Sandow Birk is a Los Angeles–based artist Sandow Birk creates ambitious, multimedia projects that address contemporary life and pressing social issues through the lens of art history. His work has explored themes from Southern California urban culture to immigration, incarceration, war, and classical literature. Notable projects include an illuminated manuscript of the entire Qur’an in English and his most recent book project, Pooh—a reimagining of The House at Pooh Corner—was published by Arion Press in San Francisco. Birk has received major honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, Fulbright Fellowship, and United States Artists Fellowship, among many others. Link to Sandow Birk at sandowbirk.com
Darin Black is a seasoned IT professional with over 30 years of experience in the industry. With a strong foundation in technology and systems management, he has spent the past decade specializing in website design, maintenance, and hosting. Darin combines deep technical expertise with a sharp eye for design, delivering reliable, user-friendly web solutions that meet the evolving needs of businesses and clients alike.
Michael Blaha is an entertainment attorney, law professor, arbitrator, stage and film producer, and writer-performer. His law practice primarily focuses on representing producers, writers, and directors of independent films. Internationally, Mike has produced over 125 shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe as a partner with Nigel Miles-Thomas in Fringe Management. He is one of the founding producers of Sci-Fest LA, the Festival of One-Act Science Fiction Plays (2014-2016). Link to Michael Blaha at fringemanagement.com and blahalaw.com
Elya Braden is a writer and mixed-media artist living in Oxnard, CA, and is an editor for Gyroscope Review. She is the author of the chapbooks Open The Fist (2020) and The Sight of Invisible Longing (2023). Her full-length collection, Dragonfly Puzzle Box, is forthcoming from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions in 2026. Her work has been widely published, and her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets. www.elyabraden.com.
Cynthia Alessandra Briano is the daughter of Mexican immigrants and grew up in Southeast L.A. She’s the Founder of Love On Demand Global and Director of Rapp Saloon Reading Series First Fridays. She was awarded the 2023-2024 Artist Fellowship from the City of Santa Monica. She is a College Counselor, an Editorial Consultant, and an Educator. She teaches English Literature, Creative Writing, and African American Arts & Literature. “The Mouth-Carriers” was first published in Cultural Daily.
Christopher Buckley‘s SPREZZATURA is published by Lynx House Press, 2025. His last book, One Sky to the Next, 2023, won the Longleaf Press Book Prize. He has recently edited NAMING THE LOST: THE FRESNO POETS—Interviews & Essays, Stephen F. Austin State Univ. Press. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two NEA grants, & a Fulbright Award in Creative Writing to Yugoslavia.
Collin Davis grew up in Long Beach, California, and played hockey, baseball, and basketball. At age 18, he was arrested and wrongly convicted of murder. While fighting his conviction from prison, he spent four years training dogs to assist disabled people and founded a hospice program for elderly and ill prisoners.
Dr. Harry Edwards is a sociologist and civil rights activist who taught for more than 30 years at the University of California at Berkeley and authored the landmark book, The Revolt of the Black Athlete. He completed his Ph.D. at Cornell University and is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at UC Berkeley. He is widely regarded as the father of the field of sociology of sport. He has served as a staff consultant to the San Francisco 49ers football team and the Golden State Warriors basketball team. Edwards was the architect of the Olympic Project for Human Rights and organized the Black Power Salute protest by two African-American athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. Years earlier, Edwards had been a discus thrower on the San Jose State track team.
Alexis Rhone Fancher is a poet and a photographer. A Picture is Worth a Poet’s Words is her photo-portrait book of over 100 Southern California poets, which will be published in early 2026 by Moon Tide Press.
Debbie Green was a folk singer who had an early influence on Joan Baez, Eric Anderson, Eric Clapton, and others in the 1960s. She was one of the first folk performers at Club 47 Mount Auburn in Cambridge, Massachusetts, before moving to Berkeley, California. She was born in 1940 in New York City and grew up in Staten Island. She attended The Putney School, where she was first exposed to music. In 1958, she began college at Boston University. While a freshman at Boston University, Green taught Joan Baez guitar, and Baez has noted her influence as a teacher.
