We hope that this page will be an excellent platform on which to promote the success of Spellbinder‘s writers and artists, in addition to our contributor promotional page contained within our paperback and digital magazine issues.
We believe that this page will provide you with an opportunity to encounter more work by fellow creatives and also give our talented contributors a chance to increase the success of their own publications.
Dramatists whose plays have been performed
This is a page dedicated to our past contributors who have or are due to have their stage or screen script (scene, monologue or full-length work) performed at at theatre.
Christopher Woods
@dreamwood77019
Christopher Woods (Drama, Summer 21) has had some of his monologues produced by the Equity Library Theatre and performed at a dedicated event at the Q.E.D. Astoria in Queens, New York (May 2023). The monologues, taken from his fiction stories, include a cast of loveable and quirky characters who are a delight to meet. “Like streetcars – quaint vehicles – if one missed, there’ll be another one along in a minute.” William Albright
Published Writers
This is a page dedicated to our past contributors who have or are due to publish their work with an established publishing house. Publishing deals included here consist of full volumes of poems/ short stories/ flash fiction/ creative nonfiction/ flash creative nonfiction, or complete single works, such as novels or stage/ screenplays.
Anna Nguyen
@anannadroid
Anna Nguyen (Nonfiction, Winter 23) has published creative nonfiction collection Paperwork & Borders: A Marriage (2022, Alien Buddha Press). This work traces the author’s many international moves related to academia. Through these memoirs-in-novella, she narrates her experiences of visa instability and lack of support from the universities she has worked for, which reveal the story behind her reluctance to get married. You can purchase it on Amazon.
R.N. Cogley
@RyanCogley1
R.N. Cogley is due to publish thriller novel An Inquiry Into Innocence (publication date to be confirmed, Cranthorpe Millner). This work will explore prison life, miscarriages of justice, and how trauma affects the mind. It’s the perfect read for fans of Alex Michaelides’ The Silent Patient, A. J. Finn’s The Woman in the Window and Simon King’s MAX series. R.N. Cogley is an Irish author who has published the bestselling The Elemental Witches series, as well as an array of poetry, fiction and CNF pieces.
Candice M. Kelsey
Candice M. Kelsey has published A Poet, a full-length poetry collection (Alien Buddha Press, 1st Sept 2022).
REVIEW by Jose Hernandez Diaz, author of The Fire Eater and the forthcoming Bad Mexican, Bad American: “In this urgent, timely collection, Kelsey skillfully illustrates the often interrelated layers of contemporary womanhood as girl, mother, teacher, and poet. There is an energetic empathy for her surroundings, even aware of the carpenters who brave harsh conditions in order to build a roller coaster which we ride merely for enjoyment. In “Requiem for an Average Woman,” Kelsey reclaims self-love as essential in an otherwise superficial world and arrives at a sense of empowerment. Kelsey’s teacher’s voice and vision, too, appreciates the unique traits of a late student who pauses for a colorful bean bag in the middle of the street, instead of worrying about going to class on time. Underneath it all, at its core, there is a sharp conscience: a humanity, a sage, a warrior, an artist. Go read this book!”
You can support Kelsey and purchase her poetry collection at this link.
Teo Eve
Teo Eve, winner of Spellbinder’s 2021 Poetry Award, has published a debut poetry and visual arts collection, The Ox House (Penteract Press, July 2022). The Ox House is a love letter to the letters of the alphabet. Each of its poems (all of which are written in uniquely innovative forms) are accompanied by hand-drawn homages to Medieval manuscripts’ illuminated capital, and many of the poems are themselves visual. The Ox House is the place the visual & the aural come together to celebrate the ‘signs with which we make music in silence’ and open up the possibilities of the alphabet.
REVIEW by Nikki Dudley, Streetcake editor and poet: “Teo Eve’s The Ox House is a visual feast for those who love the sight, sound and playfulness of language. This collection is a homage to our alphabet but enables us to see it in a new light, examining the intricate beauty in the shape, meanings and interpretations that we attach to these letters. Reminiscent of some of bpNichol’s work on letters and visual writing, The Ox House is a delightful array of work to read again and again, uncovering new things each time.”
You can support Teo and purchase their poetry collection through the Penteract Press store on the website listed above.
SJ Townend
@SJTownend
SJ Townend has published Sick Girl Screams, a debut horror short story collection (Brigids Gate Press, Dec 2023).
This unnerving curation of shorts is both disturbing and thought-provoking and will leave you screaming into the darkness yet oddly begging for more.
You can also check out their contemporary romance novel, Pick-Up Lines, which will publish in January 2023 with Champagne Book Group publishers.
