently published in Spindrift, Sheila-na-gig, Floyd County Moonshine, Mockingheart Review, among others. His fifth collection, all it would take, was published in 2020 by tall-lighthouse (UK).

Frederick Wilbur’s poetry collections are As Pus Floats the Splinter Out, Conjugation of Perhaps, and The Heft of Promise.  His work appears in many periodicals including The Atlanta Review, Comstock Review, The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, New Verse News, One Art: a journal of poetry, Shenandoah, The South Carolina Review, and The Southern Poetry Review. He is poetry co-editor for Streetlight Magazine.