Ducts.org: Contributors

columns

Bill is the editor of a small daily newspaper in New Hampshire. He studied creative writing at Harvard and is currently at work on a novel. He is married... with children.

Martine J. Byer

columns

Martine has written plays and screenplays that have been finalists at the Actor's Theatre of Louisville and at the Sundance Institute. She has written Safe House for the American Film Institute's Woman's Director's program. Her play What Difference Does It Make? was a finalist last year for the Arts&Letters Drama Prize judged by Horton Foote. It was produced in the summer of 2000 at The Guild Of Italian American Actors (GIAA). She currently writes a Q&A column for Woman's World magazine and has been published on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times.

Sandra Potkorony Chamson

memoirs

Sandra grew up on New York's Lower East Side and continues to make her home in Manhattan. In private practice as a licensed Clinical Psychologist, she also devotes time to writing and has been published in the Beacon Street Review, NY Times Metropolitan Diary, and World Wide Writers. In addition to the recently completed memoir, she has written a novel and several short stories.

Brandon Cole

Fiction

Brandon Cole has written, co-written, produced, or directed five feature films, most recently 13 MOONS, co-written and directed by Alexandre Rockwell, that stars Steve Buscemi, David Proval, Peter Dinklage and Jennifer Beals. His other film credits include MAC and ILLUMINATA, co-written and directed by John Turturro; OK GARAGE, which he wrote and directed, which starred Lili Taylor, John Turturro and Will Patton; and SONS, co-written and directed by Alexandre Rockwell. MAC won the Camera D'Or at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival. OK GARAGE was awarded best screenplay at the 1998 Avignon, France, Film Festival. The Difficult Ones is his second novel.

Devon T. Coleman

humor

Devon T. Coleman is a writer/performer who is one half of the intergender comedy duo Frowned Upon. His lovelife is currently in "turnaround" as they say in Hollywood. He writes for the weekly NYC show Saturday Night Rewritten. He can soon be seen co-hosting "The Cocktail Hour with Darce & Dev" with his partner, D'Arcy Erokan. Learn more at frownedupon.com

T. Glen Coughlin

fiction

T. Glen Coughlin has published two novels, The Hero of New York (WW Norton 1986) and Steady Eddie (SOHO Press 2001). His short stories have appeared in Doubletake magazine and the South Dakota Review. He lives in Manalapan, NJ with his wife and two children

Nic Darling

poetry

Nic currently lives in London. He does not know what he wants to be when he grows up.

Paul Data

essays

Paul has spent his entire life working the arts and has taught at New York University, in the department of music and performing arts. He's also been an aqua aerobics instructor at the West Side YMCA in New York City.

Sara Day

essays

Sara is a PhD student in English at Texas A&M University. "Committed" is a personal narrative of events that are now more than five years behind her but which never seem to leave her thoughts. Her friendship with Lisa (now Sister Theresa Agnes of the Discalced Carmelite Nuns in Arlington, Texas) shaped many of her views about relationships and continues to influence her writing.

Ritch Duncan

Humor

Ritch Duncan is a comedian and writer who has done standup all over the country, written for Saturday Night Live, Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn, Time Out New York, and The Week magazine. He was the co-founder and Editor in Chief of Jest magazine from 2002 until the summer of 2004. He is now a fulltime freelancer, and rarely wears pants during the day.

Millie Ehrlich

memoirs

Mildred has been writing poetry since she was a child and has published in college literary journals, including Turning House, the journal of Union Theological Seminary, where she works as the Faculty Secretary and International Student Advisor. She has taken fiction and non-fiction workshops at the Writer's Voice of the Westside Y in NYC and attended various writing conferences around the country. She has a Bachelor's degree in Theater and a Master's degree in Teaching ESL. Her website, www.englishforeverything.com, offers online editing services for native and non-native speakers of English. She was the development editor for several popular-level physics books by her brother, Robert Ehrlich, including Nine Crazy Ideas in Science/Some of Which May Even Be True… She has just finished writing a memoir, Beauty through Broken Glass.

Jerry Farrell

Humor

Jerry Farrell has been contributing humor to Ducts since the Summer 2004 Issue. His first piece, "Praise for Codename: Vengeance" ran under the pseudonym Paul MacTavish, which was a huge mistake considering that a Paul MacTavish of Lansing, Michigan has since been mailing Mr. Farrell a single steel-tipped bullet each week with a note accusing him of stealing his identity and thoughts. Mr. Farrell would like Mr. MacTavish to know that he is sufficiently terrified, equally remorseful, and that the proper spelling of "mame" is "maim."

