The Milk House features the best in rural writing from all over the globe. Here are the writers that have contributed to making this site the place to find good reading.
Scroll through the biographies of Milk House contributors, or jump directly to the following categories by on their surnames: Authors A-D, Authors E-H, Authors J-M, Authors N-R, Authors S-Z.
Founder
Ryan Dennis
Ryan Dennis explores the dynamics of rural life and those who inhabit it. His fiction, personal essays and poetry have appeared in numerous literary journals, such as The Cimarron Review, Fourth Genre and New England Review. He is a former Fulbright recipient in creative writing and has taught at several universities. He is the author of the literary farming novel The Beasts They Turned Away, published by époque press in March 2021. His author page can be found here.
Editors
Amruta Gaiki
Amruta Gaiki is an Indian graduate student majoring in English. She reads, writes, and goes on walks with earphones plugged in. She wishes to work with books in the future. Her work has been featured in Rejection Letters, Livina Press and Alien Buddha Zine. She occasionally updates her personal blog. You can find her on Twitter & Instagram @flames_n_ice.
Adeline Henry
Adeline Henry was born in rural Co Armagh. She has worked as a translator in Germany, taught German to adults and English for Speakers of Other Languages. She teaches yoga and is interested in creative writing as a practice. She joined the MA in Creative Writing at Queens University, Belfast in 2016, graduating with distinction. She was awarded a creative practice PhD scholarship at Ulster University (completed in 2023), with the resulting draft novel now going forward for publication. Adeline’s writing is informed by growing up and living in Northern Ireland, as well as the years she spent elsewhere.
Samantha Rogers
Born in 1999, Samantha was raised in a family of five in Navan, Co. Meath. In 2017, she moved to Galway to pursue studies in Creative Writing, and graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in French, Spanish and Creative Writing from NUI Galway in 2021. She shares her poetry over on her Instagram @wordbrewpoems.
Daramola Surprise
Daramola Surprise is a passionate writer with a proven track record of honing her skills as a writer, proofreader/editor. She authored the book titled The Marred Vessel, which showcases her literary expertise. Beyond her literary pursuits, she’s a professional entomologist with a passion for the natural world and a dedicated teacher committed to inspiring others. With a unique blend of scientific and artistic expertise, she brings a distinctive perspective to her writing and teaching endeavors. More of her work can be found at https://www.surprisewrites.
Previous Editors/Staff
Tima Grieser
After working in Kennys Bookshop in Galway for two years, Tima has just returned to her native Germany to become an editor. Her main interests are travel, literature, coffee and cats.
Authors A-D
Steve Adams
Steve Adams is a recently retired senior global medical device marketing executive living with his wife, Roberta, between the Wapsipinicon and the Maquoketa in an Iowa farmhouse just west of the Mississippi. Graduating from a one room school first (and last) in his 8th grade class, he has a BS from Iowa and done graduate work at Stanford, Harvard, Dartmouth and Northwestern. During his career, he successfully developed, managed and led over 200 international organizations in 65 countries. He is unrepentantly impassionate, lives to torment his progeny and their six offspring, collects 2-cylinder John Deere tractors and enjoys extreme mowing with his 3-cylinder diesel lawn mower. This submission of rural writing is his first published article. His piece can be found here.
Linda K. Allison
After forty years in finance, Linda K Allison is having the time of her life writing, photographing, and exploring this amazing world. Her work has appeared in Moon Park Review, The Bluebird Word, Bright Flash Literary Review, and 2023 Utah’s Best Poetry and Prose Anthology, among others. Her photography has appeared in The Burningword Literary Journal, The Sunlight Journal, Persimmon Tree, and elsewhere. She lives with the love of her life among the trees in the aptly named The Woodlands, Texas.
Swetha Amit
Swetha is an Indian author based in California. She is a recent MFA graduate at University of San Francisco. She has published works across genres in Atticus Review, Oranges Journal, Toasted Cheese, and 40+ other journals (Visit: https://swethaamit.com). She was a reader and contributor for The Masters Review, and a staff writer for Fauxmoir lit mag. Her two stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2022. She is an alumni of Tin House Winter Workshop 2022, Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop 2022 and has been selected to attend the Tin House Summer Workshop, Kenyon Review Writers’ workshop and Vona Voices in 2023. Her piece can be found here.
Pat Argar
Pat Argar writes a blog as The Rural Writer in which she has explored the fiction of Sheila Kaye-Smith, presented her poetry and short fiction, has written a Covid 19 “lockdown” diary each day for over one hundred days, posted pictures of the village in which she lives and continues to add to the diary with her observations of the countryside, her garden and the natural life around her. She has taught English Literature in schools and at university. Most of her rural writing is inspired by Romney Marsh and the surrounding areas in Kent and East Sussex, UK, and by her upbringing in a farming family. Her blog can be accessed at theruralwriterblog.wordpress.com and she is also on Twitter @theruralwriter. Her piece can be found here.
Shaurya Arya-Kanojia
Shaurya Arya-Kanojia is the author of the novella, End of the Rope, and a novel scheduled for a release next year. He is the host of the talk show, TBB Presents Books with Vishwakarma, on the Mentza platform. His short stories were nominated for The Best of the Net 2023 and the B’k Best Small Fictions 2021, while several of his other stories have been published in leading international magazines, including Analogies and Allegories Lit Mag, Provenance Journal, Nymphs Literary Magazine, and Marias at Sampaguitas, among others. He likes sports (cricket, mostly), eating out, and watching reruns of The Office and Everybody Loves Raymond. You can find him on Twitter, Instagram and his own website. His pieces can be found here and here.
Lindsey Bartlett
Lindsey Bartlett teaches composition and literature at Emporia State University. An Emporian by choice, she lives in the Flint Hills region of Kansas where she spends her days writing in various coffee shops, holed up at home with a good book, or driving the countryside for good photo opportunities. You can find her wherever there is a sunset. Bartlett has published one poetry collection, Vacant Childhood. Her writing and photography have appeared in The Write Bridge, Flint Hills Review, 105 Meadowlark Reader, and The Wyandotte Window. Her piece can be found here.
Daril Bentley
Daril Bentley is author of several books of poetry and numerous poems published in journals in the U.S. and abroad. He has been a semifinalist for the Yale Series of Younger Poets, a finalist for the New Mexico Book Award for Poetry, and recipient of an Honorable Mention in the Writer’s Digest International Book Award. He is also a Black Mountain Press “The 64 Best Poets” Series author. A bird conservationist, he makes his home in Elmira, NY. His pieces can be found here and here.
Stephen Bishop
Stephen Bishop is a writer of humor, specializing in agricultural antics. For his day job, he works at his local agriculture office and has met many outstanding farmers, a few middling to fair, and one or two outright scoundrels. His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Grit, Acres USA, Hobby Farms, Southeast Farm Press, Bee Culture, Country, American Bee Journal, Out Here, South Carolina Wildlife, and The Small Farmer’s Journal. You can sign up for his weekly blog post at misfitfarmer.com or follow him on Twitter at @TheMisfitFarmer. His pieces can be found here and here.
Robert Block
Robert Block is a lifelong New Yorker, resident in Manhattan for the last 40-plus years. He is a professional chef, restauranteur, academically trained classical musician and privately trained student of jazz great Lennie Tristano. He plays bass violin in several classical orchestras and jazz settings, as well as electric bass guitar in more rollicking venues. As a writer, Rob has produced both short and longer fiction as well as opera libretti. He has been an active blogger for several years. His interest in rural life draws on visits to his sister, then living on an acreage in eastern South Dakota, and on their road trips west. He has also written a novel called Ardensville. His piece can be found here.
Allen Braden
Allen Braden was the last generation to grow alfalfa, wheat, barley and beef cattle on his family’s farm outside White Swan, Washington on the Yakama Indian Reservation. He has published recently in The Hudson Review, The Gravel Road and Spelt. Braden is the author of A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood (University of Georgia) and Elegy in the Passive Voice (University of Alaska/Fairbanks). His writing has received awards, including a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a writer’s residency at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His piece can be found here.
Oisín Breen
Irish poet, academic, and journalist, Oisín Breen’s debut, ‘Flowers, all sorts in blossom …’ was released Mar., 2020. Breen is published in 89 journals in 19 countries, including in About Place, Door is a Jar, Northern Gravy, North Dakota Quarterly, Books Ireland, The Tahoma Literary Review, La Piccioletta Barca, Decomp, New Critique, and Reservoir Road. Breen’s second collection 4² by 5 was brought out by Dreich. His third, the experimental Lilies on the Deathbed of Étaín was published by Beir Bua Press, January 2023. His piece can be found here.
David Brennan
David grew up in Upperchurch, North Tipperary. In 2016, he won the Frank O’Connor Mentorship Bursary Award, and was longlisted for the Fish Memoire Award (2016 & 2017), and the Colm Toibín International Short Story Award (2017). He has been shortlisted for the Bristol Short Story Prize (2017), the Doolin Short Story Award, the Curtis Bausse Short Story Award, and the Fish Memoire Award (2018). He was one of the winners of the Irish Novel Fair 2018, and he was nominated for the Hennessey New Irish Writer Award 2019. His first novel Upperdown was published by époque press in 2019. He currently lives and works in Japan. His piece can be found here.
Nora Brennan
Nora Brennan grew up in rural south Kilkenny. Her poems have been published in various magazines including Skylight 47, Crannóg and the Kilkenny Poetry Broadsheet. She won first prize in the Michael Mullan Poetry Competition, 2022, second prize in the Jonathan Swift Poetry Competition, 2019 and third prize in the Frances Ledwidge Poetry Competition 2023. Recipient of the 2016 ArtLinks Bursary Award for Emerging Artist, Nora published her first collection of poems, The Greening of Stubble Ground in 2017. She was selected as a mentee in the Words Ireland National Mentoring Programme 2020. Her piece can be found here.
Michael Brownstein
Michael H. Brownstein’s latest volumes of poetry, A Slipknot to Somewhere Else (2018) and How Do We Create Love (2019) were both published by Cholla Needles Press. In addition, he has appeared in Café Review, American Letters and Commentary, Skidrow Penthouse, Xavier Review, Hotel Amerika, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Pacific Review, Poetrysuperhighway.com and others. He has nine poetry chapbooks including A Period of Trees (Snark Press, 2004), Firestorm: A Rendering of Torah (Camel Saloon Press, 2012), and The Possibility of Sky and Hell: From My Suicide Book (White Knuckle Press, 2013). His piece can be found here.Bob Brussack
Bob Brussack writes poetry and short fiction. He’s been a photographer since his parents gave him a Kodak Brownie for his birthday when he was nine. He was born in Manhattan, lived much of his life in Athens, Georgia, and resides now in Kinsale, County Cork, Ireland. His poetry has appeared in the Roanoke Review, the Naugatuck River Review, the San Pedro River Review, the Black Coffee Review, and elsewhere. His recent short fiction piece, “Toad Took Lunch,” can be found at witcraft.org. His piece can be found here.
Peter Burrows
Peter Burrows is a Librarian, also training to be a counsellor, living in the North West of England who has lived around the UK and grew up in Scotland where he still has family ties which still informs his writing. His favourite writers are Seamus Heaney, Kathleen Jamie, Thomas Hardy, Bernard O’Donoghue, Philip Larkin and Jane Clarke who also share a preoccupation with nature, familial relationships and a sense of time and place. His work has recently appeared in the Places of Poetry, The Cotton Grass Appreciation Society, An Áitiúil Anthology and The Hedgehog Press Tree Poets Nature anthologies. His poem Tracey Lithgow was shortlisted for the Hedgehog Press 2019 Cupid’s Arrow Poetry Prize. You can visit his website here. His piece can be found here.
