Jevon Allen grew up in Rochester, New York and live in Aspen, Colorado before moving to Japan. He has been an English educator for more than 10 years. He is also an avid chef, gardener, musician, surfer and all around outdoorsman. He is active in the Toyohashi Writer's Group and spends much of his free time with the written word.
Atar Hadari was born in Israel, raised in England and studied poetry and playwrighting with Derek Walcott at Boston University. His plays have won awards from the BBC, Arts Council of England, National Foundation of Jewish Culture (New York), European Association of Jewish Culture (Brussels) and the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he was Young Writer in Residence. Plays have been staged at the Finborough Theatre, Wimbledon Studio Theatre, Chichester Festival Theatre, the Mark Taper Forum (where he was a Mentor Playwright), Nat Horne Studio Theatre (New York) and Valdez, Alaska. His “Songs from Bialik: Selected Poems of H. N. Bialik” (Syracuse University Press) was a finalist for the American Literary Translators’ Association Award and his poems have won the Daniel Varoujan award from New England Poetry Club, the Petra Kenney award, a Paumanok poetry award and many other prizes. His debut poetry collection, “Rembrandt’s Bible”, was published by Indigo Dreams Press and his “Lives of the Dead: Poems of Hanoch Levin” is forthcoming from Arc Publications. Last year he was awarded the British Center for Literary Translation's first Hebrew Mentorship to translate Haim Hazaz's novel "The Noose" with Nicholas de Lange.
Anna Husson Isozaki teaches in Japan, focusing on literacy and literature in English. Her writing and teaching specialize in bringing others’ words out: translation, shaping writing for publication, and especially, helping emerging L2 writers and speakers share their thoughts. She’s written on these topics in academic journals, and is a member of SWET (the Society of Writers, Editors and Translators), and LiLT (Literature in Language Teaching). This is her second creative non-fiction publication.
Diane Jackman's poetry has appeared in many anthologies and magazines. She was winner of Liverpool Poetry Festival 2006, Deddington Festival 2014, and Norfolk Prize in Café Writers’ competition 2014. Other work includes the libretto ‘Pinocchio’ for the Kings' Singers/LSO, seven children's books, translated into several languages, children’s stories, and choral lyrics. She has just completed ‘Old Land’, a series of narratives exploring the lightly buried past of the countryside. Her interest in the English language has been sustained for the past eighteen years by a weekly group meeting in Norwich to read Old English texts, and wander down the byways of the English language.
Originally from the U.S.A., Jane Joritz-Nakagawa has lived in Japan a long time. Her poems, essays and interviews have been widely published in journals and anthologies in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and Japan. Her eighth book of poetry, Distant Landscapes, was published in spring, 2015 by Theenk Books (USA). Email is welcome at janejoritznakagawaATgmailDOTcom.
Morrison Lee is an Australian who taught English in South Korea from 2001-2013. He was counselor and advocate for students at USQ in Toowoomba, Queensland, and has a background in Communication, Theology, Counseling, and Critical thinking. He is presently living and writing in Brisbane.
Edward Levinson is an American fine art and editorial photographer who also writes essays and short poems. He has lived in Japan since 1979. His most recent book "Whisper of the Land” is a collection of essays based on 35 years worth of ‘Visions of Japan’, a lyrical memoir published by Fine Line Press (2014). He has published two books of essays in Japanese: “My Way of Planting – Cultivating a Life in Japan” (2011) and “Edo’s Lessons in Pinhole Photography – Photography for Slow Life” (2007) both by Iwanami Shoten. His photo book “Timescapes Japan” (Nippon Camera-sha, 2006) received a category First Prize Award in the “Prix de la Photographie Paris, 2007”.
Edward’s photographs and writings appear in many Japanese books and magazines as well as in English publications; his works are regularly exhibited in Japan, the U.S.A., and Europe. Though he long ago gave up language teaching, he still enjoys public speaking where he shares his photos, words, and way of life with others. He has a small gallery at his country home/studio in Kamogawa, Chiba Prefecture where he also creates and maintains his garden, a source of inspiration for his writing.
