Note on Contributors

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

ANDREW ABBOTTwas born to itinerant amber carvers. He regrets daily his missed opportunities for ………….allabbott.com

CLAIRE BURGESS studies Art History at UC Berkeley. Tis is her frst published short story.

JACKIE CRAVEN is the architecture writer for About.com and has also written for House & Garden, Old-House Journal, and other magazines. Her books are Te Healthy Home and Te Stress-Free Home (Rockport Publishers). Her fction appears in literary journals such as Te Fourth River, Verdad, and Zahir. Visit her at www.JackieCraven.com.

JOSHDOWNEY has been artistically photographing for about six years. He has grown to love the art of photographing the inanimate and invoking feelings, emotions, and ‘human’ reactions to subjects that inherently have no life, no thought, and no feeling. Downey fnds his works to be on the more macabre end of the artistic spectrum. His upbringing in the suburbs of Chicago in a close, largely Irish-Italian Catholic family, meant that he spent a good part of his childhood at wakes and funerals. Te dark subject matter that he portrays in much of his works now may result from those events and represent his way of coping with the darkness in life.

ALEKSANDRADUBOV is a singer, performer, visual artist and a native New Yorker who suddenly felt the loving pull of Berkeley calling out to her across the coast. She is currently creating music and taking pictures of her

new home. Her music, music videos and other pictures can be found at www.aleksandradubov.com.

JASON FAIRCHILD is a modern visual artist that is based in Chicago. He received his training in art and medical illustration at Te Ohio State University. His work spans from Figurative and abstract paintings to video. For more info look him up on Youtube.

GEREMY GEORGE is a thirty-one-year-old graphic artist. Born in Texas, he currently resides in Denver, CO. His most recent work involves monochrome, vector collage, produced through a series of physical and digital processes, highlighting various social, political and existential themes. Many of his images can be found and used freely at geremygeorge. com.

CHRISTOPHER M. HOOD is a graduate of UC Irvine’s MFA program. He teaches English and Creative Writing at the Dalton School in New York City. He has published work in Te Santa Monica Review, Te Anteater Reader, and Teachers & Writers, where he was a fnalist for the Bechtel Prize. He wrote the libretto for the opera “Te Prioress’s Tale,” premiered in Boston in 2007, and the lyrics for the song cycle “Brutal Arithmetic.” He lives the Bronx with his wife, Greta.

ERIKA HOOPESis a sophomore at UC San Diego pursuing a degree in Literature and Writing with minors in Film Studies and French. She is an aspiring author and is overjoyed to share her frst published work through the Berkeley Fiction Review. Currently, she is studying in Lyon, France to expand her horizons and capture the beauty in this world from a new standpoint.

MICHAEL HICKSis a student at the University of California, Berkeley, set to graduate with a Bachelor’s degree in English this May. He is proud that his frst published work (hopefully of many) will appear in the Berkeley Fiction Review.

HUNTER JOHNSONwas born and raised in Mississippi and is currently a freshman at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, MS. She graduated from the Mississippi School of the Arts, where she focused on visual art. She explores science (specifcally astronomy and the study of light) and color theory through her artwork. Although she ofen works with various

LANE KARESKA was born in Texas and raised in Chicago. He has a degree from Columbia College Chicago and an MFA from Southern Illinois University. He is currently shopping a novel entitled “Dead Wolf City.”

JENNIFER MICHELLE LONG has been studying and exploring the language of paint for several years now. Creating artwork since childhood, Jennifer has taken her work into her adulthood as a means for her own sacred communication, expression, and connection. She studied privately through BYU professor Sydney Bowman for two years. Later she attended the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. She then took her education into her own hands and interned with Bay Area artist Hilary Williams. Her many styles range from delicate grazings of oil to the ferocious markings of a palette knife. Jennifer has been showing her work in various galleries around the western United States as well as working on commission pieces since 2007. She will be attending a painting seminar in the Mischtechnik this summer in Torri Superiore, Italy with Visionary masters Amanda Sage, A. Andrew Gonzalez, Laurence Caruana, and Maura Holden. She wishes to use art as a tool to ground and articulate visions, and perception of reality.

ANDREA MARTINEZ

i am a fnger painter. i was a human doing. now I am a human being. aqui. ahora.

ELIZABETH O’BRIEN writes poetry, fction, and nonfction. Her work has appeared in Swink, Pank, Slice,Versal, Juked, A capella Zoo, Euphony, Flashquake, Te Charles River Review, Te Emerson Review, Te Found Poetry Review, and other journals. She lives in Somerville, MA, and can be found online at elizabethobrien.net.

PERRY OEI received his B.A., summa cum laude, from the University of San Francisco and his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. When he was a law student at Berkeley during the 1980s, he worked briefy on the staf of Berkeley Poetry Review. Also during the 1980s, he

co-founded and co-edited a literary magazine in the San Francisco Bay Area called Ceilidh.

DANA OSTROWSKI enjoys writing short stories and this is her frst publication. She is currently studying flm at CSU Monterey Bay. She also enjoys reading, the Internet and watching B-movies from the 60s.

ERINPOPELKA makes her home in Oregon afer living in Washington, DC and McMurdo Station, Antarctica. Her writing has appeared in Johnny America, Te Externalist, Collective Fallout, and Te Tower Journal. Her work can be read at www.erinpopelka.com.

MICHAELREPOULIS was born in Athens, Greece, February 12, 1955 and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa. He began drawing at the age of fve and at the age of eleven, took his frst lessons on the guitar, afer which he began to write his own melodies and songs inspired by poetry. In his music he particularly likes to combine melody with dissonance, modulating and syncopating contrasts. Many of Repoulis compositions have been published worldwide and have been included in the University of Toronto, UCLA, Berkeley, University of Cambridge libraries and the Library of Congress. Michael Repoulis is now residing in Toronto where he continues to practice the art of composition.

MARTIN SLAG is a nursing student and emerging horror author. His short fction has appeared in BFR #29, the Kennesaw Review, Barbaric Yawp, Morpheus Tales, and a few other places. He lives in the City of Champions.

STEPHANIE TRAIN received her MFA from Colorado State University where she is currently the assistant director at the Center for Community Literacy. Her work has given her the opportunity to facilitate inmate writing workshops which enable her to give a voice to underserved populations. Her work can be found in Te Copper Nickel, Midnight Screaming and Construction.

GENESIS TRAMAINE, born and bred in bed-stuy, lives the bustling life of a visual artist, high school math teacher, and co-founder of bklyn boihood. A graduate of Syracuse University, Genesis worked in the corporate sector for years before applying to be a NYC Teaching Fellow. She is currently in her third year of teaching math in a Brooklyn public

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