Featured Work

Each month, we highlight a work of fiction from a new author. To be considered for posting, send submissions of short fiction or excerpts of longer fiction to Renée Kashuba at renee@kppressbooks.com. All writing styles, genres, and subjects are welcome.

December 2009

About the Author

Lakis Polycarpou is a journalist, essayist and fiction writer whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Believer Magazine, Next American City, Babble.com and Energy Bulletin among other publications. Lakis also writes regularly about the issue of peak oil and its related economic, social and political implications on his blog, City of the Future.

His novel, Kyrenia Road, tells the story of a family on the island of Cyprus as they struggle through revolution, civil war and invasion.

Lakis lives in New York City with his wife Renee and three children, Dominic, Charis and Christos.

Kyrenia Road

Opening

“Now,” they say, “everything will be all right.”

Imagine this:

You build a life somewhere, marry a good woman, have four or five beautiful children. In your old village you inherit a plot of land and build a new house. Thinking back now, it may not seem like much, but compared to the one-and two-room mud-brick homes where you and your wife grew up, it feels like a whole village unto itself. Inside the children run from room to room, chasing each other as they play hide and seek while you and your wife sit in the light of the sun shining through the front picture window. At night, your friends come and you all sit on the veranda, drinking Zivania and Commandaria, as the dry summer breeze whispers and sighs through the leaves of your front-yard orchard. It has taken you years to grow it, the lemon, apricot, peach and date trees, but now you have fruit in every season, fresh jam year round.

Maybe you work in the capital, a twenty minute drive away. At lunch time you sometimes go home to eat and nap, drifting off to sleep as your old iron fan rattles and cools the calves of your legs. On other days you sit with your co-workers at the local restaurant and order souvlaki, sheftalia, salad and stuffed grape-leaves. Maybe, if you have a little extra money, you stop by the local jewelry store to pick up something nice for your wife, some small gold earrings or a silver necklace, imagining her smile and warm kiss when you give it to her. Maybe she will wear them on Sunday afternoon when you take the whole family in the car and cross the mountains on a short ride to glowing Kyrenia, where you all walk together along the waterfront eating ice-cream and watching the sailboats rocking and pitching so gently on the sharp, eye-piercing blue of the sea. Everyone always goes to Kyrenia, the “jewel of the Levant”, the most beautiful place on the island, where the dust of Cyprus gives way to lush green. This is your country, once so poor. You don’t feel rich now, but no one doubts that life is better.

Can you say you don’t know that someday it will all be taken away? War comes and goes, breathing down the neck of your homeland with its ancient, bitter breath, and in an instant your old life is taken from you; the world changes.

Some of you do not survive it; others lose husbands, brothers, sons. Some of you are raped and humiliated; some of you disappear, never to return.

You go, somewhere new, not far away, and slowly, gradually, build yourself a new life, the whole time thinking, maybe I can go back someday, to my old house, with my old neighbors and the church we used to take care of. Maybe someday it will be like it was.

Years go by; gradually, the dream fades, but never disappears. Every politician who comes to power promises the same thing—to bring you back your old life. Every politician fails and fails in the same way. How many times can you read about new U.N. negotiations? How many times do you need to hear that a new British Prime Minister or U.S. President takes a special interest in the “Cyprus Problem”? How many times can you believe against hope that something can change when you know that nothing ever will?

The rest of the world moves on. Apartheid ends; the Berlin Wall comes down. In your country, highways and hotels are built, American fast food chains and European super-stores spring up; the drug of prosperity numbs conscience, dilutes memory. Downtown a multi-story mall is built.
But always there is the Green Line, the Dead Zone, the giant Turkish flags and the soldiers, from either side, scowling at each other.

So many years go by, so many births and deaths and marriages. You grow old, and learn to live with it, the injustice, the loss, the humiliation—even as the other side spins a different story for the world, a story in which you are the villain, and they are the heroes. They were victims then, they say, in those years when you built the good l--ife for yourself. It was they who were afraid.
Ignore the lies, never mind what the world believes; in the end, you have lived through it, you know the truth. Never forget to hate them for what they did to you, your family, your neighbors; hate them for what they’ve done to your homeland.

