Fall 2012: Contributors

Authors

S. H. Aeschliman is a writer, editor, educator, consultant and dog-mom in Portland, OR. She blogs about food, culture, travel and lifestyle and writes creative non-fiction, fiction and poetry. Her life goals include speaking seven languages fluently, understanding Freud's theory on the fetish, being able to consistently make a perfect tortilla española and using writing as a vehicle for social change. To find out more, please visit her website.

Trista Cornelius lives in NE Portland where she loves riding her bike to the library, baking vegan chocolate chip cookies and attempting to grow her own veggies. However, she’s usually grading papers and teaching creative writing, literature, composition, and food studies at Clackamas Community College. She tries to practice what she teaches in creative writing classes – especially writing every day – but finds that sometimes anything seems better than writing, even washing dishes. Trista also writes VoiceCatcher’s monthly blog column, “Dotting Your Ts and Crossing Your Eyes.”

Melanie Green lives in Portland, Oregon. She has had poems published in The Oregonian, Windfall, fireweed, Kaleidoscope, The Christian Science Monitor and elsewhere.

Brandi Katherine Herrera is a Portland-based poet, journalist and editor who holds an MFA in Poetry from Pacific University. Her poetry, stories and reviews have appeared in Charlotte, Written River, The Oregonian and others. She is also the co-editor of  The Lake Rises, a forthcoming WITNESS POST Series anthology (Stockport Flats, 2013).

Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet. Retired after decades of communications work for the City of Portland, she has returned to her true love, writing poetry. Poems have recently appeared in regional and national publications such as RAIN Magazine, Muddy River Poetry Review, Midwest Literary Magazine and Elohi Gadugi Journal.

Sally K Lehman is the author of the novella Small Minutes and has had poetry published in several online literary magazines. Her flash fiction pieces have appeared in Bewildering Stories and her short stories in The Scruffy Dog Review, Bewildering Stories and Ascent Aspirations. Sally studied mathematics at UC Berkeley and worked in the computer industry for many years before becoming a full-time writer. She is currently living in the Portland, Oregon area. Her website for current projects is SallyKLehman.com.

Carrie Padian is in love with Portland and the written word. She spends her days facilitating workshops for Write Around Portland and exploring new ways of bending language to her will in the creative writing program at Marylhurst University. Her work can be found in the upcoming books Code Poems and Loving For Crumbs – An Anthology for Moving On as well as her website.

Emily Pittman Newberry is a poet, speaker, writer and performance artist. After living a life in hiding, she finally came out as the transgendered woman she lives as today. Her writing and performances explore the challenges of living as spiritual beings in a human world, the paradox of life. Emily wrote songs and poetry during the mass movements of the 1960s and did street theater. One Spirit Press published Butterfly A Rose, her first book of poetry, in 2010. She lives and writes in Portland, Oregon. Contact her through www.butterflyarose.com.

Donna Prinzmetal is a poet, psychotherapist and writing teacher living in Portland. Donna’s publications include Prairie Schooner, The Journal, Comstock Review, Cincinnati Review, Arroyo, and Cider Press Review. Her work has appeared in two anthologies: Chance of a Ghost and A Face To Meet the Faces. She has won two Oregon Poetry Association awards and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Kristin Roedell is a retired attorney living in Lakewood, Washington. Her work has appeared in Ginosko, Tacoma City Arts, Sierra Nevada Review and Frostwriting. She is the author of Seeing in the Dark (Tomato Can Press) and Girls with Gardenias (Flutter Press). Her third book is forthcoming in the fall of 2012 from Legal Studies Forum, a press dedicated to poetry written by attorneys. Since 2009, over 75 of her poems have appeared in 45 journals. She has been nominated for Best of the Web and the Pushcart Prize.

Nicole Rosevear lives, writes and plays in Portland, Oregon, the only city she has ever called home. She is a part-time English instructor at Clackamas Community College, a sometimes avid bicyclist and spends an embarrassing amount of time being schooled in cribbage by her teenage son. She has been published in The Bennington Review, Lewis and Clark Review, online at The International Ducati, and has work forthcoming in the North American Review.