Dr. Gary Greenberg is a scientist, inventor, educator, and artist who reveals the hidden beauty of the world through groundbreaking 3D microscopy. With an explorer’s curiosity and an artist’s eye, he transforms ordinary objects—like grains of sand, flowers, and living cells—into extraordinary landscapes of color and form. Holding 19 U.S. patents, Dr. Greenberg has revolutionized 3D light microscopy, with his technologies used in research, medicine, and industry. His images have appeared everywhere from scientific journals to Hollywood, including the planet Krypton in the original Superman movie. He also photographed moon dust from NASA’s Apollo missions, capturing the alien beauty of microscopic lunar landscapes. A former developmental biologist and assistant professor at USC, he now lives on Maui, where he continues his research and photography. Dr. Greenberg has delivered TEDx talks on the hidden worlds revealed by microscopes, inspiring audiences to see the extraordinary in the everyday. His work can be seen at sandgrains.com and sandgrains.com/talks
Tresha Faye Haefner’s poetry appears in many journals, including Blood Lotus, Blue Mesa Review, The Cincinnati Review, Five South, Hunger Mountain, Mid-America Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, Radar, Rattle, TinderBox and Up the Staircase Quarterly. Her work has garnered several accolades, including the 2011 Robert and Adele Schiff Poetry Prize, and several nominations for the Pushcart. Her first manuscript, “Pleasures of the Bear,” was a finalist for prizes from both Moon City Press and Glass Lyre Press. It was published by Pine Row Press under the title When the Moon Had Antlers in 2023. Find her at thepoetrysalonstack.substack.com.
Don Hata, was born in East Los Angeles in 1939, and at age three years old was taken into custody with his parents and sent to a concentration camp at Gila, Arizona, under the round-up of Japanese Americans during World War II. He and his family were periodically released for migrant farm labor during their incarceration. Hata earned a PhD in History at the University of Southern California. During a year of doctoral research in Japan (1965-1966), Hata was the katei-kyoshi (tutor in residence) to iconic cinema actor Toshiro Mifune (Rashomon, Seven Samurai) and his family, teaching American English and U.S. history and culture. He taught U.S. History, Asian History, and Asian-American History at California State University, Dominguez Hills for over 30 years, where he was the recipient of the CSUDH Lyle Gibson Distinguished Teaching Award, the CSUDH Outstanding Professor Award, and the CSU Board of Trustees’ System-wide Outstanding Professor Award. He is co-author of the book, Japanese Americans and World War II: Mass Removal, Imprisonment, and Redress, 4th Edition (2011), and a book of his paintings, entitled Nikkei Gulag: Japanese American (Nikkei) Political Prisoners and U.S. Concentration Camps in World War II (2024).
Melissa Hipple is the mother of Collin Davis. She supported him at all times in his long fight for justice.
Ferris Jabr is the New York Times bestselling author of Becoming Earth and a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine. Becoming Earth was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Oregon Book Award and was named a best book of the year by Smithsonian, Barnes & Noble, and the Chicago Public Library. Reviewers have described Becoming Earth as an “electrifying” and “infectiously poetic masterwork” that earns its place alongside the best of today’s essential popular science books, as well as acknowledged classics.” Ferris has also written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, National Geographic, and Scientific American, among other publications. He has received fellowships from Yale, MIT, and UC Berkeley, as well as grants from the Pulitzer Center and the Whiting Foundation. His work has been anthologized in four editions of The Best American Science and Nature Writing series. Ferris lives in Portland, Oregon, with his partner, Ryan, their dog, Jack, and more plants than they can count. Link to Ferris Jabr at ferrisjabr.com/
Jeff Jones continues his advocacy as a strategist for environmental and clean energy groups. He is co-founder and Board President of John Brown Lives!, a human rights and environmental justice organization in upstate New York. Jones also serves as Board Chair of Harlem-johnbrownlives.org and weact.org for Environmental Justice. Link to Jeff Jones at johnbrownlives.org and weact.org
Ron Koertge is the Poet Laureate of South Pasadena, and his many books of poetry include Yellow Moving Van (Pitt Poetry Series) and, forthcoming this Fall from Red Hen Press, Pandora’s Kitchen. Ron is also a well-recognized author of Y/A books. Sometimes, he’s recognized at the race track. For more information, spicy photos, and gossip, go to ronkoertge.com.
