photo robert neil cohen
Beverly Akerman (Lighter than Air) commenced her creative writing career after more than two decades of
bacterial molecular genetics research. Her short stories have appeared in Canada , the U.S. and cyberspace--in carte
blanche, The Nashwaak Review, Red Wheelbarrow, Rio Grande Review, Fog City Review, and Descant. She won first prize in the
Fog City Writers Short Story Contest and was recently named a finalist for the second time in The Writers’ Union of
Canada Short Prose Competition for Developing Writers. Her nonfiction and academic work has appeared in major
Canadian newspapers and magazines, on CBC Radio One’s Sunday Edition ( Canada ’s equivalent to NPR), as well as in
many other lay publications and learned journals. This is Beverly's first appearance in r.kv.r.y.
Writer and photographer Robert Neil Cohen (cover art and photo above, along with others that grace
this issue here,here and here) grew up in East Texas where he learned to appreciate a good yarn and the wide vistas the
state offered. After graduating from Northwestern University, he served in the Peace Corps in Korea, which was followed
by graduate study at The University of Texas at Austin and UCLA. He spent twelve years as a professor of film studies
specializing in Japanese cinema, teaching at UC Santa Barbara and UCLA, eventually migrating to the entertainment
industry, where he worked as a development executive. He worked as a screenwriter and was the recipient of the
Motion Picture Academy’s prestigious Nichol screenwriting fellowship. He currently lives in Southern California where
he takes pride in his passion for photography, his wife, who is a prominent Los Angeles attorney, and his son, an
automotive entrepreneur.
Ryan Crider (In the Morning) has previously been published in Moon City Review. He is the past Section Editor
for the literary journal Natural Bridge. As a graduate student, he has been nominated twice for the AWP Intro Journals
Project in fiction. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in English and creative writing at the University of Louisiana at
Lafayette and the editor of The Southwestern Review. This is his first appearance in r.kv.r.y.
Phillip Gardner (Cry Your Happy Tears) lives in Darlington, South Carolina where he writes stories and
screenplays. His work has appeared in The North American Review, The Chattahoochee Review, Hayden's Ferry Review,
Potomac Review, and other fine journals. He is the author of Someone To Crawl Back To, a collection of short stories.
This is his first appearance in r.kv.r.y.
Mel Hicks (Swan Dive) is a novelist, short story writer and screenwriter. She has been a finalist in
Glimmer Train’s Very Short Story Award and the William Faulkner Short Story Competition. Her screenplay was a
finalist in the Tennessee Screenwriting Association Script Competition. She lives in Georgia with her husband and three-
year-old daughter, a gaggle of cats and dogs, and one very overworked vacuum cleaner. In her former life as a television
promotion writer/producer, she was forced to write in thirty-second increments; she decided she had more to say. Swan
Dive is her first publication and her first appearance in r.kv.r.y. We look forward to more great work by Ms. Hicks in the
future. Check out more of her writing at www.melhicks.com.
Poet Paul Hostovsky's poems (here, Letting Go) appear widely online and in print. He has been
featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and The Writer's Almanac. He has two poetry chapbooks, Bird in the Hand (Grayson
Books) and Dusk Outside the Braille Press (Riverstone Press). r.kv.r.y. has been publishing Hostovsky's poems from the
very beginning (here and here, for instance). To read more, visit Paul's website: www.paulhostovsky.com
Scott Kauffman (Rocking) graduated summa cum laude from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, and in the upper
ten percent of his class from the Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon, where he was a member of the
Environmental Law Review and received the American Jurisprudence Award in Conflict of Laws. Following graduation, Scott
tried dozens of criminal cases, first as an assistant state prosecutor and then as an assistant public defender in a rural
Ohio community, which provides much of the background for his first novel, In Deepest Consequences, published by
Medallion Press in 2006. Scott now resides in Newport Beach, California. He maintains an active law practice, which
includes the representation of those charged with white-collar crimes. He is currently at work on a second novel and a
collection of short stories. When not working or writing, Scott gardens, reads, and listens to baroque music. This is Scott's
first appearance in r.kv.r.y.