Kelly Running is a native Oregonian, teacher and writer. Her poem "Portland's Living Room" was published this spring in the inaugural issue of Fault Lines, an anthology of West Coast poetry. She is currently writing the first in a series of mystery novels.

Penelope Scambly Schott’s verse biography A is for Anne: Mistress Hutchinson Disturbs the Commonwealth received the 2008 Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Her most recent book, Crow Mercies, 2010, was awarded the Sarah Lantz Memorial Award from Calyx Press. Penelope has worked as a home health aide, an artist’s model, a donut maker in a cider mill, and – more than anything else – a teacher. She offers poetry workshops out in Dufur, Oregon, and elsewhere.

Amy Schutzer lives in Portland, Oregon. Her first novel, Undertow (Calyx Books, 2000), was a Lambda Book Award finalist, Violet Quill Award finalist and Today's Librarian Best of 2000 Award winner. The Color of Weather, her second novel, was a finalist in the 2010 Leapfrog Press Fiction Contest. Her third novel, One Ear Turns Towards the River, is forthcoming from ArktoiBooks (2014). She is the recipient of an Astraea Foundation Grant for Fiction and a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. Taking the Scarecrows Down, a chapbook of her poetry, was published by Finishing Line Press (July 2011).

Born and raised in Oregon, Robin Schauffler has traveled in every US state and in Latin America. She has lived in the East and Southwest, but Portland is the place she always comes back to. From 1997 to 2000 she and her husband Peter lived and worked in Morelia, Mexico. “High Priest” is one chapter of her unpublished memoir about their life there. Today she writes and teaches English in Portland, and she and Peter still visit Mexico whenever possible. Her work has appeared in Open Spaces, Oregon English Journal, Street Roots, The Sun ("Readers Write"), and Oregon Quarterly online.

Leah Stenson hosts the Studio Series Poetry Reading and Open Mic in SW Portland, serves on the board of the Friends of William Stafford and is a regional editor for the upcoming publication, The Pacific Poetry Project. She writes poetry and memoir. Her poetry chapbook, Heavenly Body, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2011.

Betsy Fogelman Tighe has published widely in small literary magazines, including TriQuarterly 74, where she was nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and Verseweavers, Number 14, for which she was awarded third prize by the Oregon Poetry Association in the New Poets category. She works as a school librarian and relishes being the mother of two fascinating teens.

Deborah Brink Wöhrmann recently moved to Portland after years of teaching at Lower Columbia College. She has published in places like The Salal Review, Crosscurrents and The Raven Chronicle, and once kept a blog about her extended travels through Latin America. She loves to roam; to sit on the front porch with book and binoculars; to cook, garden, bake bread and watch movies when days go dark. She’s now finishing her first novel for young readers.

Jaime R. Wood is the author of Living Voices: Multicultural Poetry in the Middle School Classroom (NCTE 2006). Her poems have appeared in Dislocate, Matter, Weird Sisters, Rivets, Juked, ZYZZYVA and DIAGRAM. She currently teaches in the English department at Clackamas and Mt. Hood Community Colleges and lives in Portland with her husband and their family of cats.

Artists

Denise Hrouda is currently working as a mental health aide in a supported-living facility, assisting individuals with diagnoses such as schizophrenia. She engages in the Nichiren Buddhist practice of chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, while simultaneously furthering her artistic talent. She was excited to have her art piece "Shedding Old Skin" selected for the cover of VoiceCatcher6, and since then has been increasingly inspired to paint. Denise paints in a variety of mediums, including oil, acrylic and watercolor in hopes of learning more about herself. She is overjoyed to open her life to art.

Jolyn Fry has exhibited her continually evolving body of work in many group and solo shows. Whether depicting literal physical landscapes or those of a more personal, emotional nature, Jolyn says, “Surrendering to my artistic process grants me the kindest and truest perspective of myself and the life that moves around me.” To learn more about Jolyn and her exquisite art work, visit jolynfry.com.

