Micro Marvels 2024 - Salem Lit Fest

Micro Marvels: Thirty Tiny Works of Literary Art from Molecule and Five Minutes

Molecule and Five Minutes are two journals dedicated to short pieces of writing. Very short. Molecule, out of Salem State University, publishes everything from poetry to plays … all 50 words or less. Five Minutes, also based in Salem, gives writers twice that, 100 words, but they must focus on very short moments of time. Writers for both journals will gather at Lit Fest to share their tiny pieces with you.

Kathleen Aguero’s latest book of poetry is World Happiness Index from Tiger Bark Press. She has published several other collections of poetry: After That, Daughter Of, The Real Weather, Thirsty Day, and Investigations: The Mystery of the Girl Sleuth. She is co-editor of three collections of multicultural literature: A Gift of Tongues, An Ear to the Ground, and Daily Fare. Recipient of a Massachusetts Fellowship in Poetry and a fellowship to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Kathleen also was awarded a writing grant from the Elgin/Cox Trust. In addition to teaching in the Solstice low residency MFA program in Creative Writing at Lasell University, Kathleen teaches for “Changing Lives Through Literature,” an alternative sentencing program based on the power of books to change lives through reading and group discussion.

Claire Marie Anderson is a writer originally from Houston. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Molecule: A Tiny Lit Mag, The Decadent Review, Alchemy, BarBar Literary Magazine, Odessa Collective, and Whiskey Tit Journal, among other publications; Unfortunately, Literary Magazine even nominated one of her poems for Best of the Net 2023. She holds a BFA in Art History and Film Studies from Academy of Art University, and is the former Managing Editor of Landing Zone Magazine.
Instagram: @ca_dickensnerd

Toni Artuso (she/her/hers) is an emerging/aging trans female writer from Salem, Massachusetts. Recently retired from a 30-year career in educational publishing, she is transitioning, as well as trying to accelerate the emerging and slow down the aging. Her verse has appeared in Honeyguide Literary Magazine, which nominated one of her villanelles for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her poems have also appeared in The Christian Science Monitor and Nixes Mate Review.

Darren Black’s work has appeared in Molecule, Of Rust and Glass, The Forth River, The Saranac Review online, and the Muddy River Poetry Review as well as other publications. His first chap book, Of Cautious Steps, is forthcoming from Lilly Poetry Review Books. He lives on Massachusetts’s north shore with his life partner and has recently retired from a rehabilitation counseling career. Darren, he/him, loves reading at local open mikes, playing music, connecting with new friends and places through travel, coaching adaptive sports, advocating for disability accommodations, and teaching others about blindness through his own experiences.

Pamela Bloomfield is an independent consultant to governments and nonprofit organizations. Her stories have appeared in Rivanna Review, Parhelion, Foliate Oak, Evening Street Review, and other literary magazines. Her nonfiction articles have been published in Public Administration Review, State and Local Government Review, and other professional journals.

Currently studying Creative Writing with an emphasis on poetry in UMass Boston’s MFA program, Elliot Gray Boodhan describes himself as “a sad philosopher just trying to create something that matters.” Through the use of formal logic to contend with linguistic and cultural erasure in a post-colonial world, his poetry seeks to explore multicultural perspectives while amplifying disenfranchised voices. Elliot Gray has been published in CitySpeak, Free the Verse, Molecule: a tiny lit mag, and Mistake House. When not acting as a member of the UMass Boston community, Elliot Gray works as a teacher for incarcerated youths, helping students develop their literacy skills.
Instagram: @apoetgray.

Lisa Braxton is the author of the award-winning Dancing Between the Raindrops: A Daughter’s Reflections on Love and Loss, published by Sea Crow Press. The memoir in essays is a powerful meditation on grief, a deeply personal mosaic of a daughter’s remembrances of beautiful, challenging and heartbreaking moments of life with her family. It speaks to anyone who has lost a loved one and is trying to navigate the world without them while coming to terms with complicated emotions. Her novel, The Talking Drum, published by Inanna Publications, is the winner of an Independent Publisher (IPPY) Book Awards Gold Medal and an Outstanding Literary Award from the National Association of Black Journalists.
Facebook.com/lisa.a.braxton/
Instagram: @lisabraxtonwrites
X: @Lisareidbraxton

When not writing, Kathy Carroll works as a library assistant and the publications writer and designer for the East Lyme Public Library in southeastern Connecticut. Over the years, she has worked as a freelance writer, proofreader, and editor. Her work has been published in a variety of magazines and literary journals. Most recently, her stories have appeared in The First Line, Blink-Ink, 50-Word Stories, and Five Minutes, for whom she has been a guest reader.

