Vo l . 7 N o . 2 mensional component. I use contemporary and modern painting styles mixed with traditional ancient techniques. Visually, I want my paintings to speak musically through the crafting of shapes, color, surface and space. Yuliya’s art work is can be seen locally in Anchorage at Downtown Gallery and Yuliya’s Art @ Facebook, Splashnpaint@Facebook. Bob Hicks’ house is in sight of Mount Baker and within a short walk to the Salish Sea. He currently writes primarily poetry but has also has written essays and a novel. He is inspired by his wonderful wife, Debra. Branwyn Holroyd grew up in Vancouver, BC but tends to wander. She loves trail running, especially in the mountains of New Mexico. She is a student in the Red Earth MFA Program at Oklahoma City University. This winter she is living on Hornby Island, BC. Barbara Hood is a retired attorney and small businesswoman who lives in Anchorage, Alaska, where she enjoys writing opinion pieces, feature articles, personal essays, and poetry. Her work has appeared in the Anchorage Press, the Alaska Dispatch News, and the ADN’s weekly publication We Alaskans. She is grateful to Cirque, 49 Writers, the Kachemak Bay Writers Conference, and Alaska’s community of writers for encouraging and supporting literary arts in the state. Sarah Isto is originally from Fairbanks but has lived for the last three decades in Juneau. She still spends the equinox months family cabin in the Kantishna Hill near Denali. Her poetry has appeared in Cirque, Tidal Echoes, Gold Man Review, Windfall, Perfume River Review and the Timberline Review. Seth Jani currently resides in Seattle, WA and is the founder of Seven CirclePress (www.sevencirclepress.com). His own work has been published widely in such places as The Coe Review, The Hamilton Stone Review, Hawai`i Pacific Review, Gingerbread House and Gravel. More about him and his work can be found at www.sethjani.com Jill Johnson splits her time between her adopted home in Alaska and her ancestral home in Oregon’s high desert country. She is enjoying finding connections between the two locations and between her past and present. There is much to love about them all. Marion Avrilyn Jones has lived in Fairbanks, Alaska for nearly thirty years. She received her MA in English from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Her work has previously appeared in Cirque and Ice Floe. Joseph Kashi is a trial lawyer in Soldotna, Alaska. He received his BS and MS degrees from MIT in 1973 and his JD from Georgetown University Law School in 1976. While pursuing other disciplines at MIT, he also “casually” studied photography with prominent American fine art photographer Minor White. Since 2007, he has mounted more than a dozen solo exhibits at various university and art center galleries in Alaska. Peter Kaufmann lives in Homer, Alaska. He has spent the last 20 years working internationally with people and their stories, producing community based dramas, radio, film, exhibits, and written materials. He is also a closet poet. His area of expertise is using expressive arts and inquiry as a process for discovery and change.
151 is included in the collections of museums, libraries, and national parks in addition to many private collections. She has received grants from the Rasmuson Foundation and the Alaska State Council on the Arts and was the 2015 recipient of the Governor’s Individual Artist Award. Janet Klein has explored and written about the natural and cultural history of Kachemak Bay since 1978 and recently began exploring her environment through an emerging interest – poetry. In 1994 she created Kachemak Country Publications and illustrated her nonfiction books with her photographs. Books still in print include Archaeology of Kachemak Bay, Alaska; Kachemak Bay Communities, Their Histories, Their Mysteries; Index to The Ethnography of the Tanaina (Cornelius Osgood wrote the ethnography, Janet the Index) and two period pieces, murder mysteries by the arctic anthropologist Frederica de Laguna: Fog on the Mountain and The Arrow Points to Murder. Michael Kleven is a production sound mixer and filmmaker based in Seattle, Washington. He produces videos and documentaries content through his company Heartstone Studios. His freelance services company is called Kleven Creative. Born in the Pacific Northwest, Kleven has always grappled with the relationship between the land and its people. As rapid growth transforms the region, he looks for aspects that remain constant. The tug and pull of these opposing forces is reflected in his photography. Cirque editor, Sandra Kleven celebrates, with founder and partner in crime, Michael Burwell, 14 issues of Cirque. A poet and essayist, Kleven has published work in AQR, Oklahoma Review, Topic, Praxilla, Stoneboat, f-zine and the UAP anthology, Cold Flashes. Her poems were twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Kleven’s writing has won notice in the UAA Creative Writing and F’Air Words contests. In 2015, she was named to the Northshore Schools, Wall of Honor. Kleven’s most recent book is Defiance Street: Poems and Other Writing (VP&D Publishing House). Idaho native Grove Koger is the author of When the Going Was Good: A Guide to the 99 Best Narratives of Travel, Exploration, and Adventure and Associate Editor of Deus Loci: The Lawrence Durrell Journal. He writes regularly for Laguna Beach Art Patron Magazine and has published fiction in Skive, Phantasmacore, Lacuna, Two Words For, Danse Macabre, and Eternal Haunted Summer. Len Kuntz is a writer from Washington State, an editor at the online magazine Literary Orphans. and the author of I’m Not Supposed To Be Here And Neither Are You out now from Unknown Press. His story collection The Dark Sunshine debuted from Connotation Press in 2014. You can also find him at lenkuntz.blogspot.com Mercedes Lawry has published poetry in such journals as Poetry, Nimrod, Prairie Schooner, Poetry East, Natural Bridge, and others. Thrice-nominated for a Pushcart Prize, she’s published two chapbooks, most recently Happy Darkness. She’s also published short fiction, essays, stories, and poems for children. She lives in Seattle.
Jennifer Kemnitz is an herbalist-poet who lives and writes in Portland. Her work has most recently appeared in Rain, the Kerf, Medical Literary Messenger, and We’Moon, and has been anthologized by Poetry on the Lake, The Poetry Box, and VoiceCatcher. Jennifer’s poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and translated into German. She is Assistant Managing Editor for VoiceCatcher.
David M. Laws grew up in Montana, and moved to Seattle to attend the University of Washington in 1967. He has worked as a housepainter, firefighter, truck driver, logger, janitor, bookkeeper, file clerk, school bus driver, teacher, jeweler, fry cook, warehouseman, carpet salesman, cost accountant, and many other jobs. He currently repairs musical instruments from his shop in Bellingham, Washington, where he lives with his wife of thirty-five years, Judith, and his glorious little girl terrier, Princess Possum Blossom the Awesome. His first book of poetry is titled Natural History.
Margo Klass is a mixed media artist whose work includes sculptural box constructions and artist books. She shows her work widely in Alaska and
Eric le Fatte: I was educated at MIT and Northeastern University in biology and English and worked as the Returns King at Eastern Mountain