Contributor Carol Alfred is an educator and writer who lives with her husband Dugan in beautiful Monkton, Vermont, where she walks, hikes, and snowshoes well, and golfs badly. Her pieces have been published in the Sunday Boston Globe’s Globe Magazine and performed in Vermont Stage’s Winter Tales production.
Rashmi Bhopi is a physician and a creative thinker who loves to capture moments in words, when not attending to her patients and her own children. A former resident of Massachusetts, Rashmi lives in the Netherlands.
Alabama born and raised, contributor Leslie Cohen is a former lawyer, union organizer, and teacher, and a current editor.
Reader, sixth-grade teacher, and Salem Kids Tours guide Alicia Diozzi has spent her career showing kids that learning can be a fascinating adventure. She studies Italian in her free time, sometimes bursts uncontrollably into Broadway songs, and has a case of costumes that reads “Break Glass in Case of Last-Minute Shenanigans.”
Reader Sarah Hunter is Chief Collections Strategist for Boston University's libraries, and the soprano section leader and soloist with St. Michael's Episocopal Church in Marblehead. She lives in Salem with her family.
Contributor F.H. Lin writes from life and her imagination. She cares about social issues, burnout, animals, and the environment. She's written a draft of a memoir and has many unfinished pieces. She's still finding her "writing legs." This year, she's going to find them.
Contributor and reader Ian Owens is a self-employed engineer who writes for the fun of it, mostly about self-propelled travel and Vikings. His first book, called "Riding the Big One," has both. Find Ian at ianowens.com.
Adrianna Sanchez-Lopez is a Colorado native often consumed by words, trees, cats, and lavender tea. When she's not writing, she's reading and teaching.
Reader Diane Stern retired from WBZ as a news anchor and reporter after more than 40 years on the radio. She was inducted into the Massachusetts Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2017. She now volunteers on several committees and boards, including the Salem Athenaeum and the Immigrant Learning Center. She is a voice artist and a featured background actor in Boston and New York.
Reader Jacquie Valatka is Business Manager of the House of the Seven Gables. She enjoys teaching, reading, traveling, languages, photography, hiking, karate, swimming, running, aerobics, playing the piano, dancing, cooking and much, much more. Jacquie, her husband Joseph, and their two children reside in Salem, Massachusetts.
Reader Glynne Alfred lives in Salem with “the rest of the witches,” as her mother says. She haunts downtown Salem and nearby beaches and breweries with and without her husband Nate and standard poodle Layla. Her mom says she is the best daughter a mother could have. (Nate and Layla aren't bad either.)
Contributor Lisa Braxton is author of The Talking Drum, winner of a 2021 Independent Publisher (IPPY) Book Awards Gold Medal, overall winner of Shelf Unbound book review magazine’s 2020 Independently Published Book Award, winner of a 2020 Outstanding Literary Award from the National Association of Black Journalists, and a Finalist for the International Book Awards.
Reader Kristin Darden is a two-decade visitor and two-year resident of Salem. She makes a mean cocktail, a nice pork roast, and misses St Louis BBQ. Kristin supports her book habit by working in community health, and keeps the habit from becoming a hoard by maintaining a Little Free Library.
Reader Jessica Fox is the Program Director at the Beverly School for the Deaf. She is an avid reader (and book buyer!), especially at the beach. Jessica lives in Salem with her family: husband Jeff, daughter Paige, and son Lucas. She is currently the Salem High Music Boosters co-president.
Contributor and reader Rebecca Ingalls is a former English professor, now midwife and nurse practitioner. She lives in New England with her family, close to the sea, where she loves to write and play music as a DJ for her local radio station.
Reader Kate MacDougall is a reluctant lawyer and semi-successful wrangler of two rescue dogs and a cat with delusions of grandeur. She lives in Salem.
Contributor and reader Jill Pabich lives in Salem, Massachusetts, with a house full of kids and animals. She's about to start pitching her middle-grade horror, A Misery of Magpies, about a haunted hotel.
Contributor Kellie Scott-Reed’s name takes up most of her bio. She’s the Assistant Editor in Chief of Roi Fainéant Press as well as a songwriter, and poet who’s been published in lots of cool places. Kellie lives in Fairport, New York.
Reader E.F. Sweetman is a writer of crime, noir, horror and occasional reviews. Her short stories and reviews have appeared in Switchblade Magazine, FunDead Publications, Tough, Econoclash Review, Broadswords and Blasters, Spine Magazine, and Pulp Modern. She lives in Beverly, Massachusetts, where she is currently hard at work on a crime trilogy.
