Mary M. Brown lives in Anderson, Indiana, and teaches literature and creative writing at Indiana Wesleyan University.  She has published poetry and essays in magazines and journals including Tar River Poetry, Quiddity, Fourth River, and Alimentum and is an editor of The Steinbeck Review, a position that has increased her interest in the complexities of justice. She is currently working on a collection of poems about Steinbeck, his life and work.   

Christopher Bundy has published stories and essays in a variety of literary journals and magazines, and his novel—Baby, You’re a Rich Man—is forthcoming from C&R Press. He was a founding editor of the literary journal New South and teaches writing and literature at Savannah College of Art & Design-Atlanta. 

Francisco Cantú is from Prescott, Arizona. From 2008 to 2012 he worked as a Border Patrol Agent for the United States Border Patrol. He is the recent recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship. Vampire Village is his first piece to appear in print.

Susan Comninos, a journalist and poet, lives in New York. Her poetry has appeared in Subtropics, TriQuarterly, The Cortland Review, Lilith, Quarterly West, Tikkun and the Forward, among others. In 2010, she won the Yehuda Halevi Poetry Competition run by Tablet magazine. This year, she was a finalist for the Dora & Alexander Raynes Poetry Prize. She is close to completing a debut book of poems, tentatively entitled "Out of Nowhere."

Graham Cotten lives with his wife in Birmingham, Alabama. His short stories have appeared in Indiana Review, The Southeast Review, and on NPR. Special thanks to Professor Elizabeth C. Burch at the University of Georgia for her always elegant explanations of aggregate litigation.

Hege Anita Jakobsen Lepri is a translator and writer who’s had Toronto, Canada as her base for the past nine years.  She was born in Norway and her short fiction appeared in Norwegian magazines in the 1990s.  She is currently studying Creative Writing at The University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies. This is her first fiction piece to be published in English.

Norita Dittberner-Jax is an urban educator and the author of three collections of poetry: What They Always Were (New Rivers Press), The Watch (Whistling Shade Press), and Longing for Home (Pudding House Press).  Her poetry has won a number of awards and fellowships.  She lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Brad Johnson, winner of the 2012 Longleaf Press Chapbook Contest, has published four chapbooks of poetry. His work also appears numerous literary journals, including Nimrod, Permafrost, Poet Lore, The South Carolina Review, The Southeast Review, Southern Indiana Review and Willow Springs.

Jean L. Kreiling was the winner of the 2011 Able Muse Write Prize for Poetry, and she has been a finalist for the Dogwood Poetry Prize, the Frost Farm Prize, and the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award.  Her work has been published widely in print and online journals, including recent issues of American Arts Quarterly, Angle Journal, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Measure, and Mezzo Cammin, as well as in anthologies.

Mary Moycik graduated from Hastings College of the Law in 2005 and practiced law for five years at Shearman & Sterling LLP in San Francisco.  Currently, she does pro bono work with the Justice & Diversity Center of San Francisco.  Before attending law school, she earned master’s degrees in art and sociology and taught art as an adjunct professor in community colleges in New York and California.   

Eleanor Paynter has roots in Texas, Rome, and New York. Her work can be found in American Literary Review, Cincinnati Review, Nimrod, Southloop Review, and in the chapbook Dismantling the Hive (Toadlily 2012). She lives in the Netherlands.

Dawn Potter directs the Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching. She is the author of several collections of poetry and prose – most recently, an anthology, The Poet's Sourcebook: Writings about Poetry, from the Ancient World to the Present (Autumn House Press, 2013). She lives in Harmony, Maine. For more about Dawn and her work, visit dlpotter.blogspot.com.

Janice Miller Potter is the author of two poetry collections, Meanwell (Fomite, 2012) and Psalms in Time (Finishing Line, 2009).  Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poet Lore, Connecticut Review, Worcester Review, Snowy Egret and other journals and anthologies.  She has taught at Rhode Island College and elsewhere.  She lives in Cornwall, Vermont.

Joseph Rathgeber is a writer and high school English teacher from Clifton, New Jersey. His fiction has been published or is forthcoming in Fourteen Hills, North Dakota Quarterly, Vestal Review, Main Street Rag, Aethlon, and elsewhere. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming in The Literary Review, Assaracus, Hiram Poetry Review, the Blue Collar Review, Spillway, U.S. 1 Worksheets, the Paterson Literary Review, and elsewhere.

