CURIOUS & ODD
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CURIOUS & ODD •
FRESH FROM THE EXHIBITION
Cady Wu is a poet, writer, and artist of all sorts based in the Seattle area. She is a seventeen-time Scholastic Art & Writing Awards winner, and her work has similarly been recognized by Saints & Fleurs and the Chinese American Citizens Alliance, among others. She ultimately aspires to use her works to express the sentiment of being humanly beautiful. In her free time, she enjoys stargazing, baking, and hugging her tabby cat.
James Ducat’s poetry has appeared in Penn Review, Carve, Bellingham Review, CutBank, Apogee, and elsewhere, has been featured on Verse Daily, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His chapbook A Field of Nopes is from Bamboo Dart Press. His full-length collection Debris Orbits was a 2025 semi-finalist for both the Ashland Poetry Press Richard Snyder Memorial Prize and the 2025 Word Works Washington Prize. James holds an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles and is professor of English and creative writing at Riverside City College, where he advises the literary journal MUSE. Find him at jamesducat.com.
Helena Wang (she/her) is a high school junior from Connecticut, USA. Though she's a previously unpublished writer, her work has been commended by Scholastic Writing and has made Finalist for DePaul's Blue Book: Best American High School Writing. Her hobbies include playing the viola, listening to indie-rock, and drinking overpriced lattes.
David Lavenda is a poet and physical therapist from Islandia, New York, with thirty years of experience working closely with patients through pain, recovery, and resilience. Drawing from both personal experience and a career spent witnessing the quiet courage of the human body and spirit, his poetry explores bullying, complicated love, legacy, and parenting. His work has been published in Academy of the Heart and Mind.
Tamara Pantović is the author of the poetry collection "Shadows of our Shadows". Her iconic essay "I am not my hair" was published on the Montenegrina.net portal.
James B. Nicola is the author of eight collections of poetry, the latest three being Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense, Turns & Twists, and Natural Tendencies. His nonfiction book Playing the Audience: The Practical Actor’s Guide to Live Performance won a Choice magazine award.
Bella Melardi is a poet and author. She writes about the political and personal. She attends OCADU.
Emelia Delaporte is a recent graduate of Virginia Tech, where she studied English. In her time at the university, she served as editor-in-chief of Silhouette Literary & Art Magazine. Her work has been published in the Silhouette, the Shenandoah Avalon and the Floyd County Moonshine. She has work upcoming in Saw Palm, Mantis, Strip Mall and Nova Magazines. She currently lives, works and creates in Virginia.
Krysha Santiaguel is a sixteen-year-old aspiring writer based in New York City. Her work has been recognized nationally by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. She enjoys writing poetry and experimenting with bold formatting. You can find more of her work on Instagram, by the username @kreeshei.
Alex Rogers is a satirical fiction writer whose words range from goofy to grotesque to unexpectedly grounded. His stories have appeared in The Write Launch, Santa Barbara Literary Journal, Starlite Pulp, Grub Street Online, Bizarro Circus of Madness, Foofaraw Press, Internet Angelz, and A Thin Slice of Anxiety. He lives in Los Angeles with his two cats, Merlin and Osha (the Tuxedo Twins).
Nora Curtis is a former teacher and library desk clerk. She lives in Ypsilanti, MI with her husband, two young kids, affection dog, and capricious cat. Follow her @noraelisabethc
Margaret Vihnly is a Toronto native and an up-and-coming writer of her own making. 'Own making' in the sense that all of her writing comes in the dark of night, under a veil of sleep, so that she may be left unbothered for a few hours until life comes back online. It is a sanctuary that lives only in her mind and within a hard drive, gathering dust, and hopefully, now for the world to read.
Kripa Nidhi has lived in Houston, TX for the past 20+ years, and when not writing, Nidhi works as an engineer.
Elysse Ladjevic is a retired neuroscientist and writer of magical realism, literary, and Gothic stories. Marooned in Boston, she often writes about her Californian upbringing as a way to go back home.
Florence Murry is the author of Last Run Before Sunset, Finishing Line Press. Her poems have appeared in Pinch, Atlanta Review, Slipstream Press, Magazine, Off the Coast, Black Fox Literary and others. Florence lives in Southern California with her husband and two cats.
Chris Stanton is a creative writer and artist in Los Angeles. His first novel Kings of the Earth, the story of a haunted surfing town on Lake Michigan, was published in 2019. His short stories have appeared in more than a dozen literary magazines and his “novel in stories” Dandelion Crossing arrived in 2025. Kirkus Reviews called it “a heartfelt and deeply human collective portrait set in a palace of consumerism.”
Alexandria Wyckoff has a BA in Creative Writing from SUNY Oswego. She has one book of poetry titled The Pain Cycle, with work also appearing in BarBar, Kennings Literary Journal, The Bookends Review, and others. Find more of her work at https://www.alexandriawyckoff.com/
William Whyte is the recipient of the Yale Book Award. He graduated with a number one ranking in his class from Yale College. He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year of college. He lives in Manhattan Beach, California.