Margaret Cahill
Margaret Cahill is a native of Offaly who now lives in Limerick, Ireland. She writes short stories and has been featured in époque press é-zine, The Ogham Stone, The Honest Ulsterman, HeadStuff, Silver Apples, Autonomy anthology, Incubator, Crannog, Galway Review and Limerick Magazine. Her competition prizes and listings for short fiction include Write by the Sea festival, Lough Corrib Short Story Competition, Ballydonoghue Bardic Festival, Cuirt New Writing Prize, Silver Apples, Over the Edge New Writer of the Year and Allingham Arts Flash Fiction. She occasionally dabbles in writing about music and art, with non-fiction articles published on HeadStuff.org and Circa Arts Magazine. More of her work can be found on her personal website here and her piece can be found here.
William Cass
William Cass has had over 325 short stories accepted for publication in a variety of literary magazines such as december, Briar Cliff Review, and Zone 3. He won writing contests at Terrain.org and The Examined Life Journal. A nominee for both Best Small Fictions and Best of the Net anthologies, he has also received six Pushcart Prize nominations. His first short story collection, Something Like Hope & Other Stories, was published by Wising Up Press in 2020, and a second collection, Uncommon & Other Stories, was recently released by the same press. He lives in San Diego, California. His piece can be found here.
Shannon Castor
Shannon Castor is a multidisciplinary artist and writer working in film, photography, oil and acrylic painting. She has a BFA in Cross Media from the Oregon College of Art and Craft and a MFA in Art and Ecology from the Burren College of Art, National University of Galway, Ireland. More of her work, including her paintings, can be found on her site. Her pieces can be found here and here and here.
JD Clapp
JD Clapp writes in the foothills of San Diego, CA. He spends his falls in rural places chasing deer and elk, and his summers on the ocean chasing tuna. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Wrong Turn Literary, Café Lit, Sporting Classics Magazine, Fleas on the Dog, The Whisky Blot, among several others. His story, One Last Drop, was a finalist in the 2023 Hemingway Shorts Literary Journal, Short Story Competition. His piece can be found here.
Judy Clarence
Judy Clarence, a retired academic librarian, currently lives with her daughter, grandchildren, two cats and a dog in the Sierra (California) foothills after many years in Berkeley. She plays violin (baroque and modern) in several orchestras and chamber groups, has sung in many classical choruses, and writes poetry almost constantly. Her work has appeared in Persimmon Tree, Amarillo Bay, Shot Glass Journal, Allegro, and Tigershark, among other publications. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her piece can be found here.
Cathy Conlon
Cathy Conlon was joint winner of PENfro First Chapter Competition 2016 and has been shortlisted for the RTE P.J. O’Connor Radio Drama Awards. She won second prize in The Waterford Poetry Prize 2020 and was shortlisted for the Trim Poetry Festival 2020 and Seventh Bangor Poetry Competition 2019. Her poems have appeared in The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review, Books Ireland, Ropes, Skylight 47, and in numerous online journals. Her short stories have appeared in Brevity is the Soul (Liberties Press) Stories for the Ear (Kildare County Council) Boyne Berries, and in literary journals online. She lives in Celbridge, Co. Kildare. Her piece can be found here.
A.M. Cousins
A.M. Cousins grew up on a farm near Kilmore Village, Co Wexford. Her poems can be found in various literary journals including The Stinging Fly, Poetry Ireland Review, Aesthetic Anthology and poethead.com. Her poem Not my Michael Furey won the FISH Poetry Prize in 2019 and her work was shortlisted in The Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Competition 2015, 2016 and 2019. Anne is a regular contributor to Sunday Miscellany on RTE Radio 1. Her first collection of poetry, REDRESS, was published by Revival Press in March 2021. Her piece can be found here.
Annie Cowell
Annie grew up in a tiny fishing village on the northeast coast of England which dates back to before the Norman Conquest. After a career in publishing and recruitment, she switched to teaching when her children were born. She now lives by the sea in Cyprus with her husband and rescue dogs and writes whenever she can. She has poems published or forthcoming in Popshot Quarterly, Paddler Press, Gastropoda, and others. She is a BOTN 2022 nominee. Her debut chapbook Birth Mote(s) was published by Alien Buddha Press in July 2022 and her second chapbook, Splashing Pink, is forthcoming with Hedgehog Press in 2023.Her pieces can be found here and here.
Ross Crawford
Ross Crawford is a writer/scriever/poet based in Stirling, Scotland. He is an historian by trade, completing a PhD at the University of Glasgow in 2016, and works in community heritage as his day job. He continues to take most of his inspiration from the history, nature, and folklore of his home country, especially the rural landscapes of Ayrshire, the Trossachs, and the West Highlands. For smaller scribblings, visit his Medium page. For frivolous musings, there’s always Twitter. His piece can be found here.
Emily Cullen
Emily Cullen is the Meskell UL-Fifty Poet in Residence where she lectures in Creative Writing. Emily has published three poetry collections: Conditional Perfect (Doire Press, 2019), In Between Angels and Animals (Arlen House, 2013) and No Vague Utopia (Ainnir Publishing, 2003). Conditional Perfect (Doire Press, 2019), was included in The Irish Times round-up of “the best new poetry of 2019.” Emily is also a cultural producer and she served as Director of the Patrick Kavanagh Centenary (2004) and Director of Cúirt International Festival of Literature (2017-2019). Her piece can be found here.
Patrick Deeley
Patrick Deeley is a poet, memoirist and children’s writer. He grew up in a Callows or wetland meadow farmed by his mother in the east of County Galway. He worked as a teacher and later as administrative principal of a primary school in Dublin. His poems have been published widely and he is the recipient of a number of awards, including The Dermot Healy International Poetry Prize, The Eilis Dillon Book of the Year Award for Children’s Literature, and the 2019 Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Poetry Award. His bestselling memoir, The Hurley Maker’s Son, was shortlisted for the An Post Irish Book Award in 2016. Keepsake, his eighth collection of poems with Dedalus Press, will appear in Spring 2024, with a collection of surreal verse entitled Beyond the White Deckchairs due from SurVision Books also in 2024. His pieces can be found here and here.
Edward Denniston
Originally from Longford town, Edward Denniston has lived and worked in Waterford City since 1980, the city to which his Presbyterian ancestor came as a dissenting minister in the early 18th century. As a young boy he inherited his grandfather’s farm at Drumnacross, outside Longford town. Edward is a retired teacher of English and Drama. His publications are: The Point of Singing (Abbey Press, 1999); Eskimo Advice – an e-book (Rectory Press & Hayrake Poetry, 2007); Interacting – 60 Drama Scripts (Russell House Publishing UK, 2007); The Scale of Things (Salmon Poetry, 2013) and For Crying Out Loud (Salmon Poetry, 2017). Hospital Voices (2018), in collaboration with composer, the late Eric Sweeney, for the 25th Anniversary of Waterford Healing Arts Trust. As editor: Teachers Who Write (Waterford Teachers’ Centre, 2018). In 2021, Entry and Exit Wound: a text to accompany music composed by Grainne Mulvey and first performed at Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin. VITAL (Compost Poetry, 2023) is his most recent collection. His pieces can be found here and here.
Aziz Dixon
Originally a student of archaeology, Aziz turned for inspiration to the landscapes of the Pennine hills and Wales. More recently he has been drawn to landscapes of the heart, and a search for meaning in patterns of family behaviour. He is the author of the poetry collection Because of the War, published by Maytree Press. His piece can be found here.Kennady Donovan
Kennady Donovan is a junior at Central DeWitt High School. In addition to her role as a yearbook editor, she is also involved in cross country, basketball, track, choir, and other school clubs. Her other hobbies include hanging out with her two nieces, running, lifeguarding, and spending all her money at Target. Her pieces can be found here and here.
Danyl A. Doyle
Danyl A. Doyle is an “over-educated farm boy” who grew up in the shadow of Western Colorado’s majestic mountains. His childhood was a tapestry of horses, 4-H pigs, and farming, which forged a profound bond with nature. He became a History and English teacher and later, a therapeutic story-telling PhD psychologist. His piece can be found here.
Ger Duffy
Ger Duffy lives in Co Waterford, Ireland and works as a teacher. Her poems have been published in Slow Dancer Press (UK), The Womens’ Press (UK), Voxgalvia, Pendemic, In the Midst Anthology (US), The Waxed Lemon, Cathal Bui Selected Anthology, Poetry X Hunger eBook (US), Drawn to the Light Press, Local Wonders Anthology and The Ekphrastic Review (US). She is a recipient of a Poetry Mentoring Award from the Munster Literature Centre. In 2021, she was a Pushcart nominee. Her piece can be found here. Matthew Duggan
Matt is the editor of The Angry Manifesto zine, and his poems have appeared in many journals. In 2015 Matt won the Erbacce Prize for Poetry with his first full length collection of poems Dystopia 38.10 (erbacce-press) and won the Into the Void Poetry Prize in 2017 with his poem ‘Elegy for Magdalene’. He has previously published four chapbooks: One Million Tiny Cuts (Clare Song Birds Publishing House) A Season in Another World (Thirty West Publishing House) The Kingdom (Maytree Press) and Ten Truths from Wonderland (Hedgehog Poetry Press) a bilingual collaboration with Spanish Poet Maria Castro Dominguez. His second full length collection Woodworm (Hedgehog Poetry Press) was published in July 2019. He has read his work across the U.K. including Greece, the U.S.A and has appeared at various festivals such as Poetry on the Lake Festival in Orta, Italy, A Casa Dos Poetas in Portugal and also the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. Matt has finished the final edits on his new collection ‘Everyone is Waiting for Tomorrow, which will be published in 2021. His piece can be found here.Mary Dunne
Mary Dunne is a 22-year-old writer from Westmeath, Ireland. She recently graduated from NUI Galway with a degree in English Literature and French. Her work has been published in ROPES literary journal. She writes both poetry and short stories. She spent a year teaching English in Université de Poitiers in France. Mary enjoys playing Gaelic football and rugby, swimming in the sea, playing the piano, and travelling. Alongside her twin brother, she is the youngest in a family of seven. Growing up on a farm, nature has always played an important role in her life. Her favourite places to walk are in woodlands and along the Royal Canal, especially as the seasons change throughout the year. Her piece can be found here.Thomas Dunne
Thomas Dunne lives in farm country in Koshkonong, (south central) Wisconsin. He retired in 2019 and spends time writing and walking along the country roads. Adjoining his property are: a hay field, a corn field, a soybean field and a wetland. His works have appeared in the Milwaukee Journal, Mountain Pilot magazine, Liguorian Magazine and the Blue Collar Review. His poem, “My One True Home,” won the Merit Award from Arts For All, Wisconsin (2021). You can find him reading the poem here. He enjoys playing rockabilly style piano and writes and records his own (mostly country) music. You can listen to his music on Youtube. His piece can be found here.Michael Durack
Michael Durack grew up on a farm near Birdhill, Co. Tipperary, and now lives in Ballina on the River Shannon, a few miles away. He worked as a teacher for 36 years. His poems have appeared in a wide range of publications in Ireland and abroad as well as airing on local and national radio. With his brother Austin he has recorded two albums of poetry and guitar music, The Secret Chord (2013) and Going Gone (2015). He is the author of a memoir in prose and poems, Saved to Memory: Lost to View (2016) and three poetry collections, Where It Began (2017), Flip Sides (2020) and This Deluge of Words (2023) published by Revival Press. His pieces can be found here and here.
Authors E-H
James Ellson
James Ellson was a police officer for 15 years, starting in London and finishing as a Detective Inspector at Moss Side in Manchester. He now wears two hats, crime writer and smallholder. His debut novelThe Trail was published in 2020. “A pacy and intelligent thriller” (Paula Hawkins). The sequel Cold Dawn will be published in Spring 2022. He lives in the Peak District with his wife, and manages their smallholding, which includes bees and an orchard. He offers tours, and gives talks on sustainability, apples, and writing. His piece can be found here.Mark Esping
Mark O.J. Esping directed a not for profit www.folklifeinstitute.com. He is married, an eagle scout and was a reluctant sergeant in the U.S. Army. Mark tells stories, mostly true stories, of a humorous nature with a hint of morality. He is preparing a collection under the title Near Invisible, Like Footprints in Ever Shifting Sand. Mark’s work has appeared in Fantasy and Science Fiction, Country Living, Scandinavian Review, Hemslöjden and 105 Meadowlark Reader. “Farming Is Not For Me” happened in Olsburg, Kansas, a village originally settled by Swedish immigrants in the 1800’s. His piece can be found here and here.