Try not to think about the injustice, try to remember that on balance you have lived a good life, that you have a loving family, educated, doing well. Try to forget about the war even though the Dead Zone is just a hundred yards from your new house, even though half of your country is gone, amputated.

Twenty-nine years pass; so many nights when you slipped across the border in your dreams, and saw the old places: Kythrea, Trikomo, Rizokarpaso, Morphou. But after every dream you wake; wake to reality, wake to the feeling one has after dreaming of a dead loved one.

And then, just when you have begun to let go, to believe you will never see your old home, everything changes again. On their own the leaders on the other side open the border for the first time in 29 years and tell you that you and your compatriots can cross into northern Cyprus—visit your houses, your villages, the beaches, the harbors, the churches, the holy sites, the ancient ruins.
How can this happen? The other side of your country—the missing part of your soul—is suddenly back. But too much time has passed, and there is no way it can be the same.
Refuse to go; not like this, as a tourist in your own land. It’s not your country anymore; tell yourself it’s just a trick.

On the news at night you hear about it; everyone going back, feeling so happy. On television, there is a frenzy of emotion, as Turkish Cypriots living in Greek houses welcome their old occupants as guests. So many bittersweet stories, of people embracing. Stories of keepsakes found, old pictures and jewelry returned.

So—you agree to go. You agree, even against your better judgment. You imagine somehow that things will be the same; you imagine, you dream; you return, and suddenly you are walking again through the streets of Dhikomo, past the old café where you drank bitter coffee and played backgammon as a young man, past the old church your grandparents helped build. Suddenly, in your dreams, your old life is returned to you—but that is not, of course, the way it will be.

Enosis

Summer lingers in Cyprus—stays late, arrives early, and is never quite gone, even on rainy winter days when a rare dampness penetrates homes and souls and the omnipotent blue void of the sky is for a brief time covered in gray. Even then, the hot, dusty breath of summer remains, ineffably suspended, barely hiding, always in mind, never quite forgotten. Even so (or maybe because of it) Cypriots fear cold more than heat, and will wear sweaters into late May if a cool breeze is blowing.
Eleni Zenios was like that, longing all year for the pure dry warmth of July and August; but by late September of 1954, even she had to admit it was time for summer to go.

Maybe it was the city; this was the first whole summer she had spent there. She, a village girl, was still unused to the way heat seared from the asphalt in Nicosia, mixed with the sounds and smells of cars and scooters. There was no moisture in the ground here, and no shade except in the colonial government district where palm and cypress trees lined the streets.

Eleni’s village, Bellapais, wasn’t like that. Just on the other side of the Pentathaktilos mountain range, it rested in the lush shade of the foothills above Kyrenia, breathing the cool breezes that washed up the north shore of the island. In those days in Cyprus there was no haze or pollution—especially in the villages—and villagers still got around mostly by walking or on donkeys. In many villages, the women kept their heads covered in public, and some old men still wore baggy pleated vrakas and old-fashioned tunics instead of western style slacks and button-down shirts.

Nicosia in 1954 was no metropolis; to the British ruling class it seemed quiet, small. But for Eleni, it was vast. Even if one stayed on the tiny streets inside the old Venetian walls, it was easy to get lost, suddenly turned around, and find oneself in the Turkish quarter. No one ever got lost in Bellapais.
Eleni was already feeling lonely that late September evening when thoughts of being a girl in Bellapais rose again in her mind; and suddenly she felt pushed, as if from the outside, into a deep, penetrating sadness. She chastised herself immediately—there was nothing to be sad about. She forced herself to get up from her chair. There were still clothes on the line from the wash; she walked to the balcony to retrieve them.

As she leaned out to pull them in, a deep, baritone chant rumbled through the streets of old city. It was dusk, prayer time for the Turks, called out from the tops of the minarets. Eleni looked up and down the street, which was empty, except for a man and his wife, strolling along single file in the direction of the mosque, he in a red fez, she wrapped in a light scarf, only her and round face and a wisp of light brown hair showing. A motorbike turned the corner and whizzed by.

