OPENING LETTERS > FROM THE EDITORS
While it is hard to believe, earlier this month we celebrated our sixth full year in existence and operation at Sky Island Journal. Six years! I had to do the math--24 issues published quarterly definitely gets us to six years. (Even I can work out that equation without using a calculator or a multiplication flash card.)
Like any worthwhile journey, we continue to learn and discover along a path that feels familiar at times, yet continues to surprise us with new challenges to embrace and beauties to savor. Of the 24 issues, each one ignites with its unique spark and personality, thanks to the contributions of our diverse and immensely talented writers. From the beginning, back in April of 2017, we were purposeful in our approach and are continually inspired by the pursuit of publishing established and emerging writers side-by-side, creating the vibrancy reflected in each issue. When looking over the analytics, every single year we have grown. Our constellation of readers has grown. Our family of contributors has grown. Our domestic and international reach has grown. We have welcomed over 125,000 readers to experience the 989 individual pieces (poems, flash fiction, and creative nonfiction pieces) created by over 700 writers who we’ve had the honor of publishing in Issues #1 through #24. We have officially received submissions from all 50 states in the US, and 48 of those states are currently represented in the journal. On an international scale, we have published writers from 43 different countries, and we are thrilled that even though we read blind, more than 20% of our pieces offer perspectives from outside of our native country. As human beings, we have the opportunity to learn from each other, and it is humbling to serve as a conduit, connecting people across the globe with literature that wields the power to move us intellectually and emotionally.
What I cannot quantify is the feeling of gratitude that permeates our experience here at Sky Island Journal. Whether you are a contributor, reader, or both, we relentlessly strive to get better and better at serving you. As we move forward into the years to come, I have two simple words to offer that I hope can carry the weight of our appreciation for your engagement and support—thank you.
Respectfully,
Jeff Sommerfeld, Co-Founder and Co-Editor-in-Chief
While we dedicate ourselves to discovering and publishing the best new writing from around the world every season, spring, in particular, means something else for us as well: basketball! I’m a Golden State Warriors fan, and Jeff is a Milwaukee Bucks fan. Right now, both of our teams are in playoff mode and going hard. Spring in southwestern New Mexico goes hard too. Trust us when we say the “Land of Enchantment” doesn’t half-ass anything—seasons included. This is Sky Island Journal’s birthplace and spiritual home.
Each morning the mountains are draped in an explosion of poppies. Their yolk-orange blooms are tousled this way and that as the winds rush down from the peaks and splay out across the desert floor—eventually slowing to a hush, like the breathless space between a lover’s lips, when dusk arrives. Ocotillos, taller than any man, snake toward the sky at sunset—their spiny necks and blood red buds defying gravity to commune with the stars in a way that only the Apache can properly articulate. This landscape is the source of our positive energy, our rugged independence, and our relentless tenacity. This season, in this landscape, is a constant reminder that renewal and resilience are both made possible by hope. And if we’ve learned anything over the past six years, it’s that hope’s weapon of choice is always art—in our case, literature.
So, we’ve elected to leave the "scroll-through experience" and pop-up ads to other literary platforms. By design, the writing in Sky Island Journal opens as a protected Word document for an authentic, focused, and immersive experience that encourages a close, intimate, distraction-free reading of the work. We want your experience with the work of our contributors to be singular—just as it would be on the printed page, with crisp white paper between your collective fingertips. (A few poems in this issue with long line lengths will open as jpegs so fidelity to the author’s original line and stanza breaks can be maintained on all mobile devices around the world.) Without advertising, you can fully engage with the worlds our contributors have so carefully crafted for you. Without subscriptions and pay walls, you are welcome to read and enjoy whenever you like, wherever you like, regardless of your means. We believe in removing the barriers between readers and access to high quality literature, especially in regions of the world that have traditionally been underserved by English language journals or completely ignored by the literary establishment.
Our acceptance rate usually hovers around 3%, and despite its larger size, Issue 24 is no exception; we’re in playoff mode baby! Of the 1,921 individual pieces that we received from around the world, we found these 53 to be the finest. Enjoy!
Welcome to Sky Island. Welcome home.
Respectfully,
Jason Splichal, Co-Founder and Co-Editor-in-Chief
Addison Hoggard > Poetry > Japan
Addison Hoggard (he/him) is a writer and language teacher hailing from the rural inner-banks of North Carolina. He is currently based in the Aizu region of Japan. His writing has appeared in Wild Roof Journal, Cathexis Northwest Press, The Watershed Review, and elsewhere.
