Stonecrop 08
Contributors' Notes
Anonymous. The author is a senior at Singapore American School who would prefer to remain anonymous given the sensitive nature of the subject.
Marie-Andrée Auclair. Marie-Andrée Auclair’s poems have appeared in many print and online publications, such as Bywords.ca; Sumac Literary Magazine; Tokyo Poetry Journal and forthcoming at The High Window. In 2024, one of her poems was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and her chapbook Skipping Stones” written with Poet Adrienne Stevenson was published by Bumble Puppy Press. She lives in Canada and enjoys photography, traveling and dancing.
John Barrie. John Barrie may have put aside a dedicated focus on the writing life for one of those capital J Jobs that pays the mortgage and chips away at student loan debt, but he's always game for a micro fiction challenge. His stories have appeared in too many previous editions of Stonecrop to list, as well as in the Cabin's "Writers in the Attic" series and the Boise Weekly. When he isn't working or writing, John spends time with his family—one spouse, two adult children, three cats, and two dogs—or curating his Letterboxd account.
Mara Bateman. I live in Boise, Idaho where I work at the St. Luke's Cancer Institute and moonlight as a writer of fiction and poetry. My work has appeared in several local publications, including the 2021, 2023, and 2024 editions of the "Writers in the Attic" Anthology, Death Rattle Literary’s Ekphrasis: Poetry, Oroboro Vol. 9 and the Boise Weekly. I am the creator of This Poem Is For You: Horoscopic Poetry by an Unlicensed Bystander. When I am not writing, I enjoy running, hiking, watercoloring and repeatedly kissing my cats on the face.
A.J. Belmont. Albert John Belmont is a contemporary artist based in New Hampshire. Working since the mid-'90s, his art focuses on the deconstruction of subjects to convey form and feeling through simplicity. Since 2020, his drawings and oil paintings have delved into autobiographical explorations of spaces, sleep, quiet experiences, and key memories. His work has most recently been exhibited in New York and Boston.
Cat (Caitlin) Bullock. A storyteller since childhood, Cat (they/them) graduated in 2018 from the Boise State Honors College with a BA in Creative Writing, but has yet to find a way to monetize their degree. Cat enjoys thrifting tchotchkes, rockhounding in remote locations, and standing over a sink eating dill pickles straight from the jar. A frequent outsider, Cat’s Western Gothic-informed fiction and non-fiction writing frequently examine identity, Otherness, and isolation—in other words, they’re a huge hit at parties. Most recently a Portlander, Cat currently resides in a tiny dot-on-the-map Eastern Oregon town with their multiple rescue cats. Ironic? Maybe. But the other cats don’t write.
Marek Danielewski. Marek Danielewski is an award-winning multi-medium artist whose work has been featured in Philadelphia, New York and Arizona. His work is housed in Manhattan’s MOMA library collection. Marek is the winner of the Sandra Karlin Award of Excellence and the Adam Styka Juried Exposition Award. He’s currently working on a hybrid visual art and poetry project entitled The 12 Caesars of Rome featuring contemporary poetry from local Arizona poets.
Augustina Droze. American artist Augustina Droze (1981) is most recognized for her large scale murals and detailed paintings of insects, animals and other natural forms in a magical world of her imagination. Droze’s paintings and installations have been exhibited in galleries and museums internationally in numerous shows, notably the Castellani Art Museum, Niagara Falls, New York (2014), Banaras Hindu University as Fulbright Senior Scholar, Varanasi, India (2017), the Beijing US Embassy, China, as Distinguished Artist Envoy (2022), the Huzhou Art Museum (2023) and the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum (2024).
Michael Feeney. Michael Feeney was born and raised in Northern California. He studied history at Boise State University and has since worked in hospitals, prisons, and in construction. Feeney lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Matthew Fertel. Matthew Fertel is a Sacramento-based abstract photographer who seeks out beauty in the mundane. His work focuses on capturing the usually unnoticed minutiae we all encounter daily. He has worked in the Photography Department at Sierra College since 2004. Before that, he was a fine art auction house catalog photographer in San Francisco for over 10 years. His photographs have appeared in various publications, including Peatsmoke Journal, Red Ogre Review, Wild Roof Journal, About Place Journal, Mud Season Review, Kitchen Table Quarterly, and many others.
Shanmukh Gollu. Shanmukh Gollu is an artist and writer, residing in India. He earned a bachelor's degree from the M.S. University of Baroda in Fine Arts in 2022. He writes and draws, reacting to his social experiences. His works reflect on the negotiations made between different identities that we assume and shed every day, tuning and adjusting in response to each other’s politics. His visuals draw from literature, films, history, social media and from his own writings.
Natalie Hammonds. Natalie Hammonds is an MFA graduate student currently working on her Master’s in Creative Writing from Concordia St. Paul University. She lives in Houston, Texas, and teaches theater arts to middle school students. She also holds her BFA in theater from Texas State University. Natalie hopes to fulfill her childhood dream of becoming a published author in any way possible. Her pronouns are she/her, and her Instagram handle is @missnataliemarie.