You can support Townend and purchase their short story collection at this link once the work is published.
Exhibited Artists
This is a page dedicated to our past contributors who have or are due to exhibit their work at an established gallery. Exhibition deals included here involve artworks displayed in a traditional, virtual or brand gallery. Gallery-shops and personal portfolios are not included.
RUNA
@rute_norte
RUNA’s (Art, Summer 22) painting Alive and Free was featured in an anthology as well as a group exhibition at gallery The Alchemy Experiment (Glasgow, March 2023). This gallery hosted its third annual international competition, and among more than 500 applications, RUNA and other 54 Glasgow-based as well as international artists were chosen to participate in this exhibition and to be part of a creative anthology of visual art and writing (released in December 2022).
DARKRECONSTRUCTION
@darkreconstruct
DARRECONSTRUCTION is exhibiting their artworks in a group exhibition at The Box Gallery: A New Artistic Haven in the Heart of Jersey City (Juice Box, JC, February 25th to May 25th 2023, grand opening March 3rd). This shared exhibition space intends to provide a platform for emerging/ established artists to showcase their work and engage with the community. They also aim to bring together art lovers and promote development of the nearby district.
henry hu
henry hu has recently exhibited his artworks at selected01, an individual exhibition within the ANCA Gallery (30th March – 24th April 2022).
The exhibition aimed to bring together diverse media – photographs, paintings, works on glass, digital prints and video installations – and the works overall provide an overview of his emerging creative practice. To be presented in dialogue with one another, the show featured selections drawn from multiple interlocking bodies of work. Starting off in the bright light, there were two sets of photographs: passing parade and shading port, BEAMS — each of the two series offered the comfort of transience, languishing in the desire to be anywhere else. The pictures called attention to those little restful moments in life, and the certainty that all disturbances eventually calm. Sea Sore Honey Lock, a series of multimedia paintings, set the conceptual stage for the exhibition. From paints to prints, threads to fabrics, the works distilled the loss of childhood splendor, ruminating on the time before adulthood, back when everything was brand new, glaring, often exciting.
In an excerpt from the series statement, Henry Hu shares: “Children’s rhymes, myths, fables, legends. They all once filled our heads with ideas only we never seem to know what they were. This series is the reaction. An object of reverence to any and every fairy tale. Wonder tale. Magic tale. A nod to the gift of anticipation. A gleaming dive into fanaticism. A leeway in which we too become children, again. A return to that world, to recreate. If childhood is, after all, an echo of time, every now and then, rings in a memory. Then, with our decades of growth. In our dearest of feelings. We smile at those memories.”
Also on view were mixed-media works from series free corn ban_wih_bi_lg and @@@@ capcap!!!. Conceived alongside Sea Sore Honey Lock, these pieces were the skeletal keys that unlocked the progress, the self-reflections that advanced the growth.
Award and competition winning writers
This is also a space to celebrate the success of writers who have won a regional or national award or competition recently. Winners at village, town or city level are not included.
Douglas Jern
@DouglasJern
Douglas Jern won Second Prize in the 7th JLPP International Translation Competition with his English translations of Japanese short story ‘Summer Vacation’ (by Hiromi Kawakami) and essay ‘Beyond Words – A Preface’ (by Kazushi Hosaka).
REVIEW by the judges: Douglas showed “clear attention give to understatement and delicacy” and “captured the slightly ornate […] idiom 雲散霧消 (unsanmusho) as ‘disperse like the mist in the light of dawn.'”
You can find more information, as well as PDF documents of the winning entries and the judges’ comments, here.
Morgan Liphart
@mliphart
Morgan Liphart’s self-published chapbook Barefoot and Running was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award in the United States. Barefoot and Running follows a young woman’s journey from the plains of the Midwest to the mountains of Colorado. Through this journey, readers discover deep healing found in wild spaces and bear witness to the tenacity of the human heart. This chapbook is a beacon of hope gently guiding readers back to themselves. It serves as a tender reminder that everything you need is already inside of you and you can always, always begin again.
REVIEW by Matthew Dickman, All American Poem author: “In Morgan Liphart’s work we encounter more than a distinct voice, we encounter a writer willing to be vulnerable, a writer of heart and intelligence. Even through the fog of grief Liphart bravely delivers the good news ‘Hope is not a dead language / it whispers in our sleep.’ In this collection of poems I believe it not only whispers but calls each and every one of us by name.”
You can support Liphart and purchase her chapbook at this link and also this one.
Award and competition winning artists
Similarly, we have this dedicated section for regionally and nationally recognised artists.