David Estringel
David Estringel is a Xicanx writer/poet with works published in literary publications like The Opiate, Azahares, Cephalorpress, DREICH, Somos en escrito, Ethel, The Milk House, Beir Bua Journal, and Drunk Monkeys. His first collection of poetry and short fiction Indelible Fingerprints was published April 2019, followed Blood Honey and Cold Comfort House (2022, little punctures (2023), and Blind Turns in the Kitchen Sink (scheduled for late 2023). David has also written six poetry chapbooks, Punctures, PeripherieS, Eating Pears on the Rooftop, Golden Calves, Sour Grapes, and Blue. Connect with David on Twitter @The_Booky_Man and his website www.davidaestringel.com. His pieces can be found here and here and here.
Fable Farms
Fred and Michelle operate the 10-acre homestead Fable Farms. Fred is a third generation farmer with his roots deeply planted in the fertile Virginia soil. He grew up working the family’s 500 acre farm, share cropping even more to expand their acreage and living in their old farm house, a structure that had once been a Civil War hospital. Michelle was raised in a military family and dreamed of the day she could farm. She prepared for the day her dream would come true by reading as much as she could on every farming subject she could find, visiting on her aunt’s farm and learning random homestead skills.They have a blog with their own rural writing called Fable Farm and Meadery. Their piece can be found here.
John Gerard Fagan
John Gerard Fagan is a Scottish writer and author of Fish Town (2021), a memoir about living in rural Japan. He writes in Scots, Gaelic, and English. His Twitter handle is @JohnGerardFagan. His piece can be found here.
Roseanne Fahey
Roseanne Fahey is a twenty-one-year-old student living in the midlands of Ireland. She studies Creative Writing at the National University of Ireland, Galway. Her poetry and prose have been published in The Five-Two, In Parenthesis, Ice-Lolly Review, and The Daily Drunk. Her piece can be found here.Carol Fellin
Carol Fellin has been published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The Oconomowoc Enterprise and on the parenting blog Her View From Home. Carol grew up on a farm in Wisconsin. She is a writer, wife, mother, and grandmother. Her piece can be found here.
Michael Finny
Michael Finney is a traveling carnival barker. His first books are focused on photographic journeys across space and time. His books 1893 Chicago’s Columbian Exposition: Arts and Culture on the Doorstep of the 20th Century and Exploring Our National Parks: A photographic and literary album are available on Amazon. His piece can be found here.
Jon Fisher
Jon teaches English and Journalism at Central Dewitt High School. From Le Claire, IA, he attended the University of Iowa. He also is a regular columnist for the local paper, The Observer. He enjoys spending too much money on books and records and has dreams about playing pinball machines that melt. His pieces can be found here and here.
Daragh Fleming
Daragh Fleming is a short fiction writer from Cork in Ireland who uses a conversational style to delve into complex themes which emerge in everyday life. He has two collections of short stories published by Riversong Books; The Book of Revelations (2019) and If You Are Reading This Then Drink Water (2020). Recently he was the winner of the Cork Arts ‘From The Well’ Short Story Competition. His piece can be found here.
MacKenzie Fowler
MacKenzie grew up on an island off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina. She is a recent graduate of National University of Ireland Galway with a BA in English and Sociological and Political Studies. When she is not busy working at Kennys bookshop in Galway she can be found painting, writing, or procrastinating. Her piece can be found here.
Keelan Gallagher
Keelan Gallagher is a short story and screenwriter originally from Donegal, Ireland and resident in Dublin. This winter, he will be graduating from the Masters in Creative Writing from Dublin City University. His writing frequently examines the Irish landscape and the legacy of colonialism on the Irish psyche. His short story ‘Shall We Carve?’ was published in the 2023 Edition of ROPES Literary Journal. He has written two films, both set in Ireland, and his Irish-language film ‘An Solas (The Light)’ was shortlisted for the Screenplay Pitch Competition at the 2023 Galway Film Fleadh. His piece can be found here.
Margaret Galvin
Margaret Galvin is a poet and essayist living in Wexford, Ireland. She has published six collections of poetry. Her next collection, Our House Delirious, a collection of poetry and prose, is to be published in May 2023 by Revival Press, Limerick. Her work is frequently broadcast on the radio programme, Sunday Miscellany. She holds an MA in Child, Youth and Family studies and frequently facilitates writing workshops to support participants towards self-understanding. Much of her writing addresses the contrast between the Ireland she grew up in, in the 60’s and 70’s and the Ireland inhabited today. She does so in a way that is described as : ‘gritty and unsentimental.’ (Dr. FrancisDevlin-Glass, university of Melbourne.) Her piece can be found here.
Larry Gannan
Larry Ganann is an agronomist and agriculturalist by training, raised in the rolling hills of central Mississippi, and a southern boy who spent his life and career supporting those who seek to wrest their living from the land. Bitten by the genealogy bug a dozen years ago, he has written extensively about his family’s history since they arrived in America in the 1700s, and about his childhood exploits on the farm where he grew up. He writes both fiction and non-fiction short stories, mostly, and a few poems along the way. His piece can be found here.
Colin T. Gilbert
Novelist, columnist and short story writer Colin Gilbert isn’t really from anywhere. He spent a green block of childhood in an Indonesian jungle, learned to drive in the spatter-pattern streets of New Orleans, studied creative writing and other inutile arts in Iowa, lost himself in the language, literature and various underworlds of Prague, and invented a complete language against the pine-clogged backdrops of Denver. He is fabulously inept in four languages, proud of his rock and mineral collection, makes artisanal soaps in his kitchen, keeps a folder of his favorite crossword puzzles, and authored two novels, Angel Fever and The Virtues of Destruction. His piece can be found here.
Vinny Glynn-Steed
Vinny from Galway has been widely published both abroad and at home. His poetry has featured in the United States, Mexico, Northern Ireland, Wales and England. A previous pushcart nominee, Vinny’s work has appeared in journals and online sites such as Ofi Press magazine, Parhelion, Crannog, Boyne Berries, Cinnamon Press anthology, Windows anthology, Mediterranean Poetry to name but a few. Winner of the 2020 Allingham poetry festival, his debut book Catching Airwas published in December 2020 by Maytree Press. His piece can be found here.
Katy Goforth
Katy is a writer and editor for a national engineering and surveying organization and a fiction editor for Identity Theory. Her writing has appeared in Brevity, Reckon Review, Cowboy Jamboree, Salvation South, and elsewhere. She has a prose collection forthcoming with Belle Point Press (2025). She was born and raised in South Carolina and lives with her spouse and two pups, Finn and Betty Anne. You can find her work at katygoforth.com. Her piece can be found here.
Mark Grant
Mark Grant studied classics at St Andrews University and taught the subject for twenty years. He has published four books about Roman food and medicine. His Roman Cookery: Ancient Recipes for Modern Kitchens received a Special Commendation in the André Simon Awards. The ancient world influences many of his stories. When not writing or rehearsing in a local amateur dramatic society, he can be seen in his allotment tending unusual plants – mallow, bottle gourd, rue, and elecampane – for later experiment in the kitchen with old recipes. His piece can be found here.
Pat Greene
Pat Greene has been writing letters and stories for over fifty years. Some of his stories have appeared on Thewriteplaceatthewritetime.
Nicki Griffin
Nicki Griffin grew up in Cheshire in the north west of England, but has lived in County Clare, Ireland since 1997. Her poetry has been published in a wide variety of journals and anthologies. Her debut collection, Unbelonging, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2013 and was shortlisted for the Shine/Strong Award 2014 for best debut collection. The Skipper and Her Mate (non-fiction) was published by New Island in 2013, and her latest poetry collection, Crossing Places (2017), was published by Salmon Poetry. She was winner of the 2016 Trócaire Poetry Ireland competition. Nicki has read her poems at events and festivals both in Ireland and abroad, and in 2017 was judge of the Over The Edge New Writer of the Year Competition. She is co-editor of poetry newspaper Skylight 47. Her pieces can be found here and here.
Sinéad Griffin
After a career in the biotechnology sector Sinéad Griffin began writing while raising her three daughters and lived with her family in both Paris and Edinburgh before returning to Dublin. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, The Irish Times, Channel Magazine, The Honest Ulsterman, Skylight 47, The Waxed Lemon, The Storms Journal and elsewhere. She was the winner of the adult unpublished category Trócaire Poetry Ireland Competition 2021. Her piece can be found here.
Roy Gu
Roy Gu is Professor of English at Shanghai International Studies University, China. He has published poems and short stories in both English and Chinese. He has translated several books, including Love by Toni Morrison. He is also a singer-songwriter and has released folk music albums. His piece can be found here.
Jamie Guiney
Jamie Guiney is a literary fiction writer from County Armagh, Northern Ireland. His short story collection ‘The Wooden Hill’ (published by Epoque Press) was shortlisted under Best Short Story Collection, in the 2019 Saboteur Awards. Jamie’s short stories have been published internationally and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. He has also been nominated three times for the The Pushcart Prize and long-listed for Irish Short Story of the Year in the 2021 An Post Book Awards. Jamie is a graduate of the Faber & Faber Writing Academy and his work has been backed by the Northern Ireland Arts Council through several Individual Artist Awards, including ACES 2022/2023. He is a Fiction Editor at Identity Theory, and favours the short story genre, believing it to be the closest written prose to the traditional art of storytelling. Jamie is represented by literary agent Kim Witherspoon, founding partner of Inkwell Management, NYC. His pieces can be found here and here and here.
Kari Gunter-Seymour
Kari Gunter-Seymour is a ninth generation Appalachian and Poet Laureate of Ohio. Her poetry collections include Alone in the House of My Heart (Ohio University Swallow Press, 2022) and A Place So Deep Inside America It Can’t Be Seen (Sheila Na Gig Editions, 2020). Her work has been featured in About Place Journal, Rattle, one, Verse Daily, World Literature Today, The New York Times, and Poem-a-Day. Her piece can be found here.
Michael Halloran
Copywriter, poet, and essayist Michael Halloran grew up in Dublin, Ireland. He has lived and worked across the world in countries such as South Korea, Vietnam, and the USA. He currently lives in Des Moines, Iowa with his family. His piece can be found here.
Robert Harlow
Connor Harrison
Connor Harrison’s writing has appeared at the LA Review of Books, Evergreen Review, and The Moth, among others. He was shortlisted for the 2021 Poetry Wales Pamphlet Prize. He currently lives in Montreal. His piece can be found here.
Marc Harshman
Marc Harshman is the author of fourteen children’s books including FALLINGWATER: THE BUILDING OF FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT’S MASTERPIECE, co-authored with Anna Egan Smucker, and named an Amazon Book of the Month for Children. His collections of poetry include WOMAN IN RED ANORAK, winner of the Blue Lynx Prize, BELIEVE WHAT YOU CAN, winner of the Weatherford Award from the Appalachian Studies Association [WVU Press], DARK HILLS OF HOME, [Monongahela Books, 2022], and his newest volume just released, FOLLOWING THE SILENCE, Press 53, Winston-Salem, NC. He has also just been named the Appalachian Heritage Writer for 2024 by Shepherd University’s Appalachian Studies program. Harshman is the seventh poet laureate of West Virginia.
Richard Hawking
Richard Hawking’s interest in the writing of Adrian Bell, rural communties and the countryside stems from his own time growing up on a small 70-acre farm in Somerset. His father- and his uncle and grandfather – ran small mixed-method farms and they struggled to see the long-term wisdoms of the changes in agricultural practice in the mid-twentieth century. In 2019, Crowood published At the field’s Edge: Adrian Bell and the English Country Side, his monograph on the 20th Century English rural writer Adrian Bell. In late 2021, Slightly Foxed will be publishing A Countryman’s Winter Notebook, a collection of Adrian Bell essays introduced and selected by Richard. His piece can be found here.
