Staff

PUBLISHER

L.V. Lopez is a resident physician in New York. He has lived in Brooklyn, Chicago, Athens GA, and all the other cool places. He has no artistic credentials but has a very big record collection. He is the lone proud graduate of Columbia University. In July 2012, he appeared on Jeopardy, and wrote about the experience in the essay “How to Win (and Lose) on Jeopardy”

EDITOR IN CHIEF

Keith Meatto is a writer, editor, teacher, musician, reader, and traveler. He has published fiction, journalism, and criticism in many literary journals, newspapers, and magazines.  He is a graduate of Yale College and has an MFA from The New School. He teaches writing at Marymount Manhattan College and LIM College, and has taught at Pace University. He is more verbal than visual, more urban than suburban or rural, and more of a lover than a fighter.

MANAGING EDITOR

Peter Lillis is a creative professional, writer, and musician in Chicago. He is graduate of Marquette University in Milwaukee, and has many surrogate homes, including New York, DC and Boca Raton.

STAFF

Freya Bellin is a New York food writer who has written for Mark Bittman’s web site.

Andrew Hertzberg is a Chicago-based music blogger for Windy City Rock, a deep dish pizza slinger, and a night-time bike riding enthusiast.

Franklin P. Laviola is a filmmaker and freelance writer based in the New York area. He wrote and directed the award-winning short film Happy Face, which has screened at over 20 film festivals.

Gina Myers is the author of A Model Year (Coconut Books, 2009). She lives in Atlanta, but has a star marking Saginaw tattooed on the palm of her hand.

Roddy Rickhouse is an attorney and cocktail enthusiast who lives in Brooklyn.

Jared Thomas is a playwright, novelist, and scriptwriter.  He writes sneaky trash fiction.  His works include Sandoval, The Raven King, The Last Amesha, Street Dreams of Electric Youth, Dog Eats Human, and The Rose Garden.

CONTRIBUTORS

James Tadd Adcox is a fiction writer and the editor of Artifice Magazine.

Michael Bakkensen has acted On and Off Broadway, regionally, for television, film, commercials and the web, and has lent his voice to audio books and animation. He’s also a songwriter with an album in the works.

Sophie Barbasch has worked at the International Center for Photography and is now a graduate student at the Rhode Island School of Design.

John Raymond Barker is a professional actor, singer, voice-over artist, writer, and director living in New York. He is also a YouTube Partner with a wide range of videos

Jeffery Berg is a poet who lives in Manhattan. He edits poetry for Clementine and Mary and writes about film, guilty pleasures, and various obsessions on jdbrecords.

P.J Bezanson practices law in New York (by day and by night) and reviews as many concerts as he can.

Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen are writers (Drama Desk/Lortel/Outer Critics’ award-winning The Exonerated play and all-star cast film; Aftermath at NYTW), actors (Rescue Me, Lie to Me, The Namesake, Virtuality, The Bronx is Burning, Bored to Death, MTC’s Corpus Christi and much more) and directors (New York Theatre Workshop, Actor’s Gang Theater) who have several film, TV, and theatre projects in development.

Lee Bob Black is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn. He also directs a literacy program for Canteen Magazine.

Micaela Blei is a writer and teacher based in Brooklyn. She is a doctoral student in educational theater at New York University.

Mark Blankenship is a critic and reporter who edits TDF Stages  and The Critical Condition. He has written for The New York Times, Variety, MSNBC.com, and many others, and he once provided the voice of a talking beagle for the Turner South network.

Amy Braunschweiger is a recovering journalist and the author of Taxi Confidential: Life, Death and 3 a.m. Revelations in New York City Cabs. She was once a master at climbing trees, but hey, times change.

Jeb Brown recently left Spidey’s web after taking the long, strange trip with the original company of Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark, his 10th Broadway outing. He’s in The Dictator, with Sacha Baron Cohen, to be released next year, and is currently working on a documentary film about the intersection of theatre and bipolarity, all while enjoying Brooklyn and family.