Eliza Kelley (Breaking Trees) teaches Poetry, Fiction, Memoir, Nature Writing, American Indian Literatures,
Human Rights Discourse and American Minority Literature at Buffalo State College in New York. Her work has appeared in
literary magazines and anthologies such as Common Sense 2, Absinthe Literary Review, Facets, Literary Potpourri, Antietam
Review, Square Lake, Pedestal Magazine, “The Kali Guide,” Icarus International, “The Anthology of New England Writers,” and
“Red White and Blues: Poetic Vistas on the Promise of America.”
Poet Greg McBride (Transit) has published his poems, essays, and reviews at Bellevue Literary Review,
Chautauqua Literary Journal, Connecticut Review, Gettysburg Review, Hollins Critic, Poet Lore, Southeast Review, Southern
Indiana Review, Southern Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Three times nominated for a Pushcart Prize, he edits The Innisfree
Poetry Journal (www.innisfreepoetry.org). He served as an Army photographer in the Vietnam War and began writing
after a 30-year legal career. The father of three and grandfather of five, he lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with his wife
Lois, also a writer. This is Greg's second appearance in r.kv.r.y. He previously published At the Cemetery here.
Fred Melton (Panel 29e, Line 38) is a five-time Pushcart nominee whose work has appeared in Best American
Mystery Stories 2002, Passages North, Big Sky Journal, Talking River Review, California Quarterly, Under the Sun and other
journals.
Mikkilynn Olmsted (Baseball Like Roses) is a Denver writer and performer. Artistic pursuits change daily.
Her writing has appeared in journals such as High Grade, Zephyrus, Watching the Wheels: A Blackbird, HazMat Review,
among others. She currently teaches at Colorado School of Mines and Metropolitan State College of Denver. This is her
first appearance in r.kv.r.y.
Scott Owens (Getting There) appears in r.kv.r.y. for the first time here. His second collection of poetry, "The
Fractured World," is due out from Main Street Rag in August. His first collection, "The Persistence of Faith," was published
in 1993 by Sandstone Press. He will be Visiting Writer at Catawba Valley Community College this fall and coordinates
the Poetry Alive reading series in Hickory, NC. His poems have been recently published in "North American Review,"
"Main Street Rag," "Blue Unicorn," "The Pedestal," and "Hayden's Ferry Review."
Jaime Samms (Paying the Piper) writes that "with most of the hours in the day taken up by a part time job
and the full time occupation of raising and schooling two kids, writing is somewhat of an indulgence, but it's the
indulgences that keep us sane, right? When not otherwise occupied, like most writers, reading is my relaxation method of
choice. You can find links to reviews at Uniquely Pleasurable and Dark Diva Reviews to let you know what I like (and
occasionally, what I didn't). And just in case there are an extra few minutes in the day, I also help out the admin team at
the writer's critique group: Dreaming in Ink. After all, idle hands and all that. Find more fiction at my website; The fictional
world of Jaime Samms. The one thing I always keep in mind, I learned from my two little life teachers (my kids): Never stop
looking down the next path for the next adventure. Life is out there."
Mary Ellen Sanger (Trap) lived for 17 years in Mexico, and has published short stories and poems in Spanish
and English in several Mexican journals, including Luna Zeta and Zocalo. Her essay “A Grammar of Place” was anthologized
in Mexico, a Love Story, published in 2006 by Seal Press. She was a finalist for the Room of Her Own Foundation “Gift
of Freedom” in 2007, and was awarded a writers’ grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund/Money for Women.
She is currently writing a collection of stories inspired by the women of Ixcotel State Penitentiary in Oaxaca, Mexico where
she spent 33 days and nights falsely imprisoned in the fall of 2003. One of these stories appears in the inaugural issue of
CrossBRONX. Mary Ellen leads a creative writing workshop for adults through New York Writers Coalition at the New
York Public Library in Inwood and volunteers with PEN American Center as a mentor in the Prison Writing Program.
This is her first appearance in r.kv.r.y.