Jeremy Haworth
Jeremy Haworth is a Dublin-born poet, now residing in the midlands of Ireland. In 2017 he and his wife returned to the farmstead where she grew up, gradually transforming an area of long-neglected land into a thriving market garden. Charis Garden supplies people in the locality with a weekly share of fresh, seasonal produce. In 2019 Jeremy was awarded the Cúirt New Writing Prize. Last year saw the publication of his first book, Four Season Farm. Visit him at www.jeremyhaworth.com. His piece can be found here.
Shannon Hayes
Shannon’s work has appeared in national publications such as The New York Times, The Boston Review, and Northeast Public Radio. She has a large following for her blog The Radical Homemaker and has written seven books, including The Grassfed Gourmet, The Farmer and the Grill, and Homespun Mom Comes Unraveled. The most recent, Redefining Rich, is due out next summer from BenBella Books. From May through Mid-December, she writes weekly essays that appear on her blog, as well as in Yes! Magazine. Through the winter she hibernates and works on her book manuscripts. Her piece can be found here.
Yvonne Heavey
Yvonne Gleeson is about to publish her first book, a collection of semi-autobiographical short stories set in the Irish Midlands in the 1990’s. This short anthology features eleven stories, including the eponymous ‘The Wake of Yer Man’, winner of the Jersey Festival of Words short story competition. Yvonne returned to writing in her 30s and her memories of a cherished childhood amid the boglands of County Westmeath never left her. The stories feature the bookies of Mullingar, the kindly nuns of Vincent de St Paul’s and the exotic attractions of a day’s holiday spent in Bettystown, the Florida of Ireland’s east coast. The stories return the reader to a time and place where community and its characters (and dogs) were the lifeblood of existence, each one narrated through the eyes of a young Irish girl. Full proceeds of the book will go to St Vincent’s de Paul which help poverty and homeless here in Jersey and Ireland. Her piece can be found here.
Christina Hennemann
Christina Hennemann is based on the West Coast of Ireland. She’s the author of the poetry chapbook “Illuminations at Nightfall” (Sunday Mornings at the River, 2022) and her second chapbook is forthcoming with BookHub Publishing in spring 2024. She’s a recipient of the Irish Arts Council’s Agility Award ’23 and the winner of the Luain Press Prize. She was shortlisted in the Anthology Poetry Award & Dark Winter Contest, and longlisted in the National Poetry Competition. Her work appears in Poetry Ireland, Poetry Wales, Anthropocene, The Moth, York Literary Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, Moria, and elsewhere. Visit her author page here. Her piece can be found here.
Ari Honarvar
Ari Honarvar is the founder of Rumi with a View, dedicated to building music and poetry bridges across war-torn and conflict-ridden borders. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, Teen Vogue, Washington Post, Newsweek, and elsewhere. She is the author of “Rumi’s Gift Oracle Cards” (2018) and “A Girl Called Rumi” (2021). She lives in San Diego where she has befriended a hummingbird named Taadon. Her piece can be found here.
Amanda Huggins
Amanda Huggins is the author of the novella All Our Squandered Beauty, as well as four collections of short fiction and poetry. She was a runner-up in the Costa Short Story Award 2018 and her prize-winning story ‘Red’ features in her latest collection, Scratched Enamel Heart. In 2020 she won the Colm Toibin International Short Story Award, was included in the BIFFY50 list of Best British and Irish Flash Fiction 2019-20, and her poetry chapbook, The Collective Nouns for Birds, won the Saboteur Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet. Amanda grew up on the North Yorkshire coast, moved to London in the 1990s, and now lives in West Yorkshire. Her piece can be found here.
Jonathan Humble
Jonathan Humble is a retired deputy head teacher living in Cumbria. His poems have appeared in a number of anthologies and other publications online and in print including Curlew Calling (Numenius Press), Diversifly (Fair Acre Press) and This Place I Know (Handstand Press). A collection of his light poetry My Camel’s Name is Brian was published in 2015 by TMB Books. A second short collection of his work Fledge was published by Maytree Press in 2020. He is editor of the Dirigible Balloon poetry site for children which published its first anthology Chasing Clouds: Adventures in a Poetry Balloon through Yorkshire Times Publishing in 2022. He has had poems for children shortlisted and highly commended in the Caterpillar Poetry Prize and York Mix Poetry Competitions and he won the inaugural Best Poem of 2022 in The Milk House with Masterclass. He writes regularly for the Yorkshire Times, reviewing poetry collections and publishing articles on a range of subjects. He has delivered poetry workshops for Wordsworth Grasmere and also appeared as the Poet in a Fridge for the Radio Cumbria Poetry Takeaway during the BBC Contains Strong Language Festival at Tullie House in Carlisle. His pieces can be found here and here and here.
Authors J-M
D. R. James
D. R. James, recently retired from nearly 40 years of teaching college writing, literature, and peace studies, lives, writes, bird-watches, and cycles with his psychotherapist wife in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan. His latest of ten collections are Mobius Trip and Flip Requiem (Dos Madres Press, 2021, 2020), and his prose and poems have appeared internationally in a wide variety of print and online anthologies and journals. His piece can be found here.
Luke Janicki
Luke Janicki lives in Seattle, Washington. He has published poetry in Trampset, Funicular Magazine, Ghost City Review, Apricot Press, Quarter Press, Floating Bridge Press, Dipity Literary Magazine, and other publications. He has been nominated for Best of the Net 2025. He holds a B.A. from Gonzaga University and an M.Ed. from the University of Notre Dame. His piece can be found here.
Poppy Johnson
Poppy Johnson works and lives in New England, focusing on various writing projects with international and domestic clients. She is a graduate of the Michael Moritz College of Law, and writes on legal, technical, scientific and medical white papers, proposals and treatises. Lately, she is working with schools across the country developing new curriculum for remote learners of all ages. Her piece can be found here and here.
Ruth Jones
Ruth Pettey Jones lives in West Point, Mississippi, with her husband Terry. She has read thousands of short stories and written dozens. This is her first piece of published fiction. Breda Joyce
Breda Joyce grew up in Headford, Co. Galway and taught at second-level in Kenya, Clifden and in Cahir, Co. Tipperary. On retiring from teaching, Breda studied creative writing in UCC where she won her first poetry prize and graduated with an MA in 2020. Her work has been twice shortlisted for the Anthony Cronin and the Over the Edge Awards. She has been shortlisted for the Fish Lockdown prize 2020, the Desmond O’ Grady award 2021, Best of the Net 2021, the Francis Ledwidge prize 2021, 2022 and Allingham 2022. Her short collections have been highly commended in the Fool for Poetry Chapbook competition 2019 and 2020. Her poetry appears in various publications, anthologies and literary journals, including Poems for Pandemia and The Best New British and Irish Poets Anthology 2019-2021, and in The Irish Times, and she has broadcast on Sunday Miscellany. Apart from writing Breda enjoys Irish folklore, sea-swimming and hiking in the hills near her home. Reshaping the Light published by Chaffinch Press 2021 is her first poetry collection. Her piece can be found here.
Martin Keaveny
Martin Keaveney’s debut novel Delia Meade will be published by Penniless Press, UK later in 2020. His collection of stories, The Rainy Day, was published by Penniless Press in 2018. His short fiction and rural writing has been published in many literary journals in Ireland, UK and US. He has also written for the screen and his writing has been produced and exhibited at several international film festivals and on broadcast television. His play Coathanger was selected for development in a national competition at the Scripts Ireland festival in 2016. His scholarship was recently published in the peer-reviewed New Hibernia Review, Journal of Franco-Irish Studies, Liverpool Journal of Postgraduate Studies and Estudios Irlandeses. He has a B.A. in English and Italian, an M.A in English (Writing) and a Ph.D. at NUIG (Creative Writing and Textual Studies). He was awarded the Sparanacht Ui Eithir for his research in 2016 and the NUIG Write-Up Bursary in 2018. His latest novel is called Delia Meade. See more at www.martinkeaveney.com. His pieces can be found here and here.
Adam Kenworthy
Adam attended the University of Iowa undergrad fiction workshop before putting on shiny shoes and becoming a lawyer in Iowa. He lives with his pretty wife, two kids, and an unhealthy obsession with K-pop. He loves rural writing. His piece can be found here.
Beth Kephart
Beth Kephart is the award-winning author of three-dozen books in multiple genres, an award-winning teacher at the University of Pennsylvania, co-founder of Juncture Workshops, and a widely published essayist. Her new books are Wife | Daughter | Self: a memoir in essays; We Are the Words: The Master Memoir Class; and And I Paint It: Henriette Wyeth’s World. More at bethkephartbooks.com. Her piece can be found here.
Jason Kilgore
Jason Kilgore is a multi-genre author who has published books and short stories in science fiction, fantasy, horror/paranormal, and poetry. He lives in Oregon, U.S.A., with too many cats, has a crippling addiction to chocolate, and enjoys the beautiful outdoors of the American Northwest. His author’s page on Amazon lists his available books, including Dragon of the Federation, The First Nova I See Tonight and Around the Corner from Sanity . His latest book is the poetry collection Guide Me, O River. His piece can be found here.
Elise Koning
Elise Koning is a farmer, writer, and photographer in west central Indiana, where she raises sheep and Christmas trees with her husband. Goats, llamas, and cats accompany the sheep. Future plans include launching an agritourism operation with farm tours and wagon rides provided by her family’s Clydesdale horses. Much of the operation is influenced by regenerative agriculture practices and philosophies learned across the world. Elise lived and worked on several farms and sheep stations in New Zealand for a year. She then traveled to Australia, Singapore, the Philippines, Ireland, and the U.K. Each week, she writes Sylvan Sundays, using photos and prose from the farm to bring a peaceful start to the week. More pastoral stories and photos from the farm can be found on Facebook and Instagram. Her piece can be found here.
Sandy Korey
Sandy Korey lived seven years in the Wet Mountain Valley, Westcliffe, Colorado, sharing adventures with her late male companion as they roamed the still wild West, which became the basis for some of her writing. Now that her tenure as spouse, parent, partner and caregiver has been relegated to history she is exploring her new found freedom of self and indulging creative expressions in writing. Her themes cross several genres and she has been published for her efforts. Her pieces can be found here and here.
Janie Krahulcova
Janie Krahulcova is a Czech Republic born British national living in Newport, Wales. In her writing, she combines history, religion and fantasy with inclinations towards nature. Currently, she is working on her debut novel, which is the alternative retelling of the Bible’s Eden or the more scientific Big Bang. Outside of writing, her love for nature drives the many projects she has, from growing bonsai from seeds to starting a small herb garden. Her piece can be found here.
Josie Kriener
Josie Kriener grew up on a dairy farm in northeast Iowa. Now a student at the University of Northern Iowa, Josie is actively pursuing degrees in Marketing and Management Information Systems, as well as competing for the cross country and track and field programs. She started her blog The Holstein Hub for a college course, and it quickly became a platform to give a personal, informative look at family farming and tackle common misperceptions along the way. Her piece can be found here.
Cindy Ladage
Cindy Ladage is a freelance writer and blogger at Traveling Adventures of a Farm Girl
Craig Lancaster
Craig Lancaster is the author of 10 novels, including the recently released Northward Dreams, as well as a collection of short stories. He’s also a playwright, a sometimes publisher, and a frequent contributor of essays and articles to journals small and large, print and digital. He lives in Billings, Montana. See more of his work at www.craig-lancaster.com. His piece can be found here.
Hiram Larew
Larew’s poems have appeared widely, most recently in Poetry South, Best Poetry Online, Honest Ulsterman, and Iowa Review. His most recent collection, Mud Ajar, was published in 2021 by Atmosphere Press. You can find out more about Hiram’s work on his personal website. His piece can be found here.
Michael Larkin
Michael Larkin resides on the ancestral farm where Thomas Larkin was born in 1874. A graduate of the Galway Mayo Institute of Technology School of Nursing & Health Sciences, he also holds a Higher Diploma in Healthcare management. A member of the Federation of Local History Societies of Ireland, the Irish Writers Centre, Ireland Reaching Out (Ireland XO) and other networks, he has a keen interest in Irish and Irish American social history and emigration. He is the author of Making the Right Connections by Book Hub Publishing. His piece can be found here.
