Ducts.org: Contributors

art gallery

Adam is one of the driving forces behind the cultural-review, feature-based website www.crowndozen.com. As a child, when asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, he replied "Godzilla." A better career choice has yet to occur to him.

Paige Bernhardt

essays

Paige is a television writer and producer. Her work has appeared on various primetime network comedies, including Two Guys and A Girl, Yes, Dear, What about Joan with Joan Cusack, and the rest far too illustrious to go into now. Also a regular contributor to Sit & Spin at the Comedy Central Stage, she is currently performing in Hollywood Hell House with about a hundred delightfully twisted creative geniuses. She is from North Georgia and will rip a good Holly Hunter impression if given enough jammy Petite Syrah. Her interests include body surfing, medieval religious pornography and apricot jam.

Bill Bilodeau

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.

Linda Boroff

fiction

Linda is a graduate of UC Berkeley in English Literature. She has been published in Epoch, Prism International, Cimarron Review, In Posse Review, Eyeshot, Pig Iron Malt, The Pedestal Magazine, Outsider Ink, The Summerset Review, The Shadowshow, Storyglossia, and others. Her feature-length screenplay Riviera Drive is now shooting in Los Angeles.

Laura Buchholz

humor

Laura Buchholz is a writer/performer/editor type. She is a frequent contributor to "A Prairie Home Companion" with Garrison Keillor, and has also written for Comedy Central and WNYC's The Next Big Thing. She is a writer/performer for the weekly NYC stage show Saturday Night Rewritten. She is also a proud winner of the 2004 City Bakery Hot Chocolate Festival Essay Contest.

Luanne Castle

poetry

Luanne teaches at California State University, San Bernardino. A Michigan native, she received her MFA from Western Michigan University and PhD from the University of California, Riverside. Her poetry has been published in several literary journals. Her poem "Super Nova" received Honorable Mention in the 2004 Lyric Recovery Festival Poetry Contest.

Devon T. Coleman

humor

Devon used to live in Michigan. Now he lives in New Jersey. He used to live with his girlfriend, Andrea. Now he lives with his girlfriend Andrea, a baby named Omar, & his parents. He used to go to college. Now he goes to the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater. He used to be a boy. Now he's in a boy band. He used to watch comedy. Now he writes & performs it. More info can be found at www.frownedupon.com.

Holly Coulis

art gallery

Holly is a painter living in Brooklyn. She has shown her work at LFL Gallery, NY; Groeflin Maag Galerie, Basel; and Greener Pastures Contemporary Art, Toronto.

DB Cox

Review

DB Cox is a blues musician/ poet, originally from South Carolina now living in Watertown, Massachusetts. His poems have been published in numerous on-line and print magazines.

Nic Darling

poetry

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

Lily Dulan

essays

Lily recently received her MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University. She lives in Venice, California with her husband David.

Mildred 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

Previously appearing in Ducts under the pseudonym Paul MacTavish, Jerry Farrell has emerged from a period of introversion and self-neglect to officially introduce himself to Ducts readers. "Let's get sexy at my place," he'd like to offer. "I've got plenty of rum and my stamina is coming back."

Thomas Fast

memoirs

Thomas, a.k.a. Naked Man, teaches English and Spanish at a private high school in Japan. Originally from small town, Oregon, he studied art history at New York University. He has traveled and lived throughout Europe, Latin America and Asia. His photographs have appeared in articles and magazines, and have been exhibited in Japan. He also makes occasional guest appearances as a DJ at his local coffee house in Okayama City. FYI, his nickname is an homage to the “Hadaka Matsuri” or “Naked Man Festival” that takes place in his Japanese hometown every winter. He himself only rarely appears naked in public, but as a “Hakujin” (white guy) in Japan, Tom draws a lot of attention either way.

Julie Fiedler

stage

Julie Fiedler lives in New York, where she works in the broadcasting industry. She has studied improv and sketch at UCB in New York and with the Berubians in Los Angeles. She has written and produced two short films and is developing a line of original greeting cards. Additionally, she plays the lotto when the jackpot gets high.

Matthew Fisher

art gallery

Matthew has shown in group shows at Elizabeth Dee Gallery, Kravets Wehby Gallery, and Lennon, Weinberg Inc in New York City. He will have his first solo show at Spector Gallery in October 2004 and his work will be included in Scope Miami 2004. Fisher’s work has been mentioned in the New York Times and Time Out New York. Fisher is a co-founder of MatCh-Art, an open-ended project that strives to create a quality dialogue between emerging and established artists.

Chris Genoa

humor

Chris Genoa is the author of the sci-fi comedy Foop!, coming soon from Eraserhead Press. He lives in Brooklyn where he's currently at work on his second novel, The Long Spoon. More info is available at www.chrisgenoa.com where Pepino, a mite who lives in Chris's eyelashes, keeps a blog on the author's daily life.