Lisa Ferber

fiction

Lisa's short stories have been published in The Glut, Muse Apprentice Guild, and The Shore Magazine. Her plays, Lulubelle Gets a Makeover, Oh, Mister Cadhole!, The Return of Toodles Von Flooz, Penny's One Date, Either the Cat Goes, Are Not My Foibles Amusing?, Hell-O, and Stop Calling It Cinema, have been produced in New York City.

Jennifer H. Fortin

columns

Peace Corps Volunteer Jennifer H. Fortin grew up in Gaithersburg, Md., then went on to Goucher College where she majored in Art and English. Since graduating, the 24-year-old has served the Peace Corps mission in Bulgaria as a primary education volunteer teacher. She writes extensively and has literary and poetic work printed in a number of publications. Jennifer describes the world around her in tactile terms compelling her readers to feel the what she is feeling, to know the bitter cold that her students are feeling; to know the anguish of a people grieving over their great needs; a people heartened by the work of the Peace Corps.

Katherine A. Gleason

fiction

Katherine has written almost 30 nonfiction books and is really tired. Her short fiction has been published or is forthcoming in Best American Erotica (Simon & Schuster), The First Word Bulletin, Cream City Review, and on-line in La Petite Zine.

James Goar

fiction

Jim Goar took his MFA from the Kerouac School at Naropa University. He spent the past few years teaching English at universities in China, Thailand, and South Korea. His work has been published by, or is forthcoming from, El Pobre Mouse, TYPO, Nidus, elimae, and KNOCK. He'd really like his blog, Can of Corn, to get more visitors. Consider yourself invited.

Can of Corn: canofcornforyou2.blogspot.com

Typo: www.typomag.com

Nidus: www.pitt.edu/~nidus/about.html

elimae: elimae.com/poetry/Goar/Elephant.html

Knock: http://www.knockjournal.org/2_1/knock2_1.html

Mark Goldblatt

reviews

Mark Goldblatt is a novelist, political columnist and book reviewer who teaches at Fashion Institute of Technology of the State University of New York. His controversial first novel, Africa Speaks, was published in 2002 by Permanent Press. He is also the author, with Charles Salzberg, of First Lady of Wrestling, the memoir of professional wrestling valet Missy Hyatt.

Mike Golden

reviews

Mike is editor-publisher of Smoke Signals (www.carminestreet.com/smoke_signals.html) and Editorial Director-Publisher of the long dormant SoHo Arts Weekly. He has written for, among other places, Film Comment, The Paris Review, Spy, Between C & D, Rolling Stone, Spin, Vibe, The L.A. Weekly, and he was featured in The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. His Bring Me The Head Of Gregory Corso (www.corpse.org/issue_7/burning_bush/golden.htm) paid tribute to the last of the then still living big five beats at the same time it goofed on the world of wannabeats in the wings. Over the last several years of the 20th Century he worked on assignment covering the King family's attempt to reopen the MLK assassination investigation. He was a commentator on Court TV's coverage of the 1999 King v Jowers "unlawful death" conspiracy trial, and has just finished Memphis, a novel set during, and 30 years after, the MLK assassination. His book The Buddhist Third Class Junkmail Oracle (www.sevenstories.com/Book/index.cfm?GCOI=58322100707970), on the art-poetry and mysterious death of the last poet in America to be put on trial for his language, Cleveland poet-publisher d.a. levy, is now being developed as a feature film.

Richard Goodman

memoirs

Richard Goodman is the author of French Dirt: The Story of a Garden in the South of France. He has written for the New York Times, Creative Nonfiction, Commonweal, Vanity Fair, Garden Design, Grand Tour, The Writer's Chronicle, salon.com, Saveur, Ascent and the Michigan Quarterly Review. He teaches creative nonfiction at Spalding University's MFA in writing program in Louisville, Kentucky. His web site is richardgoodman.homestead.com.

John Jodzio

art gallery

John was born in Syracuse, lived in Arizona until the age of eight, moved to Detroit until the age of eighteen, lived in Ohio for four years, Jersey City for six years and Manhattan for two years. His drawings depict the landscapes of his life--desert motifs intertwined with urban ghetto streets that are rapidly being gentrified and changing the landscape that had dominated the cultural epicenter of what is America. His images impart the feeling that something very bad is going to happen at any moment.