John Herzfeld. John Herzfeld is a teacher in Kentucky and a student around the world.
Susan Lasater. Susan Lasater earned a BA in Visual Art from Boise State University. She is a painter, poet, and writer. Her work can be found at Paper Plane Press and on MING Studio’s My____ on Mondays podcast. With twenty-seven screws and four rods drilled into her spine, plus a plate in her skull, she has the power to predict rain and snow with 98.97% accuracy.
Iraeda Mendell. I started writing rockstar songs at age eight and have not stopped since; it has only evolved from mediocre middle-school poetry to deep and thoughtful writing. I hope to craft masterpieces someday based on all sorts of subject matters; from infantile doo-wop to pieces about loss, love, curiosity, and life. I found my passion for writing poetry through courses in college. While I majored in Creative Media, specifically sound and audio, I learned many tips from great professors who, like Mr. Keating from Dead Poets Society, continue to encourage my love for poetry and writing. I strive to be known by not only sound work but the words I have to say. Every year throughout college, I performed my poems at college-run events and found a power in my voice when I spoke my own words.
Ava Micek. Ava Micek is a 22 year old student attending Michigan Technological University in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
Glenis Moore. Glenis is a relatively new writer working in the flat lands of the Fens near Cambridge, UK. When she is not writing, she makes beaded jewelery, knits, reads and runs 10K races slowly. She has been previously published by Dust Poetry, The Galway Review, Infinity Wanderers and Cosmic Daffodil.
Larry O’Neal. Larry O’Neal is the author of stories published in Book of Matches, East of the Web (UK) and Skunk Ape Review. As a singer-songwriter, O’Neal’s humorous, absurdist songs are available online. He holds a BA in Creative Writing from Webster University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Lindenwood University. www.ukularry.com.
Hari Parisi. Hari B. Parisi’s (formerly Hari Bhajan Khalsa) poems have been published in numerous journals, most recently in Atlas and Alice, Paper Dragon and Poetry South. She is the author of three volumes of poetry, including She Speaks to the Birds at Night While They Sleep, winner of the 2020 Tebot Bach Clockwise Chapbook Contest. She has recently moved from the city to reside in her hometown in the heart of Oregon.
Rory Perkins. Rory is a British writer focusing on shorter works. He has been published in Vast Literary Press, SoFloPoJo, Passengers Journal, and Iceblink, among others. He can be found at @roryperkinswriter on X.
Christopher Rubio-Goldsmith. Christopher Rubio-Goldsmith was born in Merida, Yucatan, grew up in Tucson, Arizona and taught English at Tucson High School for 27 years. Much of his work explores growing up near the border, being raised biracial/bilingual and teaching in a large urban school where 70% of the students are American/Mexican. A two-time Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, his writings will appear in Sport Literate, and The Yearling and have been published in The Twin Bill, The San Pedro Review, Clockhouse and other places too. His wife, Kelly, sometimes edits his work, and the two cats seem happy.
Sarah Sorensen. Sarah Sorensen (she/her), MA, MLIS is a queer writer based in the Metro Detroit area. Sarah has been published over 70 times in lit mags, but her most recent work can be found in Soundings East, Jet Fuel Review, and Hare's Paw. Sometimes she daydreams about rescuing every shelter dog in Metro Detroit, but she just has one tiny fireball of barks. Her work is forthcoming from The Sonora Review, so stay tuned!
Bethany Tap. Bethany Tap is a queer writer, wife, and mom of four. Her poems and stories have been published in Litmosphere, Fahmidan Journal, Yellow Arrow Journal, and The MacGuffin, among others. Her debut novel, Upon the Burning, is forthcoming in 2025 with Midnight Meadow Publishing. More of her work can be found at bethanytap.com.
Mike Wilson. Mike Wilson’s work has appeared in magazines including The Gravity of the Thing, Mud Season Review, The Pettigru Review, Still: The Journal, and in Mike’s book, Arranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic. Mike’s rap sheet includes the League of Minnesota Poets Award, the Maine Poets Society Award, and the Chaffin/Kash Prize of the Kentucky State Poetry Society.
Amelia Wright. I am a recent graduate of Columbia's MFA program in nonfiction creative writing. I have work appearing in Oyster River Pages, Variant, and The Hunger Journal, among others. I grew up in Baltimore City and now live in Los Angeles. I am currently working on a memoir about pain and trying to decide if I want to be a coral reef or a tree when I die. ameliaclarewright.com.
Robin Young. Based in Borrego Springs California, artist Robin Young currently works in mixed media focusing mostly on collage and contemporary art making. Her focus on collage art using magazine clippings, masking tape, wallpaper, jewelry, feathers, foil etc. allows her to develop deep into the whimsical and intuitive.