Dudley Laufman
Dudley Laufman has published numerous trade edition books of poems, such as An Orchard and a Garden (1974), Mouth Music (2001), The Stoneman (2005), Walking Sticks (2007), She Plumb Ned, She More’n Plum ( 2011), and the chapbooks: Smoke Screen and Behind the Beat (2004, 2008), Left Eye (2012), as well as numerous other pamphlets, chapbooks and broadsides. In 2009 he was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship. He is a recipient of the New Hampshire GOVERNOR’S AWARD IN THE ARTS Lifetime Achievement Folk Heritage Award for 2001. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Award, and is the subject of a documentary film The Other Way Back. For more information about Dudley, check out www.laufman.org. His piece can be found here.
Sydney Lea
A former Pulitzer finalist and winner of the Poets’ Prize, Sydney Lea served as founding editor of New England Review and was Vermont’s Poet Laureate from 2011 to 2015. He is the author of twenty-five books: a novel, five volumes of personal and three of critical essays, and sixteen poetry collections, most recently What Shines (Four Way Books, 2023). In 2021, he was presented with his home state of Vermont’s most prestigious artist’s distinction: the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. His pieces can be found here and here and here.
Ariane Lee
Ariane Lee grew up on a farm in Marlette, Michigan, but defected to Arizona in 2015 where the weather is much nicer in the winter. She has a BS in Biology from Saginaw Valley State University and you can often find STEM themes in her urban fantasy fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction. She would love to tell you what she does when she’s not writing, but right now she’s too busy dealing with the willful characters in her first novel to have “spare time.” You can find her previously published works in SCC’s Vortex 2022 and 2023, Poets Choice, and in a scrapbook on her mom’s coffee table. Her piece can be found here.
Edward Lee
Edward Lee’s poetry, short stories, non-fiction and photography have been published in magazines in Ireland, England and America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen and Smiths Knoll. He is currently working on two photography collections: Lying Down With The Dead and There Is A Beauty In Broken Things. He also makes musical noise under the names Ayahuasca Collective, Orson Carroll, Lego Figures Fighting and Pale Blond Boy. His blog/website can be found at https://edwardmlee.wordpress.
Megan Lee
Megan’s writing focuses on nature, community and wild spaces. Her first book, Atlas of Amazing Migrations, was published by Pavilion Books in 2021. The children’s non-fiction text features the migration patterns of over 70 different species. She has a Masters in Creative Writing and Critical Life from the University of Leeds and currently lives in Yorkshire with her partner Bill, where she enjoys spotting curlews and walking the Pennine Way. Her piece can be found here.
Richard A. Levins
Dr. Richard A. Levins is Professor Emeritus of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota. He is an award-winning author of books about policy and economic issues affecting the food system and the general economy, including the biography Willard Cochrane and the American Family Farm. After spending over 25 years in major universities advising adult learners on farm management issues and teaching economic principles, he left University life in 2003 and maintains an active practice in consulting, writing, and public speaking. Much of his work centers on agricultural policy and the economic and environmental benefits of organic and sustainable agriculture. He is the founder of Levins Publishing. His piece can be found here.
Laura Lewis
Laura Lewis is a retired farmer, mother and grandmother with a B.S. in Communications and Public Relations from Central Missouri University at Warrensburg, MO, USA. Her work has been published in several anthologies: Kaleidoscope’s Reflections of Women’s Journeys: In my Shoes, KelLee Parr’s More Voices of the Willows; and the Adoption Hub of America, short stories in two publications of Chicken Soup for the Soul and Wising Up Press’s Power of the Pause. She has also self-published Where Roses Grow, a historical novel of the 18th century and the recipient of the 2022 Peggy Vining poet Laureate Award. She now resides in Kansas City, Missouri. Her pieces can he found here and here.
Avery Lin
Avery Lin is a Chinese writer and a current undergraduate student majoring in English Literature at Shanghai International Studies University. She has published short stories and poems, and she contributed a translated review to the magazine ‘Journey Planet,’ which is a finalist of Hugo Awards for Best Fanzine in 2023. Her flash fiction was shortlisted for the 7th EU-China International Literary Festival. Her piece can be found here.
Christina Linsin
Christina Linsin is a poet and teacher living in western Virginia. Her poetry examines connections with the natural world, the complexities of mental illness, and the difficulty of creating meaningful connections amid life’s obstacles. Her work has been published in tiny wren lit, and she has work forthcoming in Stone Circle Review and Still: The Journal. Her piece can be found here.Fay L. Loomis
Fay L. Loomis grew up in rural Michigan and now leads a quiet life in the woods in Kerhonkson, New York. A member of the Stone Ridge Library Writers and the Rat’s Ass Review Workshop, her poems and prose appear in a variety of publications, most recently in Synchronized Chaos Magazine, The Blue Mountain Review, Fevers of the Mind, Spillwords, Pleiades: Literature in Context, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Rats Ass Review, Lock Raven Review, and The Passionfruit Review. Her piece can be found here.
David Lynch
David Lynch grew up on a tillage farm in North Cork. He now resides in Southeast Asia. Although he is no longer physically present in Ireland he remains a passionate online campaigner for the rights and protections of all the children who live and work on Irish farms–both past and present. He can be found on Facebook at the “Farm Abuse Support Group Ireland.” His piece can be found here.
Jessica Maybury
Jessica Maybury is an Irish zine maker working on short fiction, poetry and visual art. She lives in Geel, Belgium – find her online at jessicamaybury.com. Her piece can be found here.
DJ McAuliffe
DJ McAuliffe is a farmer and blogger living outside Castle Island in Co. Kerry, Ireland and has been working in the agricultural sector from the early 1990s. He now runs a herd of Scottish Highland and Belted Galloway cows, as well as some rare breed Kerry bog ponies. He has recently started the blog Black Field Farm about farming issues facing rural life in Ireland. His piece can be found here.
Edward N. McConnell
Edward N. McConnell writes flash fiction and short stories. To date his work has appeared in Literally Stories, Terror House Magazine, Mad Swirl, Down in the Dirt, Rural Fiction Magazine, The Corner Bar Magazine, MasticadoresIndia, Drunk Monkeys and Refuge Online Literary Journal. His story “Where Harry’s Buried” was selected for inclusion in The Best of Mad Swirl v2021. He lives in West Des Moines, Iowa with his wife. His pieces can be found here and here.
Maura McElhone
Maura McElhone is an author and columnist whose work has appeared in The Irish Times, the Irish Farmers Journal, on thejournal.ie, Image.ie, and on RTÉ Radio 1’s CountryWide programme. Born and raised in Portstewart, County Derry, she studied in Scotland at undergraduate level and completed a Masters in Writing at the National University of Ireland, Galway. She lives in Kildare with her husband and their four-month old son. Maura was the 2017 recipient of the Cecil Day Lewis Literary Bursary for Emerging Writers from Kildare County Council. Falling for a Farmer, her first book, was published by the Mercier Press in October 2018. Her piece can be found here.
Matt McGuirk
Matt McGuirk teaches and lives with his family in New Hampshire. BOTN 2021 nominee and regular contributor for Fevers of the Mind with words in 75+ lit mags, 100+ published pieces and a debut collection with Alien Buddha Press called Daydreams, Obsessions, Realities on Amazon. http://linktr.ee/
Maeve McKenna
Maeve McKenna is a poet living in Sligo, Ireland. Her work has been placed in several international poetry competitions and published widely. Maeve was a finalist in the Eavan Boland Mentorship Award 2020, third in The Canterbury Poet of The Year, 2021, and a Pushcart nominee, 2022. Maeve was part of a collaboration with three poets and their pamphlet won the Dreich Alliance Pamphlet Competition, published October, 2021. Her debut pamphlet, A Dedication To Drowning, was published in February 2022, by Fly On The Wall Press. A second pamphlet is forthcoming from Rare Swan Press. Her piece can be found here.
Gerard McKeown
Gerard McKeown is an Irish writer who has been shortlisted for The Bridport Prize and longlisted for The Irish Book Awards’ Short Story of the Year and the BBC National Short Story Award. His work has been featured in a number of journals and anthologies, and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. His blog Licking The Bowl was nominated three years in a row at the Irish Blog Awards. He is a former Ulster performance poetry champion and was a runner up in the All-Ireland Poetry Slam. He completed a Masters degree in Creative Writing at Queens University, Belfast. His blog Licking The Bowl was nominated three years in a row at the Irish Blog Awards. More of his work can be viewed at www.gerardmckeown.co.uk. His piece can be found here.
rob mclennan
Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, he won the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2010, the Council for the Arts in Ottawa Mid-Career Award in 2014, and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012 and 2017. In March, 2016, he was inducted into the VERSe Ottawa Hall of Honour. His most recent poetry titles include A halt, which is empty (Mansfield Press, 2019) and Life sentence, (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019), with a further poetry title, the book of smaller, forthcoming from University of Calgary Press in April 2022. An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics and Touch the Donkey . He is editor of my (small press) writing day, and an editor/managing editor of many gendered mothers. In spring 2020, he won ‘best pandemic beard’ from Coach House Books via Twitter, of which he is extremely proud (and mentions constantly). He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com. His piece can be found here.
Lis McLoughlin
Lis McLoughlin holds a BS in Civil Engineering, an MEd in Education, and a PhD in Science and Technology Studies. She founded NatureCulture, a green, online media and events company through which she directs the Writing the Land project, as well as editing and publishing the Writing the Land anthology series. Her own published writing includes academic articles; poems; essays; a stage performance; book chapters; and newspaper articles. Lis organizes the annual Authors and Artists Festival, and serves on the Northfield (Massachusetts) Historical Commission. She lives off-grid in Northfield, Massachusetts and part-time in Montréal, Québec. Her piece can be found here.
Paddy McMenamin
Paddy worked 20 years in a German car factory before redundancy led him to return to full time education. He spent a year on IT, and then headed to NUI Galway for a BA in English and History, PGDE in Teacher Training and finally an MA in History, graduating as a Secondary Teacher at the age of 58. The next years were spent teaching and working for the exam commission as Examiner and Superintendent, and summers were spent teaching English in Malta. He is now retired and working to lower his handicap on Galway Bay golf course. In December 2020 he published Walking Through a Story of Life. All proceeds from the books go to support the charity Darkness Into Light. He has also written a 135,000-word tome about his life going from conflict in Belfast to academia in Galway. It’s due to be published at Easter, and is titled Armed Struggle to Academia. His piece can be found here.
Caite McNeil
Caite McNeil lives in Midcoast Maine where she teaches HS English and serves as the Nonfiction Editor for carte blanche journal. Her work has been published in The LA Times, The Tahoma Review, Mutha Magazine, and elsewhere. More of her work can be seen at @Quantumcartwheel & www.caitemcneil.com. Her piece can be found here.
Tom Milburn
Tom Milburn was born on a dairy farm near Peterborough, Ontario, and despite living in Taiwan, South Korea and Alberta, now drives past that same dairy farm with regularity, which gives rise to some of his questions. Tom was a reporter once and still likes to write, but has been in education for 25 years, so a lot of his writing energy has gone towards lesson plans. He is the co-author of a number of textbooks for English Language Learners, but also occasionally likes to write non-fiction pieces for the right kind of publishing site. Tom is heartened to know that enough people are still interested in both writing and rural issues so that a site like The Milk House exists. His piece can be found here and here.
Dalton Miller
Dalton Miller was born and raised in the Appalachian Mountains in West Virginia. At a young age he began writing, creating art, and learning music instruments. After years of experimenting with various mediums he has returned to writing poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. He currently lives in Georgia with his partner and their animals. His piece can be found here.