Jamie Carr is a recent graduate of the College of Charleston, where she was the editor of the literary magazine Miscellany. In September 2012, she’s entering the MFA creative writing program at Portland State University.

Laura Carter lives and works in Atlanta, where she is pursuing a PhD in critical theory and poetry. She has published four chapbooks of poetry, most recently Midheaven Leo (Dancing Girl Press).

Damien Casten is President and co-founder of Candid Wines, a wholesale company in Chicago focused on organic, biodynamic, and sustainably grown wine.

Jillian Coneys received her BA in Theatre and English Literature, as well as her M.S. Ed. in Secondary English Education at Hunter College.  In addition to doing theatre work throughout the city, she now teaches middle school in Harlem introducing student to the arts.

Jen Davis is a Brooklyn-based photographer who  received her MFA from Yale University and her BA from Columbia College Chicago. She has exhibited at Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Center for Photography at Woodstock, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, among others. Her photographs are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Sir Elton John Photography Collection, and the Houston Center for Photography. Her work has been featured in Camera Austria, Aperture, and PDN.

Chris Dippel is an actor, director, playwright and professor at Hofstra University. He is a founding member of the award-winning New York Neo-Futurists, who write and perform Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind every Friday and Saturday night at the Kraine Theater.

Claire Dippel is an actor and mom, currently directing the St. Luke’s Advent Pageant.

Amy Elkins received her BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts in NYC. Her photographs have been exhibited nationally and internationally, including shows at Kunsthalle wien in Vienna, Austria, The PIP International Photo Festival in Pingyao, China, Gallery Gagopa in Masan, South Korea, Gallery Elsa in Busan, South Korea, Barbara Walters Gallery, National Arts Club, Tina Kim Gallery and Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York as well as at Carnegie Art Museum.  In June 2008 Amy Elkins and Cara Phillips co-founded wipnyc.org, a platform for showcasing established and emerging women in photography.

Mike Errico is a musician, writer, producer and music supervisor based in Brooklyn.

Alaina Ferris is a singer, writer, music teacher, and food enthusiast. In 2011, she released two albums: one with Shadow Pilot, a trip-hop/downtempo collaboration with her brother, Joseph Drew Ferris; another with Small Dream Ada, her chamber/rock band with composer Tyler Gilmore.

Lucas Foglia is a photographer  based in New York and San Francisco. A graduate of Brown University and the Yale School of Art, Foglia exhibits nationally. His photographs are in many public and private collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Fine Art and have been published in Aperture Magazine, British Journal of Photography, the New York Times Magazine and The Washington Post Magazine.

Fryd Frydendahl lives in New York where she works in photography and video. Her book, Familiealbum, was published by the Danish Publishing house, Nyt Nordisk Forlag; the book featured a collection of portraits from a Danish punk venue that was demolished in 2007. Most recently she has published the zine Personal Spam and was the recipient of the Camera Club Of New York fellowship.  Frydendahl graduated from Fatamorgana, the Danish school of art photography, and received an Advanced Certificate from the The International Center of Photography in General Studies.

Tyler Gilmore composes chamber music ranging from jazz to modern classical.  He leads Ninth+Lincoln, an orchestra that fuses big band sounds, 20th century symphonic influences and electronic textures.  He has three recordings to be released in 2011 including a rock/folk project with vocalist Alaina Ferris and a chamber ensemble project with trumpeter Cuong Vu. This fall, he will begin graduate study at the New England Conservatory of Music.

Tiffany Hairston lives, works, and plays in Washington, DC, where she was born and where she claims she will die at the age of sixty-three-and-a-half. She believes your golden years should be almost as tumultuous as your twenties.  She spends a lot of time daydreaming, often about what she would put on a playlist for a formerly deaf person and recent recipient of a cochlear implant, hearing music for the very first time.

Django Haskins is a musician, author, and songwriter living in Durham, NC. His eighth album, Tender Age, recorded with his band, The Old Ceremony, came out in September 2010.  He is now working on a biography of his great-grandfather, Karl Howell Behr, who survived the Titanic, and a touring memoir that explores the history of five cities where he performs. He studied literature and Chinese at Yale College.

