The Avalon Literary Review
Contributors 2025
Author Biographies:

Nina Avedon is a psychoanalyst and a poet who lives and works in Brookline, MA though she dreams she still resides in the New York City of her childhood. She has been aware over the years of how word choice, metaphor, association and the creative wellspring of the unconscious feature in both endeavors. Her poems have appeared in Oberon Poetry Magazine, Leon Literary Review, Poetry Breakfast and in the poetry and medicine section of JAMA.

Robert Boucheron worked as an architect in New York City and Charlottesville, Virginia. His stories, essays, book reviews, and translations have appeared in Alabama Literary Review, Bellingham Review, Fiction International, New England Review, and The Saturday Evening Post. 

Brian Builta lives in Arlington, Texas, and works at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth. His work has been published in North of Oxford, Hole in the Head Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, New Ohio Review, TriQuarterly and 2River View among others.

Nancy Ciucevich Story is a retired English professor and academic dean at Community College of Denver.  She was born in Savannah, GA and lives in Carthage, NC.  Her poetry has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, Hard Ground: Writing the Rockies, kentucky poetry review, Gertrude, the black fly review, and other journals.

Daniel DiStasio’s work has appeared in The Louisville Review, Summerset Review, Reed, Bodega, 45th Parallel and many others. His first novel Facing the Furies was published in 2012. He earned his MFA in fiction at Spalding University.   He is currently working on a historical novel based on the 1897 Gold Rush in Alaska, and a collection of short stories focused on the magic of bears. His obsession has led him to trekking bears in Alaska, India, Greece, Peru, and Rumania. 

Nwodo Divine is from Africa.

Melissa Drydahl is from California.

Sean Ferrier-Watson has pieces published or forthcoming in Lovecraftiana, Discretionary Love, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Better Than Starbucks, Hawk & Whippoorwill, Hellbound Books, and Illumen. He was recently a finalist in Crystal Lake Publishing’s Shallow Waters Flash Fiction Contest. His book The Children’s Ghost Story in America was published by McFarland in 2017. Follow him at www.seanferrierwatson.com.

Jenny Fosket is from California.

Stacey Gordon writes book club fiction and mystery novels as well as short stories. She has worked as a magazine journalist and authored non-fiction books on design and online retail. She is based in the San Francisco Bay Area where she manages a team of software writers at a tech company and lives with her husband, daughter, and a black Lab named Winston. staceygordonauthor.com 

Lesley Hart Gunn is the winner of the Fall 2022 F(r)iction Poetry Contest and has upcoming or previous publications in Carve Magazine, Strange Horizons, Flash Fiction Magazine, Asimov’s Science Fiction, PseudoPod, Abyss and Apex, and Phantom Drift Journal. She is originally from the lakes and lighthouses of Atlantic Canada but currently lives in the mountains and desert of the American west with her partner and three children. 

David Hutto’s work has appeared in Galway Review, Paterson Literary Review, Mudfish, Crazyhorse, and other magazines. His experience includes a writers’ retreat in Mérida, Mexico, a residency at the Vermont Studio Center, and an upcoming retreat in Dublin, Ireland, as well as first-place poetry awards in Alabama and Georgia. Website: www.davidhutto.com

Kendall Lawless is from Oregon.

Shontay Luna is a native Chicagoan whose  has appeared in Umbrella Factory Magazine, Brittle Paper and Riverbed Review among others. The author of four books, the most recent entitled 'The Goddess Journal.'


Al Maginnes has published ten full length collections and four chapbooks of poems, most recently Fellow Survivors: New and Selected Poems (Redhawk Publications 2023). New poems appear in Twelve Mile Review, Tipton Review, Salt, Cimarron Review and others. Al lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Darren Montufar lives and works in Des Moines, Iowa. He enjoys exploring photography, fiction, and the great outdoors.

Nancy Carol Moody is a mixed-media artist and the author of the poetry collections, The House of Nobody Home and Photograph with Girls, as well as a chapbook, Mermaid. She wouldn’t mind living on a train, but is content at home in Eugene, Oregon, with her partner and more than a thousand pens. Find Nancy online at nancycarolmoody.com.

Valerie Nichols has published poetry, short stories, and a hopefully comic piece, as well as writing and performing a script at a small theatre in Utrecht in the Netherlands. She is co-organizer of the Eindhoven Creative Writing Group. For more information, please see her website: https://arboles321.wixsite.com/arlenescholvi

Frisk Normandy lives with his partner and dog in the mountains of Vancouver, British Columbia. His free time is dedicated to writing and creating music. Most recently, his work has appeared in Heart of Flesh Literary Journal and Muse-Pie Press.

Dominik Slusarczyk is an artist who makes everything from music to painting. His poetry has been published in various literary magazines including California Quarterly and Taj Mahal Review. His full-length poetry collection Reaction is out now with Cyberwit.

Jessica B. Sokol writes scandalous creative nonfiction. She’s the author of For Better And Worse: Short Stories and Tantalizing Tales—From Coast to Coast (published in 2016), and her stories recently appeared in The Long Covid Reader Anthology (Long Hauler Publishing, 2023), Still Point Arts Quarterly, Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, “I DO” Wedding Guide 2023, Music Museum of New England, Hosmer Gallery at Forbes Library, and in The McNeese Review’s Boudin. She’s a vegan cook living in Western Massachusetts. 

Matthew J. Spireng’s 2019 Sinclair Poetry Prize-winning book Good Work was published by Evening Street Press. A 12-time Pushcart Prize nominee, he is the author of two other full-length books, What Focus Is and Out of Body, winner of the 2004 Bluestem Poetry Award, and five chapbooks. Website: matthewjspireng.com.

A professor of English at Winona State University in Minnesota, Myles Weber is the author of Consuming Silences:  How We Read Authors Who Don’t Publish.  His work has appeared in the Georgia Review, the Kenyon Review, and the Southern Review.

David Zopfi is from Wisconsin.

Lee Clark Zumpe, an entertainment editor with Tampa Bay Newspapers, began writing poetry and fiction in the early 1990s. His work has appeared in a variety of literary journals, genre magazines, and anthologies over the last two decades. Recent publication credits include Space & Time, Lovecraftiana, Illumen, and The Literary Hatchet. His work is featured in several single-author collections, including Wearing Winter Gray, Feed Me Wicked Things, and Whispers from the Intoxicating Abyss. Lee lives on the west coast of Florida with his wife and daughter.