Daniel Edward Moore
Daniel Edward Moore lives in Washington on Whidbey Island. His work has appeared in Western Humanities Review, Southern Humanities Review, December, Rattle, and many others. His work is forthcoming in I-70 Review, Tar River Poetry Journal, Sierra Nevada Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Bryant Literary Review, Book of Matches, and Eastern Iowa Review. His work has been nominated for both Pushcart Prizes and Best of the Net. His chapbook, “Confessions of a Pentecostal Buddhist,” is from My space on Amazon, and his book, Waxing the Dents, from Brick Road Poetry Press was a finalist for the prize and published in 2020.Raymond Moore
Raymond Moore a RN living and working in Saudi Arabia. Originally from Glasgow he spent my teenage life on the Isle of Skye. His Skye Stories Trilogy was published in 2021 by Redshank Books in the UK. These document his adventures from Glasgow to Skye and beyond. He’s currently finishing his first novel entitled Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll and Nursing which he hopes to publish later this year. His piece can be found here.Jill Muhrer
Jill Muhrer, a retired nurse practitioner, completed writing workshops at Westport Writers, Smokelong Quarterly, and Columbia University. Her publications include stories in Pulse-Voices from the Heart of Medicine, Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, and haiku and haibun in Modern Haiku, Contemporary Haibun Online, and The Haibun Journal among others. Her piece can be found here.
Patrick Mulcahy
Patrick Mulcahy, aka The Mindful Farmer, is the owner of Ballinwillin House Farm, with farmed venison, wild boar and goats. His business interests include a boutique B&B at Ballinwillin, a vineyard in Hungary and “RetrEAT” a weekend experience to nourish the body and mind. At age 8 Patrick was practicing mindfulness, which he acknowledges helped him during his work in his first career as a Garda. Patrick created a “Thinking Path” on the grounds of Ballinwillin House Farm with a holistic garden with areas dedicated to mindfulness, meditation and forgiveness. He has a huge interest in health and wellbeing. He is also author of the book Hope in a Time of Crisis. His piece can be found here.Gráinne Murphy
Gráinne Murphy is a novelist and short story writer. Her novel, Where the Edge Is, was published in 2020, with The Ghostlights due out in September 2021, both with Legend Press. Her short stories have been published in the Fish Anthology, RiPPLE Anthology, Nivalis 2015 and online in the Irish Literary Review. Walking is a big part of her writing life, often the same stretch by the water, finding comfort in both its daily shifts and its constancy. Gráinne lives and writes in west Cork, which, among other accolades, has the best rain. Her piece can be found here.
Donna Myers
Donna Myers is a mom and regenerative farmer with a bachelor’s in biology and a master’s in writing. Her work has appeared in the Penn-Union Journal, Murfreesboro Post, and Black Poppy Review. Donna is currently completing a memoir about the four years she and her family spent raising chickens, ducks, and Bretonne Pie Noir cattle in the Haute-Vienne department of France. You can find her at The Happy Homestead on Facebook and Instagram.
Authors N-R
John Noonan
John Noonan grew up in County Longford, now lives near Dundalk and is a member of Dundalk Poetry Group. His work has been published in Poetry Ireland Review and many other publications at home and abroad. He was also shortlisted for The Allingham Poetry Prize, Northwest Words, and Rush Competitions and is a past winner of The Goldsmith Poetry Competition. In January 2022 he was one of the featured readers on “Over The Edge” in Galway, Ireland. His piece can be found there.
Eamon O'Leary
After taking early retirement, Eamon soon realised he needed something more than hacking up the golf course to keep him busy, so he started writing short stories. An eclectic mix which has found favour and been published in a myriad of anthologies and online. A number have made their way onto the airwaves. He is currently looking for a publisher for his collection of humorous semi-autobiographical childhood memories. Eamon’s highlight to date was winning the Southport Int Short Story Competition in ’19. He lives close to the sea in Carrigaline, Cork, Ireland.Surnaí Ó Maoildhia
In a family of six, Surnaí was raised on Inis Mór, the largest of the Aran Islands. Home-schooled until the age of fifteen, she then joined school, so as to sit her Leaving Certificate Examinations. She is now a student of NUI Galway, entering her final year in Creative Writing with English and Maths. Her piece can be found here.
Katie O'Sullivan
Katie O’Sullivan is a Galway poet turned shop assistant, aged twenty-two. She has been previously published in The Stinging Fly, Strukturriss, Dodging the Rain, and The Galway Review. When she isn’t recklessly wandering into the Atlantic, Katie enjoys reflecting on the mindboggling behaviour of the customers she encounters. Having recently finished her studies in English, History and Creative Writing at NUI Galway, she is now working towards her first novel. Her piece can be found here.
Andy Offer
From those early days in the 50’s, peering through the hedge, watching the new combine, through clandestine tractor driving when the boss wasn’t looking, a gap year milking cows and an agricultural degree, Andy has been involved in agriculture for over 60 years. After university he joined ADAS, the then government advisory service as a farm consultant and spent 30 years helping farmers grow and develop their businesses. In 2001 he moved with his wife to the tiny hamlet of Whyle in Herefordshire with the intention of hobby farming a few sheep, alongside his consultancy work but events intervened and he has spent the last 20 years building his own food and farming business. Now retired, Andy is still active as a mentor to local young farmers through a Prices Trust funded scheme. He is an experienced broadcaster and technical writer and his business, Whyle House Lamb, was a finalist in the British Farming Awards, 2016. His pieces can be found here and here.
BJ Omanson
BJ Omanson lives in Morgantown, West Virginia. He was born and raised on a farm in the upper Spoon River valley of Stark County, Illinois, where both sides of his family have farmed since the Civil War. His book Stark County Poems (monongahelabooks.com) covers the history of Stark County from the 1830s through the 1930s. The poems are based on letters, newspaper articles, obituaries, family stories, early county histories and diaries and have appeared in such publications as Shenandoah, Sewanee Review, The Hudson Review, Illinois Heritage, The Stark County News, Small Farmer’s Journal, The Naugatuck River Review, the Amish periodical Farming Magazine and in Ted Kooser’s international newspaper column American Life in Poetry. His pieces can be found here and here.
Thomas Alan Orr
Thomas Alan Orr raises hay and Flemish Giant rabbits on a small farm in central Indiana. His latest collection is Tongue to the Anvil: New and Selected Poems. He has recent work in Northwest Indiana Literary Journal, Twin Bill, Hobo Camp Review, and Tipton Poetry Journal. His piece can be found here.
Jeremy Paden
Jeremy Paden teaches Spanish and Latin American Literature at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Adirondack Review, Atlanta Review, California Quarterly, Hampden Sydney Review, Rattle, and others. He is the author of three chapbooks of poetry, two full-length collections, and has translated several Latin American and Spanish poets. His piece can be found here.
Steve Passey
Steve Passey is originally from Southern Alberta. He is the author of the short-story collections Forty-Five Minutes of Unstoppable Rock (Tortoise Books, 2017), the novella “Starseed” (Seventh Terrace), and many other individual things. He is a Pushcart and Best of the Net Nominee and is part of the Editorial Collective at The Black Dog Review. His pieces can be found here and here.
Bernard Pearson
Bernard Pearson’s work appears in over seventy publications worldwide, including; Aesthetica Magazine, The Edinburgh Review, Crossways, North West Words and FourxFour and The New Critique I. In 2019 he won second prize in The Aurora Prize for Writing. His piece can be found here.
Robert E. Petras
Robert E. Petras is a graduate of West Liberty University. His poetry and short fiction have appeared in more than 200 publications across the globe. Petras supported his writing habits by working a variety of jobs, including farmhand, boiler tender, deck hand, heavy equipment operator and laborer. He is also the author of River Rats, a collection of stories about growing up in a small midwestern town during the 1960s. His pieces can be found here and here.
Ralph Pooler
Ralph was born and raised on a farm in South Africa. After school, two years of compulsory military service, a degree from the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal and a few years struggling to make a living off a Social Science degree he started travelling. He now lives in Seattle where he works as a tinsmith by day and writer by night, dividing his time between Seattle and South Africa where he and his wife founded a non-profit building preschools for rural South African’s, and where their daughter goes to University. His piece can be found here.
Edgar A. Porter
Edgar A. Porter was born and raised in Middle Tennessee, moving on from there to years in China, Japan and Hawaii as an educator and writer. He is the author or editor of six books, focusing on oral history and biography. His most recent book is From Calvin to Mao and Beyond, A Memoir, published by St. Andrews University Press in North Carolina. He currently lives in Aiea, Hawaii with his wife Ran Ying, where he writes fiction and non-fiction. And enjoys horsing around with his grandchildren. His piece can be found here.
Joseph Powell
Joseph Powell has published seven books of poems, and his book of short stories, Fish Grooming & Other Stories, was a finalist for the Washington Book Award. He’s a retired English professor who lives in Ellensburg, Washington. His pieces can be found and here.
Sara B. Pritchard
Sara is a homesteader, writer, and professor at Cornell University. She grew up in Seattle, but has lived in rural southeastern France, the Bay Area, Lyon, Cambridge (Massachusetts, not England), Philadelphia, Bozeman, and now Ithaca, New York on the traditional homelands of the Gayogo̱hó:nǫɁ (the Cayuga Nation). She writes about technology and the environment in history—from water management in post-World War II France and the triple disaster at Fukushima to conservation politics and the history of light pollution. Her piece can be found here.
Jeremy Proehl
Jeremy’s poems have appeared in several anthologies: Kent State’s Edith Chase Symposium, Hessler Street Fair, #ThisIsCle Poetry, and others. He has also been published both in print and online in the following journals: Headline Poetry & Press, Ink Sweat & Tears, Poetry Pea, Muleskinner Journal, The Westchester Review, Panoply, The Grindstone, Otherwise Engaged Literary & Art Journal, and others. Jeremy has participated in the Cleveland poetry scene and have enjoyed reading at open mics for almost 20 years. He attends the biennial Dodge Poetry Festival and has participated in several Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences, Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, Catamaran Writing Conference, the Lost Lake Writers Retreat and other poetry workshops over the years. Dan Chiasson mentioned him in an article he wrote for the August 2019 issue of The New Yorker. Jeremy works in the garage-door industry. He and his wife have recently relocated to our Michigan cabin with their two Labradors where they enjoy time in the woods. His piece can be found here.Jon Pyatt
Jon Pyatt is an emerging writer working toward an MFA in creative writing at Wilkes University. He recently served as Managing Editor of the River and South Review. He has worked as a journalist, criminal prosecutor, political operative, and congressional chief of staff. Together with his husband and two dogs, he splits his time between Washington D.C. and the wild and wonderful mountains of West Virginia. This is his first publication. Learn more about him on his author page. His piece can be found here.
Liz Quirke
Liz Quirke is a writer and scholar from Co. Kerry. Salmon Poetry published her debut collection The Road, Slowly in 2018, and then her second collection, How We Arrive in Winter, in 2021. She teaches on the MA in Writing at NUI Galway and is an Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholar, a Galway Doctoral Fellow and is completing a practise-based PhD on Queer Kinship in Contemporary Poetry. She is one of the founders of Pendemic.ie, a social history and literary project that has been archived by UCD and funded by the Arts Council of Ireland. Her piece can be found here.
Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera
Chicana Feminist and former Rodeo Queen, Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera (she/her) writes so the desert landscape of her childhood can be heard as loudly as the urban chaos of her adulthood. She’s obsessed with food. A former high school teacher, she earned an MFA at Antioch University Los Angeles and is a PhD candidate at the University of Southern California. Her young adult novel, Breaking Pattern, is forthcoming with Inlandia Books. She is a Macondista, creates drama with Center Theater Group Writers’ Workshop, and works for literary equity through Women Who Submit. You can read her other stories and essays at http://tishareichle.com/. Her piece can be found here.
Stephen Reilly
Stephen has an MA in Drama and Theatre Studies. He works as a teacher and writes to avoid accusations of hypocrisy from his students! He has written primarily for the stage and has also directed a selection of dramas and musicals. He lives in Galway with his wife and son. His piece can be found here.
Dominic Rivron
Dominic Rivron writes mainly short stories and poetry. His work has been published in a number of magazines, including The Poetry Bus, SETU Magazine and Dream Catcher. In the past he has worked at various jobs, from care assistant to piano teacher. He is a classically-trained musician who, as well as writing, has an active interest in free improvised music. His early life was spent in rural Lincolnshire. He currently lives in a village in the North of England, although before moving north, he lived for some years in London. He writes a blog which can be found here. His piece can be found here.