Suzanne Lummis’ fourth full-length collection, “Crime Wave” will be published by Giant Claw, imprint of What Books. And, also in Fall 2025, the next installment of her YouTube series exploring film noir and noir-themed poems, They Write by Night, produced by poetry.la. She is editor of the new anthology, national in scope, “Poetry Goes to the Movies.” Her poems have appeared in New Ohio Review, Ploughshares, Catamaran, Rattle, The New Yorker, and elsewhere.
Yvonne McGrath grew up in Los Angeles where she studied acting, voice, and dance within the Hollywood studio system at RKO Pictures. Among her television credits were The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, The Wild, Wild West, Sugarfoot, The Andy Griffith Show, My Three Sons, and I Dream Of Jeannie. She was later signed by the Nina Blanchard Modeling Agency and appeared in international promotions for such clients as Clairol, Miller, Buick, Kodak, and many more worldwide brands. As a singer, she recorded the albums To You With Love and Yvonne in Private. As an entertainer, Yvonne performed at the legendary Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. Yvonne’s work as an Interior Designer led her to create “Peaches N’ Cream,” a hand-crafted lace and eyelet pillow design. Her paintings of fantasy flowers are permanently on display at the South Lake Tahoe public library. Her paintings have been exhibited at the South Lake Tahoe Airport, the Reno Tahoe International Art Show, Crafted in San Pedro, the San Pedro Annual Art Walk, and she served as a live painter at the Los Angeles Burning Man Recreation.
Lee Rossi is the love child of the ’60s and the Spanish Inquisition; details of his mixed parentage and haphazard upbringing can be found in his most recent book, Say Anything, from Plain View Press.
Terrance Steele Terrance Steele was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles. He worked on his father’s ice cream truck at ages 8-9, played Little League baseball, played football, and basketball. He had a memorabilia collection of baseball, basketball, and football cards. He is the oldest sibling with three brothers and three sisters. His grandfather was a sergeant in the U.S. Marines, and his grandmother was an educator. Terrance enjoyed cooking with his grandmother. He attended Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles.
David Ulin is the author or editor of twenty books, including the novel “Thirteen Question Method” and “Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles,” shortlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. The recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and Ucross Foundation, as well as a COLA Individual Master Artist Grant from the City of Los Angeles, he is a Professor of English at the University of Southern California, where he co-directs the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities and edits the journal Air/Light.
Charles Harper Webb was the Recipient of grants from the Whiting and Guggenheim foundations. His latest collection of poems, Sidebend World, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Webb recently won the Longleaf Press Editor’s Choice Award for his collection, Old Gnu, forthcoming in 2025.
Dr. Robert Weide is Associate Professor of Sociology at California State University, Los Angeles, with a PhD in Sociology from New York University. He is the author of Divide & Conquer: Race, Gangs, Identity, and Conflict, published by Temple University Press, as well as numerous academic articles and book chapters on gangs, prisons, graffiti, and prisoner reentry. Dr. Weide is the Co-Founder of the Project Rebound program for formerly incarcerated students at Cal State LA and a Board Member of the Division of Critical Criminology and Social Justice in the American Society of Criminology. A former gang member himself, Dr. Weide has been deeply involved in grassroots gang intervention and prisoner reentry programs and initiatives over the past dozen years or so.
Conney D. Williams is a poet, actor, community activist, and performance artist with three collections of poetry: “The Distance of Observation (2021) “Leaves of Spilled Spirit from an Untamed Poet (2002)” and “Blues Red Soul Falsetto (2012).” In 2015, he released two critically acclaimed CDs of his poetry accompanied by music titled “River & Moan “ and Unsettled Water.” He is the former Artistic Director at the World Stage and Coordinator for the Anansi Writers Workshop; he’s also the cofounder of World Stage Press. His poems have also been published in various anthologies & journals, including Dryland Review, Voices from Leimert, Cultural Weekly, Drumming Between Us, Askew Poetry Journal, Wide Awake Anthology, and Poets & Allies Anthology. He has performed his poetry on television, radio, universities & colleges, and various venues across the U.S.
