Monkey Puzzle Magazine

Meet the Contributors to Monkey Puzzle #9!

Alexandra Parsons

Alexandra lives, writes, teaches, and learns in Manhattan. Aside from being a middle and upper school English teacher, she obsesses about Shakespeare and hopes to have her children’s book manuscript published one day. Photography is a hobby that follows her around the world.

Andrew Antar

Andrew paints with colorful oils and turpentine; he is also a photographer and violinist who secretly writes poems. Originally from Penn Valley, Pennsylvania, now at Brown University, Andrew enjoys strong coffee and red wine. Andrew believes art, in all forms, either conveys a feeling, captures an essence, stirs emotion, inspires self-consciousness, expresses the sublime, acknowledges the outer reaches of the mind, or all of the above.

Brandon Arthur

Raised in the flatlands of central Illinois, Brandon moved to Boulder, Colorado in 1999 and graduated from Colorado University in Boulder. He then received an MFA from the Writing and Poetics Program at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics of Naropa University. He is the author of expired Rx (Monkey Puzzle Press, 2010). He currently resides in Denver, Colorado.

Brandon Gray

Brandon was born, raised, and is still stuck in California. Known to occasionally take a great photo or write a masterpiece only a baboon would understand, he spends most of his time traveling and entertaining children through his business Wild Child Adventures.

Bryan Jansing

Bryan moved to Italy at an early age, graduated from an American high school in northern Italy then served in the US Navy. Flash Fiction has been his passion for over a decade. He’s been published in journals, magazines and newspapers in both Italy and America. He currently resides in Denver, Colorado.

Carolyn Zaikowski

Carolyn is a writer, performer, and social worker who lives in Northampton, Massachusetts. She is the author of the chapbook Ouch, Humans and work has appeared in Fact-Simile, NOÖ Journal, Apothecary, Monkey Puzzle, Meat for Tea, Doom Zine, and Scar Songs: An Anthology Articulating the Terrain of Trauma and Resilience (forthcoming, The Icarus Project).

Get in the Car, Helen

Get in the Car, Helen began writing shortly after discovering Helen, the woman he loved more than anything, had been secretly fucking a guy named Craig. Since being dumped by Helen, he has published a book of poetry, Avenge Me. (Baobob Tree Press), and is a frequent contributor to Illiterate Magazine. His new book, The Aftermath, etc., will be published in 2010 by Monkey Puzzle Press.

Jack Collom

Jack is a poet, essayist, and creative writing pedagogue. His most recent collection of poems is Cold Instant (Monkey Puzzle Press, 2010). His major collection, Red Car Goes By: Selected Poems 1955-2000, was published by Tuumba Press in 2001. Other volumes include Little Grand Island, Arguing with Something Plato Said, 8-Ball and Entering the City. His work has been published in countless magazines and anthologies in the United States and abroad. His essays on teaching and anthologies of children’s poetry appear in Moving Windows and Poetry Everywhere.

Jeffrey Spahr-Summers

Jeffrey is a poet, writer, photographer and digital artist in Colorado. He is the editor and publisher of Poetry Victims, a contributing editor of Sketchbook (a journal for Eastern & Western short forms), the new webmaster of Simply Haiku, and part of the Linchpin Collective. Jeff has published eight books of poetry and photography (Cherry Productions). His poems and photographs have appeared in numerous print and online journals, recently Poetry Super Highway, Kritya, Media Cake, Houston Literary Review and Unlikely 2.0.

Jennifer Hamilton

Jennifer is a liver of life, a manifesting goddess who creates with the divine while passionately dancing through life, soaking up the beauty all around her. She expresses herself creatively by sharing gifts and love with others while capturing the ever-changing scenes in photographs, paintings, and words. Jennifer is a free spirit who makes the most of the moment creating happiness and following her true nature…

Jeremiah Johnson

Jeremiah lives on Oahu. He surfs.

Jon Olsen

Jon was born in England and grew up among rednecks in Northern California. He travels the world and makes films with inexpensive camcorders.

Jordan Antonucci

Jordan is an MFA candidate in the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. An artist of multiple mediums, his textual work can be found forthcoming in Freaklung Odes out of London, Anthology of the Awkward (City Lights, 2010) and his art exhibit with collaborators Joshua Antonucci and Min Jung Oh can be found online at www.sen-sing.com.