Their apartment was only a few blocks from the Selimi Camii mosque—known to the Greeks as the Ayia Sophia. It had once been a Roman Catholic cathedral, built by the Lusignans—French crusaders who ruled Cyprus from the 13th to the 15th centuries. When the Turks came, they chopped up its altar, whitewashed its inner walls and grafted giant minarets to its façade, so that it towered above other structures—a bizarre hybrid, a medieval gothic mosque in the exact center of the old town. To Eleni it symbolized all that was strange about this city. She, like most Greeks, felt no attachment to the structure: to her the Catholics who had built it were as foreign as the Turks who came later. Even without its minarets, the stark right angles of the Ayia Sophia’s bell-towers clashed with the wide-open expanse of bright-blue sky—unlike the island’s Byzantine churches, whose domes seemed to mimic the firmament above.

The foreignness of it bothered her husband Yiorgos even more. Eleni was at least used to living with great foreign buildings—Bellapais village, after all, was named for its centuries-old Latin abbey, built by the same Lusignans. But unlike the Ayia Sophia, Bellapais abbey was passed to the Orthodox church when the Turks came, and was cared for in Eleni’s childhood by an old Greek who tended its courtyard flower gardens and tall, slender cypress trees. Its arches were not traditional Orthodox, and yet it was indisputably beautiful, perched on a natural hill terrace which dropped away to a wide-open view of the sea. It was, at least partially, foreign, and yet Eleni loved it.

Yiorgos, though, was from a village in the Troodos mountains—the big range, in the central part of the island, where few invaders had ventured. Unlike in the rest of Cyprus, Turks had never built villages in those high mountains, and there were no Western Christian ruins either; the churches were ancient Orthodox, and almost without exception, living places of faith. Bellapais, the Ayia Sophia—to Yiorgos these could never be more than ugly symbols of Cyprus’ centuries-long occupation by foreign powers. To Eleni, her village was the most beautiful on the island, maybe in the world. But she knew Yiorgos would never settle down there.

She sighed and closed the shutters. Yiorgos should have been home from the office an hour earlier. The black-eyed peas she’d made for dinner had long-since grown cold.

Her mother had been by before and had taken some of the food, putting it in a giant iron pot and wrapping it up in thick towels to carry it down the street to where they lived. Before she left, she attacked her son-in-law's negligence. “Why don't you just come back home and eat with us tonight? He'll know where we are. Serve him right for being so late.”

“No, Mama. I'll wait.”

Her mother just shook her head and turned to walk out.

Eleni felt a pang of guilt; it wouldn’t be that long before her parents finished building Eleni and Yiorgos’ house, and moved back to Bellapais, where it would be much harder for Eleni to see them. But she was married now, and wanted to eat alone with her husband. Also, she had something to tell him.

They had been married for almost three months. Spying her at a friend's wedding, a year earlier, he had inquired about her, and they were soon engaged. The following year had been both tremendous and tedious, full of romantic walks, stolen kisses, awkward dinners with family, and long nights apart.

After they were married Eleni and her parents moved to Nicosia, where Yiorgos’ job was; her parents rented a room down the street from Yiorgos’ one-room apartment where the couple now lived. In Cyprus, the traditional dowry was always a house, so Eleni’s father set upon building one for her in Strovolos, a neighborhood outside the old walls, where the houses and roads were wider and plots of land were bigger. He bought the land by selling a large field near Bellapais to a British retiree.
Eleni cried when she found out. She had never truly wanted to leave her village, and hoped that someday she and Yiorgos would move back, maybe build on that land. Yiorgos promised her that as soon as they could afford it—maybe in six months—he would sell his Vespa and buy a car; then they would be able to go to Bellapais all the time, in a couple of hours. That would be so nice, she thought.

She remembered when she first saw him, the night he came over to her parents’ house. What had she expected? Her married friends and older sisters had warned her not to hope for too much in these meetings with strangers.

He was short, wiry, with a thick, drooping mustache, a narrow face and small, sharp eyes. He took his hat off immediately when he saw her, revealing his close-cropped, thick curls. He was in his early 20s, but his hairline was already receding above the corners of his forehead, in the classic Cypriot pattern.

She smiled at him politely, and shook his hand, realizing that this was the first moment of the rest of her life, that if she said the word, this man would take her away, kiss her and marry her, and that someday—someday soon!—they would look into the eyes of a baby they made together.