Alena Coleman > Poetry > Indiana, USA
Alena Coleman is a poet from New Harmony, Indiana. She is a recent graduate of the University of Notre Dame, where she majored in English and Spanish. As an undergraduate, her work appeared in Zeniada, Asterism, and Laurel Moon, among others. For the next year, she will be teaching and researching in Uruguay as a Fulbright Scholar.
Amy Beveridge > Poetry > New Mexico, USA
Amy Beveridge works as a pediatric speech-language pathologist and grant writer whose poems have appeared in Heron Tree, bosque, Red Ogre Review, and Abandoned Mine, which recently nominated her poem “Gasoline” for a Pushcart Prize.
Annie Albright > Poetry > Georgia, USA
Annie Albright is a medical student in Atlanta, Georgia. She enjoys capturing the humanity in medicine through various written mediums. She lives with her pitbull, Chicken.
Austin Gilmore > Flash Fiction > Kansas, USA
Austin Gilmore is an Art Director and Gallery Artist based in Kansas City. Before that, he co-ran Kevin Costner's production for 7 years. His stories have appeared in Mystery Tribune, Esoterica Magazine, The Bluebird Word, Tangled Lock Journal, and Fauxmoir Literary Magazine. He is passionate about donuts.
Chandan Dey > Poetry > India
Chandan Dey is a new and emerging writer. His work has appeared in Liquid Imagination, Vayavya, Sky Island Journal, Foxglove, and elsewhere. He is a teacher and a passionate reader and writer of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. He loves to write articles on scientific philosophy; some have been published online. He lives in West Bengal, India. Find him at
Christopher Rubio-Goldsmith > Poetry > Arizona, USA
Christopher Rubio-Goldsmith was born in Merida, Yucatan, grew up in Tucson, Arizona and taught English at Tucson High School for 27 years. Much of his work explores growing up near the border, being raised biracial/bilingual and teaching in a large urban school where 70% of the students are American/Mexican. A Pushcart nominee, his writings have appeared in Book of Matches, The Ramble Review, Allium Journal and other places too. His wife, Kelly, sometimes edits his work, and the two cats seem happy.
Cynthia Ventresca > Poetry > Delaware, USA
Cynthia Ventresca has been writing poetry since the age of seven and is currently working to finish her B.A. in English from Southern New Hampshire University. A resident of Wilmington, Delaware, she lives with her partner, five needy cats and a garden. Publication credits include American Life in Poetry, The Broadkill Review, Orbis Quarterly International Literary Journal, 3rd Wednesday and Glassworks. Pending publication in The Main Street Rag.
Daniel Brennan > Poetry > New York, USA
Daniel Brennan (he/him) is a queer writer and resident of New York City, who spent much of his youth in the lush Blue Ridge Mountains of Pennsylvania (an early ecological source of inspiration). As a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, Brennan hopes to juxtapose the vastness we experience within our rapidly changing natural world with the often-daunting intimacies the human body presents. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in Passengers Journal, The Garfield Lake Review, North Dakota Quarterly, and ONE ART (among others).
Darci Schummer > Poetry > Minnesota, USA
Darci Schummer is the author of the story collection Six Months in the Midwest (Unsolicited Press), the forthcoming novel The Ballad of Two Sisters (Unsolicited Press), and co-author of the poetry/prose collaboration Hinge (broadcraft press). Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in Ninth Letter, Folio, Jet Fuel Review, MAYDAY, Matchbook, Necessary Fiction, Sundog Lit, and Pithead Chapel, among many other places. She has been nominated both for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and her work has also been selected as a Longform Fiction Pick of the Week. In May of 2023, she will be the artist-in-residence at LaPointe Center for the Arts in LaPointe, Wisconsin, on Madeline Island. In addition to writing, she teaches at Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College where she serves as faculty editor of The Thunderbird Review.
David Jenkins > Poetry > Colorado, USA
Anthropologist David Jenkins is the author of Nature and Bureaucracy: The Wildness of Managed Landscapes (Routledge 2022). He has taught at MIT and Bates College and worked in the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology at the University of Arizona. For the last dozen years, he has worked in public lands management, where he tries to do some good for the planet.
