Poet Biographies
Meet the authors behind the Inaugural Issue of Gleam:
Tina Cane | Julie A. Dickson | Corinna German | Sandra Sloss Giedeman | Caitlin Gildrien | J. Esther Hawley | Penelope Moffet | Kristen Ringman | Lauren Scharhag | Jenner Shaffer | Bunkong Tuon | Lori Witzel | Jonathan Yungkans
Tina Cane
Tina Cane was born in Hell’s Kitchen, NYC in 1969 and grew up in the city’s East and West Village. She attended the University of Vermont, the Sorbonne, the University of Paris X-Nanterre and Middlebury College. She holds a bachelor’s degree in French and English and a master’s in French literature. Tina is the founder and director of Writers-in- the-Schools, RI and is an instructor with the writing community,Frequency Providence. Her poems and translations have appeared in numerous publications, including The Literary Review, Two Serious Ladies, The Tupelo Quarterly, Jubliat and The Common.
She is the author of The Fifth Thought (Other Painters Press), Dear Elena: Letters for Elena Ferrante, poems with art by Esther Solondz (Skillman Avenue Press), Once More With Feeling (Veliz Books), and Body of Work (Veliz Books). In 2016, Tina received the Fellowship Merit Award in Poetry from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts and she currently serves as the Poet Laureate of Rhode Island, where she lives with her husband and their three children.
Julie A. Dickson
Julie A. Dickson is a poet whose work comprises image, experience and environment; her work appears in Poetry Quarterly, The Harvard Press, Ekphrastic Review, Blue Heron Review, The Avocet and others. Dickson was nominated for a Push Cart Prize in 2018 for her poem, The Sky Must Remember. Her latest books are A World without Ivory [2018 Sunrise Press], Untumbled Gem [2018 Goldfish Press] and Bullied into Silence [2016 Piscataqua Press]. She also edited an anthology of raptor poems, entitled Prey Tell in 2015 for Owl Moon Raptor Center. Julie lives with two rescued feral cats and advocates for zoo and circus elephants to be released to sanctuaries.
Corinna German
Corinna German writes creative nonfiction and poetry with the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness over her shoulder. Her work has appeared in anthologies and numerous literary journals including Blood, Water, Wind, and Stone: An Anthology of Wyoming Writers (Sastrugi Press), Manifest West: Women of the West (Western Press Books), Deep Beauty: Experiencing Wonder When the World is on Fire (Woodhall Press), High Plains Register, and Oakwood.Corinna is a recipient of the2018 Wyoming Writers, Inc. Western Horizon Award. Find her @corinnawriter on Twitter, or deep in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem backcountry.
Sandra Sloss Giedeman
Sandra Sloss Giedeman is a poet and short story writer. She’s an editor and past president of the Orange County Chapter of PEN. Sandra won the Mudfish Poetry Prize awarded by Charles Simic and is a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work has appeared in a number of literary journals, including Poetry, The Cortland Review, Bellevue Literary Review (NYU School of Medicine), Paris/Atlantic, and others. She lives in southern California. Her poetry collection, In this Hour, was published by Green Tara Press (Los Angeles).
Caitlin Gildrien
Caitlin Gildrien is a poet, designer, and erstwhile farmer. She lives with her family on a 200-year-old farmstead at the feet of the Green Mountains of Vermont, on traditional Abenaki land, on sandy loam that was once the bottom of an ancient sea. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Rattle, Poets Reading the News, and more. Find her at cattailcreative.com and @cattail_caitlin.
J. Esther Hawley
J. Esther Hawley is a white, cisgender, sober lesbian committed to justice. She lives in western Massachusetts, on unceded Pocomtuc land, near where she was born and raised. She learned to read and write at age three, and has been making up stories ever since. Her journalism was published in the independent newspapers Stonewall News Spokane and Lavender Rag from 1993 through 1995. She worked as a professional costumer for thirty-five years, and retired in 2017. Since 1985, she has volunteered her time and energy to advance the causes and comforts of LGBTQIA communities.