Sharon Gilbert

art gallery

Sharon makes artist’s books, collating political developments with personal identity. Over the past twenty years her work has been shown in major museum exhibitions internationally. In 2004, she had work on view in Denmark, Holland, and in New York City, where she lives, as part of Open House at the newly renovated Brooklyn Museum of Art. You can see more of her work at www.bookarts.com in Focusing on the Environment, Spirituality & Social Justice.

Richard Goodman

best of

Richard Goodman is the author of French Dirt: The Story of a Garden in the South of France. He has written on a variety of subjects for many national publications, including 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 has twice been awarded a fellowship at the MacDowell Colony and twice been awarded a fellowship at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. He is a winner of a Hopwood Award for his fiction. He has taught creative writing in New York City for a number of years, where he is now associated with the New York Writers Workshop. Recently, he wrote the introduction for Travelers' Tales Provence, and his essay about Paris appears in the collection, The Best Travelers' Tales 2004. His essay, "In Search of the Exact Word," originally a lecture at Spalding University, appears in the Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus from Oxford University Press. The University of Michigan Press will publish his essay, "Homage to Cazzie Russell" in its anthology, Ann Arbor: A Literary Portrait, in the fall of 2005.

Mindy Greenstein

essays

Mindy is a Clinical Psychologist and Psycho-oncologist, who lives in New York City with her husband and two sons. "It was at the deathbed of a patient that I decided to start writing about my experiences with people at the beginnings and ends of their lives. But that's another article."

Federico Hatoum

stage

Brooklyn resident Federico Hatoum is a writer, actor and award-winning filmmaker. He has appeared in several television commercials, regularly acts in his own films and was a founding member of Robotski, a NY-based improvisation group. Federico's films have screened in film festivals around the world, and his film "Teddy Graham Theatre" appeared on HBO's Real Sex. Current projects include "Creamers," a feature-length screenplay, and a LED light installation that he predicts will look very nice in his bedroom. Federico's girlfriend may disagree with that assessment when she actually lays eyes on it.

Aileen Hewitt

essays

Aileen Hewitt worked as a public school English teacher, guidance counselor, and social worker. She is now in her fourth career, writing from her home in Old Greenwich, CT.

Ridley Howard

art gallery

Ridley lives and works in Brooklyn. Upcoming exhibitions include the Frieze Art Fair, London and LFL Gallery, NY.

Craig Kirchner

poetry

Craig's recent works have appeared in journals on and offline including Subterranean Quarterly, Erosha, Divine Animal , Thunder Sandwich, Ink Magazine, Lily, Megaera, Adagio and Wicked Alice. He lives and works as a consultant on the east coast but considers himself a hobo of the universe. He writes about what he knows best and yet least -- himself -- in an effort to remove those labels.

Mitchell Levenberg

best of ducts

Mitchell has published short stories in FICTION magazine, The New Delta Review, The Cream City Review, Fine Madness and others. He teaches writing at New York University and St. Francis College.

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.

Laura Emily Mason

memoirs

Laura is recently retired from her job as a Business Systems Analyst at a major U.S. Corporation. She now divides her time between working as a Reference Librarian in a public library and writing her memoir, Losing the Atmosphere.

Elisabeth Ann McGrath

essays

Elisabeth Ann McGrath is a former English teacher. She has a special interest in natural history and currently teaches field birding classes.

Stepehen Mead

reviews

Stephen Mead is a published artist/writer living in northeastern NY. A
resume and samples of his artwork can be seen in the portfolio section of
Absolute Arts, and 123soho.com. Mr. Mead also has several title pieces of e books online at www.scars.tv. These pieces incorporate both image and text, as does his new e book "We Are More Than Our Wounds". Stephen"s book "Blue Heart Diary" is scheduled for release in February 2005 from Stonegarden.net. Films of the piece can currently be seen online at http://stephenmead.neptune.com.

Marilyn Meiselman

profile

Marilyn is an art historian specializing in Precolumbian Art, with a secondary interest in Asian Art. She is a college professor, museum curator and has published articles in her fields of interest. She is trying to write for a broader audience, to share experiences from her rich life, varied travels, and, probably, most important, her understanding of the developing art forms beyond European traditions.

Maura Mulligan

memoir

Maura immigrated to America from County Mayo, Ireland in 1958. A late bloomer to the world of writing her publications include an essay on 9/11 as seen through the eyes of ESL students - The Irish Times (September 2001) and Irish America Magazine (December 2001). Chapters from The Song of the Lark, a memoir in progress, were serialized for publication on the website IrishpoetsWorldwide.com. (2001) A former wearer of many hats, Maura Mulligan has been Gaelic teacher, an actor and a nun. She currently teaches Irish dance to adults in Manhattan, and she works as an Instructional Support Specialist in the NYC Dept of Education.

