Gale Acuff (One Nation, Under & Counting) has had poetry published in Ascent, Ohio Journal, Descant, Adirondack Review, Ottawa Arts Review, Worcester Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Florida Review, South Carolina Review, Arkansas Review, Carolina Quarterly, Poem, South Dakota Review, Santa Barbara Review, Sequential Art Narrative in Education, and many other journals. He has authored three books of poetry: Buffalo Nickel (BrickHouse Press, 2004), The Weight of the World (BrickHouse, 2006), and The Story of My Lives (BrickHouse, 2008). He has taught tertiary level English in the US, China, and the Palestinian West Bank.
Cherie Brown (Line of Duty) lives in Japan, and currently teaches academic skills at an English-medium university there. Co-author of two TESOL resource books, “Max Vocab: Journeys in the English Language”, and “Partners in the Classroom”, she has also written TESOL materials for “English-to-Go,” an online language teaching and learning resource site, and a wide range of academic material for professional books and journals. Cherie regularly presents teacher-development workshops across Asia through the ‘Teachers Helping Teachers’ organization, a Special Interest Group within JALT (the Japan Association for Language Teaching). She enjoys writing short stories and poetry for pleasure, and tries not to take life too seriously.
Bridget Cassidy (Exactly Where I should Be) is a National Board Certified Teacher with 18 years of experience teaching English as a new language to elementary and high school students in the Milwaukee area. Her love of languages and culture began in elementary school, where she studied Spanish and German. She lived in Seville, Spain where she studied art, history, politics and language. After spending 4 years in Tokyo and Kamogawa studying Japanese and teaching English as a foreign language in a range of contexts, such as military bases, private language schools and public high schools, she returned to school again to earn her teaching degree. She currently resides in Wisconsin where she continues to learn from her students and their families. This is her first publication in nonfiction.
Maria Fachal Corbeira (A Quick Fix for English Teacher Burn-Out) teaches English in Spain and majored in three languages at USC, Spain: English, French and German. She has been teaching English to adults for over 20 years. She took up Chinese many years ago with very limited success but lost her German in the attempt to learn Chinese. While living and working in China, she had the opportunity of meeting some of the most prestigious scholars of Spanish language in the country. Meeting those people and learning about their philosophy of education has completely altered her vision of language teaching and deeply enriched her life. Just like Wu Guanzhong, who became one of the best painters in China after his contact with Western art, she strongly believes that cultural exchange is extremely positive in the context of education for all sides involved.
Ruben D. Escudero Jnr. (Teaching Transcends Boundaries) is a native of Dapitan City, Philippines. He is presently exemplifying his teaching competence at Sulangon National High School in his hometown. He has taught English and Filipino Languages as well as social sciences for many years now. He worked in one of the banks in the nearby city as a legal researcher for four years, but soon realized that he loved teaching more. He earned his Juris Doctor Degree from Andres Bonifacio College in 2010, and was also a graduate of Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication from the same college in 2003. He earned units in Secondary Education and has taken and passed the Licensure Examination for Teachers which qualified him for a teaching position in the Department of Education in his country, the Philippines. He has been writing since he was in college and his articles have been published in his school paper and in his school’s law journal. He has also written an article that was published in one of the national newspapers in the Philippines.
Mike Guest (The Uklak) is Associate Professor of English at the University of Miyazaki (Faculty of Medicine). A Canadian citizen but a 25-year resident of Japan, Guest was a regular columnist in The Japan News (newspaper) on EFL matters for 13 years, and now authors a blog entitled ‘Methods and Musings’ for Language Teaching Professionals (LTP) . He has published loads of academic papers, a few textbooks and guidebooks in both Japanese and English, as well as The Little Suicides, his first novel. He writes whenever the urge becomes irresistible.
Aled Harris (On a Pickle, Very Very Very & Figurative Language is Useless) is an English teacher in Jilin province North East China. He writes poems for his students and is currently working on compiling his first book.
Andrew Innes (Generation C) is originally from Cheshire near Manchester in England. He now lives in Himeji and divides his time between teaching at Mukogawa Women`s University, Himeji Dokkyo University, and various freelance classes around the Kansai area. He has written about topics such as machine translation, and the use of video in class to reduce transactional distance when teaching online, among others. In his free time, he likes going hiking and going to the local gym to keep fit. This is his second short story publication. (andrewhimeji@gmail.com).
Hardy Jones (Red Ants) is a Creole/Cajun educator and author in New Orleans. He is a two-time Pushcart Nominee, the author of the novels Every Bitter Thing, International Love Supreme, the memoirs People of the Good God, Resurrection of Childhood, and the story collection Coconuts and Crawfish. He is the co-author of the memoirs Wal-Mart Girl, When I was a Child, and A True Story of Child Labor. Please check out his books at this link
His creative nonfiction won two grants. His stories were anthologized in the 2009 Dogzplot Flash Fiction Anthology, The Best of Clapboard House Literary Journal, Southern Gothic: New Tales of the South, and Summer Shorts II. He is the co-founder and Executive Editor of the online journal Cybersoleil (www.cybersoleiljournal.com).
Hardy holds a Ph, D. in American Literature from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Memphis, and a M.A.T. in Secondary English Education from the University of New Orleans. He taught in universities for 18 years and is a certified teacher. His website is www.hardyjoneswriting.com and he is on Twitter @HardyJonesWrite. Hardy splits his time between New Orleans, Louisiana and Si Sa Ket Province Thailand.
