GROWTH & DECAY
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GROWTH & DECAY •
WHAT’S NEW ON THE EXHIBITION…
Arria Deepwater (she/they) identifies as white, invisibly disabled, queer and faithfully middle-aged. Her work appears in In Between Spaces: A Disabled Writers Anthology, and she runs a newsletter, “Together, Between Worlds,” offering notes on a bad breakup with modern society. Arria shares a home by a lake with her mother near Perth, Ontario, Canada on unceded Algonquin Omàmìwininì Territory, where they regularly remind each other that they can, in fact, live without a dog. www.arriadeepwater.com
Chase Harker is a poet from New Bern, North Carolina. He is currently a student in the MFA program at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. His work has previously appeared in Flying South, BarBar, In Parentheses, and elsewhere.
Max Talley was born in New York City and lives in Southern California. His writing has appeared in Vol.1 Brooklyn, Atticus Review, Santa Fe Literary Review, Litro, and The Saturday Evening Post. Talley's collection, My Secret Place, was published in 2022 and When The Night Breathes Electric, debuted from Borda Books in 2023.
Sara Matson’s poetry can be found in Impossible Task, The Chicago Reader, Kicking Your Ass, Bone Bouquet, and elsewhere. Sara’s recent chapbook, (Women) In STEM is available from Bottlecap Press and her pop-culture inspired chapbook Special Features: DVD Poems is available from Alien Buddha Press. Sara hosts the seasonal online reading series Words // Friends + can be found on Instagram @skeletorsmom and Bluesky @saramatson.bsky.social. More of Sara’s poetry can be found at https://linktr.ee/saramatson
V.J. Hamilton calls Toronto home. Her work has been published in The Antigonish Review, Amsterdam Quarterly, and The Penmen Review, among others. She won the EVENT Speculative Fiction contest.
Robert Eugene Rubino fantasizes about rewriting the screenplay of "2001: A Space Odyssey" so that HAL is the sole survivor.
Matthew Bailey is a musician breaking into the world of poetry. He graduated with an albatross of a Bachelors of Science from York College of Pennsylvania in Music Industry and Recording Technology. He lives with his soon-to-be wife Dylann and a poorly-behaved akita named Ursa in New Jersey. You can keep up with Matthew on his Instagram or Bluesky @mymattisname.
Milo Duclayan is a student in Burlington, Vermont, but in his free time in the summers he is out LARPing in the woods, back in New York. There’s a kind of magic he has found there that he’s sure comes from another world, and it’s always his pleasure to use writing to bring some of that magic with him wherever he goes.
Nickie DeSardo is a poet, writer, and activist whose work explores identity, love, heartbreak, and social justice. With a master’s in education and linguistics, she is pursuing an MFA in Writing at WCSU, focusing on poetry and feature journalism. Her published works reflect her experiences as a feminist, mother, and advocate for change. Nickie lives on Connecticut’s shoreline with her partner, two children, and their dogs, blending artistry and purpose in her deeply confessional writing.
Gizem özbek (she/they) is an emerging queer writer from Turkey based abroad for more than a decade, currently in Brussels. she works in the field of protection for human rights defenders and spends her free time with her dog, writing and reading. she lives, loves, and struggles between home in Türkiye, Brussels and her old home Berlin. Gizem's work has appeared on velvele.net in Turkish.
Julian Macke is a Creative Writing major with a soft spot for the dark and macabre. Specializing in pieces that highlight stigmatized human experiences, he dabbles in both poetry and prose.
Trace McLaurin has worked as a screenplay writer, game developer, and desert park ranger for the past few years. As a black and trans writer, she has a passion for finding beauty in the peculiar and the forgotten. Her work strives to be unusual, captivating, and inviting, just as she hopes this story finds you.
Kollin Kennedy is a writer in the Dallas area who has graduated from the University of North Texas with his Bachelor’s in Creative English Writing. He has self-published a few collections of poetry, including his recent 'A Blue Period, which has made it to #1 in Poetry, Poetry on Nature, & Poetry on Love on Amazon in January of 2024, and has recently finished his comedic novella 'Something's Got to Give' that he plans to release very soon. He has also published his poems in other issues such as Wingless Dreamer and The Decadent Review.
Veronica Gardner lives in Red Deer, Alberta (Canada). She has moved around the globe from NYC, LA, and then to Comox Valley to find gold, and then for a summer, she watched David Blaine live in a box for 44 days in London, England. Her poem "A Cat With Wings" has been published in Poet's Choice: Poems Now and Forever edition.
Suzanne Ondrus' first book, Passion Seeds, won the 2013 Vernice Quebodeaux Prize. She was Gordon Square Review’s 2022 runner up winner for prose, the 2013 Reed Magazine Markham Poetry Prize winner, a 2017 featured UNESCO World Book Capital poet in Guinea, Conakry, and a 2018-2020 Fulbright Scholar to Burkina Faso. Her work delves into love, desire, different cultures, history, racism, body image, African fashion, and women’s sexuality. Her forthcoming poetry book, Death of an Unvirtuous Woman (Finishing Line Press) from which these poems come, examines domestic violence and homicide in an1881 Ohio German immigrant couple from Wood County. Hear her read on her YouTube channel Suzanne Ondrus and find her updates on suzanneondrus.com.
Ryan T. Pozzi is a writer and historian whose work blends cultural commentary, biography, and emotional narrative to challenge received wisdom about artists, legacy, and what we leave behind. He is the founder of the Nebraska Writers Collective and former director of the Apollon Art Space. His nonfiction is forthcoming in Ponder Review, Cursed Morsels, and Villain Era. Ryan is a member of the Biographers International Organization, Historical Writers of America, and Authors Against Book Bans. He lives in Council Bluffs, Iowa with his wife and too many notebooks.