Dick Altman > Poetry > New Mexico, USA
Dick Altman writes in the high, thin, magical air of Santa Fe, NM, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in Santa Fe Literary Review, American Journal of Poetry, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Blue Line, Landing Zone, Cathexis, Humana Obscura, Haunted Waters Press, Split Rock Review, The Ravens Perch, Beyond Words, New Verse News, Wingless Dreamer, Blueline, Sky Island Journal, and others here and abroad. A Pushcart nominee and poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has in progress two collections of some 150 published poems. His work has been selected for the forthcoming first volume of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry, to be published by the New Mexico Museum Press.
Dila Toplusoy > Poetry > Turkey
Dila Toplusoy is an emerging writer and poet from Istanbul, Turkey. She holds a First Class Honours degree from University of the Arts London. Her work has been published by La Piccioletta Barca, Sky Island Journal, Sidekick Books, The Pandemic Post, and The Story Seed, among others.
Doug Jacquier > Flash Fiction > Australia
Doug Jacquier's writing meanders amongst the peaks and the swamps of various forms of short story, flash fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, from the lunatic to the lucid. For readers prepared to come along for the ride, he likes to make them think, laugh, cry, or groan (and, sometimes, all of the above). His poems and stories have been published in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. He blogs at Six Crooked Highways.
Elizabeth J. Wenger > Creative Nonfiction > Iowa, USA
Elizabeth J. Wenger is a writer from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Currently an MFA student at Iowa State University, her work has been published in Flash Fiction Magazine, The Hopper, essaydaily.org, and more.
Ella Kerr > Poetry > Hawaii, USA
Ella Kerr is a full-time writer who lives and surfs on the Big Island of Hawaii. Her poems and short stories have appeared in several publications and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in Literature, as well as the Best of Web Literary Award.
Ellouisa Night > Poetry > Singapore
Ellouisa Night hails from Singapore, a small city-country in Southeast Asia. It is a colorful, vibrant city that blends different cultures and nationalities together beautifully, allowing her exposure to learning different ways of living from her various friends. Ellouisa has enjoyed writing since she was young; it’s a natural way for her to express her thoughts, emotions, and observations via ink and paper. Her first publications were in school magazines and local town council newsletters where she would submit to writing competitions and emerge as one of the winners. Academically, she holds a Bachelor’s in Mass Communications (majoring in Journalism), from Murdoch University. She wrote articles and research assignments for her Mass Communications studies, as well as her Psychological studies under James Cook University. While not pursuing a career in Journalism (due to the limited scope in her country), Ellouisa owns several blogs; over the years, they have featured her poems, reviews, and thoughts on current affairs. The blog sites used to garner a good fanfare and even media invites for her to review travels, beauty, and food scenes. Finally, she had a publishing contract for her novel, The Black Widow’s Hospitality, from AmericaStar Publishing.
Fannie H. Gray > Flash Fiction > New Jersey, USA
Fannie H. Gray writes fiction inspired by a southern American childhood and dark fairy tales. She is a 2022 Gotham Writers Josie Rubio Scholarship recipient. Her first published piece, “Last Damsel,” was nominated for a Best of The Net. Her work, “Incendies,” received Honorable Mention in Cleaver Magazine’s 10th Anniversary Anthology Flash Contest and was nominated for Best Microfiction.
Fiona Perry > Poetry > United Kingdom
Fiona Perry’s first collection of poetry, Alchemy (Turas Press, Dublin), won the Poetry Book Awards (2021) Silver Medal and was shortlisted for the Rubery Prize. Her flash fiction, Sea Change, won first prize in the Bath Flash Fiction Awards (2020). Her poetry and short fiction have been published internationally in publications such as Lighthouse, Skylight47, Utopia, Abyss & Apex, and Ink, Sweat & Tears. She lives near Oxford, in the UK, with her family.
Fran Qi > Poetry > California, USA
Fran Qi is a lost engineer and a renewed writer based out of San Francisco.
Greg Friedmann > Poetry > Virginia, USA
Greg Friedmann's poetry has appeared in Cagibi, Panoplyzine, Beyond Words, The Northern Virginia Review, The Poetry Society of Virginia, and other journals. He and his wife live alongside a channel of the Potomac River in northern Virginia, inspiring him to write on riparian themes, particularly on nature's power to console and inspire.