Websites – http://www.edophoto.com http://www.whisperoftheland.com
Gill McEvoy taught EFL in Finland and Ireland many years ago! She now runs several regular poetry events in Chester, UK, and is a Hawthornden Fellow. Publications in print are ‘The Plucking Shed’ (Cinnamon Press, 2010), ‘Rise’ (Cinnamon Press, 2013), and ‘The First Telling’ (Happenstance Press, 2014). Visit Gill’s website at www.poemcatchers.com
Pete Mullineaux lives in Galway, Ireland. He is widely published in Ireland, UK, USA & France, including in Poetry Ireland Review 100 (ed. Paul Muldoon), The Stinging Fly, Van Gogh’s Ear (Paris), Poetry Daily, and about.com/poetry (USA). Pete’s work was featured recently on ARENA (RTE Radio 1) & in FUSION magazine, Berklee College of Music, Boston. Hie has published three collections: Zen Traffic Lights, (Lapwing, 2005) A Father’s Day (Salmon Poetry, 2008) and Session (Salmon Poetry, 2011.) Three of his plays have been produced by RTE radio, most recently ‘Butterfly Wings’ (2011). Just a Second! – a book of plays on global issues written for schools – was published by Afri (Action from Ireland) in 2014. Visit Pete’s website at petemullineaux.com
Sarah O’Sullivan completed her MA at University College Cork in 2001. Her thesis was entitled ‘Mary Dorcey: The Making of Poetry’. She has had poetry published in an annual collection of contemporary poetry called ‘The Stony Thursday Book’ and in the U.S. based ‘Diverse Voices Quarterly’. Her first collection, Small Things, was published in 2010. She now lives in Cork, Ireland, after spells in Australia, South Africa and the South West U.S.A. Visit her website at sarahosullivanpoetry.com
Patrick Parr has taught English as a Second Language since 2007, when he moved to Oita, Japan to teach at a conversation school. Since then, he has gone on to teach at Central Washington University, the University of Washington, and Kumon Leysin Academy of Switzerland. Currently he lives with his wife near Seattle, but will be relocating back to Japan this summer. Previous work has appeared in USA Today, The Japan Times, The Humanist and the Kyoto Journal, among others. Website: www.patrickparr.com
Connla Stokes is a Dublin-born, Vietnam-based writer. He currently lives in Ho Chi Minh City where he divides his time neatly between writing for money and writing for nothing.His fiction has been published online by Litro Magazine, Eastlit, Prick of the Spindle, Barcelona Review and Zouch Magazine and in print by Total Cardboard (Australia), Sleepers Almanac (Australia) and Esik Cini (Turkey). His day to day blog can be found at the-comical-hat.tumblr.com.
The Paper Bark tree of Susan Laura Sullivan’s childhood was not linked to sacred scrolls or ancient scholars, but to Kentucky Fried Chicken. Stripping the bark from the tree and picking away the flaky caramel outer layer revealed white flesh, soft and spongy like cooked chicken breast – sustenance for the games of make-believe that Susan and her sister played. Climbing the Paper Bark to the tin roof of the shed, not on a baking hot Perth day, the girls scribbled a retelling of The Three Little Pigs. Filling a notebook, it was a veritable novel. The Paper Bark was a place of imagination and adventure, and Susan’s creative path has been infiltrated, shaded, inverted and shaped by foliage of every notion and nation ever since.
Anna W.B. Tso received her PhD in Applied Linguistics from The University of Birmingham, U.K. She is an assistant professor of English and Comparative Literature at the School of Arts and Social Sciences, the Open University of Hong Kong, where she heads the Master of Arts in Applied English Linguistics, leads the English Cultural Literacy project, and directs the Digital Humanities Research Centre of the Institute for Research in Digital Culture and Humanities. Interested in children’s literature, gender studies, and translation studies, Anna has published research articles, essays and reviews in peer-reviewed journals across Asia, Australia, Europe and the U.S. She is currently writing a book on teaching Shakespeare and language arts. In her free time, she also writes plays, poems and short stories for leisure. Her prose and verse have appeared in literary periodicals and national newspapers, including Initium, American Tanka, New Academia, and China Times.