Milena Abrahamyan
Milena is a poet when she has no other choice and a painter when she can't find the words. She has been writing since she was very young, beginning with her mother tongue, Armenian and now in English, the language that comes easiest. Because she is obsessed with where people come from, most of her work revolves around identity, especially her own. She has been saying for far too long now that she will publish a memoir soon, so this time around she will just promise that she will write a little bit everyday and work toward her book that will one day be titled "A Country Called Memory" and appear in a store near you.
Nancy Agabian
Nancy Agabian is the author of Princess Freak, a collection of poems and performance texts on sexuality and rage, and Me as her again: True Stories of an Armenian Daughter, a memoir on the influence of her family's dark history on her coming-of-age. She is currently working on a book that documents her relationship with a much younger Armenian man, composed of blog posts and journal entries that travel back and forth in time between Yerevan and Queens. Documenting the couple's changes as “foreigners” and “natives” as they married in Armenia, moved to America, grew apart and separated, she explores what freedom means in a personal relationship scrutinized by Armenian relatives, baffled friends, and the Department of Homeland Security. Nancy teaches writing at Queens College and NYU.
Richard Fein
The poets that have influenced RICHARD FEIN the most are those of the New York and deep images school. Whatever they do, he does the opposite. Also, those poets recommended by the living white male, general know‑it‑all literary scholars he doesn't read. This leaves him with little to read and few to emulate. Basically he gazes into a mirror and copies down his rantings and ravings. He has been published in many of the finest literary journals, such as: The Northville Review, Gulf Stream Magazine, 96inc Mississippi Review, ELF: Eclectic Literary Forum Touchstone, Windsor Review, Maverick, Sonoma Mandala Literary Review , Ellipsis, Roanoke Review, El Dorado Poetry, and many others. The University of Wisconsin's Parallel Press, demonstrated its extraordinary good taste by publishing his chapbook "The Required Accompanying Cover Letter". This poet of the Western World (except New Jersey) requests that all hate mail, communiques of derision, marriage proposals and meretricious solicitations of his person not be sent since he's already backlogged with hate mail and parcel post packages that have strange ticking sounds.
George Held
George Held is a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee whose poems, stories, translations, and book reviews have appeared in such places as Commonweal, Confrontation, Notre Dame Review, and on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac. His poems are included in over two-dozen anthologies, and his fourteenth collection is After Shakespeare: Selected Sonnets (Červená Barva Press, 2011). His children's book Neighbors, illustrated by Joung Un Kim, has just been published.
Catherine Kapphahn
Catherine Kapphahn received her MFA from Columbia University and her BA from Hunter College. She teaches Narrative Medicine writing workshops that explore the patient and caregiver perspective at Lehman College, City University of New York in the Bronx. She also teaches yoga, and continues to translate the physical experience in her own creative work. Her writing has appeared in CURE Magazine, Sunday Salon, and Ars Medica: a Journal of Medicine, the Arts, and Humanity, The Wanderlust Review, and in the anthology (Feminist Press) This is the Way We Say Goodbye. She is a recipient of the 2011 Individual Artist grant from Queens Council on the Arts. She lives in Astoria with her husband and son.