Nuala Roche
Nuala has been writing for over twenty years. She won Dromineer Literature Festival’s poetry prize in 2017, and was awarded an Arts Office Bursary to publish a chapbook, Fish-Speak (Highly Commended in the Patrick Kavanagh competition). Her play, Bridie, premiered at The Watergate Theatre during AKA Fringe Festival 2017. She is a recipient of an Artlinks Bursary for poetry film and recently contributed to short film, Broken Sleep. Her work has been published in The Cormorant broadsheet and anthology, Doghouse Press journal, Pendemic.ie and nine editions of the Kilkenny Poetry Broadsheet. Nuala is currently pitching her first novel, Hello World, a story set in a near-future Ireland. Her piece can be found here.
Chelsea Renée Roper
Chelsea Renée Roper is a graduate student at Southern New Hampshire University, where she focuses on creative writing. A proud daughter of Appalachia and a native of West Virginia, her work draws inspiration from the rich culture and landscapes of her home. This publication marks her first significant foray into the literary world. With a passion for exploring themes of identity and place, Chelsea is eager to share her journey and creativity through her writing. She currently lives in Kentucky. Her piece can be found here.
Samantha Rogers
Born in 1999, Samantha was raised in a family of five in Navan, Co. Meath. In 2017, she moved to Galway to pursue studies in Creative Writing, and graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in French, Spanish and Creative Writing from NUI Galway in 2021. She shares her poetry over on her Instagram @wordbrewpoems. Her pieces can be found here and here.
Simon Rowe
Simon Rowe grew up in rural New Zealand when orange Fanta came in glass bottles and AM radio was king. He has lived in Japan for more than 27 years, winning numerous awards for his short fiction and screenplays, including Pearl City: Stories from Japan and Elsewhere (2021 Best Indie Book Award) and Good Night Papa (2013 Best Asian Screenplay Contest). His stories have appeared in The Paris Review, the New York Times, and TIME (Asia). He is author of the cosy mystery Mami Suzuki: Private Eye (Penguin Random House 2023).
Elizabeth Ryan
Elizabeth Ryan grew up by the river Shannon, not far from the village of Clondra in Co. Longford. She is a retired Medical Scientist and now lives near Lough Derg in beautiful East Clare. Her piece can be found here.
Authors S-Z
David Salner
David Salner’s Summer Words: New and Selected Poems appeared in March 2023 from Broadstone Books and his sixth collection, The Green Vault Heist, in September. Salner’s debut novel, A Place to Hide, won first place for 1900s historical fiction from Next Generation Indie Book Awards. He’s worked as iron ore miner, steelworker, librarian, baseball usher, and in many other trades. For more https://DSalner.wixsite.com/
Grace Sampson
Grace Sampson is an emerging Irish poet, aged twenty-one. She has been previously published in The Galway Review, and The Lothlorien Poetry Journal. She has a piece forthcoming in Bealtaine Magazine, and in the Analogies & Allegories Magazine. She has been selected as EMC’S November Poet of the Month, along with being chosen to feature on the ‘Collective’ platform on Instagram. She is currently pursuing a poetry workshop with Tentacular Magazine. She now separates her time between her undergraduate studies at NUIG, and on writing her first collection. She works as a staff writer for the Farside Review. You can see more of her on @graceksampson7 on IG. She lives in the South of Ireland. She hopes to pursue an MA in Creative Writing. Her piece can be found here.
Mark Scheel
Mark Scheel grew up in east-Kansas farm country. Prior to writing full time, he served overseas with the American Red Cross, taught at Emporia State University and was a public library information specialist. He co-authored the book Of Youth and the River: the Mississippi Adventure of Raymond Kurtz, Sr. and his collection of stories and poems, A Backward View, was awarded the 1998 J. Donald Coffin Memorial Book Award from the Kansas Authors Club. More recent works include the blog collection The Pebble: Life, Love, Politics and Geezer Wisdom, the fiction collection And Eve Said Yes: Seven Stories and a Novella, the poetry collection Star Chaser and the novel The Potter’s Wheel. “The Empty Road” is excerpted from a memoir-in-progress. His pieces can be found here and here.
Bel Schenk
Bel Schenk is the author of three poetry collections – Urban Squeeze (Ginninderra Press, 2003), Ambulances & Dreamers (Wakefield Press, 2008) and Every Time You Close Your Eyes (Wakefield Press, 2014). She has been published in various journals and magazines both in Australia and overseas. Originally from Adelaide, she now lives in Melbourne with her partner Rachel and daughter Lola. Her piece can be found here.
Julie A. Sellers
Julie A. Sellers was born and raised in the Flint Hills of Kansas. Those great expanses of tallgrass prairie and reading fueled her imagination, and Julie began writing at an early age. After living in several states and countries, Julie is happy to make her home in Atchison, KS. Her creative prose and poetry have appeared in publications such as 105 Meadowlark Reader, Cagibi, Wanderlust, The Very Edge, and Kansas Time + Place. Julie was the Kansas Author’s Club Prose Writer of the Year (2020, 2022, 2023), and the Overall Winner in Prose (2017, 2019) and Poetry (2022) in the Kansas Voices Contest. Her collection Kindred Verse: Poems Inspired by Anne of Green Gables (Blue Cedar Press) was released in 2021. Her debut novel, Ann of Sunflower Lane (Meadowlark Press, 2022) was a finalist for the 2023 High Plains Book Award in Young Adult.
George Sheils
With some 20 years of experience in writing for the healthcare sector, George moved from Dublin to study Creative Writing, English and Archaeology at NUI Galway in 2016 and graduated in 2020. While only a short time in Galway, his short story Pigeon Face won the Over the Edge Fiction Slam for 2016. Later, the story was re-written as a stage play and in 2019 scooped Best Script at the Jerome Hynes One Act Play Series. Since then, George has written a number of short stories, poems and a full length play called the Cabbage Planters which is based on his own personal experiences of working on a large tillage farm in North County Dublin as a youth in the 1970s and 80s. In addition to being a playwright, George is also a noted photographer and has exhibited his work at exhibitions in Ireland, Europe, America and Australia. His piece can be found here.
Katherine Shirley
Katherine Shirley is a native Londoner and constant scribbler on buses and trains. Katherine’s poems have appeared in The Worst Best Years: A Student Life Anthology; the Mycelium Magazine; the Best New British and Irish Poets Anthology 2016; the Snakeskin e-zine; the Gold Dust calendar; Soul Vomit; and the Rochdale Canal Festival Poetry Trail. Katherine has featured at the Stockwell Festival and the Ashmolean Museum’s ‘Poetry in the Galleries’ series. Her piece can be found here.
Noah Siela
Noah Siela lives in Columbia, Missouri and teaches writing at the University of Missouri. He graduated from the University of Iowa and earned an MFA from The University of Maryland, where he won the Academy of American Poets Prize and the Stan Plumly Thesis Award. His chapbook, Meep Meep?, was a finalist for The Slash Pine Press Chapbook Contest. His work has been published in Phantom Limb, Calaveras, Oak Bend Review, and Full of Crow among others. His pieces can be found here and here and here.
Mary Silwance
Originally from Egypt, Mary Silwance lives in Kansas City. Mary provides workshops on writing and serves on the editorial team of Kansas City Voices. While her poetry and essays appear in numerous publications, Mary explores ecology from an intersection of justice and spirituality in workshops and at https://www.
Lorna Sixsmith
Lorna Sixsmith’s first book Would You Marry A Farmer? (2013) was inspired following the popularity of one of the posts on her Irish Farmerette blog. Later books include How to be a Perfect Farm Wife (2015), How to be an Ideal Farm Husband (2016) and more recently, her memoir Till the Cows Come Home (2018) by Black and White Publishing. Married to a farmer, Lorna manages the calf rearing in the spring but doesn’t get bored for the rest of the year. Lorna was co-founder of Blog Awards Ireland and co-organised the event for three years.Lorna has spoken at a number of events, including the Dublin Web Summit and National Women’s Enterprise Day. She is an occasional panellist on TV3’s Midday, has been interviewed on Ireland AM, the Seven O’Clock Show and Tubridy 2FM, as well as being featured in numerous print publications. Her piece can be found here.
Simon A. Smith
Simon A. Smith is a Chicago teacher and writer. His stories have appeared in many journals and media outlets, including Hobart, Lit Magazine, Whiskey Island, Chicago Public Radio, and NewCity. He is the author of two novels, Son of Soothsayer and Wellton County Hunters. He lives in Rogers Park with his wife and son. You can find more of his work at his website: simonasmith.com. His piece can be found here.
Cassie Smith-Christmas
Cassie Smith-Christmas currently works as a researcher for the National University of Ireland, Galway, and holds a PhD from University of Glasgow, Scotland. Her writing has appeared in The Wild Word; Gutter; Poets’ Republic; Earthlines and the Skye Reading Room’s anthology A Stillness of Mind after receiving an honourable mention in their Baker Prize competition. She was also runner-up in the Highland Literary Salon’s ‘Roots’ competition and an honourable mention in the Society for Humanistic Anthropology’s international ethnopoetry competition. Her piece can be found here.
J.R. Solonche
Professor Emeritus of English at SUNY Orange, J.R. Solonche has published poetry in more than 500 magazines, journals, and anthologies since the early 70s, including The New Criterion, The New York Times, The Threepenny Review, The American Scholar, The Progressive, Poetry Northwest, Salmagundi, The Literary Review, The Sun, The American Journal of Poetry, Poet Lore, Poetry East, The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, The Journal of the American Medical Association, and Free Verse. His poems have been read on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac and other radio shows and have been translated into Portuguese, Italian, German, and Korean. He is the author of Beautiful Day (Deerbrook Editions), Won’t Be Long (Deerbrook Editions), Heart’s Content (Five Oaks Press), Invisible (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize by Five Oaks Press), The Black Birch (Kelsay Books), I, Emily Dickinson & Other Found Poems (Deerbrook Editions), In Short Order (Kelsay Books), Tomorrow, Today and Yesterday (Deerbrook Editions), True Enough (Dos Madres Press), The Jewish Dancing Master (Ravenna Press), If You Should See Me Walking on the Road (Kelsay Books), In a Public Place (Dos Madres Press), To Say the Least (Dos Madres Press), The Time of Your Life (Adelaide Books), The Porch Poems (Deerbrook Editions , 2020 Shelf Unbound Notable Indie Book), Enjoy Yourself (Serving House Books), Piano Music (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize by Serving House Books), For All I Know (Kelsay Books), A Guide of the Perplexed (Serving House Books), The Moon Is the Capital of the World (Word Tech Communications), Years Later (Adelaide Books), The Dust (Dos Madres Press), Selected Poems 2002-2021 (nominated for the National Book Award by Serving House Books), Life-Size (Kelsay Books), The Five Notebooks of Zhao Li (Adelaide Books), Coming To (Word Tech Communications/David Robert Books), The Lost Notebook of Zhao Li (Dos Madres Press, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize), Around Here (Kelsay Books), It’s About Time (Deerbrook Editions), The Book of a Small Fisherman (Shanti Arts), The Dreams of the Gods (Kelsay Books), and coauthor with his wife Joan I. Siegel of Peach Girl: Poems for a Chinese Daughter (Grayson Books). He lives in the Hudson Valley. His piece can be found here and here.
Deb Stark
Deb lives in rural Ontario with her husband, a foster cat that refused to leave, and too many raccoons to count. Her stories have been published in places such as The New Quarterly, GRAIN, and FiveMinuteLit. In 2023, she was shortlisted for The Milk House magazine’s Best in Rural Writing contest. Her pieces can be found here and here.
Dr. Charles A. Stone
The pseudonymous Dr. Charles A. Stone (born in Green Bay, Wisconsin) holds doctoral degrees from Marquette University and Johns Hopkins University. He is widely published in both medial and poetry literature and served on the Board of the Austin International Poetry Festival. His piece can be found here.
