Ascent Aspirations Magazine Print Anthology One Contributors

Becky Alexander is a Cambridge, Ontario poet. She has been published in Pegasus, Country Woman, Tower, People’s Political Letter, Zygote, Canadian Writer’s Journal, The Amethyst Review, and many other journals. She has four poetry publications. Her work has won many awards and has been included in national and international anthologies. In 2000 she founded Craigleigh Press, which has published eight collections to date. Becky has edited books for fellow writers, and served as a literary judge for various groups. She was the 2002 recipient of the Bernice Adams Cultural Awards for the City of Cambridge, and won for best poem in the 2004 One Book, One Community writing contest for the Kitchener Waterloo Region, based on Jane Urquhart’s book, The Stone Carvers.

Richard Arnold lives on a modest acreage near Errington, BC. He teaches English at Malaspina University College in Nanaimo. Besides writing and reading poetry, he likes spending time with his family, hiking, canoeing, and camping. His work has been published in many print and electronic places across North America. He has two collections of poetry to his credit: a chapbook from Leaf Press (2002) and a haiku pamphlet from Island Scholastic (2003).

Peter Austin lives with his wife and 3 daughters in Toronto, where he teaches English at Seneca College. His poems have appeared in over a dozen magazines, in Canada, the US and the UK. He also writes plays, and the third production of his musical adaptation of THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS will be mounted by Vancouver’s Carousel Theatre in the spring of 2006.

Judith Bilodeau is an Adult Education teacher, currently teaching ESL, and living in Ottawa. She is married, with two grown children, five grown step-children and a ten year old dog. She loves traveling, gardening, reading, and walking.

April Bulmer has four books and a chapbook. She holds graduate degrees in creative writing, religious studies and theology. She is interested in women’s spirituality. She recently won first prize in the TOPS, “Second Time Around Contest.” April lives in Cambridge, Ontario with her puppy, Lichee.

Heather Cardin lives in Gatineau, QC with her family. She received a Master’s degree in English from Carleton University (2005) after twenty years as a high school and college instructor. She has published a number of poems in a variety of magazines, has had a poetry manuscript accepted for publication in the U.K., has published a non-fiction book entitled Partners in Spirit (2006) and has another, A Warm Place in My Heart, forthcoming in fall 2007. Her blogs can be found at Book Woman and Poet.

D.B. Cox is a blues musician/writer from South Carolina. His writing has appeared in Underground Voices, Ascent Aspirations, Thunder Sandwich, Dublin Quarterly, Aesthetica, Bonfire, Gator Springs Gazette, Heat City Review, Snow Monkey, Southern Hum, Southern Gothic and others. He has had three chapbooks of poetry published: Passing For Blue (Rank Stranger Press), Lowdown and Ordinary Sorrows (Pudding House Publications). Main Street Rag recently published his first full-length poetry collection, Empty Frames.

Peter Francis, a retired school principal, enjoys life as an eclectic mix of writing, reading, yoga, karate, art, travel, and running. Born and raised in Saskatchewan, he now lives in Winnipeg, and is married with four children and a grandchild.

Stephanie Gibbon writes poetry because she has no choice. Whenever she feels a poem coming on, she reclines in a darkened room and takes deep, cleansing breaths. Often this strategy is effective: the poem goes away and she is freed to complete more useful tasks. But, like a terminal condition, she cannot escape poetry completely. She finds herself with pen in hand, facing her notebook - and a poem is the inevitable result of this unholy synthesis. She lives in Burlington; she eats All-Bran for breakfast.

Katherine L. Gordon lives to write in a secluded river valley in Ontario. She has two full collections, many chapbooks, and is an award-winning poet whose work has been published in many languages. Her latest book Myth Weavers, a collection of Canadian myths and legends, Serengeti Press, was released in April, National Poetry Month, 2007. She is the resident columnist for Ancient Heart Magazine, England. Katherine believes that poetry is the link uniting all cultures.

Will Greaves is originally from Ottawa, Ontario and is currently a student at Bishop’s University in Lennoxville, Quebec. He has been writing on and off since he was 15, not counting several successful stories written and performed in his grandparents’ kitchen while still in elementary school. In between recent travels to Haiti, Australia, Fiji, and New Zealand, Will has had poems published in Bishop’s University’s literary journal, The Mitre, and has submitted works to several other magazines.