Rory Reinim is a poet and author who is currently pursuing publishing their debut novel and becoming a librarian. They graduated from Slippery Rock University with a Bachelor’s in Creative Writing, and will be attending PennWest for a Master’s in Library Science. You can find them at linktr.ee/itsrory1220
Robert Eugene Rubino is a former copy editor, sports columnist and adult literacy tutor whose first published poem appeared eight years ago when he was 70. Since then he's published two collections and his poetry has appeared in various online and print journals. He's a regular at poetry open mics throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond.
George Abreu is a writer and poet based in Pennsylvania. His work engages themes of inheritance, displacement, class, mortality, and the emotional architecture of everyday life. Blending meditative lyricism with narrative clarity, his poems examine how personal histories intersect with larger cultural forces and his Cuban / American upbringing.
R. Young, a native and long-time resident of the Gulf Coastal South of the United States, now lives in Saint Paul de Fenouillet, France. The Core Review of Fork Apple Press will publish his work in an upcoming issue.
Rob Schwartz writes from New York City. He has written for Madison Avenue, Hollywood and points beyond. He is currently working on a collection of short stories.
Hayden Winston is a multilingual, bisexual, Caribbean writer and activist. He is currently pursuing a doctorate in organizational leadership at UNC Chapel Hill. His work draws on his experiences growing up in Los Angeles as the queer son of West Indian immigrants. His poetry has featured in The Caribbean Writer, In Parentheses, and Terror House Press.
Victoria Thompson is currently working as an Adjunct English Professor at Longwood University in Farmville, VA where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in English. Upon graduation, she acquired a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing from West Virginia Wesleyan College. She spends her days writing and reading fiction featuring empowered women finding their voice amidst trials and tribulations.
Siyan Sienna Chen is a student writer with a focus on poetry and fiction. She serves as president of her school’s Poetry Club and has published work in school and university-affiliated journals, including translations of Louise Glück. She is also involved in literary editing and dramatic writing, with an interest in the relationship between language, performance, and emotional experience.
Camdyn Bass is currently an MFA candidate at New Mexico State University where she serves as the Poetry Editor for the graduate led literary magazine, Puerto Del Sol. She is the recipient of the Ruth Scott Poetry Award and Harris Kunz Poetry Thesis Prize. Her piece, "Put Down Your Weapons", can be found online at Poets.org.
Saru Potturi is an Indian-American poet based in California. They received their B.A. in English from Pomona College. Saru's work has appeared in publications such as Wilderness House Literary Review and Agave Review, and draws heavily from their lived experience as a queer racialized minority.
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Sarah Crane is a lifelong reader and writer, unpublished unless you count college papers or medical journals. She is a youngish old person who has spent 35 years as a physician and parent living in Boston. She reads two novels at any given time, The New Yorker, and two papers delivered daily although she knows that is archaic but can't stop as it links her to her childhood at the table with her parents.
John C. Krieg is a retired landscape architect and land planner who formerly practiced in Arizona, California, and Nevada. He is also retired as an International Society of Arboriculture (ISA) certified arborist and currently holds seven active categories of California state contracting licenses, including the highest category of Class A General Engineering. He has written a college textbook entitled Desert Landscape Architecture (1999, CRC Press). In conjunction with filmmaker/photographer Charles Sappington, Mr. Krieg has completed a two-part documentary film entitled Landscape Architecture: The Next Generation (2010).
Jane Dill is an emerging writer from Mississippi. She has an MFA in Creative Writing, an MA in French, and a BA in Fine Arts. She travels often to Paris.
Charlotte Burnett is dyslexic and a high-functioning autistic. She lives in Scotland, and has had short stories published in literary journals such as The Write Launch and Coffin Bell. She also has a Bachelor’s in Science from the Open University, focusing on Psychology and Sociology.
Anna Oberg is a professional photographer based in Estes Park, Colorado. When she's not arranging family portraits with the perfect view of Long's Peak as backdrop, she focuses on writing tiny memories and small stories. She has been published in Hunger Mountain Review, The South Dakota Review, Mud Season Review, Pidgeonholes, Causeway Lit, The Maine Review, decomp Journal, The Festival Review, and Split Rock Review, among others.
Esabeau Harrington is a senior creative writing student at Rocky Mountain College in Billings Montana. Her work often involves the relationships in her life and also includes themes surrounding mental and physical health.
Rodney Crisp is an Australian author and freethinker who lives and writes in Paris near Montmartre, the favorite haunt of the 19th-century impressionist painters, between the modest lodgings in which Suzanne Valadon gave birth to her son, Maurice Utrillo, and the elegant bourgeois apartment of Paul Cézanne.
Andrew Sarewitz has published more than 60 short stories (website: www.andrewsarewitz.com) along with several scripts. Mr. Sarewitz is a recipient of the 2021 City Artists Corp Grant. His play, Alias Madame Andrèe, garnered First Prize from Stage to Screen New Playwrights in San Jose, CA.
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