CONTRIBUTORS' NOTES
Sally J. Bellerose writes about class, sex, illness, absurdity, and lately, growing old. Her novel Fishwives (Bywater Books, 2021), features old women behaving badly. Her novel The Girls Club won many awards, including an NEA Fellowship. Her poetry is featured in Lady Business (Sibling Rivalry Press).
Jim Bishop retired several years ago as a lecturer in English at the University of Maine, Orono, where he also served as point person in creating the Franco-American Studies program. Prior to his official employment in that capacity, he coordinated, with Yvon Labbé and Peter Archambault, the first Rassemblement of Franco-American Artists and Writers in 1983. Bishop is the author of one collection of poetry (Mother Tongue, Contraband Press, 1975), and a later CD of selected work (Vox Audio, 2007). His writing has appeared in several journals and anthologies, including: The Sun, Café Review, Contraband, Maine Times, Onan, Marshroots, Moth, Tolstoy Studies Review, Voyages: A Maine Franco-American Reader, and French Connections: A Gathering of Franco-American Poets. He also edited Hearts in Suspension (University of Maine Press, 2016), a hybrid fiction/nonfiction collection that includes essays by Stephen King and several classmates from King’s undergraduate years at the University of Maine. Bishop is currently compiling a volume of his own selected works.
Gabriella Brand's writing has appeared in over fifty literary magazines and anthologies. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee. Some of her work can be found in The Christian Science Monitor, Aji, and Rockvale Review.. Gabriella lives near New Haven, Connecticut, where she teaches in the OLLI program at the University of Connecticut, Waterbury. She speaks five languages and is an avid hiker and canoeist. She is married to Douglas Peary, a proud Mainer with long-time roots in Aroostook County.
Kristin Sánchez Carter (theme issue co-editor) teaches in the English Department of Barnard College, and is also active in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Her scholarship and teaching have also included Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies, American Studies,Media Studies. Current projects include work that began as an investigation into late 20th century documents of white masculine anxiety, in films like The Matrix, Pleasantville, and Forrest Gump. That work has morphed, somewhat like these films’ technological forays into virtual embodiment, into a consideration of the history and use of prosthesis, and prosthetic technologies, in the shaping of the citizen and subject.
R. Paul Cooper is a Senior Lecturer in Rhetoric and Literature at Texas A&M. His poetry has appeared in collections from Lavender Ink and Louisiana Literature in New Orleans and Hammond. He is a published scholar of sci-fi and hip-hop, and has published French nonfiction with Le Bourdon de La Louisiane. Like many from Louisiana, he is trying to restore a language nearly lost by his parents' generation.
Julie Cyr has been published by Slipstream, Blood and Thunder Journal, Broad River Review, and Lost Horse Press in the Nasty Women Poets Anthology, among others. She was awarded 2014 Best of Poetry by Blood and Thunder Journal, a finalist in the 2016 Rash Awards for Poetry, awarded a scholarship from Murphy Writing of Stockton University in 2018, nominated for a 2019 Pushcart Prize, and won first place in the 2020 Poetry Society of NH Member’s Contest. Julie holds an MFA in creative writing from Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband and two sons.
Kevin Cyr is a Maine-based artist known for his paintings of vehicles, as well as his sculptural works depicting unique shelters and transitory homes. He studied illustration at Massachusetts College of Art and worked as a studio assistant to the painter Kehinde Wiley for five years. He has had three solo shows at Jonathan LeVine Gallery, several group and solo shows at other galleries, and is currently with the Alden Gallery in Provincetown, MA. His work can be found at www.kevincyr.net and @kevincyrstudio on Instagram.
Rafael Jesús González born and raised on the U.S./Mexican border (El Paso, Texas/Cd. Juárez, Chihuahua). He taught at various U.S. universities before joining the faculty of Laney College, where he founded the Mexican & Latin American Studies Dept. Four times nominated for a Pushcart Prize, he was honored by the National Council of Teachers of English for his writing in 2003. In 2013 the City of Berkeley honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2017 he was named Berkeley's first Poet Laureate. (http://rjgonzalez.blogspot.com/)
Denise R. Larson grew up in a red-brick factory town in Connecticut, listening to her Rajotte aunts’ stories about Canada and her Grandfather Duperré’s stories of life as a youth in northern Maine. She was an editor for a Maine daily newspaper and a book editor. She is now a novelist and free-lance writer, whose work includes Companions of Champlain, Founding Families of Quebec: 1608-1635, and many contributions to Le Forum.
Denis Ledoux’s books include Turning Memories Into Memoirs/A Handbook for Writing Lifestories (1992, 1998, 2006); We Were Not Spoiled / A Franco-American Memoir (2014), his mother’s story, which he wrote with her; and A Sugary Frosting (2016), a memoir of his deceased wife’s childhood in a New England parsonage. His fiction has won several Maine Art Commission awards and fellowships. Ledoux lives and works in his native Maine, just a mile from his boyhood home. He serves on the board of Lewiston’s Franco-American Collection.
Luis Lopez-Maldonado is a Xicanx poeta, choreographer, and educator, born and raised in Southern California. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California Riverside, in Creative Writing and Dance. His poetry has been seen in The American Poetry Review, Foglifter, The Packinghouse Review, Public Pool, and Latina Outsiders: Remaking Latina Identity, among many others. He also earned a Master of Arts degree in Dance from Florida State University and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame, where he was poetry editorial assistant for Notre Dame Review, and founder of the men's writing workshop in the St. Joseph County Juvenile Justice Center. He was named Recipient of the Sparks Summer Fellowship 2016. He is currently adding his glitter to the Land of Enchantment, working for the public education system, and preparing for acceptance to The University of New Mexico, School of Law, where he plans to pursue immigration, criminal, and personal injury law.