Heather Diamond > Creative Nonfiction > Washington, USA
Heather Diamond has worked as a bookseller, university lecturer, and museum curator. She is the author of American Aloha: Cultural Tourism and the Negotiation of Tradition and Rabbit in the Moon: A Memoir. Her essays have appeared in various literary magazines. She lives on Whidbey Island, where she is working on a second memoir and planting a garden.
Heather Rolland > Flash Fiction > New York, USA
Heather Rolland is an emerging writer and psychotherapist based in upstate New York. Her flash fiction, short stories, and essays have been published by Agnes and True, Pinky Thinker Press, Red Noise Collective, and Drunk Monkeys (pending). She writes fiction and nonfiction, hikes every day with her dogs, and is an amateur wildlife photographer.
Isaac Rankin > Prose Poetry > North Carolina, USA
Isaac Rankin lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he works as a financial adviser. His poems, creative nonfiction, and short stories have appeared in the Indianapolis Review, Potomac Review, William & Mary Review, and other places. His first collection of poetry, Wonderings, was published by Main Street Rag Publishing Company in 2022.
James Engelhardt > Poetry > South Carolina, USA
James Engelhardt is an avid tabletop games player, hiker, and cook. His poem in Sky Island Journal is part of a project in which he responds to board games from the nineteenth century to the present. Some of the poems are inspired directly by the art and gameplay, but others are only very loosely associated with the game. His poems have appeared in the North American Review, Hawk and Handsaw, ACM: Another Chicago Magazine, Terrain.org, Painted Bride Quarterly, Fourth River, and many others. His ecopoetry manifesto is “The Language Habitat,” and his book, Bone Willow, is available from Boreal Books, an imprint of Red Hen Press. He lives in the South Carolina Upstate and is a lecturer in the English Department at Furman University.
Jeannie E. Roberts > Poetry > Minnesota, USA
Jeannie E. Roberts has authored eight books, six poetry collections and two illustrated children's books. Her most recent collection is titled The Ethereal Effect - A Collection of Villanelles (Kelsay Books, 2022). Her poems appear in Anti-Heroin Chic, Blue Heron Review, The Ekphrastic Review, New Verse News, Panoply, The Poeming Pigeon, Quill and Parchment, Silver Birch Press, Sky Island Journal, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Writing In A Woman’s Voice, and elsewhere. She is an award-winning artist and poet, listed in the Poets & Writers directory, serves as a poetry editor for the online literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs, and is a Best of the Net and an Eric Hoffer award nominee.
Jeff McLaughlin > Flash Fiction > Minnesota, USA
Jeff McLaughlin was born in Nebraska, grew up in the Carolinas, went to school in Minnesota, and now lives and works there. Two stories from his current work in progress have appeared in Sky Island Journal, and others have been published in the Kenyon Review, december magazine, Southern Humanities Review, and most recently in the Louisville Review.
John Hazard > Poetry > Michigan, USA
John Hazard grew up in the southeastern Ohio village of Caldwell and now lives in Birmingham, Michigan. He has taught at the University of Memphis and, more recently, at the Cranbrook Schools and Oakland University in suburban Detroit. His poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart and Best of the Net and has appeared widely in magazines, including Ploughshares, Poetry, Shenandoah, Slate, The Gettysburg Review, Arts & Letters, Ascent, Atticus Review, Carolina Quarterly, Diagram, Gulf Stream; New Ohio Review, Harpur Palate, Terrain.org, and Valparaiso Poetry Review. His 2015 book of poetry is Naming a Stranger (Aldrich Press), and his new collection, Interrupt the Sky, will appear in 2023 from Stephen F. Austin University Press.
John Muro > Poetry > Connecticut, USA
Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize and, more recently, for the Best of the Net Award, John Muro is a resident of Connecticut, a graduate of Trinity College and a lover of all things chocolate. He has published two volumes of poems – In the Lilac Hour and Pastoral Suite – in 2020 and 2022, respectively. Both volumes were published by Antrim House and both are available on Amazon and elsewhere. John’s poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Acumen, Barnstorm, Euphony, New Square, River Heron, Sky Island Journal, and the Valparaiso Review.
Linda Petrucelli > Creative Nonfiction > Hawaii, USA
Linda Petrucelli’s essays have been nominated for a Pushcart and Best of the Net. She’s lived and worked in Hawaii for the last twenty years.