Contributor and reader Elisabeth Weiss is a member of The Salem Writer’s Group and the Thursday Poets, a poetry collective. She’s taught poetry in preschools, prisons, and nursing homes, as well as to the intellectually disabled. She’s published poems in London’s Poetry Review, Porch, Crazyhorse, the Birmingham Poetry Review, the Paterson Literary Review, and many other journals.
Contributor Apple An grew up during China's Cultural Revolution. She came to the U.S. at 26 to work on her PhD. She is a full professor and lives in New York state. Her debut memoir, "las Crosses: An Unwavering Journey to a New Life in America," was published in April. More memoirs are coming and can be found at www.AppleAnBooks.com.
Contributor and reader Salena Casha's work has appeared in over 100 publications in the last decade. Her most recent work can be found in Metaphorosis Magazine, Flash Frog, and Ghost Parachute. She survives New England winters on good beer and black coffee. Subscribe to her substack at salenacasha.substack.com.
Reader Vickie Dawson is clerk for the Salem-based Clothing Connection and manages the nonprofit’s program at Salem High School. An avid reader and dog lover, Vickie is an active volunteer with several community organizations including her church and the Salem High School Marching Band. She lives in Salem with her family.
Reader Jeff Fox is a physics teacher at Salem High School. He plays the trumpet with the Salem Community band, pitches for the rec-league Base Invaders softball team, and volunteers with the Salem High music program. He likes swimming, hiking, reading, and listening to music in his free time. He lives in Salem with his family.
Contributor and reader Ann Kathryn Kelly writes from New Hampshire’s Seacoast region. She’s an editor with Barren Magazine, a columnist with WOW! Women on Writing, and she works in the technology sector. Ann leads writing workshops for a nonprofit that offers therapeutic arts programming to people living with brain injury. annkkelly.com/
Reader Barbara Matteau is a UMass Boston MFA student working on a collection of short stories. She also writes poems and plays. She pays the bills as both a grant administrator at UMass Boston and the proprietor of an Airbnb called The Forsythia Apartment.
Contributor and reader E.M. Panos is an avid reader and sometimes writer of fiction and micromemoirs. She loves to travel and typically plans her next vacation before getting home from the one she’s on. E.M. lives on Boston’s North Shore with her wife, cats, and dogs.
Sumitra Singam writes in Naarm/Melbourne and wishes all her real and almost-exes well.
Contributor Miriam BC Tobin is a playwright and theatre artist from Seattle. She also runs SCRiB LAB, a writing organization aimed at community.
Reader Holly Wielsma is a medical and musical professional who has loved public speaking since the days of giving lectures and sermons to her stuffed animals in the basement of her childhood home. She is a graduate of Bay Path University's MFA program and has written a memoir of her 20+ years as a paramedic.
Contributor Moh Afdhaal spends his days on construction sites. He spends his nights writing flash fiction. Moh lives in Sri Lanka.
Contributor and reader Julia Clebsch writes brief memoirs and descriptive non-fiction memoir/essays drawing attention to the connections of place, family, and nature through her and her family, especially the scientists, and their past. The lesbian writer has been published in Legacy, Five Minutes, and is a WOW Women on Writing finalist. Pronouns: she/her
Contributor and reader Jim DeFilippi served in the Air Force during the Vietnam Conflict and then taught public school in northern Vermont for thirty years. His books of biography, history, crime fiction, and humor have been praised by publications like Publishers Weekly and the Library Journal. Visit Jim’s Amazon page.
Contributor Samuel Hernandez grew up along the Rio Grande River in Texas. He moved to New York City for college and hasn't been back since.
Contributor and reader Bobbi Lerman runs prompt and workshop group Scribbler’s Ink, online home to an active writing community and Boston-area site for in-person workshops. Bobbi, who serves as assistant editor of Five Minutes, primarily writes medieval romance and travel essays, including a number of pieces for Bella Grace magazine.
Elizabeth Maria Naranjo is a writer in Tempe, Arizona. Her work has appeared in Brevity, Superstition Review, Reservoir Road Literary Review, and a few other places.
Contributor and reader Phyllis Rittner writes poetry, flash fiction, and creative non-fiction. Her flash can be found in Wrong Turn Lit, Burnt Breakfast, Roi Faineant Press, Versification, Friday Flash Fiction, Fairfield Scribes, Six Sentences, and others. She is a member of the Charles River Writing Collective.
Contributor and reader John Sheirer lives in Western Massachusetts and is in his 30th year of teaching at Asnuntuck Community College in Northern Connecticut. His most recent book is Stumbling Through Adulthood: Linked Stories. Forthcoming in fall 2023 is For Now: One Hundred 100-Word Stories. Find him at JohnSheirer.com.
Contributor and reader Josh Turiel is a tech professional, retired politician, and frustrated author in Salem.