Patty Somlo (A Toast) has had her articles, reviews, fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction published in numerous
journals and newspapers including the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, the Honolulu Star Bulletin, the
Baltimore Sun, the Santa Clara Review, ONTHEBUS, and Fringe Fiction, among others. Her short story "Bird Women" was
just nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She was a finalist in the 2004 Tom Howard Short Story Contest. Her work has also
appeared in the anthologies Voices From the Couch, VoiceCatcher 2007 and Bombshells: War Stories and Poetry by Women
on the Homefront, and is forthcoming in the Sand Hill Review, and in the anthologies, Rainmakers' Prayers and VoiceCatcher
2008. This is her first appearance in r.kv.r.y.
Sarah Voss (Backbone) is a semi-retired minister, author, and lecturer who lives in Nebraska and publishes
mostly esoteric stuff about religion and science which sometimes gets used by strange academicians in religion or history
classes or by normal ministers for strange purposes: What Number Is God?; Voice to Voice; Heart to Heart; Zero: Reflections
About Nothing. Lots of articles on "matheology" and "moral math," too, in publications as varied as Parabola, Religious
Humanist, and Theology and Science. Her poems and creative nonfiction have appeared in various literary journals and
anthologies, including Thema, The Mid-America Poetry Review, The Healing Muse, Ellipsis, Nebraska Presence and
(forthcoming, web journal) Sacred Journey. Micro-fiction (250 words max) is a new exploration for her. This is her first
appearance in r.kv.r.y.
David A. Willis (Snowed In) is a graduate of the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi and
the M.A. program at CSU, Chico. He is currently working as an English Instructor at Jefferson Davis Community College in
Brewton, AL and lives in Gulf Breeze, FL with his wife and son. His previous work has appeared in RE:AL magazine. This is
his first appearance in r.kv.r.y
Richard Wirick (The Ten Cent Plague) is one of r.kv.r.y.'s most faithful supporters. Wirick's fiction, essays
and journalism have appeared here in r.kv.r.y. as well as in Fiction, Quarterly West, Northwest Review, Playboy, Another
Chicago Magazine, Indiana Review and elsewhere. Telegram Press recently published his haunting set of prose poems
One Hundred Siberian Postcards to great critical praise. He is completing a collection of short stories, Fables of
Rescue, and is co-founder and editor of the journal Transformation. One Hundred Siberian Postcards grew out of his
assignments in Ukraine and Siberia in 2003-5, and his adoption of a Siberian daughter. He practices law in Los
Angeles, where he lives with his wife and three children.
bacterial molecular genetics research. Her short stories have appeared in Canada , the U.S. and cyberspace--in carte
blanche, The Nashwaak Review, Red Wheelbarrow, Rio Grande Review, Fog City Review, and Descant. She won first prize in the
Fog City Writers Short Story Contest and was recently named a finalist for the second time in The Writers’ Union of
Canada Short Prose Competition for Developing Writers. Her nonfiction and academic work has appeared in major
Canadian newspapers and magazines, on CBC Radio One’s Sunday Edition ( Canada ’s equivalent to NPR), as well as in
many other lay publications and learned journals. This is Beverly's first appearance in r.kv.r.y.
Writer and photographer Robert Neil Cohen (cover art and photo above, along with others that grace
this issue here,here and here) grew up in East Texas where he learned to appreciate a good yarn and the wide vistas the
state offered. After graduating from Northwestern University, he served in the Peace Corps in Korea, which was followed
by graduate study at The University of Texas at Austin and UCLA. He spent twelve years as a professor of film studies
specializing in Japanese cinema, teaching at UC Santa Barbara and UCLA, eventually migrating to the entertainment
industry, where he worked as a development executive. He worked as a screenwriter and was the recipient of the
Motion Picture Academy’s prestigious Nichol screenwriting fellowship. He currently lives in Southern California where
he takes pride in his passion for photography, his wife, who is a prominent Los Angeles attorney, and his son, an
automotive entrepreneur.
Ryan Crider (In the Morning) has previously been published in Moon City Review. He is the past Section Editor
for the literary journal Natural Bridge. As a graduate student, he has been nominated twice for the AWP Intro Journals
Project in fiction. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in English and creative writing at the University of Louisiana at
Lafayette and the editor of The Southwestern Review. This is his first appearance in r.kv.r.y.
Phillip Gardner (Cry Your Happy Tears) lives in Darlington, South Carolina where he writes stories and
screenplays. His work has appeared in The North American Review, The Chattahoochee Review, Hayden's Ferry Review,
Potomac Review, and other fine journals. He is the author of Someone To Crawl Back To, a collection of short stories.