Natthinee Khot-asa Jones (Red Ants) is a memoirist, novelist, and short story writer publishing in Thai and English. She is a country girl from the Thai side of the Thai-Cambodian border who grew up speaking Cambodian, Thai, and Laotian. In 2001, she graduated from Sophon Business School in Thailand, and later attended the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Auburn University, and the University of New Orleans. Her English publications include the memoirs “Wal-Mart Girl,” “When I Was a Child,” “A True Story of Child Labor. She is the co-author of the story collection “Coconuts and Crawfish,” and the novel “International Love Supreme.” The essay “Praying Hands,” which appeared in The Font literary journal. Please check out her books here.
Her Thai publications include the novel “February, I Love You” and the short story “Puppy Love,” published in the High School Love anthology in 2007. A Thai version of Natthinee’s memoir Wal-Mart Girl was published in 2008 by Nokhook publishing, and in 2008 the novel The Heart of Time was also published by Nokhook.
In 2017 the essay “Praying Hands” appeared in The Font literary journal. In 2015, an excerpt of the English version of Wal-Mart Girl, “My Talking Dic,” was in Issue Two of Red Truck Review. In 2008, her web-blog, Roslita-bloggang, was voted the third best literature blog on the Pantip website.
In addition to being a writer, Natthinee is a photographer, and one of her photos was used for the cover image of the “Family Secrets” (Issue #44) Sugar Mule Online Magazine. In 2006-2007, she was a Laotian translator and interpreter for Louisiana’s Folklife “New Populations Project.” For this project, her husband Hardy Jones received a research grant to write about Songkran, the Buddhist New Year’s celebration in the Laotian community of Lanxang outside of Lafayette, Louisiana. The essay and photographs from their research are on the Louisiana Folklife website. Natthinee loves cooking Thai and Cajun food, and in 2006 her Phad-Thai recipe was featured in the Wal-Mart Family Cookbook. Organic gardening is her newest passion, building on her childhood experiences on her family’s farm in Thailand.
Her website is www.natthineeandhardy.com. She is the co-founder and the Webmaster of the online journal Cybersoleil (www.cybersoleiljournal.com).
Edward Levinson(Enlightened Alphabet) is a photographer, essayist and poet living in Japan since 1979. His book Whisper of the Land (Fine Line Press, 2014) is a collection of essays based on his life in Japan and includes many bilingual haiku. Timescapes Japan, (Nippon Camera, 2006) his award winning photo book takes one on a black and white pinhole photo journey through Japan. He resides in a countryside paradise on the Boso Peninsula in Chiba Prefecture where he attunes to nature and the world around him for creative inspiration. Please visit http://www.edophoto.com and http://www.whisperoftheland.com
Dianne Loyet is contributor of The Font’s regular column, In Love with Language. She was born and raised in Illinois, and became determined to study languages at the age of nine when her much older brother told her she was a ‘mala puella,’ and refused to explain what it meant. That determination carried her through bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Russian at the University of Illinois in Champaign. She briefly taught Russian but then switched to TESOL, earning an MA from UCLA and a PhD from New York University. She has been teaching composition to advanced non-native speakers of English since 1993. Currently she is an adjunct instructor at the University of Illinois at Springfield Intensive English Program.
Rini Rose Matthew (The Eternal Thought & The Day She Spoke) is a Language Instructor. She has been facilitating English Language and Literature to students in colleges and schools since 2012 and resides in India. Her interests in articulation skills and language have been acknowledged in several voice-over projects in educational and advertisement projects. One of her works made a commendable entry for a National Skills Network Contest titled ‘Be skilled Be relevant’ in August 2017.
Michael Pronko ( The Language Dance) became a professor of American Literature and Culture at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo after years of traveling, an M.A. in ESL, an M.A. in Comp Lit and a PhD in English from the University of Kent. His seminars focus on contemporary novels and film adaptations and he teaches classes in American film, music and art.
Michael has published three award-winning collections about Tokyo life and two mystery novels, The Last Train and The Moving Blade. The latter was selected as one of the best indie mysteries and thrillers of 2018 by Kirkus Reviews. Michael has written regular columns for many publications, including The Japan Times, Newsweek Japan, ST Shukan, and Artscape Japan. He runs his own website, Jazz in Japan (www.jazzinjapan.com). More at: www.michaelpronko.com www.facebook.com/pronkoauthor @pronkomichael
Bharat Sigdel (Reclaiming Vedic Education) is an English teacher and enthusiast of innovation in pedagogy. He has been teaching English in different institutions in Nepal since 1999. Currently, he is the head of the Department of English at the Nepal Police School in Sanga, Kavrepalanchowk. He has also been a school coordinator and vice-principal in the same institution. He is currently pursuing an MPhil in English Language Education at Kathmandu University.
Sarah Somerset (Weeding in Wakayama) has taught in Japanese universities for nearly twenty years. A brief sojourn with her family for a teaching contract has somehow evolved into two decades. When she began teaching in Japan her children were in kindergarten, and now they are older than her students. She is surprised that despite being from a minority in terms of both gender and ethnicity she has been given more responsibility in the workplace than she could ever have imagined or desired. Her family members have all returned to her country now, but she somehow manages to keep going because she has internalized the ethic of group loyalty, not to mention the look of trust in her students’ eyes.
Helen Waldron (Hand to Mouth) has been teaching and running in-company and academic seminars in a wide variety of business fields and organizations for over 30 years. She holds a MEd in Applied Linguistics, along with various coaching and intercultural qualifications. Her writing credits include “What’s Your Teaching Identity?,” “A-Z of Global Issues” and “Teacher Stories” and she is interested in the relationships between language, society and work and in practitioner identities within the ELT industry. www.helenwaldron.com.