Lorrie Ness > Poetry > Virginia, USA
Originally from Indiana, Lorrie Ness currently lives and writes in Virginia, where she takes her inspiration from the outdoors. When not writing, she can be found hiking, birding and otherwise digging in the dirt or disappearing into the woods. Her work can be found in numerous online journals including Palette Poetry, THRUSH, Typishly, The Shore, and Sky Island Journal. Her chapbook, Anatomy of a Wound, was published in 2021 by Flowstone Press.
Polly Orr > Creative Nonfiction > Canada
Polly Orr is a non-binary artist, activist, and lover residing on the traditional unceded lands of the Hul’q’umi’num’ and SENĆOŦEN speaking Coast Salish peoples. Their work has been featured in various publications including Flurt Mag, Antilang, Filling Station, and Nothing to Say. Their work was most recently included in an anthology released early 2023 featuring works from disabled creators, Nothing Without Us Too.
R.A. Pavoldi > Poetry > New York, USA
R.A. Pavoldi is a self-trained poet writing over 50 years. He credits the concise, lyrical “near Naples” Italian American dialect and the school of hard knocks for his voice. Some of the many places he is grateful to have been published include: The Hudson Review, North American Review, FIELD, Cold Mountain Review, Crab Orchard Review, ARS MEDICA, Hanging Loose, Tar River Poetry, Italian Americana, The American Journal of Poetry, recently on Viewless Wings podcast, and forthcoming in I-70 Review, and Atlanta Review.
Rachel Lauren Myers > Poetry > Nevada, USA
Rachel Lauren Myers is a poet and writer from Reno, Nevada. Her work has appeared in Drunk Monkeys, Wild Roof Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, and elsewhere.
Richard Lister > Poetry > United Kingdom
What lies beyond the familiar? Who do we meet and what happens at life’s edges? Richard Lister’s first collection, Edge and Cusp, explores these questions. “The beating heart of the collection is found in the poetry inspired by Lister’s work and travels…an identification with the people he meets, tinged with a sense of otherness and longing—bringing insights for all of us.” Lister works with locals to tackle poverty in East Africa, South Asia and the UK. He is also one of a select group of people to have accidentally sunk a dragon boat in front of a Cambodian prince! His work is published in a wide range of international publications including Orbis, Shooters Literary Magazine and Ekphrastic Review.
Robert Bires > Flash Fiction > Tennessee, USA
Robert Bires writes in Chattanooga, Tennessee. A long time English teacher and Dean of Student Life at the McCallie School, he now enjoys the challenge of telling stories in 50 words, 100,000 words, or anything in between.
Sangeetha G > Flash Fiction > India
Sangeetha G is a business journalist in India. Her flash fiction and short stories have appeared in Academy of the Heart and Mind, Kitaab International, Indian Review, Storizen, The Story Cabinet, and Borderless Journal. Her story recently won the 2022 Himalayan Writing Retreat Flash Fiction Contest.
Sarah Cipullo > Flash Fiction > Italy
Sarah Cipullo lives in Turin, Italy. She writes in English as a foreigner and sometimes comes back to Italian to seek warmth. Her work has been published in Rivista Crack, FRiGG Magazine, Penelope Story Lab, The /tƐmz/ Review, Hook Magazine, Fantastico! and New Reader Magazine. She was selected as a finalist for the InediTO prize.
Tory Bilski > Flash Fiction > Connecticut, USA
Tory Bilski recently published a travel memoir Wild Horses of the Summer Sun: A Memoir of Iceland (Pegasus Books/New York), and has written for LitHub, Atlas Obscura, Roads & Kingdoms, Hartford Courant, New Haven Living. A little earlier in life, she had stories published in The Kenyon Review, Black Warrior Review (nominated for a Pushcart), and 13th Moon (anthologized). She lives in a coastal town in Connecticut; the poem “Sea Fever” is never far from mind.
Yoni Hammer-Kossoy > Poetry > Israel
Poet, translator, and educator, Yoni Hammer-Kossoy's writing appears in numerous international journals and anthologies. A winner of the 2020 Andrea Moriah Prize in Poetry, his first poetry collection, The Book of Noah, will be published this year by Grayson Books. Originally from Brooklyn, New York, Yoni has lived in Israel with his family for the last 25 years.