In This Issue

Featured Author: Richard Holinger

Richard Holinger’s books include the essay collection, Kangaroo Rabbits and Galvanized Fences, and North of Crivitz, poetry of the Upper Midwest. His work has appeared in Southern Review, Witness, ACM, Ocotillo Review, and Boulevard, and has garnered four Pushcart Prize nominations. “Not Everybody’s Nice” won the 2012 Split Oak Press Flash Prose Contest, and his Thread essay was designated a Notable in Best American Essays, 2018. Degrees include a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago and an M.A. in English from Washington University. Holinger has taught English and creative writing on the university and secondary school levels and lives northwest of Chicago far enough to see deer, turkeys, and foxes cross his lawn. He’s working on two collections, creative nonfiction, and short fiction, many pieces already appearing in journals such as Iowa Review, Western Humanities Review, Chicago Quarterly, Hobart.

Pharmacopia

When Michael Hower began digital photography ten years ago it was founded upon a fascination with abandoned buildings and landscapes. His work focuses on historical themes, portraying human objects/structures in modified environments now devoid of human activity with a particular interest in places of industry, prisons, and graffiti. Mike’s work conveys themes of wear, deterioration, and nature’s reclamation of manmade environments via architecture and landscape. He has taken dozens of place-seeking journeys across the Mid-Atlantic states showcasing a whole range of forgotten, otherworldly and bizarre places, including the pieces in this series of the abandoned Hospital for Contagious Diseases on Ellis Island.