Penelope Moffet
Penelope Moffet’s most recent chapbook is It Isn’t That They Mean to Kill You (Arroyo Seco Press, 2018). Her poems have been published in Natural Bridge, Permafrost, Levure Litteraire, Pearl, The Rise Up Review, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Verse-Virtual, The Missouri Review and other literary journals, as well as in the anthologies what wildness is this: Women Write about the Southwest (University of Texas Press, 2007), Coiled Serpent: Poets Arising from the Cultural Quakes and Shifts of Los Angeles (Tia Chucha Press, 2016) and California Fire & Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology (Story Street Press, 2020).
Kristen Ringman
Kristen Ringman is a deaf author, artist, and wanderer. Her multicultural, lyrical fiction plays along the boundaries of fantasy and horror. She is the author of two Lambda Literary finalist books: I Stole You: Stories from the Fae and Makara: a novel. Her poetry can be found in Callisto: A Queer Fiction Journal, QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology, and many other places. She is the editor of Everyday Haiku: an anthology. When she’s not writing, she’s painting wild animal portraits, making rune sets, or wandering the woods barefoot.
Website: kristenringman.com | Twitter: @KristenRingman | Instagram: @wanderingnorsefox
Lauren Scharhag
Lauren Scharhag is the author of fourteen books, including Requiem for a Robot Dog (Cajun Mutt Press) and Languages, First and Last (Cyberwit Press). Her work has appeared in over 150 literary venues around the world. Recent honors include the Seamus Burns Creative Writing Prize, three Best of the Net nominations, and acceptance into the 2021 Antarctic Poetry Exhibition. She lives in Kansas City, MO. To learn more about her work, visit: www.laurenscharhag.blogspot.com
Jenner Shaffer
Jenner Shaffer is an Ozark native living at Pomme de Terre Reservoir in southwest Missouri. He is a graduate of Missouri State University, former editor of Moon City Literary Review, a veteran of the 101st Airborne Division, former college educator, worked for Dell Computer Corporation, Bass Pro Shops, and Tim Burrows Metal Art & Design. His work has appeared in university publications. Currently he manages a farm specializing in heirloom peppers and rare chicken breeds. In his free time he enjoys reading literature, writing, photography, fishing, and painting.
Bunkong Tuon
Bunkong Tuon is a Cambodian-American writer and critic. He is the author of Gruel, and So I Was Blessed (both published by NYQ Books, The doctor Will Fix It (Shabda Press), and Dead Tongue (a chapbook with Janna C. Valente, Yes Poetry). He teaches at Union College, in Schenectady, NY. He tweets @BunkongTuon.
Lori Witzel
Lori Witzel has been writing poetry, and rarely submitting her work, since the early 1990s. The new form of the cadralor has inspired her most recent writing. Lori Witzel’s blog Chatoyance contains sketches, photos, and poems that constitute souvenirs from her journeys from Central Texas through to Portland, Oregon, where she resides today, with three cats and a dog, and an abundance of goldfinches, pine siskins, and bushtits.
Jonathan Yungkans
Bio CoJonathan Yungkans is a Los Angeles-based writer and photographer with an MFA from California State University, Long Beach. His work has appeared in San Pedro Poetry Review, Synkroniciti, West Texas Literary Review and other publications. His second poetry chapbook, Beneath a Glazed Shimmer, won the 2019 Clockwise Chapbook Prize and is slated for release by Tebor Bach Publishing in 2020.ming
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About Us
Gleam is a journal wholly devoted to the new poetic form, the cadralor, created by Gleam’s founding co-editors, Lori Howe and Christopher Cadra. The cadralor consists of five short, unrelated, highly-visual stanzas.
Get In Touch
If you are interested in submitting your own cadralor poem or if you have questions, you can reach out to our Gleam email. We look forward to hearing from you!
Meet the Editors
The cadralor was co-created by:
• Lori Howe, Editor in Chief
• Christopher Cadra, Senior Editor
Gleam: Journal of the Cadralor 