Mark Strohschein
Mark Strohschein is a Washington state poet who lives on Whidbey Island. His work is forthcoming in Flint Hills Review, Barren Magazine, Cosmic Double, Red Fern Review and Main Street Rag. His poems have also appeared in Lips Poetry Magazine, In Parentheses and an anthology, Dulce Poetica. His piece can be found here.
Chris Struyk-Bonn
Chris Struyk-Bonn previously detasseled corn, worked in a small motor-parts factory, framed pictures, served in various and sundry restaurants and sorted eggs in an egg factory. She has been an English teacher for over twenty years and now works as an administrator at an online K-12 charter school. The Pork Queen is her third book. Her piece can be found here.
Marie Studer
Marie Studer lives in Castleconnell, Co. Limerick. Her poems can be found in various literary journals including The Storms, The Ogham Stone, The Stony Thursday Book, The Galway Review, Live Encounters and The Honest Ulsterman. Anthologies include Not the Time to Be Silent, eds. Ciaran O’Driscoll and Tayve Neese, Christmas-Winter Vol lll eds, M.C. Smith and Damien Donnelly. Her poem Declaration won the Trócaire/Poetry Ireland competition 2020 and she was twice a winner in the Bangor Ekphrastic Poetry Challenge and shortlisted in other competitions. Her first collection of poetry, Real Words, was published by Revival Press in October 2023. Her piece can be found here.
Laura Swift
Laura Swift lives in Tramore, Co. Waterford. She has always loved English, having studied it in UCD. She started writing after her husband Richard died in 2009. Richard was a dairy farmer and introduced her to farm life. She’s now keeping suckler cows and pedigree Herefords. She loves the combination of the hands-on approach of farming and the more reflective aspect of poetry. For her, they compliment each other really well. Farming has become very scientific and technical, so she thinks it is good to also explore rural life from a creative and personal viewpoint. Her piece can be found here.
Emily Tee
Matt Thomas
Matt Thomas is a smallholder farmer, engineer, and poet. His recent work can be read in Pinhole Poetry, Susurrus Magazine, and Ponder Review. Disappearing by the Math, a full-length collection, was published by Silver Bow in 2024. He lives with his family in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.Rebecca Tiger
Rebecca Tiger teaches sociology at a college and in jails in Vermont, lives part-time in New York City and spends part of each summer in a small village in Greece. Her stories have appeared in Bending Genres, BULL, JMWW, MER, Peatsmoke, Roi Faineant, Tiny Molecules and elsewhere. She’s on twitter: @rtigernyc and at rebeccatigerwriter.com. Her piece can be found here.
Jeffery Allen Tobin
Jeffery Allen Tobin is a political scientist and researcher based in South Florida. His extensive body of work primarily explores U.S. foreign policy, democracy, national security, and migration. He has been writing poetry and prose for more than 30 years. His piece can be found here.
Jim Trelease
Jim Trelease is an America nonfiction writer. Born in New Jersey in 1941, he spent more than a decade as a journalist for a daily newspaper in Massachusetts before self-publishing in 1979 a 30-page booklet on the cognitive benefits of reading aloud to children. Penguin USA liked the booklet’s concept enough to publish his greatly expanded version in 1982, called The Read-Aloud Handbook. By the time Mr. Trelease retired in 2013, he had spent almost three decades lecturing in all 50 states and the Handbook had sold two million copes in seven different American editions. More information can be found at trelease-on-reading.com. His piece can be found here.
Adam Trodd
Adam Trodd’s fiction and poetry have appeared in publications such as The Irish Times, Crannóg, Banshee, The Molotov Cocktail, Ellipsis and The Caterpillar, as well as the Bath Flash Fiction and National Flash Fiction Day anthologies. He won the Benedict Kiely Short Story Competition and the Book of Kells Creative Writing Competition and was one of the selected poets for Ireland’s first Poetry Jukebox installation in Belfast. He was a Best Small Fictions 2018 and 2020 nominee and has been shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award. He is on the editorial team for Splonk. His piece can be found here.
Neil Tully
Neil is from the west of Ireland and currently lives in Cork City. He recently won the overall prize at the Write By The Sea Literary Festival and the New Roscommon Writing Award 2021, as well as the Dock Arts Centre winter writing award. His short fiction has appeared in the Irish Independent, The Honest Ulsterman and other literary journals, as well as the anthology Voices from the Land. He is currently studying for an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Limerick. His pieces can be found here and here.
Emma Tyme
Emma Tyme was raised on a dairy farm in Western New York. As an adult, she kept a flock of sheep, started a farmers market, performed original music, taught songwriting, worked as an in-home health aide, and farmsat for local farmers. She completed her B.S. in Gerontology from Ithaca College in 2021 with a minor in music and a concentration in rural aging. She currently coordinates homecare for rural residents. Emma hopes to return to her childhood farm to raise her family and her warm, wet-nosed friends. See more of her work, including rural writing, at www.emmatyme.com. Her piece can be found here and here.
Sally Urwin
Sally is probably the shortest farmer in England. She left her city career in 2004 to live on High House Farm in Northumberland with her husband Steve. Now they have two children, 200 sheep, Mavis the sheep dog, a fat pony and a farm cat. She is the author of Diary of a Pint-Sized Farmer: A Year in Keeping Sheep, Raising Kids, and Staying Sane, published in 2020. Sally now spends her time farming sheep, looking after her children, writing, working, madly hoovering and fighting the urge to lie down on the carpet or fall asleep under a blanket. Her piece can be found here.
Dana VanderLugt
Dana VanderLugt, who descends from a family of apple growers, lives in Michigan with her husband, three sons, and a spoiled golden retriever. Her current project is a historical verse novel written for young adults, based on the stories of the German POWs who came to work on her grandfather’s orchard during WWII. She also has published essays in Longridge Review, Relief: A Journal of Art & Faith, The Reformed Journal, and is a frequent contributor for The Twelve. A former middle school English teacher, she now works as an instructional coach and has recently completed an MFA in Creative Writing from Spalding University. She is happy to report that she is still making bread from her Pandemic-inspired sourdough starter. She can be found online at www.danavanderlugt.com. Her piece can be found here.
Rachel Vigier
Rachel Vigier was raised on a farm in a French-Canadian community in Manitoba. She has published two books of poetry, On Every Stone and The Book of Skeletons, a short story “Pig Fire” in The Milk House, and a book of nonfiction, Gestures of Genius: Women, Dance, and the Body. Her poetry has been featured on CBC Radio and has appeared in journals in Canada and the United States. Her pieces can be found here and here.
Corey Villas
Corey Villas, born and raised in North Carolina, is a graduate of Auburn University. His work has appeared or is scheduled to appear in 2024 in Poverty House, BULL Magazine, The Argyle Literary Magazine, and A Thin Slice of Anxiety. Corey is a proud husband and father of two. His piece can be found here.
Jennifer A. Walker
Jennifer Walker started her writing adventures as a child composing short stories. As she matured, she wrote poetry and novels. Her poetry collection, Prairie Girl, was selected as a 2022 Finalist for The Birdy Poetry Prize by Meadowlark Press. As a hobby photographer, Jennifer received a developing artist grant from the Southwest Minnesota Arts and Humanities Council and two awards from the Marshall, Minnesota Fine Arts Photography Competition. Jennifer is married and a proud mother of three boys. Her other roles include being a high school English teacher and a farmer’s daughter. Jennifer has lived all over the American Midwest before finding her way back to her home state of Kansas. Her piece can be found here.
Philip Walling
Philip’s passion for the land and its people began early. After farming in his native Cumbria for ten years, Philip practised as a barrister until he came to realise that the land was his real calling. The theme of his writing is that humanity has a sacred duty to cultivate the soil and make it fertile for our sustenance; that without our cultivation the land becomes a forbidding wilderness; and that by our husbandry we create real beauty. Philip has had two books published: the Sunday Times best-seller, Counting Sheep (2015) and its sequel Till the Cows Come Home (2018). He is currently writing a book about our practical and mystical relationship with water. His piece can be found here.
Ross Walsh
Ross Walsh is a Wexford-born journalist and writer based in Dublin, Ireland. He was chosen by the Irish Writers Centre to be a Young Writer Delegate for the 2021 West Cork Literary Festival, and his work has previously been published in Stepaway Magazine, Beir Bua Journal, and The Honest Ulsterman, among others. His piece can be found here and here.
M.D. Wanyagah
M.D. Wanyagah is a freelance writer and contributor for technical, health and financial blogs. He is based in Kenya, and has worked at TUKO Media Freelance and currently works with other companies as an international freelancer. He has received a B.A. from Dedan Kimathi University of Technology (Dekut) with a degree in English Language and Literature. He also speaks fluent Swahili, and writes creatively on fiction short stories whenever he gets the chance. His piece can be found here.
Clint Wastling
Clint Wastling’s poetry has been published in magazines like Alchemy Spoon, Dream Catcher, Orbis and the anthology Geography is Irrelevant. Maytree Press published his poetry collection Layers in 2020. He toured his one man show The Poet as a Geologist and gives poetry workshops at events like Fantasycon. His novel Tyrants Rex is a post global warming fantasy. The Geology of Desire is an LGBTQ+ thriller set in North Yorkshire; both are published by Stairwell Books. His piece can be found here.
Gwyl Weatherford
Gwyl Weatherford is a native Californian. He grew up in a small San Joaquin Valley farm and much of his writing has its roots in this central part of the state. In retirement, he has been an adjunct theatre instructor at Southern Oregon and Cal Poly State Universities and the University of Aalborg, Denmark. Primarily a short story writer, he also wrote the screenplay for and directed the 2014 feature film, Underclassmen. His first YA novel, Tilly & Turp, is coming to print in 2025. At present, he lives in Los Osos on California’s Central Coast. His piece can be found here.
Will Weaver
Will Weaver grew up on a farm in Minnesota and published novels with Farrar Straus and Giroux, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster. Among his many books, he is the author of Barns of Minnesota (2005), and more recently Sweet Land: New and Selected Stories (2017). In 2011, he was a fiction judge for the National Book Awards. His post-apocalyptic novel Memory Boy (2003) is used widely in schools across the United States, and in 2016 was produced as a full length opera by the Minnesota Opera. In total he has published 12 novels/novellas, three short story collections and a book of nonfiction. Two films, Red Earth, White Earth (1989) and Sweet Land (2006), have been adapted from his work. You can learn more about him on his website. His piece can be found here.
Laura Grace Weldon
Laura Grace Weldon lives on a small ramshackle farm where she works as a book editor, teaches writing workshops, and maxes out her library card each week. Laura served as Ohio’s 2019 Poet of the Year and is the author of four books. Her piece can be found here and here.
David Whitsell
Consummate little brother and dark child. Eclectic writer and world traveler – Dave is a dude who who does the dangerous, mysterious, and otherwise different. His piece can be found here.
Mike Wilson
Mike Wilson’s work has appeared in magazines including The Pettigru Review, Fiction Southeast, Mud Season Review, The Saturday Evening Post, Deep South Magazine, Still: The Journal, Barely South Review, and Anthology of Appalachian Writers Vol. X. He’s author of Arranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic. He lives in Lexington, Kentucky USA. His piece can be found here.
Nick Wynne
Nick Wynne is a retired historian who has published several historical books and self-published six novels. He is a native of Georgia and has a PhD from the University of Georgia. He and his wife, Debra, live in a century-old house in Rockledge, Florida. His piece can be found here.
Harlan Yarbrough
Graduated as a mathematician, but a full-time professional entertainer most of his life, Harlan attempted to escape the entertainment industry through work as a librarian, physics teacher, syndicated newspaper columnist, and city planner. He migrated to Bhutan in 2018 but is currently trapped in Australia by the pandemic. His short fiction has appeared in fifty-one literary journals, including the Galway Review, Indiana Voice Journal, Page & Spine, Scarlet Leaf Review, and Green Hills Literary Lantern. Also, one of his stories won the 2019 Fair Australia Prize, and another appeared last year in the annual Running Wild Press anthology. His piece can be found here.
If you would like to submit a piece to The Milk House and contribute to the best in rural writing, you can find more information here.