Eleni’s parents had told her that if she didn’t like him, she could say no to his proposal; she was still young. She had already said no to other proposals though, from boys in her village. How many times could she say no before the no of now became the no of forever, until she was a lonely old woman or forced to say yes later to someone worse? Better, worse, how could she tell? As she stood on the doorstep smiling politely to Yiorgos it occurred to her that even if she had known him for 20 years she wouldn’t know if he was the one. Now she had to figure out in a few evenings if he was good enough. He was a bookkeeper; he was educated. That was good . . .

She decided to say yes after hearing him chant at church. He was one of three psalters at a cathedral in the city, but his voice was the strongest—it pierced the air, seemed to expand and fill all the wide space under the high dome with a sweetness Eleni could almost taste. In her head she whispered along with the words—from the Psalms of the Orthros through the Cherubic hymn, to the dismissal prayers—and it felt as if her prayers too were filling up the holy space, and she thought that maybe this was the first time she had truly prayed.

“He has a beautiful voice,” she had said to her mother as they left. Her mother nodded and smiled.

Was she even there? thought Eleni. Did she hear what I heard, feel what I felt?

Eleni could tell from the first moments after meeting him that Yiorgos was a hard-working man, deadly serious, even grim. It would make sense that he would sing in church, but not so beautifully. Later, when they knew each other better, he surprised her by playing the violin; they got together on Sunday afternoons and sat under the Tree of Idleness café in Bellapais, and he drew the bow over the strings with confidence. Then she would blush as a crowd gathered to watch her fiancée show off to the fathers and brothers of men who had once wanted her for themselves.

This, she thought then, was the real Yiorgos. Later, though, she would wonder if his seriousness was a mask which covered the playful soul of the musician—or if the musician was the mask, covering his true, grim, immovable spirit.

Three months after their wedding, her worst fears seemed to have come from a different person. Yiorgos and Eleni were still strangers to each other in many ways, but she was now at least certain that she had married a kind man. She had been lucky, she thought, to have married a kind man.
As for his being late on that September evening, it didn't worry her as much as fill her with a quiet sadness, the color of the descending dusk; something, she knew, was happening. There were reasons for everything Yiorgos did.

The last sounds she heard as she closed the shutter were a couple of voices, speaking English; then laughter, then silence. Eventually, she turned on the lights in the little apartment, and for a strange moment, having nothing to do, she sat down. Instantly, she was filled with an eerie dread of silence in that house, of being alone. Even after so many months it felt like a luxury to flip on a light switch like this and have the night suddenly illuminated. But tonight it failed to chase away her loneliness.
She could still go, she thought, to her mother's house. He would come there and find her whenever he finished what he was doing. On the verge of a decision, she heard the familiar sound of a Vespa buzzing to a stop outside.

In those days, Cyprus was still separate from the world, and the world knew her not.

It had been a year since the end of the Korean war ; three months since the battle of Dien Bien Phu, when France lost Vietnam; two weeks since a Soviet atom bomb burst the Siberian sky. It would be another month before the much smaller but more deadly bombs of Batna and Aures began the Algerian revolution. The failed British and French Suez Canal gambit was still a year away. The era of world wars was over; the era of guerrillas was beginning and yet, still, Cyprus was quiet.
It had been 23 years since Enosis protesters burnt down government house and four and a half since the Greeks of Cyprus went to their churches and demanded, by public referendum, that Britain surrender the island to Greece. Since then, there had been protests, rallies, demonstrations; in 1953 students rioted against celebrations for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth.

In July of 1954, the minister of the state for Colonies, Henry Hopkinson, was asked of the possibility of self-determination for Cyprus. His answer was not hopeful. There were, he said, certain territories in the commonwealth, “which, owing to their particular circumstances, can never expect to be fully independent.”

The British offered a plan for limited autonomy and a constitution. But the Archbishop rejected it, saying that anyone who accepted was a traitor. Children spray-painted signs, cursed British policemen—and yet, still, Cyprus was quiet. Quiet, but simmering.

