Five Minutes explores five minutes of a life in one hundred words.
The latest list of Five Live authors is listed here!
Carol Alfred is an educator and writer who lives with her husband Dugan in beautiful Monkton, Vermont, where she walks, hikes, and snowshoes well, and golfs badly. Her pieces have been published in the Sunday Boston Globe’s Globe Magazine and performed in Vermont Stage’s Winter Tales production.
Lisa Braxton is author of The Talking Drum, winner of a 2021 Independent Publisher (IPPY) Book Awards Gold Medal, overall winner of Shelf Unbound book review magazine’s 2020 Independently Published Book Award, winner of a 2020 Outstanding Literary Award from the National Association of Black Journalists, and a Finalist for the International Book Awards.
Salena Casha‘s work has appeared in over 100 publications in the last decade. Her most recent work can be found in Metaphorosis Magazine, Flash Frog, and Ghost Parachute. She survives New England winters on good beer and black coffee. Subscribe to her substack at salenacasha.substack.com.
Julia Clebsch writes brief memoirs and descriptive non-fiction memoir/essays drawing attention to the connections of place, family, and nature through her and her family, especially the scientists, and their past. The lesbian writer has been published in Legacy, Five Minutes, and is a WOW Women on Writing finalist. Pronouns: she/her
Jim DeFilippi served in the Air Force during the Vietnam Conflict and then taught public school in northern Vermont for thirty years. His books of biography, history, crime fiction, and humor have been praised by publications like Publishers Weekly and the Library Journal. www.amazon.com/Jim-Defilippi/e/B000APHXRI
Sixth-grade teacher and Salem Kids Tours guide Alicia Diozzi has spent her career showing kids that learning can be a fascinating adventure. She studies Italian in her free time, sometimes bursts uncontrollably into Broadway songs, and has a case of costumes that reads “Break Glass in Case of Last-Minute Shenanigans.”
Jessica Fox is the Program Director at the Beverly School for the Deaf. She is an avid reader (and book buyer!), especially at the beach. Jessica lives in Salem with her family: husband Jeff, daughter Paige, and son Lucas. She is currently the Salem High Music Boosters co-president.
Rebecca Ingalls is a former English professor, now midwife and nurse practitioner. She lives in New England with her family, close to the sea, where she loves to write and play music as a DJ for her local radio station.
Ann Kathryn Kelly writes from New Hampshire’s Seacoast region. She’s an editor with Barren Magazine, a columnist with WOW! Women on Writing, and she works in the technology sector. Ann leads writing workshops for a nonprofit that offers therapeutic arts programming to people living with brain injury. annkkelly.com/
Bobbi Lerman runs prompt and workshop group Scribbler’s Ink, online home to an active writing community and Boston-area site for in-person workshops. Bobbi, who serves as assistant editor of Five Minutes, primarily writes medieval romance and travel essays, including a number of pieces for Bella Grace magazine.
F.H. Lin writes from life and her imagination. She cares about social issues, burnout, animals, and the environment. She’s written a draft of a memoir and has many unfinished pieces. She’s still finding her “writing legs.” This year, she’s going to find them.
Kate MacDougall is a reluctant lawyer and semi successful wrangler of two rescue dogs, and a cat with delusions of grandeur. She lives in Salem.
Barbara Matteau is a UMass Boston MFA student working on a collection of short stories. She also writes poems and plays. She pays the bills as both a grant administrator at UMass Boston and the proprietor of an Airbnb called The Forsythia Apartment.
Ian Owens is a self-employed engineer who writes for the fun of it, mostly about self-propelled travel and Vikings. His first book, called Riding the Big One, has both. Find Ian at ianowens.com.
Phyllis Rittner writes poetry, flash fiction and creative non-fiction. Her flash can be found in Wrong Turn Lit, Burnt Breakfast, Roi Faineant Press, Versification, Friday Flash Fiction, Fairfield Scribes, Six Sentences and others. She is a member of the Charles River Writing Collective.
John Sheirer lives in Western Massachusetts and is in his 30th year of teaching at Asnuntuck Community College in Northern Connecticut. His most recent book is Stumbling Through Adulthood: Linked Stories. Forthcoming in fall 2023 is For Now: One Hundred 100-Word Stories. Find him at JohnSheirer.com.
E.F. Sweetman is a writer of crime, noir, horror and occasional reviews. Her short stories and reviews have appeared in Switchblade Magazine, FunDead Publications, Tough, Econoclash Review, Broadswords and Blasters, Spine Magazine, and Pulp Modern. She lives in Beverly, Massachusetts, where she is currently hard at work on a crime trilogy.
Elisabeth Weiss is a member of The Salem Writer’s Group and the Thursday Poets, a poetry collective. She’s taught poetry in preschools, prisons, and nursing homes, as well as to the intellectually disabled. She’s published poems in London’s Poetry Review, Porch, Crazyhorse, the Birmingham Poetry Review, the Paterson Literary Review and many other journals.
Jacquie Valatka is Business Manager of the House of the Seven Gables. She enjoys teaching, reading, traveling, languages, photography, hiking, karate, swimming, running, aerobics, playing the piano, dancing, cooking and much, much more. Jacquie, her husband Joseph, and their two children reside in Salem, Massachusetts.
Holly Wielsma is a medical and musical professional who has loved public speaking since the days of giving lectures and sermons to her stuffed animals in the basement of her childhood home. She is a graduate of Bay Path University’s MFA program and has written a memoir of her 20+ years as a paramedic.