Todd Hido is a San Francisco Bay Area-based artist whose work has been featured in publications such as Artforum, The New York Times Magazine, and Vanity Fair. His photographs are in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, New York,  the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and in 40 public & private collections. His books include the award-winning monograph House Hunting (2001) as well as Outskirts (2002), Roaming (2004), and A Road Divided (2010). He is an adjunct professor at the California College of Art, San Francisco, California.

Paul Houseman is a writer living in Madison, Wisconsin. His work has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Smew, and on his mother’s refrigerator.

Susan Hyon is now performing in Ethan Coen’s “Happy Hour” with the Atlantic Theater Company through Dec 31. Susan holds a Fulbright (S. Korea) from her pre-theater days, speaks Japanese, Korean, a bit of Russian, Czech, Turkish, Italian, and has a very good ear.

Michael Itkoff is a photographer, writer, and educator and a Founding Editor of Daylight Magazine. His monograph Street Portraits was published in 2009 by Charta Editions.

David S. Jung has appeared on Hung, Mad TV, Law & Order: SVU, Jimmy Kimmel Live and Howard Stern. He is also the 2003 US and World Air Guitar Champion and is the star of the documentary, Air Guitar Nation. His air guitar performance on Good Morning America led to a lifetime ban from the show.

Eric Katz is a math professor and urban cyclist. Despite his music recommendations and the epigraphs to his research papers, he is not Brazilian.

Robin Lester Kenton lives in Brooklyn with her husband, deaf Chihuahua, two kittens and now two chickens. She is documenting her urban farming adventures at General Tso and Potpie.

Will Kenton is a critic, teacher, screenwriter, and the founder of Cultural Capitol. He lives, thinks, and writes in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn.

Steven Klein runs Firefly: Theater & Films, recently played a Russian operative on Burn Notice and produced the award-winning documentary Make Believe of which Ebert said “Gem of a movie…thumbs up!”

Katie Kline studied photography and visual art at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and the Institute of Contemporary Art in London. She lives in New York and works at the International Center of Photography.

Jim Knable is a Brooklyn-based writer of plays, songs, and prose.  His plays have been produced at MCC Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, Soho Rep, NYC’s Summer Play Festival and other regional theaters, and have been published by Broadway Play Publishing, Smith and Kraus and Playscripts, Inc. He released his solo album Miles in 2000, Redbeard (2006) and Golden Arrow (2009) with his band The Randy Bandits.

Anna Kushner is the translator of the novels The Halfway House by Guillermo Rosales, Jerusalem by Gonçalo Tavares, The Autobiography of Fidel Castro by Norberto Fuentes, and the forthcoming The Man Who Loved Dogs by Leonardo Padura. She lives in Paris, and is promiscuous but sincere in her love of various cities, including Lisbon, Havana, Marseille, and Philadelphia.

Jess Lacher’s plays have been produced in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, among other places, and her writing has been published in the Random House collection Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers, Dramatics Magazine, Prism Magazine, and The Kenyon Review. She lives in Brooklyn, but it’s pretty easy to tell that she’s from the Midwest. She is working on an MFA in fiction at Hunter College.

Chris Landriau is a musician and teacher who lives in Park Slope and brews his own Kombucha.

Caitlin Leffel is a writer, editor, and the author of two books about New York.

David Levi is a history teacher, activist, poet, forager, chef, and farmhand. His sociopolitical analysis and musings on food and foraging can be found at Mr. Levi’s Class.

Daniel F. Levin’s latest play, Hee-Haw: It’s a Wonderful Li_e, was called a “delightful surprise” by The New York Times. His musical, To Paint the Earth, about resistance fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto, won the Richard Rogers Development Award.  He is now writing a memoir.

Carrie Levy is a photographer and photo editor based in Brooklyn. She received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts and her MFA from The Royal College of Art, London. Her work has been represented by Daniel Cooney Fine Art in New York since 2002. Levy has exhibited throughout the US, Asia, and Europe. Trolley Books published her first monograph, 51 Months. Her latest body of work, You Before All, showed in a solo exhibition at Daniel Cooney Fine Art. Levy is also a part-time professor of photography at the School of Visual Arts.