Yiorgos Zenios rarely went to the cafenion. He lost patience with the men who he found there, watching them while away their hours on backgammon and pastra. Some of them practically lived there; the cafenion was their home more than their marriage beds, and it disturbed him. He wanted more out of life, to believe that there was more than just Cyprus Brandy and Turkish coffee. But that day, after work, he went; he had a reason. He was relieved to find four of his colleagues from the office there. He sat with them and felt less conspicuous.

“To what do we owe your presence?” one asked.

“I know how much you miss me,” he replied. “I’m here to relieve your pain.”

They laughed, and he sat down.

They were playing pastra, betting the tab. Everyone was drinking coffee except Yiorgos, who, already nervous, ordered a beer instead. The cafenzis brought him a Carlsberg. In those days in Cyprus, they were only two kinds of beer, and only the Communists drank Keo, and though he had never met him, the proprietor knew that Yiorgos was not Communist.

As the playing cards flipped out across the table, Yiorgos watched the café door carefully, waiting. His colleague Andreas accused him of not paying attention to the game. “That’s what happens when you get married,” he said. “She’s not even here, and yet he hears her scolding him. Re Yirogo! Don’t train her to wait up for you!”

Yiorgos tried to smile and laugh with them, be self-deprecating. Someone ordered him another beer and told him to relax. Someone else launched into a long dirty joke.

At the next table two old-timers played a lighting-fast game of backgammon, the dice and chips clicking and sliding on the polished wood board, cracking occasionally like a gunshot when one of the players slammed a piece down on his opponent’s open position. The rest of men in the café were clustered around two tables, talking, sipping coffee, clicking worry-beads and smoking cigarettes. The conversations, as always, started with light news: they spoke of weddings and baptisms, jobs and money, education and the likelihood of a good winter wheat crop. But then, just as predictably, the talk moved to the universal Greek passion, politics—and in September of 1954, in Cyprus, there was only one issue: when would Cyprus achieve enosis with Greece?

The British government said it was out of the question, but no one believed them. The British and the Greeks loved each other, after all—ever since the days of the revolution, in 1821, when Lord Byron and the Phillhellenes gave their lives to liberate Greece from the Turks. Since then Britain had given back Zakinthos, Kephalonia, Corfu and Ithaka. In 1915, they had even promised Cyprus to Greece in return for Greece’s entry into the First World War; but Greece wasn’t ready and said no. Still, hadn’t that been an admission of Cyprus’ true character—her destiny?

A couple of the men started to argue. One of them was saying that the British would come around; they weren’t Nazis. The other was arguing that liberty could only be achieved through blood.
Through blood. The conversations always came around to this. Yiorgos tried to stay out of them, which was hard, since they were ubiquitous. He had been one of the convinced for some time.

There had been enough talk. Now was the time for action.

He looked at his watch. Eleni would be wondering where he was. He would have called her, but their little apartment had no phone—something he hoped to remedy in the new house. For a second he thought about that house, what it would look like, how it would be to live in a fresh, spacious place. They would have two bedrooms, a large kitchen, verandas on the front and back porches, a little dirt yard where they might be able to plant a tree. It would be a nice place to go home at night, and for a moment he asked himself if it was worth it, this risk he was about to take with his future. But the thought left him as quickly as it had come. It was still early, Cyprus was still quiet, and risk felt unreal to him then, while the insult of being ruled by foreigners repeated itself all day, every day. He worked for a British shipping company as a bookkeeper. Would he still have that job after the Greeks achieved their freedom? It didn’t matter. Better to be unemployed and free.

They played another three rounds of pastra before one of them said he had to leave; his wife was waiting for him. The game dissolved then, and they started talking about things, a conversation which moved quickly again, from work, to family, to politics.

Yiorgos became uncomfortable. He didn't want to say anything political. When the discussion came to him, he deflected it with bland comments, repeating what the men said. In his mind, he thought, talk, talk, all talk, nothing will ever happen.

Eventually, one by one, the men got up to drift out, until it was too suspicious for him to remain any more. Then, precisely at the instant when he was about to suggest that he too, had to leave, a young man appeared at the door carrying a newspaper. He sat down without speaking to anyone. The owner oddly hyper attentive, instantly brought him a cup of coffee.