Carla Hartsfield is a poet, classically trained pianist, harp player, and songwriter. She has published three collections of poetry, the most recent with Brick Books titled Your Last Day on Earth(2003). Carla has poetry in the soon-to-be released

Rebecca Holand writes and paints about the bittersweet of the everyday from her home in Lethbridge, Alberta. She has an art education degree, with the addition of creative writing courses. Rebecca is an active member of the Writers Guild of Alberta, Most Vocal, and Mudlark Writers Collective. She has appeared as a featured poet at Lotosland, South Country Fair, and her poems appear in all six issues of Rags, Southern Alberta’s Journal of Creative Writing.

Barbara Hunt is a dry-eyed nostalgic who delivers contemporary bites of naked truth wrapped in a rich appealing texture. She writes poetry, fiction and non-fiction from her home in Port Perry, Ontario where she’s a correspondent for a local monthly magazine. She has been published with CBC Radio One, The Globe and Mail, Metroland, Esteem and Homemakers Magazine as well as in several anthologies. She can be reached at Writers Plyaground

I.B. Iskov is the Poetry Editor for The Outreach Connection Newspaper, sold by the homeless and the unemployed in Toronto. She is also the Founder of The Ontario Poetry Society, Ontario’s only provincial, grass roots, democratic, poetry friendly organization. Visit www.mirror.org/tops

Marcelle Kasprowicz was born in Niort, France and lives in Austin, Texas. She received an M.A. from UT at Austin (Foreign Language Education Department) in 1983. She was awarded first prize for her poem “House of Bones”, in the Austin International Poetry Festival Anthology Di-verse-city 2001. Marcelle also won an honorable mention in the Tri-language Poem Contest 2001 from Gival Press. In 2005 she was awarded second prize in the Ascent Aspirations Magazine for her poem “The Seer”. Her poem “Field Hospital” was published in the 2005 Texas Poetry Calendar. Organza Skies, her first book, was published in 2005.

Shervin Kiani is a writer/artist/poet living in Toronto. His previous credits include Black Petals Magazine, Dream Fantasy International, and a forthcoming publication in the online magazine Nocturnal Ooze. He has a special fondness for 18th century poetry, especially those of Blake, Keats and Coleridge.

Mark Lavorato was raised on the Canadian prairies, but has spent most of his adult life abroad, and is currently living and writing in France. This is all part of his attempt to ‘establish credibility’ in the literary world, while he dredges through the tedious process of seeking publication for his first novel. He is contentedly working on his second novel as well, of which poetry is an integral part. Like many of us, he sometimes finds himself sitting and pondering just how in the hell people can live without poetry. Thankfully, if you’re reading this, you can’t.

Monika Lee has had many poems published in literary journals, including recent credits in A Room of One’s Own, Event, Atlantis, The Fiddlehead, Antigonish Review, Canadian Literature, Ariel, and Qwerty. Slender Threads (2004 HMS Press) is her first collection. Her homepage is http://publish.uwo.ca/~mlee5/

Rusti Lehay lives in Edmonton. Freelance writing helps to support her passion for poetry. Her poems have been published in On Spec, The Prairie Journal of Canadian Literature, FreeFall, Other Voices, on the Tupperware Sandpiper spoken word collection and in a sold out chapbook titled: i’m not sure. A commissioned poem circulated in Europe and Japan.

Bernice Lever, member and past executive on national writing organizations, has been publishing poems for decades, but she still gets high on words. From 1972-1987, she edited WAVES in Ontario; now she enjoys life on Bowen Island, BC. BLESSINGS, Black Moss Press, 2000. Find more about her on www.colourofwords.com