Jim Lillis is a Property Master working in film and television in New York. He is currently at Blue Bloods (CBS TV); past credits include HBO’s How to Make It in America, Life on Mars, Cashmere Mafia, Law and Order:Criminal Intent, and Spin City. His film work includes Riding in Cars with Boys, In the Cut, Spiderman 1 and 3, Kinsey, Little Odessa and The Ice Storm. He studied photography at the Savannah College of Art and Design. A lifetime New Yorker, he has never been to the top of the Empire State Building.

Sophie T. Lvoff received her BFA in Photography and Imaging and Philosophy from New York University. She is now pursuing an MFA in Studio Art at the University of New Orleans and is a member of Good Children Gallery.

Max Maddock is a writer who often takes photos of things that most other people ignore. And he’s a photographer who sometimes writes. He hunts for urban squirrels daily with his trusty Brittany Spaniel.

Bob McGrory, who vividly portrayed the Mayor of Bladensburg, is currently featured off off Broadway as a Town Manager on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

Mark Meatto is the director of How To Grow a Band, a documentary film about Chris Thile and Punch Brothers and one of Paste Magazine’s Best Movies of 2012 (So Far). The film, which documents mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile and his bluegrass quintet Punch Brothers, debuted in April 2012 in New Yorkafterplaying the Nashville Film, Newport Folk, and the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festivals. Theatrical screenings include: Chicago, San Francisco, New Orleans, Portland (OR), Hartford, Columbus, Eugene, and Lexington. 

Kevin Mueller is a freelance writer living in Milwaukee, Wis. He writes about music and culture for The A.V. Club; the city’s alt-weekly, The Shepherd Express; and the daily online magazine Third Coast Digest. He graduated from Marquette University in 2009 with a journalism degree.

Chris Q. Murphy is a Brooklyn-based musician and songwriter.  He’s also been known to teach people things, take photos, and write off-handed non-fiction about his fancies. He’s too old, fat, married, and fatherly to be a hipster, but shares many of their ideals.

Tim Myers is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Alex Nackman is a Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter, producer, and composer. His sixth album, This Revolution, was released in January 2011. He has written music for projects on MTV, The CW, HBO, and other networks.

Michael Nicoloff is a poet, critic, and wage laborer. Work of various sorts has appeared in 6X6, The Brooklyn Rail, The Recluse, The Poetic Labor Project, and elsewhere. He still owns a drum machine.

Allyson Paty was raised in New York City, where she continues to live. In 2009 her poems were published in Tin House as part of their New Voices series. Her poems have also appeared in A Similar but Different Quality and Underwater New York.

Dana Perry is a writer, musician, and cyclist who lives in Brooklyn.

Jared R. Pike is a New York based actor and director whose credits include Boyet in Love’s Labors Lost, all three witches in Macbeth, and Freddy in Pygmalion.

Mayumi Shimose Poe is Managing Editor of American Anthropologist and was the managing editor of Hawaii Women’s Journal. Her  fiction, essays, and poetry have appeared in American Anthropologist, Dark Phrases, Drunken Boat, Eternal Portraits, Hawaii Women’s Journal, The Honolulu Advertiser, Hybolics, The Phoenix, and Stepping Stones. She wrote the libretto for Ka’ililauokekoa, a Hawaiian opera performed in Honolulu in 2007. She lives with her husband and puppy in the San Francisco bay area.

Marisa Ptak teaches English in the Chicago public schools. A native of the South Side, she now lives in Wicker Park.

Sarah J. Robbins is a Brooklyn-based writer, editor, and teacher.

Anjoli Roy  is a recipient of the Myrle Clark Award for Creative Writing. Her nonfiction, fiction, and poetry have appeared in The Big Stupid Review, Brownstone Magazine, Diverse Voices Quarterly, ExPatLit.com: A Literary Review for Writers Abroad, Hawai‘i Review, Hawaii Women’s Journal, Midwest Literary Magazine, and The West Fourth Street Review. She lives in  New York.