Yiorgos trembled with alcohol and nervousness. His tolerance was low, and there was a place in his abdomen that tingled. He got up slowly.

The man saw him past the newspaper, and was instantly familiar with him: “Yiorgo!” he said,

“What's going on with you? How is everyone? Your wife? Your parents?”

Yiorgos sat down and forced a friendly smile.

They chatted for a while, and then, as if it were part of the conversation, the man suddenly said,

“Are you ready?”

Yiorgos nodded. They both rose. The man waved absently to the café owner, and they left without paying.

Night was falling; they ambled quietly in the city’s darkening shadows. For a time, Yiorgos looked up, happy to catch a glimpse of the first stars. A stray cloud reflected the pink light of dusk. He was reminded of his youth, of the feeling he had when he and his cousins would leave the mountains to work in the fields of the flat-lands.

Yiorgos was from Palehori, a village in the mid-Troodos mountain-range. To grow enough to eat, the villagers all had parcels of land down in the foothills and on Mesaoria plane. As a child, Yiorgos and his cousins would water the fields from sunset to sunrise every Tuesday night. Yiorgos was first to water his grandfather’s, and then his own. He later remembered nothing more vividly than the way night descended and left them with only the sound of trickling water in their ears as the sky speckled with stars. Darkness was different in the low fields; unlike in the mountains, the distance to the horizon seemed infinite, and the earth below them felt like a giant skin stretched across the fabric of space. In the mountains the villagers were nestled in the womb-like enclosure of the shielded valley. In Palehori Yiorgos felt protected; in the flat fields he felt breathtakingly free.

Once, the summer before he was to leave the village for high school in the city, he worked in the fields three days straight without resting. As a reward he was invited to eat alone with his grandfather. In those days the men always ate meals first, while the women and children waited. Yiorgos was only 12, but understood that in those three days he had earned the first step to his manhood. A few days later his grandfather took him on a trip to Kyrenia, to see the sea for the first time.

Now, twelve years later, he thought about how in other times and places one became a man not by working hard in the fields but by risking his life, shedding blood for freedom. Grandfather had died years ago, and Yiorgos wasn’t sure if he would have been proud of what his grandson was about to do.

“Where are we going?” Yiorgos asked.

“It’s not far,” said the man.

They turned down a sidestreet and were suddenly all alone. Yiorgos felt a flutter of nervousness. What if this man were really a British agent? What if their movement were to be crushed before it even began?

Finally they arrived. Outside the church, a teenage boy loitered, trying to look casual. Obviously he was a lookout; to Yiorgos the scene seemed suspicious, but then, he knew what to look for.

Inside there were two other men waiting. They were younger than Yiorgos, and suddenly he got the feeling that the whole plot he was entering was just a dream of little boys, a fantasy of the kind his little brother Athos might have thought up.

The priest wasn’t young though. As Yiorgos nodded and kissed his hand, the priest seemed to read his mind. “It is the youth that will save our country,” he said.

They began the ceremony with some quiet, solemn prayers, and the priest sprinkled Holy water on them, blessing them. God was with them, he said.

Then the tall man asked them to repeat the oath:

I swear in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit that:

(1) I shall work with all my power for the liberation of Cyprus from the British yolk sacrificing for this even my life;

(2) I shall perform without objection all the instructions of the organization which may be entrusted to me and I shall not bring any objection, however difficult and dangerous these may be;

(3) I shall not abandon the struggle unless I receive instructions from the leader of the organization and after our aim has been accomplished;

(4) I shall never reveal to anyone any secret of our organization, neither the names of other members of the organization, even under penalty of torture;

(5) I shall not reveal any of the instructions which may be given to me even to my fellow combatants.

If I disobey my oath, I shall be worthy of every punishment as a traitor and may eternal contempt cover me.

Yiorgos almost laughed. Even under penalty of torture! It seemed so silly, but at the same time the solemnity of the moment was crushing. These boys are serious, he thought, which meant that now he was serious, and that soon the whole country would be serious—that the time for playing games was over.

