LINEA Volume 2

LINEA  2020-2021 Online Launch

Welcome to the online launch of Volume 2 of LINEA, a journal of micro fiction, edited by Elizabeth George and Carol Edelstein, designed by Adell Donaghue and published by Simian Press.

LINEA is a hand stitched journal, lovingly produced each year in a small edition of 250 copies. Volume 2 was created using both letterpress and digital printing technologies.

In addition to publishing established authors from the far corners of the world, we encourage new writers, many of whom hail from our local community in western Massachusetts. Since local flavor is one aspect of our work, beginning with our inaugural edition in 2019, we established a tradition of hosting an in-person gathering to celebrate the launch of each volume. Given the pandemic and the challenges we have all faced during this past year, an in-person gathering was not feasible; hence, we are offering an online celebration from the Winter 2020 edition here, featuring authors reading their work and videos showcasing the artwork included in this volume. Hard copies are also available. Our thanks to Simon Ratcliffe for his help in editing our authors’ audio files and to Simian Press studio assistant Josh Perkins for his work on our Launch page, which included the final image, audio and video editing.

Our on-line launch is supported in part by a grant from the Northampton Arts Council, a local agency which is supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency. We are grateful for the Arts Council’s acknowledgement of and contribution to our work.

We are especially grateful to our contributors, past and present, who continue to demonstrate the magic of micro fiction—how, within the bounds of 180 words, we can feel the beauty, tenderness and ache of life, see the humor in ourselves, and connect to the world.

The Authors Reading LINEA Volume 2

Linda Barnes-Aaron is the author of You Can Always Change Your Mind (Gallery of Readers Press, 2015). She has lived in Rhode Island, France, Germany, England, Switzerland, and her native New York City, where she attended Columbia Teachers College.

D M Gordon wrote Nightly, at the Institute of the Possible, a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award and International Book Award. She’s been published widely. An MCC Artist Fellow in fiction and two-time finalist in poetry, she’s an editorial consultant at www.dmgordoneditorial.com.

James Brunel is an itinerant writer and photographer with a home base in western Massachusetts and a spiritual home in Death Valley, California. He is currently writing a novel.

Marian Wade has published short fiction in Writers Bloc Anthology (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, Winter 2016), and is currently working on a series of historical novels set in revolutionary France. She is ninety-five years old, was married nearly fifty years and has two grown children. She enjoys life with her dog Sukey in the home she shared with her late husband, and counts herself blessed beyond words.

Susan Laier writes both fiction and poetry. Her work has previously been featured in Tammy, Catapult, New York Tyrant, and NOON. She also paints and is a master leather artisan. She lives in Stephentown, New York.

Aubin Tyler has been a writer and editor for more than twenty years, with articles in the Boston Globe and Boston Globe Magazine, Psychology Today, Good Housekeeping, the Los Angeles Times, Parenting and other publications. A resident of western Massachusetts, she is currently at work on a historical novel.

Julie C. Day is the author of Uncommon Miracles (PS Publishing, 2018) and The Rampant (Aqueduct Press, 2019). She has published over thirty stories in fantasy and science fiction magazines and is a Lambda Literary Award finalist. Born in Darlington, England, Julie now lives with her family in a small New England town.

Ellen LaFleche’s poetry collection, Walking into Lightning was published by Saddle Road Press (2019). She is a recipient of the Ruth Stone Poetry Prize, the Philbrick Award, and the Tor House Prize, among others. She is assistant judge of the North Street Book Prize.

Mary Cowhey is a writer, gardener, walker, math tutor, tricycle rider and retired teacher who lives in Florence, MA. She is the author of Black Ants and Buddhists, Thinking Critically and Teaching Differently in the Primary Grades (Stenhouse Publishers, 2006).

Celia Jeffries lives and writes in Florence, MA.

Carol Edelstein’s third book of poems, Past Repair, was published by Simian Press in 2020. She lives with her husband and their hedgehog in Northampton, MA.

Barbara Lucey is a nonprofit financial consultant, writer and editor. She is the author of Meet Jimmy Fox, for young readers. She has published several works of short fiction in anthologies and was awarded an Outer Cape Artists in Residence Consortium residency. She lives in Florence, MA.