Beeb Salzer is an artist, set designer, and essayist based in San Diego.

Terry Selucky is a playwright based in Brooklyn. She also writes regularly for Comedy Central’s Indecision web site.

David Skeist is an actor and occasional teacher and music director based in Brooklyn. He is a founding member of Caborca and is soon to appear in Shlemiel the First at the Skirball Center.

Suzanne Farrell Smith has published published  in The Writer’s Chronicle, Muse & Stone, Hawaii Women’s Journal, Tiny Lights, and In the Fray. She lives with her husband in Manhattan, where she freelances as a writer, teacher, editor, and proofreader, and hosts a literary salon.

Amy Stein is a photographer and teacher based in New York City. Her work explores our evolving isolation from community, culture and the environment. She has been exhibited nationally and internationally and her work is featured in many private and public collections in the US and abroad. In 2006, Amy was a winner of the Saatchi Gallery/Guardian Prize for her Domesticated series. In 2007, she was named one of the top fifteen emerging photographers in the world by American Photo magazine and won the Critical Mass Book Award. Amy’s first book, Domesticated, was released in Fall 2008.

Jay Tarbath is a high school English teacher in Manhattan. While he often tells people that he followed Lloyd Cole from England to New York, he actually came for the love of a good woman.

Joe Trapasso is a musician and composer based in Massachussetts.

Christianne Tisdale writes, sings and acts (Belle in Beauty and the Beast on Broadway, currently in On a Clear Day), and is a proud maenad.

Phil Toledano has published three books of photography: Bankrupt 2005), Phonesex (2008) and Days with My Father (2010). His forthcoming book, A New Kind of Beauty, will be released in September 2011. He recently exhibited his installation work at the Center for Photography at Woodstock.  His photographs have appeared in publications such as The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Harpers, and The London Times.

Sofie van Dam studied photography at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and is now a master’s student at TaiK (Aalto University, School of Art & Design) in Helsinki.  She is represented by Jan van Hoof Galerie in ‘s-Hertogenbosch.

Jeff  Wilser is the author of The Maxims of Manhood and The Man Cave Book and the founding editor of The Plunge. His column is syndicated in The Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, Miami Herald, Detroit Free Press, and a network of 100+ newspapers. His writing has appeared in print or online at GQ, Esquire, Glamour, The New York Daily News, The New York Post, VH1, and MTV.  He’s the former Editor-in-Chief of the nightlife site Clubplanet. As a guest on The Tyra Banks Show, he served as Tyra’s “nightlife guru.” His celebrity interviews (80+) include George Clooney, Ellen Page, Matt Damon, Jamie Foxx, and everyone from Ice Cube to Woody Allen.

Khaliah Williamsis a Philadelphia native who now resides in Baltimore where she spends her days as a college guidance counselor and English teacher. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and the Iowa Writer’s Workshop (where she did not play softball). When not teaching the youth of America, she enjoys knitting, $10 bottles of wine, military uniforms and fancy coffee. She is currently at work on a novel and a collection of short stories

David Wilson is a teacher, writer, and the lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter of Miss Ohio. Their recent EP, “Called and Raised,” is available for digital download. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and two children.

Susan Worsham is a member of the Appalachian Photographer’s Project and was named one of PDN’s 30 Emerging Photographers to Watch in 2011. Her work has been featured on Flak Photo, The Exposure Project, Lenscratch, Ahorn Magazine and Fraction Magazine, and she has exhibited at Dean Jensen Gallery, The Photographic Center Northwest, Silver Eye Center for Photography, and the Corcoran Museum of Art.

James Yeh is a founding editor of Gigantic and indie books editor at The Faster Times. He lives in Brooklyn and blogs at Yellow Redneck Blues.

Bernard Yenelouis has shown his photography in New York City, Los Angeles, and Detroit. He is currently based in Ithaca, NY, where he is a graduate student at Cornell University.

Wayan Zoey plays drums, bass, and guitar with and for a number of other bands.