Contributors Page
Karlando Butt
@kxrlymiyagi
Karlando Butt (Kxrly Miyagi) is a self taught pixel artist from Mandeville, Jamaica and currently based in Kingston, Jamaica. Practicing pixel art for 6 years, since a young age, Karly has been fascinated with video games and its unique ways of telling a story especially those created within the confines of pixel art. In his art, Karly uses well known video games and its characters as well as creations of his own to share his and other’s experience of being a Jamaican through a pixelated lens. He has been able to bring his style of pixel art to the mainstream and worked with contemporary dancehall and international music artistes like KYLE, Jada Kingdom and Teezo Touchdown as well as social media personality Patrick Cloud on an upcoming mini-series created entirely in pixel art.
PURSUIT
Medium: Procreate, Photoshop. Dimensions: 30x30 inches
Jenna Kay Duxbury
jennakayduxbury.com
Jenna Kay Duxbury (she/her) is a writer, musician, and painter living in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She graduated from Western Michigan University with a Bachelor’s degree in professional writing and anthropology.
Landlines
Short story
Mel Essick
mvessick.com
MVEssick is a muiltimedia digital artist based in Florida. His passions are virtual reality and digital art. When not drinking copious amounts of cold brew coffee, he waits dreaming of the day he can have his own steampunk airship.
glitch cowboy
I used the wayback machine looking up the old websites of my youth from the late 90's early 00's and I was inspired to create a piece that resonated with me. Digital Collage. Photoshop.
Kristin Gustafson
@kristinthered
Kristin Gustafson typically thinks she is funnier than she really is. She is one of Literary Cleveland’s 2023-2024 Breakthrough Writing Residents and is working on her first full-length poetry collection about mental illness and pop culture. Her work has appeared in HAD, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, BULLSHIT LIT, Gone Lawn, and elsewhere.
Tama Time
Shape poem
Daphne Fauber
dank.pizza/art
Daphne (she/her) is a digital artist and photographer who currently enjoys making surrealist and creepy portraits of her friends and family (or, if very desperate for a model, stock photos).
Siren's Call
Digital Art created with Procreate for iPad. First published in As Alive Journal Issue #2.
Alex Lee
@bonebitten
Alex recently graduated from UC Santa Barbara with a BA in Art and currently works at a museum in Los Angeles. They're interested in exploring how narratives are conveyed visually and create works that range from painting, digital illustration, and comics. They can be found eating hot pot, browsing the local book store, or trying to perfect homemade lattes.
Issue 08 Cover
Digital art
Ben Macnair
@benmacnair
Ben Macnair is an award-winning poet, playwright and musician from Staffordshire in the United Kingdom.
Harmony Thing Part 4
Instrumental music composition
Jamie Manias
@jamiemanias
Jamie Manias is a poetry MFA candidate and instructor at Bowling Green State University. They serve as an assistant editor to the Mid-American Review. Their work has appeared and is forthcoming in Rat's Ass Review, fruitslice, Kingfisher, and other publications.
DOOM (1993)
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Iñaki Oñate
@inakionate
There is a matter of immediate connection between the mind and the hand. That hand that thinks, that captures thoughts in the form of faces, bodies, nightmarish landscapes.
Paradox
Ball pen point on paper scanned and digitally colored
The Machine Is Hungry
Ball pen point on paper. Digitally scanned.
Gisela Perez
beacons.ai/giselawrites
Soft-spoken fantasy devotee, writing comfort and curiosity into every line and story. In her spare time, she can be caught humming little tunes, drinking milk, and admiring the moon.
Editor's Note
Writing
Christina E. Petrides
christinaepetrides.com
American Southerner Christina E. Petrides lived in South Korea for 6.5 years. She has published four children's books, one massive Russian to English nonfiction translation, and a poetry collection.