Julia Clebsch writes brief non-fiction memoirs, flash non-fiction, and longer descriptive creative non-fiction memoir/essaysdrawing attention to the connections of place, family, and nature through natural history, places, herself, and her family. Being the daughter and granddaughter of botanists, as well as being the granddaughter of a consummate naturalist, strongly influence Clebsch’s writing and worldview, as does living with mental illness and being neurodivergent. She has been on three reading teams for “Five Minutes,” and won an award with the 2023 555 Writing Project. At the 2023 Salem Literary Festival, she read an original one hundred word 5-minute memoir. With the Pioneer Valley Writers Workshop community writing and reading, she exercises her writing skills, and has read excerpts of her longer memoir/essays. The lesbian writer’s work has been published in “Five Minutes,” “Legacy.” and is twice a WOW Women on Writing non-fiction essay finalist.
Instagram: @clebsch

Nicole Livingston Crain is a queer writer living in Philly. She has been published in Molecule: A Tiny Lit Mag, Meow Meow Pow Pow Lit Mag, and The Cry Lounge. Nicole has written on foreign policy and international relations in the Middle East and North Africa. She lives with her partner, Jon, and their dogs, Red and Mira.
Web: nicolelivingstoncrain.com

Kathy Curto teaches at Sarah Lawrence College/The Writing Institute and Montclair State University as well as several nonprofit organizations and writing centers in the metropolitan area. She is the author of Not for Nothing-Glimpses into a Jersey Girlhood. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, on NPR, and in the anthologies And There Were Red Geraniums Everywhere (released in Italian) and Listen to Your Mother: What She Said Then, What We’re Saying Now. She has also published widely in a variety of literary journals and magazines. Kathy’s piece, “Still Cooking Side by Side” considered a “Modern Love in miniature” by The New York Times, was included in The Best of Tiny Love Stories in August 2021. She is co-founder of Key to the Castle Workshop and serves on the board of the Italian American Writers Association. Kathy lives with her family in the Hudson Valley. Web: kathycurto.com.
Facebook: /kathy.curto26
Instagram: @kathy.curto

Coordinator of Salem State University’s Mary G. Walsh Writing Center, Al DeCiccio has worked in higher education for four decades. He was President of the National Writing Centers Association (NWCA), which is now the International Writing Centers Association (IWCA), and co-editor of The Writing Center Journal. He received the Muriel Harris Outstanding Service Award. He has written about peer tutoring, writing centers, pedagogy, leadership, and spirituality. Al believes peer tutors are keystone species in the academy, leading the way to productive change.

Jim DeFilippi has published over forty books. His latest, the novel The Cart Savior, has been called “a heartfelt examination of the human condition.”

Betsy Ellor lives near the beach in a house filled with color and chaos. When not at her desk, she’s usually either hiking, hunting for shells, or chasing her son and her dog. She’s the editor for the anthology Heroic Care: 35 Writers & Artists Show What It Means to Care and her debut picture book, My Dog is NOT A Scientist came out last spring from Yeehoo Press. Her writing has been published in Spine Magazine, 5 Minute Lit, and The Creative Collective.
Facebook/Instagram: @betsyellor
X: @bewordsunbound

Therese Gleason‘s poetry, flash fiction, essays, and hybrid work have appeared in 32 Poems, Atticus Review, CincinnatiReview, Indiana Review, Lunch Ticket, New Ohio Review, On the Seawall, Rattle, and elsewhere. She is author of three chapbooks: Hemicrania (forthcoming, Chestnut Review, 2024), about living with chronic migraine; Matrilineal (Finishing Line,2021); and Libation (co-winner, 2006 South Carolina Poetry Initiative Competition). Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, she lives with her family in central Massachusetts, where she teaches English language and literacy to multilingual learners in the Worcester Public Schools.
Web: theresegleason.com

Maryellen Groot is a fiction writer and essayist living on the north shore of Boston. She likes to tell tall tales, fables, folk tales, myths, and sometimes, the truth. Her work has previously appeared with Vox, Racked, and Soundings East. She is a graduate of Bard College, and recently, Salem State University.

Matthew E. Henry (MEH) is the author of six poetry collections, including the Colored page (Sundress Publications, 2022), The Third Renunciation (NYQ Books, 2023), and said the Frog to the scorpion (Harbor Editions, 2024). He is editor-in-chief of The Weight Journal and an associate editor at Rise Up Review. The 2023 winner of the Solstice Literary Magazine Stephen Dunn Prize, MEH’s poetry and prose appears in Anti-Heroin Chic, ASP Bulletin, Barren Magazine, Bending Genres, Massachusetts Review, Mayday, Ninth Letter, Ploughshares, Porcupine Literary, Redivider, Terrain, The Worcester Review, and Zone 3. MEH is a high school educator who received his MFA yet continued to spend money he didn’t have completing an MA in theology and a PhD in education. You can find him at www.MEHPoeting.com writing about education, race, religion, and burning oppressive systems to the ground.
Facebook: MEHPoeting
X: @MEHPoeting

Sandra Houghton Hudson is a semi-retired Registered Nurse, former business owner and entrepreneur, artist and writer. She has had works published in anthologies and is an active member of a writers group. She is currently working on a collection of poems, prose and essays detailing her life experiences.