This is his first appearance in r.kv.r.y.
Mel Hicks (Swan Dive) is a novelist, short story writer and screenwriter. She has been a finalist in
Glimmer Train’s Very Short Story Award and the William Faulkner Short Story Competition. Her screenplay was a
finalist in the Tennessee Screenwriting Association Script Competition. She lives in Georgia with her husband and three-
year-old daughter, a gaggle of cats and dogs, and one very overworked vacuum cleaner. In her former life as a television
promotion writer/producer, she was forced to write in thirty-second increments; she decided she had more to say. Swan
Dive is her first publication and her first appearance in r.kv.r.y. We look forward to more great work by Ms. Hicks in the
future. Check out more of her writing at www.melhicks.com.
Poet Paul Hostovsky's poems (here, Letting Go) appear widely online and in print. He has been
featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and The Writer's Almanac. He has two poetry chapbooks, Bird in the Hand (Grayson
Books) and Dusk Outside the Braille Press (Riverstone Press). r.kv.r.y. has been publishing Hostovsky's poems from the
very beginning (here and here, for instance). To read more, visit Paul's website: www.paulhostovsky.com
Scott Kauffman (Rocking) graduated summa cum laude from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, and in the upper
ten percent of his class from the Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon, where he was a member of the
Environmental Law Review and received the American Jurisprudence Award in Conflict of Laws. Following graduation, Scott
tried dozens of criminal cases, first as an assistant state prosecutor and then as an assistant public defender in a rural
Ohio community, which provides much of the background for his first novel, In Deepest Consequences, published by
Medallion Press in 2006. Scott now resides in Newport Beach, California. He maintains an active law practice, which
includes the representation of those charged with white-collar crimes. He is currently at work on a second novel and a
collection of short stories. When not working or writing, Scott gardens, reads, and listens to baroque music. This is Scott's
first appearance in r.kv.r.y.
Eliza Kelley (Breaking Trees) teaches Poetry, Fiction, Memoir, Nature Writing, American Indian Literatures,
Human Rights Discourse and American Minority Literature at Buffalo State College in New York. Her work has appeared in
literary magazines and anthologies such as Common Sense 2, Absinthe Literary Review, Facets, Literary Potpourri, Antietam
Review, Square Lake, Pedestal Magazine, “The Kali Guide,” Icarus International, “The Anthology of New England Writers,” and
“Red White and Blues: Poetic Vistas on the Promise of America.”
Poet Greg McBride (Transit) has published his poems, essays, and reviews at Bellevue Literary Review,
Chautauqua Literary Journal, Connecticut Review, Gettysburg Review, Hollins Critic, Poet Lore, Southeast Review, Southern
Indiana Review, Southern Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Three times nominated for a Pushcart Prize, he edits The Innisfree
Poetry Journal (www.innisfreepoetry.org). He served as an Army photographer in the Vietnam War and began writing
after a 30-year legal career. The father of three and grandfather of five, he lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with his wife
Lois, also a writer. This is Greg's second appearance in r.kv.r.y. He previously published At the Cemetery here.
Fred Melton (Panel 29e, Line 38) is a five-time Pushcart nominee whose work has appeared in Best American
Mystery Stories 2002, Passages North, Big Sky Journal, Talking River Review, California Quarterly, Under the Sun and other
journals.
Mikkilynn Olmsted (Baseball Like Roses) is a Denver writer and performer. Artistic pursuits change daily.
Her writing has appeared in journals such as High Grade, Zephyrus, Watching the Wheels: A Blackbird, HazMat Review,
among others. She currently teaches at Colorado School of Mines and Metropolitan State College of Denver. This is her
first appearance in r.kv.r.y.
Scott Owens (Getting There) appears in r.kv.r.y. for the first time here. His second collection of poetry, "The
Fractured World," is due out from Main Street Rag in August. His first collection, "The Persistence of Faith," was published
in 1993 by Sandstone Press. He will be Visiting Writer at Catawba Valley Community College this fall and coordinates
the Poetry Alive reading series in Hickory, NC. His poems have been recently published in "North American Review,"
"Main Street Rag," "Blue Unicorn," "The Pedestal," and "Hayden's Ferry Review."