Erin Murphy’s eighth book of poems, Human Resources, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. Her work has appeared in such journals as The Georgia Review, Field, Southern Humanities Review, Glass, and Women’s Studies Quarterly. Her awards include The Normal School Poetry Prize, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, and a Best of the Net award. She is editor of three anthologies from the University of Nebraska Press and SUNY Press and serves as Poetry Editor of The Summerset Review. She is Professor of English at Penn State Altoona. www.erin-murphy.com
Abby Paige was born and raised in northern Vermont, USA, and now lives in New Brunswick, Canada. Her poems, essays, and book reviews have appeared in publications in both countries, including Room Magazine, Arc Poetry Magazine, Bitch Magazine, The Montreal Review of Books, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. Her solo shows, “Piecework: When We Were French” and “Les filles du quoi?,” are currently being translated in preparation for publication.
Kate Pashby (they/them) is a queer Mexican American poet from San Jose, California who resides in Washington, DC. Their work has been published or is forthcoming in Genre: Urban Arts' House, Northern Otter Press, Embryo Concepts Zine, The Confessionalist Zine, Burrow, Rogue Agent, and Rabid Oak. Kate was nominated for Best of the Net 2020.
Fernando Pérez was born and raised in Southern California to Chicano parents. While in pursuit of an MFA at Arizona State, he began to learn about the relationship between poetry and photography--how both are solitary pursuits, how both have a job to frame an image for the viewer. Today, he teaches writing at Bellevue College, and his first collection of poems, A Song of Dismantling, was published in 2018 with the University of New Mexico Press.
Juan Manuel Pérez, a Mexican-American poet of indigenous descent and the current Poet Laureate for Corpus Christi, Texas (2019-2021), is the author of several books of poetry including a new book, Screw the Wall! and Other Brown People Poems (FlowerSong Books, 2020).
Hopeless romantic Quixote on a bike, Jérôme Pilette is a 37-year-old Québécois adventurer, voice over artist and writer. Scholarship: École de la Vie. Work Experience: lighting engineer; production assistant; movie columnist; cook; dishwasher; etc. No life experience has ever been above or below his spirit and curiosity... or his need to pay the rent. Struggling with depression for many years, Pilette left the security and comfort of normal life in Montréal, on July 20th 2017, to travel on a beaten up 15-year-old-or-more second-hand bicycle to a place called ''As far South as possible.” To this day, he is still in Southern Chile, waiting for the pandemic to move along so he can get back on his journey. Pilette’s e-book of travel stories, Recits de Voyages, is available online.
Fabrice B. Poussin teaches French and English at Shorter University, where he is the advisor for The Chimes, an award-winning poetry and arts publication. His writing and photography have been published in Kestrel, Symposium, The Front Porch Review, San Pedro River Review, and other art and literature magazines in the United States and abroad.
Sujash Purna is a graduate student at Missouri State University. He serves as an assistant poetry editor to the Moon City Review. His poetry appeared in Naugatuck River Review, Kansas City Voices, Poetry Salzburg Review, English Journal, Harbinger Asylum, Watershed Review, Stonecoast Review, Red Earth Review, Emrys Journal, and other publications.
Steven Riel (theme issue co-editor) is the author of one full-length collection of poetry (Fellow Odd Fellow), with another titled Edgemere forthcoming in 2021. His most recent chapbook Postcard from P-town was published as runner-up for the inaugural Robin Becker Chapbook Prize. His poems have appeared in several anthologies and numerous periodicals. He received an MFA in Poetry from New England College.
Catherine Rivard is a native of Minneapolis, Minnesota. She spent much of her adult life in New England researching the life of May Alcott (sister of Louisa) and has not-yet-diminished hopes of someday, someday, completing her biography. Catherine has been involved in Franco American activities since the 1970s.
Recent poetry and fiction by Bruce Robinson appears or is forthcoming in Pangyrus, Common Ground, The Five-Two, Dead Mule, and Aji magazine.
Gerard Sarnat won the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize. His work has been widely published in U.S. literary journals (including Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, MiPOesias, and American Journal of Poetry) and in international publications (including Review Berlin, Voices Israel, Foreign Lit, New Ulster, and Transnational). He’s authored the collections Homeless Chronicles: From Abraham to Burning Man (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014), and Melting the Ice King (2016). Gerry is a physician who has built and staffed clinics for the marginalized as well as a Stanford professor and healthcare CEO. Currently he is devoting energy/resources to deal with climate change justice. Gerry’s been married since 1969 with three kids plus six grandsons, and he is looking forward to future granddaughters. www.gerardsarnat.com
Jeri Theriault’s poetry collections include Radost, my red (Moon Pie Press) and the award-winning In the Museum of Surrender (Encircle Publications). Her poems and reviews have appeared in journals such as: The American Journal of Poetry, The Rumpus, The Texas Review, and Contemporary Verse 2: The Canadian Journal of Poetry and Critical Writing. A 2019 Maine Literary Award Winner, Jeri lives in South Portland. Find her at www.jeritheriault.com.
David Vermette is the author of the book A Distinct Alien Race: The Untold Story of Franco-Americans (Montreal: Baraka Books, 2018). He is a researcher, blogger, and speaker on the subject of New England's Franco-Americans. He was born and raised in Massachusetts.
Erica Vermette is an artist and designer from the Greater Boston area. You can follow her work @ericavee1 on Instagram.
Nathan Wendte is an independent scholar residing in New Orleans with his wife and son. He is an occasional adjunct faculty member at Tulane University, where he received his MA and PhD degrees in linguistic anthropology. Nathan’s work centers the issues of language, contact, and identity. He is an active member of the movement to revitalize Louisiana Creole (aka KouriVini) and has co-authored a learner’s guide to the language entitled Ti Liv Kréyòl.