Kade Alexander Jensen

Originally from Iowa, Kade is a Graduate Student at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. He holds two Bachelor’s degrees, in English and History, from Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. He’s currently working on a collection of experimental translations of Matsuo Basho’s Haiku as well as a collection of poetic essays. He lives and works in Boulder, Colorado.

Kai Forrest Brown

Kai is a vivacious five year-old who loves to explore the natural world. He’s working on his first garden, and has an ever changing collection of pet bugs. Kai has always enjoyed having poetry read to him. One day he scribbled a drawing and asked his grandma to write down his poem.

Kathy Conde

Kathy’s work has appeared in Calapooya, CutThroat, Pearl, Underground Voices, Word Riot, and others. She won the Hemingway Festival Short Story Contest in 2008 and her short story collection was a semifinalist for the Iowa Short Fiction Award. She holds an MFA from Naropa University and is past fiction editor of Bombay Gin.

Lee Ann Grossberg, MD

Dr. Grossberg lives in Houston, Texas. She’s a forensic pathologist and mother of five. “Uncle Mort” is her first piece of fiction to be published.

Michael D. Edwards

“If you don’t know, now you know.”

Michael Cohen

Michael Cohen used to write academic books; his last was Murder Most Fair: The Appeal of Mystery Fiction (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000). Now he writes personal essays. He and his wife Katharine live on Kentucky Lake and in Tucson, Arizona.

Ming Jung Oh

Min Jung worships the sunlight, finds empathy in water’s gaze, and dreams of becoming a male peacock in her next life. She writes because it’s the imagination of possibility in language that creates the world and because she cannot ignore the fragmented cries of the unspeakable to be spoken. Min Jung is currently an MFA candidate at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado and received her BA in English and philosophy at the University of Maine, Orono. She has works forthcoming from Tidal Basin Review and The Anthology of the Awkward (Fast Forward Press).

Nathan Antar

“That’s what she said.”

Ralph Bland

Ralph is a long-time resident of Nashville, Tennessee and a graduate of Belmont University. After wasting away his youth in riotous living, he is now happily married and residing on the outskirts of Music City, USA disguised as a normal person. He’s the author of three novels: Once In Love With Amy, Where Or When, and Past Perfect.

Rocky Balboa

Rocky Balboa. Southpaw from Philly. He didn’t contribute anything, he just belongs here.
(ed. note – it was either that or he was gonna break my thumbs)

Samuel Jablon

Born in Binghamton, New York, Samuel learned to paint and mosaic from his mother Susan, founder of both Rude and Bold Woman and Susan Jablon Mosaics. While in Binghamton, Samuel studied freeform music with avant-garde composer Eric Ross, one of Samuel’s most influential mentors. He left Binghamton for Boulder, Colorado to study poetry, meditation, and painting at Naropa University. He also studied banjo, music theory, and composition with Jayme Stone; and was a studio assistant/apprentice to artist and poet Ana Maria Hernando. Samuel resides, and has a studio in Brooklyn, New York.

Sarah Cooke

Sarah is a low-residency graduate student in Naropa University’s Creative Writing MFA program. She predominantly writes poetry. She’s an assistant teacher at the Bellwether School in Williston, Vermont. Her work has been published in journals such as the Black Mountain Review and Whrrds and is available in audio form at instereopress.com.

Suzanne DuLany

Suzanne is a poet, visual artist, and environmental activist with roots in Austin, Texas. She is currently an MFA candidate at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and Associate Editor of Bombay Gin. Her most recent projects include the blog Humans for Wolves, and an anti-memoir about her father, Endangered Memory.

Travis Macdonald

Travis’s work has appeared in Bombay Gin, Court Green, ditch, House Press: Source Material, Jacket, Otoliths, Requited, Wheelhouse and elsewhere. His experimental translation, Basho’s Phonebook, is available from “E-ratio”. His first full-length book, The O Mission Repo, an erasure of The 9/11 Commission Report is available from Fact-Simile Editions.Travis puts dental floss between his toes in the morning to keep them from getting confused with his shoes.