Jennifer Martelli has received fellowships from The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Monson Arts, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her work has appeared in The Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Poetry, Verse Daily, Plume, The Tahoma Literary Review, Best of the Net Anthology (2024), and elsewhere. She is the author of Psychic Party Under the Bottle Tree (forthcoming, December, 2024, Lily Poetry Review Books), as well as The Queen of Queens, which won the Italian American Studies Association Book Award and was shortlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award. Jennifer Martelli is co-poetry editor for MER. www.jennmartelli.com

Ian Owens recently retired (again) from a 40-year career in high-tech to travel, write and act. While his micro pieces have appeared in fiveminutelit.com, he is hard at work on a Viking-era historical trilogy featuring Eirik the Red. His first book, a cycling memoir called Riding the Big One, is available at ianowens.com. He lives in Essex, MA where he watches birds, rehearses his lines and collects swords.
Facebook: ian.owens.5030
Instagram: ianowens63/

Jill Pabich has recently completed her first novel, A Misery of Magpies, for middle graders. It is about a haunted hotel, which she is familiar with as she grew up working at her family’s haunted hotel, the Salem Inn. She still lives in Salem and is currently pursuing a master’s in counseling.

Maria S. Picone—수영—(she/her/hers) has four chapbooks, Anti Asian Bias (forthcoming Game Over Books), Adoptee Song (forthcoming Game Over Books), This Tenuous Atmosphere (Conium), and Korean Girl Ghost (self-published). Maria is the recipient of an Emerging Artist Grant from the South Carolina Arts Commission. She won Cream City Review’s Summer 2020 Poetry Prize and Salamander’s Louisa Solano Memorial Emerging Poet Award, for which she published her debut e-chapbook Water Gwisin Saves the Earth. Her work has been supported by Lighthouse Writers, GrubStreet, VONA, Kenyon Review, The Watering Hole, Tin House, South Arts, and Juniper. She attended Hambidge as a Leaders in the Arts Distinguished Fellow. She is the managing editor of Chestnut Review and edits at Uncharted Mag, Foglifter, Five Minutes, and The Seventh Wave. Maria was selected for Best Small Fictions 2021. She is an alumna of GrubStreet’s Novel Generator and is working on her first novel and poetry collection.

EF Sweetman writes crime, noir, horror, reviews and flash. Her stories has are in Pulp Modern, Switchblade Magazine, Econoclash Review, Broadswords and Blasters, Fundead Publications, and Microchondria II. She is a member of Independent Fiction Alliance, and the Carrot Cakes Writers.

Marjorie Tesser’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Cutleaf, Sunspot, ANMLY, SWWIM, Molecule, and others. Marjorie earned her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and won a John B. Santoianni Award from the Academy of American Poets. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, co-editor of three anthologies of poetry and prose, and editor-in-chief of MER-Mom Egg Review.
Web: linktr.ee/marjorietesser.com

John Sheirer (pronounced “shyer” — he/him/his) lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, and is in his thirty-second year of teaching at Asnuntuck Community College in Enfield, Connecticut, where he edits Freshwater Literary Journal. He writes a monthly column on current events for his hometown newspaper, The Daily Hampshire Gazette. Recent work has appeared in 10 By 10 Flash Fiction, Fiction on the Web, Five Minutes, Flash Boulevard, Iceblink, Meat for Tea, Poppy Road Review, Synkroniciti, San Antonio Review, Scribes *MICRO* Fiction, Wilderness House Literary Review, WordPeace, and Witcraft, among others. His recent books include Stumbling Through Adulthood: Linked Stories (2021 New England Book Festival Award Winner) and For Now: One Hundred 100-Word Stories (2023 New England Book Festival Award Runner-Up). Find him at JohnSheirer.com.

Chrissy Stegman is a poet/writer from Baltimore, Maryland. Recent work has appeared in: Rejection Letters, Gone Lawn, Gargoyle Magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic, Poverty House, Stone Circle Review, Fictive Dream, Inkfish, The Voidspace, The Madrigal, 5 Minutes, and BULL. She is a 2023 BOTN nominee and was a featured reader for the 2024 Sundress Academy of the Arts Reading Series.

David Earl Williams, The Absurdilachian, writer of absurdist anti-dada dadaist poetry, was born deep down near the bottom of the Ethnocentric Gorge and grew up on the banks of the great Ethnocentric River just like everybody else who was ever temporarily alive. His grandfather, Newton Fyffe, was a graduate of Leavenworth @ Kansas with federal degrees in Moonshining and Poverty Studies— which is maybe why come D’Earl to have inherited the habit of courting “the spirits ” and peddling derangements. D’Earl’s chapbook: EVERYBODY LIVES HERE ONE NIGHT AT A TIME, Hillbilly DaDa Poetry ( for sure as hell rollin’ in the aisles, barkin’ at the moon DaDa-Dogmatic times… ) is available for purchase @ https://wetcementpress.com ( Berkeley )! Reviews, more bios, and poetry may be found @ https://cruellestmonth.com or @ The Dead Mule School of Southern Literarure, or, simply Google: david earl williams poetry.

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