Kathryn M. Arbour’s work has appeared in Peregrine, Pacific Coast Journal, New Virginia Review, Confluence and Black Buzzard Review. She serves on the leadership team at Tennyson Center for Children, a nonprofit committed to kids who suffer from abuse and neglect. She lives in Denver, Colorado.

Alison Smith’s work has appeared in Granta, McSweeney’s, Real Simple, Glamour, and The New York Times, among others. Her book, Name All the Animals, was awarded the Barnes & Noble Discover Award, A Lambda Literary Award and the Judy Grahan Award.

Salvatore Difalco lives in Toronto, Canada. His novel, Once A Hitman is due out in 2021.

Lydia Davis’s Essays One was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in November, 2019. She is currently working on Essays Two, on translation and learning foreign languages. Her most recent collection of short fiction was Can’t and Won’t (FSG, 2014).

Jane Christensen is a graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA program in fiction, and has been published in Paragraph, New South, The Binnacle, The James Franco Review, Poetry Midwest, and Marathon Literary Review. 

Kathryn Petruccelli’s work has appeared in New Ohio Review, Rattle, Literary Mama, and other publications. She is a past winner of San Francisco’s Litquake essay contest and is at work on a poetry series based on the history of the alphabet.

Susan F. O’Neill is a psychologist and writer. She lives and works in Northampton, MA. Her work has been published in Fourth Genre and A Gallery of Readers Anthology, 2017 (Gallery of Readers Press, 2017).

Kim Chinquee is the author of the collections Oh Baby, Pretty, Pistol, Veer, Shot Girls, Wetsuit, the forthcoming collection Snowdog, and the forthcoming novel-in-flashes, Battle Dress. She is the recipient of two Pushcart Prizes, lives in western New York, and serves as the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Northeast Regional Chair.

Nan J. Gray is a writer and former journalist. Her poetry is published in White Wall Review. She has worked as an editor for Book People magazine. Living in Toronto, she also writes fiction.

Allyson L. Mazzuchi is a licensed social worker and visual artist who is inspired by nature and wild animals. She is owned by two terrier mixes, a sweet but devilish Scottish Terrier, and her two cats Roo and Poppy.

Jennifer Jacobson is a mother, writer, story advocate, and curriculum developer. She is the Associate Director of the UMass MFA for Poets and Writers and the Director of the Juniper Summer Writing Institute & Juniper Institute for Young Writers.

Elizabeth M. George is the author of Glass Teepee (Gallery of Readers Press, 2017). Her work has appeared in Patchwork Journal and A Gallery of Readers Anthology, 2017 (Gallery of Readers Press, 2017).

Candice Reffe’s book of poems Live from The Mood Board won the Antivenom Poetry Award and was published by Elixir Press in 2019. Her poems appeared in Denver Quarterly, Hotel Amerika, Poetry Daily, Witness and elsewhere. She lives in Northampton, MA.

Robin Barber was born at Cooley Dickinson Hospital, March 24, 1947. He has been struggling to keep it simple ever since.

Harrison Candelaria Fletcher is the author of the award-winning Descanso For My Father: Fragments of a Life and Presentimiento: A Life in Dreams, as well as numerous personal essays, lyric essays and prose poems. www.harrisoncandelariafletcher.com

Rebecca Hart Olander’s poetry has appeared recently in Crab Creek Review, Mom Egg Review, and Solstice. Her chapbook, Dressing the Wounds, was published by dancing girl press. Rebecca teaches writing at Westfield State University and is editor/director of Perugia Press.

Donald Wheelock’s poems have appeared in Blue Unicorn, Ekphrasis, Equinox, The Journal of Inventive Literature, Light, Linea and The Lyric. His chapbook In the Sea of Dreams (2019) is available from Gallery of Readers Press.

S.F. Ratcliffe works in the film and music industry as a sound professional and occasional movie producer. He writes slipstream fiction with a distinctly South African edge.

Adell Donaghue is a mixed-media artist and educator. Her work is in public and private collections throughout the United States. She lives in Southampton, MA and Stonington, ME with her wife.