Outdated
Poetry
Holly Fortune Ratcliff
linktr.ee/hollythehare
Holly Fortune Ratcliff resides in Austin, Texas where she writes about her family, grief, and complicated relationship with food as well as an empowered form of nature - one with realized thoughts and combined autonomy. She drafts her work on a 2017 MacBook and creates many versions of the same vision - until the words are crisp and crunchy enough to plate for good company. You can find her on social sharing slow, small snippets @hollythehare.
You didn’t imagine it: We were once close
Poem ⭐ Pushcart nominee for CCM Issue 08
David Ricceri
davidricceri.com
I'm an art teacher in the NYC public school system, and have run an afterschool book design class with 2nd to 5th graders for 6 years now. I primarily work in ink and watercolor, but have created a lot of art in acrylics and oils too (I don't paint in oils any more). I was an illustrator for 25 years but moved fully on into teaching and selling my personal paintings. I miss the illustration assignments and am excited to get back into freelance illustration with my new kid friendly style. I live on the upper east side of Manhattan, and am married with one child.
Spy Dog
Ink, watercolor, Crayola markers, colored pencil
hannah rubin
hannahrubin.com
hannah rubin is a writer, artist, and organizer. Their work explores queer ecologies of gender and relationships, the psychogeography of post-modernity, and love. They live in Los Angeles, where they run an experimental writing school called sticky poetry club and co-host a monthly poetry radio show on dublab.
The Social & Environmental Effects of Large Dams on BananaSplit927
Poetry
Ocean Salazar
theartofoceansalazar.com
Ocean Salazar’s work encapsulates a self-titled and self-defined genre called Dark Tropical – where the glitz, the vibrancy, and the allure of a tropical paradise coexists with the things that go bump in the night. Even when those things are ourselves.
MISTER ARTIFICIAL
Mixed Media, 9'' x 14''. A mixed media illustration focusing on personal annihilation in the digital age.
Elinor Serumgard
elinorserumgard.com
I used handy dandy Crayola watercolors, which were a staple tool of my early art creating years in the 00s. In 2024 though, I use a water brush which leads to a lot more precision than the brush that comes with the paints. I then used a photo editing software to layer together the pieces I had painted on separate pages to make it one piece, without fiddling around with cutting each element out.
Watercolor Bliss
Mixed media paper, Crayola watercolors, Micron pen, Pixelmator for Mac. Dimensions 7''x5''
Rachel Turney
turneytalks.wordpress.com
I am an educator, traveler, and writer. I am inspired by nature, adventure, passionate love, positive body image, and the cities where I have lived. The most crucial and prevailing lens and reach of my work is based on my identity as a woman and urgent protectorship of other women globally. Instagram: @turneytalks
In Fair Verona
Short creative nonfiction
Sam Ward
@cybrwez
I aim to use illustration as a storytelling medium to reckon with technology, nostalgia, identity, and the human versus the machine. I've been drawing since I was old enough to gather inspiration from the cartoons I'd watch on my family's CRT television, and continue with the hope of one day inspiring new artists in the same way.
The Static and I
Digital, 3000 x 3600 px
Elzbieta Zdunek
@surrellart
Whenever I am asked to describe my work, I respond with the quote by historian and novelist Umberto Eco: 'every story tells a story that has already been told.' In my collages and photography, by reusing recurring topics and elements, I highlight the inevitability of events and their consequences; the repeating cycles and patterns in the history of humanity; the meshed hope and hopelessness; and how often what we think we have an agency to choose has been chosen for us beforehand. Knowing that viewers will approach and read my works through their own biases and experiences, I encourage them to decide who is the hero and who is the villain, or if the outcome is a blessing or a curse. I am fascinated with the concepts of nature versus nurture, what makes us us, and how many different people we are depending on the context.
a copy a copy a
Digital Collage. This piece, inclusive of its title, embraces a foundation of self-irony. The nature of digital collaging, with its capacity for repeated use of elements and the influence of personal preferences, sets the stage for a potential trap of repetition.