Sue Littleton: Born in Texas, Sue Littleton now lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her first two books, in Spanish, were published in Buenos Aires in 1972 and 1974. After 18 years in Argentina, she returned to Texas in 1976 and in 1990 received a B.L.S. from St. Edward’s University, Austin, Texas. She has published six chapbooks. The Ranch on the Pecos, the story of her family’s West Texas sheep ranch was published in 1996. Her poems have been published in numerous anthologies, including three of the Ascent Aspirations anthologies and in the Ascent Aspirations Magazine online. Her poem “Regime Change Begins at Home,” from 100 Poets Against the War, has been published in Croatia and Denmark. She has edited three poetry anthologies and for five years hosted bilingual poetry venues in Austin under the auspices of the Austin Commission for the Arts. Sue is one of the four founders of the Austin International Poetry Festival, now attended by poets from all over the world. She has four books on CDrom, two with audio readings (Waltsan Publishing) and her bilingual illustrated epic poem, Corn Woman, Mujer Maiz, is available in its entirety at hhtp://www.waltsan.com/FTP/sandra/corn_woman/index.html and is the history of corn in the Americas. She has participated in the Encounters of Narrators and Poets organized by the Asociación Cultural de las Dos Orillas, Uruguay, and is presenting two books, one an illustrated bilingual re-edition of Imágenes/Images and the other Papel de Barrilete/Kite Paper (Botella al Mar, Colección Poetas del Sur) at the 2007 Uruguayan Book Fair.

Kate Marshall Flaherty's poetry has won several awards, including Word Magazine, THIS Magazine, Shaunt Basmajian Award for 2006 and was shortlisted for Descant’s Winston Collins Best Canadian Poem 2006 and Nimrod’s Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. In Toronto she teaches yoga, meditation and leads teen retreats and workshops for Children’s Peace Theatre.

Corey Mesler is the owner of Burke’s Book Store, in Memphis, Tennessee, one of the country’s oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores. A Trappist Monk, he was raised by wolves. He has Canadian blood, which, unlike Canadian Bacon, doesn’t stay fresh if left out. He has published poetry and fiction in numerous journals including Rattle, Pindeldyboz, Quick Fiction, Cranky, Thema, Mars Hill Review, Poet Loreand others. He has also been a book reviewer for The Memphis Commercial Appeal. A short story of his was chosen for the 2002 edition of New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best, published by Algonquin Books.

Paula Martin Morell, MFA is the recipient of regional, national, and international awards for her short stories and poetry. Her work has appeared in publications such as Short Story Journal, New Works Review, Passport Journal, Outsider Ink, The Double Dealer Redux, The Little Rock Free Press, Quills and Pixels, The Arkansas Women’s Journal, andWord Salad. In addition to teaching creative writing workshops and English classes for Saint Leo University, Paula has been featured three times as an emerging writer at the International Conference on the Short Story in English and is the co-founder and creative director of A Way With Words Writing Workshops (www.awaywithwords.org). Her critically acclaimed first novel-in-stories, broken water, was released in 2004. Her second book, Invoking the Gifts (2005), is a creative writing workshop that is garnering national attention and being used in drug and alcohol treatment centers, high schools, youth groups, and art centers. Paula lives in Little Rock, Arkansas with her husband Jason and their daughters Annaliese and Sophia. www.paulamorell.com

Martina Reisz Newberry is the author of a collection of poems Running Like a Woman with her Hair on Fire, published by Red Hen Press 2005. She is also the winner of i.e. magazine’s Editor’s Choice Poetry Chapbook Prize for 1998: An Apparent Approachable Light. She is the author of Lima Beans and City Chicken: Memories of the Open Hearth — a memoir of her late father—published by E.P. Dutton and Co. in 1989. She is also the author of The Star Jasmine Club - an Adult fable, a novel purchased by E.P. Dutton & Co. She has written four novels and several books of poetry and has been widely published in literary magazines such as: 5 AM, Amelia, Atom Mind, Bellingham Review, Black Buzzard Review, Cape Rock, Caprice, Catalyst, Connecticut Poetry Review, Context South, Descant, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Hob Nob, i.e.,Innisfree, International Poetry Review, Iowa Woman, The Ledge, My Legacy, New Laurel Review, Passages North, Piedmont Literary Review, Snake Nation Review, Sonoma Mandala, Sonora Review, Rectangle, Southern Review of Poetry, Touchstone, Visions International, Willow Review ,Women’s Work, Yet Another Small Magazine, and many others. Martina lives in Los Angeles, California, with her husband Brian and their benevolent dictator and cat, Gato.