P.M. Kalayeh

fiction

P. M. Kalayeh is an MFA graduate from The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. He has been published in the anthology, "Looking Back" (New Brighton Books, 2003); was a candidate for Best New American Voices (Harcourt & Brace, 2004); and was granted a Zora Neale Hurston Award (2002). His work has recently appeared in Spire Press (Fall 2004), Sliding Uteri (Summer 2004), and Three Therefore Two.

Lisa Linn Kanae

fiction and humor

Born and raised on the island of Oÿahu, Lisa Linn Kanae is the author of Sista Tongue; a memoir/essay that weaves the social history of Hawaii'i Creole English with personal experience. Some of Kanae's prose and poetry is published in 'Oiwi: A Native Hawaiian Journal. Bamboo Ridge Press publications, Hybolics, and Tinfish.

Julia Hays Klebanow

essays

Julia Hays Klebanow was born into a family of writers. Her father and brother, David and Daniel Hays, co-authored the NY Times bestseller, My Old Man and the Sea. Julia graduated from Harvard '77, is a fundraiser, and lives in Westchester with her husband and three sons. In her spare time she moonlights as a Muse. She is currently writing her first work of non-fiction, OK, I'm 47 and Grumpy, So Sue Me: A Manual on How To Get Through Mid-Life Crisis and More.

Miriam N. Kotzin and Bill Turner

fiction

Miriam and Bill's collaborative flash fiction is published or is forthcoming in Monkeybicycle, Somewhat, The Beat, and Admit Two. Bill's fiction has appeared in Underground Voices, Thieves Jargon, Riverbabble, Rumble, Writers Bar, The Beat, Prose Toad, Whim's Place, Storied World and Bewildering Stories. He is also the cover artist for October 2004 in Edifice Wrecked. He is a former columnist for the Virgin Islands Daily News and The Virgin Islands Source Online. Miriam's fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in ELF: Eclectic Literary Forum, Slow Trains, Smoke Long Quarterly, Pindeldyboz, Littoral, Storied World, The Glut, Toasted Cheese, SaucyVox, HiNgE, Writers Bar, The Beat, Yankee Pot Roast, edifice WRECKED, The Rose & Thorn, rumble, Salome, The Quarterly Staple, Southern Ocean Review, Dead Mule, and Carve. Her poetry has appeared in print venues such as Boulevard, for which she is contributing editor, The Iron Horse Literary Review, The Painted Bride Quarterly, The Mid-American Review, The Southern Humanities Review, Pulpsmith, and Confrontation. Online her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the Thieves Jargon, Small Spiral Notebook, Drexel Online Journal, the Vocabula Review, Three Candles, the Poetry Super Highway, For Poetry.com., Word Riot, The Front Street Review, Open Wide, Segue, edificeWRECKED!, Shampoo, Eclectica, FRiGG, Flashquake, Circle Magazine, Branches, Plum Ruby Review, Gator Springs Gazette, Blaze, The Green Tricycle, Riverbabble, MAG:Muse Apprentice Guild, Mini Mag, Snow Monkey, Maverick Magazine, Poems Niederngasse, Carnelian, Facets, Another Toronto Quarterly and Valparaiso Poetry Review. Miriam teaches literature and creative writing at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA where she directs the Certificate Program in Writing and Publishing and is faculty advisor to Maya, the student literary magazine. Bill is a freelance web designer when he is not writing his fiction or plays.

Tamara Shnobu Loomis

best of

Marge Lurie

fiction

Marge lives and works in New York City. She earned her M.F.A. in writing from The New School University, and her B.A. in philosophy from Barnard College. Her fiction has also appeared online at www.fictionwarehouse.com; www.pindeldyboz.com; and the Summer 2004 issue of www.ducts.org.

Benjamin Malcolm

columns

Benjamin Malcolm works both as a freelance writer and teacher in Northern Thailand. A native of the larger Boston area, he worked for several years in Washington, D.C. before he returned screaming to his Peace Corps roots in Asia. He currently lives peacefully with his wife Supalak in the northernmost province of Chiang Rai.

Andrew Mattina

stage

"As a teenager, a friend's band needed a bassist. They strapped a tuned down guitar over my neck and said, "here, play this!"" To read more about Andrew, go to his stage.