CREDITS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Front Cover (print edition): “Headwind,” oil on canvas, by Jewel Okamura
From the Editor: NASA Photo (James Webb Telescope); photograph of Blue Window magazine cover by Daniel Ritkes
Essays: “The Poem Noir, Too Dark to Be Depressed,” first published In Malpais Review, ed. Gary L. Brower, Winter 2012-13, then in Pratik, the noir issue, Darkness in Style, ed. Yuyutsu Sharma, Guest Editor, Suzanne Lummis, 2024; photograph of house at night by Daniel Ritkes; “Edinburgh Fringe Festival,” most photographs by Michael Blahla, et al.
“Jagged Blade Found in Cake Destined for Inmate,” is published in Ron Koertge’s book, Pandora’s Kitchen, from Red Hen Press (2025)
Interview with Ferris Jabr: NASA photographs; Amazon Rain Forest (Shuttershock); photo of Ferris Jabr by Ryan G.
“You are Los Angeles” poem — mixed media, “L.A. Woman” by Jewel Okamura
Suzanne Lummis’ “Jump,” is from Ghost Town, ed. Chad Sweeney, 2018
Suzanne Lummis’ “Bad Gun,” is from Noir Riot, pub. by Noir Con and Out of the Gutter Books, 2014
mixed media in the poem “Jump,” entitled, “Awesome,” by Jewel Okamura
Interview of Dr. Harry Edwards: photograph of Ali-Liston by Neil Leifer (1965)
“The Edinburgh Fringe Festival”: most photographs by Michael Blaha (2024)
Interview of Jeff Jones: photo of napalm bombing by Nick Ut (1972)
Interview of Jeff Jones: photo of execution on Saigon street by Eddie Adams (1968)
Interview of Jeff Jones: photo of Fred Hampton, Chicago History Museum
Interview of Jeff Jones: photo of Eldridge Cleaver and Timothy Leary, from the movie Weather Underground
painting by Salvador Dali, “Profanation of the Host” (1929), Dali Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida
“The Mouth Carriers” poem: mixed media “The Mouth Carriers,” by Jewel Okamura
Cynthia Briano’s “The Mouth-Carriers” was first published in Cultural Daily
Christopher Buckley poem: mixed media, “Saturn” by Jewel Okamura
painting, “Calla Lilies,” by Yvonne McGrath
Interview of Dr. Robert Weide: painting, “Anglo-Dutch Slaver,” by Nicholaas Bauer (1818)
Interview of Dr. Robert Weide: painting, “The Burning of Jamestown in 1676 by Black and White rebels Led by Nathaniel Bacon,” by Howard Pyle (1905)
Essay by Terrance Steele: painting by Sandow Birk, “California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison (SATF) – Corcoran, CA, Courtesy of the Artist and Koplin Del Rio Gallery
Paintings of Don Hata: All paintings by Don Hata
“Tiki Torch” poem: Arrangement and photograph by Jewel Okamura
“Angelenos in the Rain” poem: mixed media, “Road,” by Jewel Okamura
Interview of Gary Greenberg: all photographs by Gary Greenberg
“Lake George with White Birch,” by Georgia O’Keefe
“Plain Jain” poem: mixed media, “Goldfish,” by Jewel Okamura
“In the Breath of Non-doing” poem: drawing, “Cat,” by Jewel Okamura
painting, “Art Studio,” oil on canvas, by Debbie Green
photograph of Joni Mitchell and Debbie Green by George Madaraz
photograph of typewriter by Daniel Ritkes
Vincent Van Gogh, Self Portait (1888) Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
“Early Flight” poem: mixed media, “Windshield,” by Jewel Okamura
photograph of ruins at Delphi, Greece (1974) by Daniel Ritkes