Debbie Okun Hill Since the fall 2004, Debbie Okun Hill has had two short stories and over 60 poems published in over 25 different Canadian and US publications including Quills, MOBIUS, North American Maple, Rhyme and Reason: Modern Formal Poetry, Reportage (Cranberry Tree Press), and all print editions of Ascent Aspirations Magazine. Her poems have won awards from The Ontario Poetry Society, the Canadian Poetry Association, the 2006 Toward the Light Poetry Contest, and most recently the 2007 WCDR Dan Sullivan Memorial Poetry Contest. Read her most current work in the chapbook Executive Sweet: A Collection of Poetry by TOPS Executives.

Jo Panton has just completed her third year as a Creative Writing/English Double Major at York University, where she received the 2005 Sorbara Award in Creative Writing.

Kamal Parmar was born in India and has been passionately involved in writing for the last ten years. Her genre is poetry and she has a few books to her credit. Her poems are simple though poised and evocative. While juggling wisdom with naivete, she appeals for a touch of God in our lives. Currently she is working on a manuscript that describes the emotional journey of a poet, while juxtaposing images of Canada and her original country, India. She resides with her family in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

Kate Pattarnaraskouwski is twenty-three and lives in Brighton, England. She works in experimental theatre. She loves to play around in fine art, poetry/free verse and music. She also takes an interest in and is disturbed by past and present and the looming future of political and social issues.

Daniel Pendergrass grew up in Scottsboro, Alabama. After working as a journalist, he began his teaching career on an outer island of Micronesia. His poems and travel pieces have appeared in Shampoo and Travelmag, and he has work forthcoming in Van Gogh’s Ear. He lives in the Middle East.

A.S. Popowich

Having lived all his life in Winnipeg’s North End, he developed early on an interest in his family’s Slavic heritage. He began writing poetry seriously while attending the University of Manitoba, where he achieved a degree in History. History and Russian literature has always informed his writing to a large extent. Since he began submitting poetry, he has won several poetry contests in the city, and his work has been included in Winnipeg magazines such as Collective Unconscious and the Manitoban. Most recently, he won first prize in a poetry contest sponsored by the University of Winnipeg’s Writer’s Collective, and a poem on the Dubrovka hostages was included in the most recent anthology from the Canadian Poetry Institute in Victoria, A Golden Morning.

Sarah Ruffolo is the editor-in-chief of the University of Ottawa’s literary publication, Yawp. She also selects for Bywords: Ottawa Poetry and Literary Events. She is a recent graduate of English Literature from the University of Ottawa where she also studied creative writing. Her work has recently appeared in Another Toronto Quarterly.

Cheryl Wood Ruggiero lives, teaches, writes in the blue mountains of southwest Virginia. Her work appears or is forthcoming in CALYX, 2River View, Potion, and Wolfmoon Press Journal.

J. D. Savanyu’s poetry has appeared in several publications, including Northwoods Journal, Parnassus Literary Review, Flesh from Ashes, Red Owl and The Magpie’s Nest, along with Bear Creek Haiku and Poetry East in a forthcoming issue. He is a twenty-six year-old student at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, where he is an English major and a mentor of poet Gary Sange.

Tom Sheehan has five Pushcart nominations, and a Silver Rose Award from American Renaissance for the Twenty-first Century (ART) for short story excellence. , memoirs, was issued in September, 2004 by Pocol Press. A poetry chapbook, The Westering, was issued summer 2004 by Wind River Press. His fourth poetry book, This Rare Earth & Other Flights, was issued in 2003, by Lit Pot Press. He has two mysteries from Publish America, Vigilantes East, in 2002 and Death for the Phantom Receiver, an NFL mystery, in 2003. Another mystery, An Accountable Death, is serialized on 3amMagazine.com. His work can be seen in Projected Letters, Elimae, StorySouth, 3711 Atlantic, Triplopia, Melange, Prose Toad, Moonwort Review, Black Medina, Starry Night Review, Deaddrunkdublin, Megaera, The Square Table, Slow Trains, The Paumanok Review, 42 Opus, Snow Monkey, Ken *Again, Taj Mahal, Literati Magazineand many others. He has been a feature writer in Nuvein, New Works Review, Tryst and Eclectica.