Previously Featured Authors

October/November 2009

Sheela Lambert is a veteran bi and LGBT activist, presenter and writer published in the LGBTQ America Today Encyclopedia, Huffington Post, Lambda Book Report, The Advocate, Curve, AfterEllen, Bi Magazine, AfterElton, GO Magazine, Bisexual.com, Hakomi Journal and edits the Bidar blog reporting on bisexuality in media, arts and culture located on BiWriters.org and LiveJournal. She is the founder of the Bi Writers Association, co-founder of Bi Women of All Colors and organizer of the Bisexual Speakers Bureau of New York. She spearheaded the successful campaign to add a bisexual award category to the Lammys LGBT book awards in 2006 and has served as a Lammy judge ever since. She produces the Bi Lines reading series and has organized film programs, concerts, conferences, summits and other programs for the bi and LGBT communities for 18 years. She made history as producer and host of the first weekly bi TV series on the planet, Bisexual Network (on NYC public access cable in 1993) and was a correspondent on the GLBT public access cable show Out in the 90’s 1992-93.

She has an anthology of bisexual literary short stories ready for publication, is writing a book on Famous Bisexuals in History and is starting work on anthologies of bisexual poetry and bisexual plays. She lives in Washington Heights with her books and her dust collection.

September 2009

Cynthia Foo is a displaced Canadian living and working in New York City. She teaches art history at the New School and writes short fiction, poetry and music reviews.

July/August 2009

Rebecca Serle is a writer living and working in NYC. She is the founder of Nurturing Narratives, an organization that brings storytelling and narrative building workshops to young children. Rebecca holds a MFA in Creative Writing from The New School and a BA in English from The University of Southern California. Her work has appeared in SLICE Magazine, The Ampersand Review, The Raleigh Quarterly and Twelve Stories among others. She is an avid fan of yoga, the written word in all its forms, and, of course, New York.

June 2009

Joseph Legaspi works as a grant writer for a multi-service non-profit organization in New York City as well as a freelance editor, tutor and journalist. He has been a contributing writer for the publications of LACE (The Local Arts Collaborative Exchange) in Jackson Heights. He is also a writer and co-editor of Tinig, The Jackson Heights Filipino-American Journal and Newsletter. Joseph holds an MFA in creative fiction writing at the New School, studying with the writers Stephen Wright, David Gates, Helen Schulman, Abigail Thomas and others. While pursuing the degree, he was also completing an internship working with special needs children. The experience inspired him to write the novel The Evening House for which he is seeking publication. Joseph lives in New Jersey with his wife, Yoko. He can be reached at joe2write@hotmail.com. More information on his work can be found at http://www.linkedin.com/in/joelegaspi.

May 2009

Noah Elliot Blake is a Brooklyn resident, MFA student at The New School, teacher of children and struggling adults, celebrator of beards, hero to the smallest of men, and above all, desperately trying to eke out some affection with his bio. His work has appeared (or is forthcoming) in Willows Wept Review, Macabre Cadaver, Dogzplot, SBS Magazine, and The Ampersand Review. He can be emailed at nononoah@gmail.com.

April 2009

Marvin Waldman is president of The Shadow Group, a creative and strategic consulting firm. He is also an adjunct professor in the Graduate Design Management program at Pratt Institute, and is a founding board member of the Bronx Charter School for Better Learning.

March 2009

Pamela Gettinger Tucker writes fiction for fun when she can take a break from her "career" writing. As marketing communications executive at a Fortune 100 company, Ms. Tucker writes countless communications, catalogues and brochures. In a previous career as an art critic and curator, Ms. Tucker also wrote essays, reviews and exhibition catalogues. "Punctuation" was inspired by a remark her daughter made that made Ms. Tucker laugh. Ms. Tucker regularly attends writer's workshops and has had several other short pieces published online. To read more of Ms. Tucker's work, send an email request to: pamget@me.com.