Tina Tran is currently a student at the University of Washington pursuing her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photomedia and Art History. A contributor to VoiceCatcher6, Tina exhibited her extraordinary black-and-white photographs at Stonehenge Studio in May 2012. She enjoys spending time with her family and friends, taking pictures, making greeting cards and playing with her baby turtles.

Young Voices

Frances Bringloe goes to North Salem High School where she is in the school's winter guard, plays the French horn, writes, acts, plays video games and sews. She hates writing about herself and, just this one time, she thought writing in the third person would be less self-centered than the first person. Perhaps she was wrong, but cut her some slack. She doesn't do this a lot.

For Sage Freeburg, writing is the very crux of who she is. She assumes that without it, she would be a completely different person. She practices yoga daily and hikes quite often. She’s dedicated to a clean, whole-food lifestyle, resulting in her creating fun and interesting recipes. She also spends her time painting, sketching and playing piano. Sage is currently in her first year at Reed College.

Chaquita McClendon goes to Thomas Jefferson High School where she has been on the honor roll and has been a student of the month. She says, "I love to write and play tennis. Reading makes me calm and so does country music."

Allison Stein is eighteen years old and is currently taking classes at Portland Community College. Well-known for her love of the dark and spooky, her volunteer work at the Cat Adoption Team also has many suspecting that she is a witch. When not hunting down steampunk paraphernalia, Allison is usually found baking, reading tarot cards or designing mix tapes.

Calli Storrs likes cats, shoes, pretty hair, baking and industrial tech. Reading makes a pretty darn good writer — so she’s heard. Knee-high socks and suspenders! No tea, but sweats always make her feel better. She hopes that people will read her poem.

Poetry Fourteen poets fill this section with mothers, daughters, sons; with dreams, promises, hauntings; with joy, pain and what lies in between.		Prose I am a world creator ... . I am a voice finder. (S. H. Aeschliman, “On Voice”) Meet five prose writers who will guide you into unique worlds and invite you to hear their creative voices.		Artwork Three photographers and two painters make the pages of this journal sparkle with color, light, variety.		Young Voices We are proud to introduce five emerging writers whose work shows a depth of talent and creativity that will delight you.		Contributors Here are the 27 authors and artists whose work make our first online issue so extraordinary.

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS POETRY         To the Friend Who Talked Me Down by Amy Schutzer         Memorial Day on South Greeley Avenue by Penelope Scambly Schott         Lost Rubies by Deborah Brink Wöhrmann         Everything between your palms by Jaime R. Wood         315C by Kristen Roedell         In 4th Grade, Sally Teaches Me the Bases by Betsy Fogelman Tighe         Swan Song by Jaime R. Wood         We by Carrie Padian         The Supplicant by Emily Pittman Newberry         Jailhouse Call by Kelly Running         spoon by Brandi Katherine Herrera         my in mind ungrammared kiss by Melanie Green         Beyond Reach by Leah Stensen         You must give up your dead by Kristin Roedell         Tree Ghosts by Tricia Knoll         Personal Interview by Penelope Scambly Schott         Fairy Tale I Haven't Read Yet by Donna Prinzmetal PROSE         One Small Thing Right by Nicole Rosevear         How Mom Played Sad by Sally K. Lehman         Running with Dragons by Trista Cornelius         High Priest by Robin Schauffler         On Voice by S.H. Aeschliman ART         Lush iii by Tina Tran         The Commuter by Denise Hrouda         Which Witch by Denise Hrouda         The Center of Two by Jolyn Fry         A Knot Unties by Jolyn Fry YOUNG VOICES         weight bags by Calli Storrs         No Parking by Frances Bringloe         Falling in Love by Chaquita McClendon         Go On Then, Gunslinger by Allison Stein         Fishing Float by Sage Freeburg CONTRIBUTORS