Jake Novak

Humor

Jake is the producer of "In the Money," the fast-paced and humorous news and finance program on CNN anchored by the cranky Jack Cafferty. Novak is also an Adjunct Professor of Journalism at New York University's College of Arts and Sciences. He is a daily contributor to the "Jokes of the Day" segment on the "Shoptalk" web site , and is a weekly contributor to the "Punchlines" column in Newsday. All of his daily musings can be found at http://jakejakeny.blogspot.com.

Helen Rafferty

columns

Helen, Brooklyn born and bred, currently resides in beautiful Mamaroneck, NY with her husband and three children. Her essays chronicle suburban family life - the glamour, the excitement, the daily dose of decadence and danger. You might say she has a rich interior life.

Jenni Russell

poetry

Jenni lives in NC with her husband Jack and writes full-time. Her poetry and prose have recently been published in Mipo Print, three candles, mothertongued, The Melic Review, Poetic Voices and Espresso Fiction . Besides writing and reading poetry, she enjoys yoga, "The Onion" and playing with her pet bird, Percy Budgie Shelley. She is currently an editor and the interviewer for Mipo Magazine .

J.D. Smith

fiction

J.D. Smith’s publications include the collection The Hypothetical Landscape (Quarterly Review of Literature Poetry Series) and the edited anthology Northern Music: Poems About and Inspired by Glenn Gould (John Gordon Burke, Publisher). His work has twice been nominated for Pushcart Awards, and he is currently circulating his second collection, Settling for Beauty. His prose has appeared in Chelsea, Exquisite Corpse, and Literal Latte, and his poetry has recently appeared in Jest Magazine.

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."

Philippe Stessel

fiction

Philippe has attended school, lived and worked in Manhattan 24 years and in only two apartments. He scaled the corporate ladder, producing everything from Japanese television commercials to investment bank Web sites, until he jumped off. He is currently drawing down his retirement fund and working on short stories and a novel.

Erich R. Sysak

fiction

Erich teaches writing at Webster University Thailand. He lives on the western coastline of the Gulf of Thailand in Hua Hin. His recent work has appeared in Oxford Magazine, Bangkok Post, The Nation, Rare Book Review, StorySouth, and Knot Magazine.

S. Brady Tucker

fiction

S. Brady Tucker received his MA in Creative Writing from Northern Arizona University in 1998, where he founded and worked as Poetry Editor for Thin Air magazine. Currently, he is pursuing a doctoral degree in Fiction at Florida State University. He is originally from Wyoming, and served as an Army paratrooper in Panama and the Persian Gulf. He has taught Shakespeare in London, eaten snakes raw, broken his teeth in fights, and was at one time a collegiate basketball player. He has been known to lie often about his achievements if he thinks it enhances his chances of getting laid, and he believes there are three indelible rules to remember for great comedy: monkey sounds, midgets, and men being kicked in the balls. His poetry and fiction is forthcoming or has recently appeared in the Lullwater Review, North American Review, Poetry Motel, Mississippi Review, Rhino, Southern Poetry Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Spoon River Poetry Review. He also has material appearing in the following anthologies: American Diaspora (University of Iowa Press), Like Thunder (University of Iowa Press), and Clockpunchers (Mammoth Books).

And the Way the Sun Was Positioned and The Focus of the Thousand Mile Stare were originally published by the MacGuffin in 2003. And the Way the Sun Was Positioned was published online by Pif Magazine in 1997.

Christina Vassalo

art gallery

Christina has just gotten comfortable with calling herself a writer and independent curator. During the day, she is a curatorial assistant for a non-profit arts organization. At night, she is one-half of the curating duo, MatCh-Art. Vassallo's opinions on art can sometimes be found on the pages of NY Arts magazine.

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.

Aaron Zimmerman

art gallery

Aaron is a 29 year-old artist based in New York. Sometimes a painter, sometimes focusing on installations or video, sometimes just dressed up and sleeping on the floor; he always draws on popular media for his work. He is also a contributing writer for NY Arts Magazine who makes his living as an art handler and a freelance illustrator. His most recent work can be seen at re-titled.com

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

Daniel is a freelance writer and actor whose work has appeared in Modern Humorist and been performed on the NPR programs Rewind and Morning Edition. He is currently studying improvisation at the UCB theater and performs frequently with the improv troupe Robotski . He lives in Brooklyn. Email Daniel at dkirk78@yahoo.com.

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.

Jennifer Lauren 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

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.

Cody
Dennison

web
designer

Cody is currently lost at sea. Existing on future memories, he communicates via messages in a bottle. If you need to reach him, put a bottle to sea at sunset near the mouth of the east river and expect a response in about 72 days.