Benjamin Morris

poetry

Benjamin Morris was born in Mississippi but now lives in Scotland. The short form in poetry, though not in biography, continues to elude him.

Glenda Caidas O'Malley

essays

Glenda was born in Paranaque, Metro Manila, Philippines, and moved to Shoreline, Washington over ten years ago. Her husband, Tom, and she have been married for ten year and have two beautiful daughters: Francesca who just turned ten and Genevieve eight. Since she was a little girl, she has been writing poems and short stories mostly in her native tongue, Tagalog. Her mother had to spend her saved centavos to buy her the cheapest journals she could find in order for her to stop writing around the edges of my schoolbooks. As she grows older, time to scribble, imagine, and dream were spent in a more productive work such as cleaning the house, studying, working, etc. Journals were left under the bed for dust bunnies to cover and writing became a treat she could not afford. But tide has its own way of bringing back the water that once kissed the shore to taste the salty grain of sand. Not too long ago at Shoreline Community College, she met the very talented and intelligent English professor Shalin Hai-Jew who opened up the world of writing, the world that she used to enjoy, in a very short time. Now, the familiar lead color that once marred her fingertips is back, scribbled words covered her journals, saved in her computer, and as usual cluttered her mind. .

Diane Payne

fiction

Diane teaches in the English Department at the University of Arkansas-Monticello, where she's faculty advisor of Foliate Oak, a magazine currently seeking submissions (www.uamont.edu/foliateoak) .

She just published her first novel, Burning Tulips.

Jessica Rubin

fiction

Jessica Rubin lives and writes in New York City, where she is employed at W magazine. She holds a BA in English from Wesleyan University. Currently, Rubin is studying at NYU for her certificate in Publishing.

George Sparling

essays

George Sparling has been published in many literary magazines including Word Riot, nthposition, Rattle, Red Rock Review, Potomac Review, Lynx Eye, Pittsburgh Quarterly, Paumanok Review, Slow Trains, Snake Nation Review, Pindeldyboz, Thieves Jargon, Prose Toad, and Underground Voices. He has a degree in English literature from Iowa Wesleyan College. His jobs have included welfare casework in East Harlem, a counselor in the Baltimore City Jail, and a crab butcher, but ost of his working life has been in bookstores. Currently, he's working on a memoir about his relationship with his father.

Ian Stansel

fiction

Ian Stansel is a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. A native Chicagoan, he is currently poor and happy in Iowa City.

Sunsh Stein

memoir

Sunsh lives in New York City, but has one foot out the door. She's a freelance writer with a master's degree in journalism and a day job as a patient advocate. She was recently called an "advanced hippie."

Ray Van Ryckeghem

humor

Ray Van Ryckeghem is a consultant who spends his time hopping assignments around North America and trying to maintain a residence in Florida and a girlfriend in Chicago. He maintains the site www.twowhiteguyswithbeer.com and writes under the name Zeke. Oh, and he's a hell of a guy and would make a fine pope if they would just ask.

Kirsten Williams

stage

"Southern Grace at a Northern Pace…" A phrase which accurately describes the musical stride of Kentucky born singer songwriter Kirsten Williams. Since settling down in New York's vibrant East Village five years ago, Ms. Williams has established herself as a fixture on the New York music scene. With her rich, emotional vocals and heartfelt lyrics, she composes contemporary acoustic tunes mixing themes of urban life and love with sounds rooted in her southern upbringing. Performing regularly around Manhattan at such venues as The Knitting Factory, CB's Gallery, and the Sidewalk Cafe, she's an easy and enjoyable find.

For her third album, Between Home and Here, and her fourth, Flood the Sky, Williams has tapped into New York's resources by teaming up with fellow musicians on the local circuit. Ms. Williams' writing style has been compared to that of Lucinda Williams and Suzanne Vega, while her singing has been compared to the vocal sounds of Sarah McLachlan, Tori Amos and Margo Timmons of the Cowboy Junkies.

Richard Willis

memoirs

Richard grew up on a farm near Marengo, Iowa. He is both an actor and a teacher. After receiving his Ph.D. at Northwestern University, he taught and directed there for three years, and later at Lewis & Clark College where he was chairman of the Department of Theatre. He has been active as a member of Actor's Equity, the Screen Actor's Guild, and the American Federation of Radio and Television Artists for over twenty years. He is published in New Author's Journal, Words of Wisdom, Red Wheelbarrow, Phantasmagoria, and Iconoclast. He and his wife, Linda Barry, live in New York City

Helen Zelon

memoirs

Helen's writing has appeared in The New York Times, Cosmopolitan, Family Circle, Brooklyn Bridge and Scientific American: Explorations. A proud booster of her adopted hometown (New York), she is a nonfiction contributor to Totally Brooklyn.