February 2009

Greg Thomas, born in 1963 in Hartford, CT, attended Carnegie-Mellon University, where he received an undergraduate degree in drama. He co-founded IgLoo, the theatrical group in Chicago, IL, and later moved to New York City working with Joseph Papp in Bill Gunn’s play The Forbidden City and then performing in an international tour of the Athol Fugard play My Children! My Africa! After spending a year on Haight Street in San Francisco, Thomas returned to New York to receive his masters in creative nonfiction writing at the New School, studying with the writers Philip Lopate, Vivian Gornick, Susan Cheever, David Hajdu, Robert Polito, and others. Thomas continues to write in a variety of genres and has published a number of works, including “The Smell of Snow,” “Trouble with Girls (Wendy),” and “TravelSnaps” (an interactive travel essay for the web). His one-man show NeverSaid was presented at Primary Stages in New York City. Thomas currently lives in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan with his wife, Jillian, and son, Sundar.

Greg's essay Letters from a Sinking Ship was featured in September.

January 2009

Jeanne Dickey’s fiction and poetry have appeared in the journals Passages North, RE:AL, Karamu, Parting Gifts, The Amherst Review, The Good Foot, Poet Lore, and The Newport Review. She was a resident at the Byrdcliffe Art Colony in 2007, and has attended numerous writers’ conferences and residences. Her work takes on a highly psychological viewpoint as she explores the relationship women have with violence, whether they are victims of it, or perpetrators. Her short fiction collection, The Woman Who Came Through the Mirror, is near completion, and she has begun a novel about a stalker (female, of course) whose oversized need to be loved leads her into increasingly dangerous situations.

A native New Yorker and a 10+ year resident of Washington Heights, Jeanne works days as an Administrative Assistant at a midtown law firm.

December 2008

Chris Cavalari was born December 6, 1960, in Cornwall, NY. His works include the play The Camel (staged reading at the Wythe Avenue Workshop in Brooklyn); two feature-length screenplays, Dissenter and Corvette; poetry (read in NYC); and an earth-based sci fi novel series. He is a lifelong musician/composer, a photographer, and an actor. His photographs can be seen at smugmug.com, robertoshutterbug user. Performances include Wishing Willy, available at danshepfilms.com , and the comedy sketches Human Species and Steroids, available at superdeluxe.com. In addition, he has performed leading roles in the student films Reclaiming a Purpose (by Daniel Yates) and Intercourse (by Carleton Ranney). His abstract paintings, street junk, and found furniture pieces are regularly shown at Mars Bar in Manhattan on 1st Street and 2nd Avenue. Chris lives in Inwood in Northern Manhattan.

November 2008

MRtoll (Jamie Toll) was born in Canberra, Australia, in 1975, and now divides his time between Sydney and New York City. He first came to New York in 2003 to study at Arts Students League, where he met Philip L. Sherrod and the Street Painters of New York. He served as an Understudy for Mr. Sherrod, working with Kenneth McIndoe, from 2003 to 2007. Group exhibitions include those at S.H. Ervin Gallery in Sydney and Cork Gallery in New York. He can be contacted at mrrtoll@yahoo.com.

October 2008

Christopher Way was born in Ft. Myers, FL in 1977 and raised nearby in the small town of Sanibel Island. He received his B.A. in English, Magna Cum Laude, from the University of Florida in 1999. He works in advertising and lives in Inwood, Manhattan where he writes poetry, paints and composes songs, most of which he distributes freely on the net. He is currently working on a collection of poetry and his fourth album of folk songs and acoustic instrumentals. He can be reached at bb@buriedbranches.com.

September 2008

August 2008

John Michael Santora (www.johnmichaelsantora.name) is an independent writer, artist and musician currently residing in Parlin, New Jersey. A graduate of the Rutgers University School of Communications, he currently works with autistic adults as a behavior therapist. As a musician, his bands have shared the stage with acts like Live, Chuck Berry, Fountains of Wayne, Streetlight Manifesto, the Alarm, and Gym Class Heroes. In 2005, John was nominated for an Asbury Park Music Award for his bass work for The TroubleMakers. In August, his band Beale Street Love will be featured on the indy music show, Fearless Music, which airs on Fox 5 and reaches 46 million homes regionally. With increasing music success under his belt, John has begun to divert some of his creative energy towards literature. His short story, "The Drunken Cowboy," is currently featured in the latest issue of the e-zine, Spry Magazine. He is also the author of the comedic blog Ask Dr. Lotes. His writing takes a facetious angle on the cark of the "twenty something" generation.

July 2008