Jaime Samms (Paying the Piper) writes that "with most of the hours in the day taken up by a part time job
and the full time occupation of raising and schooling two kids, writing is somewhat of an indulgence, but it's the
indulgences that keep us sane, right? When not otherwise occupied, like most writers, reading is my relaxation method of
choice. You can find links to reviews at Uniquely Pleasurable and Dark Diva Reviews to let you know what I like (and
occasionally, what I didn't). And just in case there are an extra few minutes in the day, I also help out the admin team at
the writer's critique group: Dreaming in Ink. After all, idle hands and all that. Find more fiction at my website; The fictional
world of Jaime Samms. The one thing I always keep in mind, I learned from my two little life teachers (my kids): Never stop
looking down the next path for the next adventure. Life is out there."
Mary Ellen Sanger (Trap) lived for 17 years in Mexico, and has published short stories and poems in Spanish
and English in several Mexican journals, including Luna Zeta and Zocalo. Her essay “A Grammar of Place” was anthologized
in Mexico, a Love Story, published in 2006 by Seal Press. She was a finalist for the Room of Her Own Foundation “Gift
of Freedom” in 2007, and was awarded a writers’ grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund/Money for Women.
She is currently writing a collection of stories inspired by the women of Ixcotel State Penitentiary in Oaxaca, Mexico where
she spent 33 days and nights falsely imprisoned in the fall of 2003. One of these stories appears in the inaugural issue of
CrossBRONX. Mary Ellen leads a creative writing workshop for adults through New York Writers Coalition at the New
York Public Library in Inwood and volunteers with PEN American Center as a mentor in the Prison Writing Program.
This is her first appearance in r.kv.r.y.
Patty Somlo (A Toast) has had her articles, reviews, fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction published in numerous
journals and newspapers including the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, the Honolulu Star Bulletin, the
Baltimore Sun, the Santa Clara Review, ONTHEBUS, and Fringe Fiction, among others. Her short story "Bird Women" was
just nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She was a finalist in the 2004 Tom Howard Short Story Contest. Her work has also
appeared in the anthologies Voices From the Couch, VoiceCatcher 2007 and Bombshells: War Stories and Poetry by Women
on the Homefront, and is forthcoming in the Sand Hill Review, and in the anthologies, Rainmakers' Prayers and VoiceCatcher
2008. This is her first appearance in r.kv.r.y.
Sarah Voss (Backbone) is a semi-retired minister, author, and lecturer who lives in Nebraska and publishes
mostly esoteric stuff about religion and science which sometimes gets used by strange academicians in religion or history
classes or by normal ministers for strange purposes: What Number Is God?; Voice to Voice; Heart to Heart; Zero: Reflections
About Nothing. Lots of articles on "matheology" and "moral math," too, in publications as varied as Parabola, Religious
Humanist, and Theology and Science. Her poems and creative nonfiction have appeared in various literary journals and
anthologies, including Thema, The Mid-America Poetry Review, The Healing Muse, Ellipsis, Nebraska Presence and
(forthcoming, web journal) Sacred Journey. Micro-fiction (250 words max) is a new exploration for her. This is her first
appearance in r.kv.r.y.
David A. Willis (Snowed In) is a graduate of the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi and
the M.A. program at CSU, Chico. He is currently working as an English Instructor at Jefferson Davis Community College in
Brewton, AL and lives in Gulf Breeze, FL with his wife and son. His previous work has appeared in RE:AL magazine. This is
his first appearance in r.kv.r.y
Richard Wirick (The Ten Cent Plague) is one of r.kv.r.y.'s most faithful supporters. Wirick's fiction, essays
and journalism have appeared here in r.kv.r.y. as well as in Fiction, Quarterly West, Northwest Review, Playboy, Another
Chicago Magazine, Indiana Review and elsewhere. Telegram Press recently published his haunting set of prose poems
One Hundred Siberian Postcards to great critical praise. He is completing a collection of short stories, Fables of
Rescue, and is co-founder and editor of the journal Transformation. One Hundred Siberian Postcards grew out of his
assignments in Ukraine and Siberia in 2003-5, and his adoption of a Siberian daughter. He practices law in Los
Angeles, where he lives with his wife and three children.