STAFF

Jonathan
Kravetz

editor

Jonathan is best known for his ability to scratch his forehead and squint his eyes simultaneously. He is a writer, editor and some time trumpet player who spends too much time reading long feature stories on the world wide web. He is a co-founder of ducts and founder of the New York based reading series, Trumpet Fiction, held each month at KGB Bar in the east village. He has studied writing with a number of teachers in New York, including Alice Eliot Dark (fiction), the late Fred Hudson (screenwriting) and Alison Estes (children's fiction) and has held a number of odd jobs, including news reporter, taxi cab driver, projectionist and ducts installer (hmmmm). He currently works as a computer consultant. He has recently taken up improv comedy classes with the Upright Citizen's Brigade Theater of NYC as a way to discover finer and more glorious ways of embarrassing himself on a weekly basis. You can contact him at editor@ducts.org.

Philip
Shane

Philip is a freelance film editor and co-founder of ducts . His programs have appeared on PBS, ABC, Cinemax, Lifetime Television, The Learning Channel, and in theaters and film festivals around the world. He lives in New York with his wife Julie.

Daniel
McCoy

humor editor &
illustrator

Dan trained in improvisation at The Upright Citizen's Brigade Theater. He also trained as a "normal" actor, but you've probably never seen any plays he's been in. He's a regular contributor to Jest Magazine, and his sketches have been performed on the public radio program, Rewind, and NPR's Morning Edition (speaking of public radio, he also interned at WNYC's The Leonard Lopate Show, where he prepared interview notes for Mr. Lopate). Dan currently writes for, and performs in, the Juvie Hall shows "Sara Schaefer is Obsessed With You," and "Saturday Night Rewritten," where he is a regular fixture at the anchor desk. Although unemployed in the traditional sense, he has countless temp jobs to his credit, and has the bank account to prove it. He lives in Brooklyn with his patient wife and a small impatient cat.

Anne
Mironchik

treasurer

Anne, although a fine treasurer, is much more renowned for her songwriting, which reaches back to capture the classic brilliance of favorite hits by Carole King and Laura Nyro. She blurs the lines between jazz, country, rock and R&B, weaving melody and rhythm together in masterful ways. Her rich alto voice leads listeners from one genre to another as she explores the struggles, loves, fears and joys of everyday heroes. When she's not writing great music, Anne is busy crunching numbers for ducts! Anne's new CD "Find Me " is now available and can be found at www.annemironchik.com.

anne@ducts.org

Cindy Moore

art gallery editor

art gallery

Cindy Moore is a Brooklyn-based encaustic painter and recovering aquaphile. Her recent work on paper can be seen at Streits Flat Files in the Lower East Side. Current exhibitions include Girl Art Now (RI,) Dress-(Re)dress (CA,) and Connections (NJ.) Cindy works in art administration in midtown and teaches at the College of New Rochelle, The Creative Center for People with Cancer, The Craft Students League and Artworks in Trenton.

Kara Murray

Marketing

Kara hails from Newton, Mass. but currently makes her home in Brooklyn. When not looking for ways to promote the brilliance of ducts, she can be found verifying the factual accuracy of children's nonfiction books - unless it's the weekend, then she does other things.

Jenah Pelley

Illustrator

Jennifer is a recent graduate of the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She is an actress and director.

Charles
Salzberg

essays, criticism and reviews editor

Charles is a New York based freelance writer and teacher. He has published a wide variety of fiction and nonfiction books. His writing has appeared in the New York Times Arts & Leisure section, Redbook, New York Magazine, Travel & Leisure and many others.

Tim
Tomlinson

fiction editor

Tim's fiction has appeared in The Missouri Review, North American Review, Libido, and elsewhere. He's published haiku in Modern Haiku, Time Haiku, and Black Bough. He's an occasional journalist, and a full time teacher, working at both NYU and the New York Writers Workshop.

Ryan Van
Winkle

poetry editor
Best of

Ryan is 24 years old and lives out of a backpack. He has no permanent residence and is a happy freelance writer. He spends as much time naked as humanly possible. E-Mail him at ryan@smaxx.com.