Andrea Shumovsky is a Canadian poet, writing out of Ottawa. Her poetry is inspired by the beauty of the Canadian landscape and the people she has known there. World events have also inspired her to speak out. Her family never ceases to amaze her; she hopes the wonder of life will speak to you through her writing. Her work has been published in Clevermag, Ascent Aspirations Magazine, Jones Ave., the anthology Gifts From the Heartland, Poetic License, Canadian Creative and most recently, as the featured poet in Turbula.

K.V. Skene has appeared in numerous Canadian, U.K., U.S., Irish and Australian publications. Two of her chapbooks, Only a Dragon (2002) andA Calendar of Rain (2004), won the Shaunt Basmajian Chapbook Award . A further chapbook Edith (a series of poems on Nurse Edith Cavell) was recently published by Flarestack Publishing (UK). A long-term expat Canadian, K.V. Skene grew up in Lachine Quebec and has lived in various parts of Canada as well as England and Ireland. She is presently ensconced in Oxford.

Pat Smekal has always loved words. She would write more of them if she didn’t spend so much time with other loves, including Yoga, hiking, travel, kayaking and grandchildren. Nonetheless, during the past four years or she has won a number of prizes across Canada for her poetry, and has had work published in Island Writer, Reportage, Love the Main Course, A World of Words 2006, and Ascent Aspirations Anthologies (One and Two). Pat and her husband, George, live next to the sea, on Vancouver Island.

Meghan Smith is currently a third year social work student and a mother of a 6 month old baby girl. She has been pubished in a few journals and internet periodicals such as Ascent, Re:verse and Pandora’s Collective under her maiden name Meghan Johnston.

Kirk Stensrud was born in 1980 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. He now lives in Calgary where he works for dsv2 media as a programmer.

Luminita Suse lives in Ottawa. She is a member of the Ottawa Independent Writers, Valley Writers’ Guild, and The Ontario Poetry Society. Her poetry has been published in the “Anthology One” and “Agua Terra” anthologies of Ascent Aspirations Magazine, Enchanted Crossroads anthology and Verse Afire newsletter of The Ontario Poetry Society, Sage of Consciousness literary E-Zine, The Saving Banister anthology of the Canadian Authors Association – Niagara Branch, and Bywords Quarterly Journal. Visit her website at Web Site

Mildred Tremblay lives in Nanaimo, BC. Her latest book of poetry The Thing About Dying is available from Oolichan Books. She is the recipient of many awards, amongst them The Arc National Poetry Award, and The League of Canadian Poets Award. Recently she placed first and second in the Victoria Erotica Festival Poetry contest.

Vernon Waring: The poetry of Vernon Waring has been published in Anthology, Stylus, Alabama School of Fine Arts Quarterly, Midwestern University Quarterly and The Writer. On-line credits include the Prairie Home Companion, Starving Arts Literary Magazine and poetic inhalation web sites. His short fiction and poetry have also appeared in Ascent Aspirations on-line literary journal. He resides in Philadelphia.

Nora White: In the 1980’s, with the encouragement of the Kent Writers Guild, and invaluable assistance from Alvin Armstrong, Nora White distributed a self-publication entitled Pick a Card – Any Card. Shortly thereafter, she moved to Parry Sound District, and focussed her efforts on other facets of her life, allowing her writing to return to the emotional-release closet where it had previously hidden. She remarried “numerous” times, helped raise many of the area’s children, managed an electrolysis business, a cottage resort, then upgraded her education. In the current millennium, she happily filled the office clerk’s desk at Bot-Seegmiller while hundreds of men worked at the HWY 69/400 improvements, then spent a year and half discovering the incredible abilities possessed by people with disabilities. Sudden life and career developments led to a recent ‘spring cleaning’ that revealed an excess of accumulated material, including the poem presented here.

D.L. Wilson: British Columbia bred and born, D.L. Wilson has lived in several provinces, raising two children, getting an English degree, and working in the corporate world along the way. The west coast and writing have finally pulled her home.

Kaimana Wolff is a writer with British Columbia roots, currently in hiding on an island (aren’t we all?).   Kai’s older than dirt, juicier than a mango, and busier than a rodent.