Mark Rigney is the author of the play Acts of God (Playscripts, Inc.) and Bears, winner of the 2012 Panowski Playwriting Competition, also the non-fiction book Deaf Side Story: Deaf Sharks, Hearing Jets and a Classic American Musical (Gallaudet University Press).  His short fiction appears in The Best of the Bellevue Literary Review, Black Gate, and The Long Story.  Two collections of his stories are available through Amazon: Flights of Fantasy and Reality Checks.  His website is markrigney.net.

Judith Skillman’s poems and collaborative translations have appeared in Poetry, FIELD, The Southern Review, Ezra, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, The Pedestal Magazine, and numerous other journals. She’s the recipient of an award from the Academy of American Poets for her book “Storm” (Blue Begonia Press.) Two of her twelve full-length collections of poems (“Red Town,” “Prisoner of the Swifts”) have been finalists for the Washington State Book Award. Visit judithskillman.com or see her blog on techno-bling: abricabrac.

Laura Smyth is a writer, teacher, and book designer. She holds an MFA degree from Columbia University and spent many years living and working in the New York metropolitan area before moving to a small, refurbished miner’s house on the rustic Keweenaw Peninsula of upper Michigan. She is a founding member of the Keweenaw Writers Workshop, launched in 2012, in the hopes of broadening the opportunities for creative expression in her new, rural home.

Dana Stamps, II, has a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Cal State University of San Bernardino, and he has worked as a fast food servant, a postal clerk, a security guard, and a group home worker with troubled boys.  His publications to date include:  THEMA, Plainsongs, CC&D, Front Range Review, Blue Collar Review, Main Street Rag, Blue Unicorn, J Journal, Karamu, Yemassee, Bloodroot, Hurricane Review, White Pelican Review, Art Times and Avocet.

J. J. Steinfeld is a Canadian fiction writer, poet, and playwright who lives on Prince Edward Island.  He has published fourteen books, including Should the Word Hell Be Capitalized? (Stories, Gaspereau Press), Would You Hide Me? (Stories, Gaspereau Press), An Affection for Precipices (Poetry, Serengeti Press), Misshapenness (Poetry, Ekstasis Editions), and A Glass Shard and Memory (Stories, Recliner Books). His short stories and poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and periodicals internationally, and over forty of his one-act plays and a handful of full-length plays have been performed in Canada and the United States.

Shelby Stephenson's Maytle's World is forthcoming from Evening Street Press.  His Play My Music Anyhow, a chapbook, was published by Finishing Line Press, spring, 2013.


FALL 2015

Fiction by Diya Abdo, Cara Bayles, Stephanie Dickinson, Paul Hadella, Joe Jarboe, Donald Edem Quist, Alison Ruth

Poems by Austin Alexis, Byron Case, Courtney Lamar Charleston, Jessica Greenbaum, Brad Johnson, Don Kimball, Thom Schramm, Hasanthika Sirisena, Judith Skillman, Jack Vian, Catherine Wald, JJ Amaworo Wilson, Paula Yup

Nonfiction by Lyle May




BookTalk: The Number of Missing by Adam Berlin
March 25, 2015

4:15-5:30pm
Conference Room, 9th fl.

John Jay College of Criminal Justice
524 West 59th Street
New York, NY 10019

In the months after 9/11, David and Mel meet to drink, give each other comfort and reminisce about Paul—Mel’s husband and David’s best friend. The memories are not all good for David. Before Paul died, the two friends fought, brutally questioning each other’s lives. Fueled by anger and grief and too much alcohol, David stumbles through the city while holding onto a silent promise he’s made to a dead friend: he will wait for Mel to fall so he can catch her. Like the best post-war novels, where catastrophe is not an easy catalyst for plot, where characters go on living but not really, is about New York during a time when the city seemed dead. 

*All book talks are free and open to the public. 
Refreshments will be served.

 





J Journal
jjournal@jjay.cuny.edu
Department of English
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
524 West 59th Street, 7th Floor
New York, NY 10019