A Collection of Jazz Poetry — Winter, 2024 Edition

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The artist

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A native of Miami, FL, Marsha Hammel grew up in Central America and Europe, returning to the states in 1961. A prolific artist, she enjoys a wide audience for original paintings and published works in the UK, having been represented by Felix Rosenstiel’s in London since the early 90’s. During a four-decade studio practice, at least 1500 paintings have become part of private, corporate and institutional collections throughout the US and Europe. Click here  to visit her website.

 

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Poet biographies are listed in alphabetical order

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Byron Beynon coordinated Wales’s contribution to the anthology Fifty Strong (Heinemann). His work has been featured in several publications including Agenda, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Wasafiri, Cyphers, The London Magazine, Poetry Wales, English: Journal of the English Association, and the human rights anthology In Protest (University of London and Keats House Poets). Several collections, including The Echoing Coastline (Agenda) and Where Shadows Stir (The Seventh Quarry Press) were launched at the birthplace of Dylan Thomas, Swansea, in February 2023.

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Carol Boutard lives with her husband, Anthony, in Penn Yan at the northern end of Upstate New York’s Keuka Lake. Tucked into hardwood forest, her small plot is often occupied by deer, fox, turkeys and magnificent native marmots. Her book, Each Leaf Singing, was published by MoonPath Press in 2020.

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John Briscoe is a San Francisco poet, author and lawyer. He has published four books of poetry, and five of prose. He’s received the Oscar Lewis Award in Western History, First Prize in the Top Shelf Book awards, and other literary distinctions. His law practice for more than fifty years has included representing countries in disputes with other countries in international courts, and advising the United Nations in the aftermath of the Gulf War. He serves on the boards of several literary organizations, and is a distinguished fellow at the University of California, Berkeley.

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Daniel Brown has loved jazz (and music in general) ever since he delved into his parents’ 78 collection as a child. He is a retired special education teacher who began writing as a senior. He always appreciates being published in a journal or anthology. His first poetry collection, Family Portraits in Verse and Other Illustrated Poems, was recently published by Epigraph Books.

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Patricia Carragon is author of Angel Fire (Alien Buddha Press), Meowku (Poets Wear Prada), The Cupcake Chronicles (Poets Wear Prada), and Innocence (Finishing Line Press). All are available on Amazon.com.  She is curator/editor-in-chief  of Brownstone Poets, Brooklyn, NY

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Nayma Chamchoun is a British Moroccan self-taught writer and poet. Her writing is influenced by her cultural duality. She is interested in female voices in the diaspora community, the challenges they face within both communities and the taboos around mental health within their ancestral communities.  Her poetry collection  COVID:  The Wordy Wilds of a Mind Under Lockdown,  is a cultural fusion poetry collection.

Click here to visit her Facebook page, and click here to visit her Instagram page.

 

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Malaysian artist Christina Chin is a widely published haiku poet. She is a four-time recipient of top 100 in the mDAC Summit Art Contests, exhibited at the Palo Alto Art Center. She is the sole haiku contributor for MusArt book of Randall Vemer’s paintings. First Prize winner of the 34th Annual Cherry Blossom Sakura Festival 2020 Haiku Contest. First prize winner in the 8th Setouchi Matsuyama 2019 Photo-haiku Contest.

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Molly Larson Cook is an award-winning Oregon writer, writing coach, and artist. In 2016, she received the first Steve Kowit Poetry Prize in a national competition. Molly was a Fellow at the Fishtrap Writers Conference in Oregon where she worked with poet Naomi Shihab Nye. Molly’s jazz novel, Listen, was published in a limited edition in 2003.  Her “Colors of Jazz” paintings can be seen by clicking here.

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Brooklyn-born Arlene Corwin, now in her late 80’s, is a harpist, pianist and singer – a jazz musician forever. She earned her BA at Hofstra Univ. She has published 19 poetry books. In the 1950s her mother owned a jazz club in Hempstead, Long Island with Slim Gaillard. She currently lives in Sweden.

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Russell duPont is an artist and an author whose artwork is included in a number of public and private collections. He has published three novels, King & Train, Waiting for the Turk and Movin’ On, the sequel to King & Train; two books of poetry; and two non-fiction chapbooks. His essay, “The Corner,” is included in the anthology Streets of Echoes. His work has been published in various newspapers and literary magazines. He was the founder & publisher of the literary magazine, the albatross.

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Michael Edman is a writer from Oklahoma. He finds inspiration in jazz songs such as Coltrane’s “Alabama” and Sidney Bechet’s “Si Tu Vois Ma Mère.” When not working on poetry, Michael enjoys writing short stories, and he’s currently putting the finishing touches on a first novel.

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Francis Fernandes grew up and studied in Montréal, Canada. Since spring 2020, his writing has appeared in over twenty literary journals, including Modern Poetry Quarterly Review, Saint Katherine Review, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Third Wednesday. He lives in Frankfurt, Germany, where he writes and teaches.

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Barbara Anna Gaiardoni is winner of the First Prize 2023 “Zheng Nian Cup” National Literature Prize and of the Edinburgh “Writings Leith” contest. She received a nomination for the Touchstone Award 2023. Her Japanese-style poems has been published in one hundred and seventeen international journals.  Click here to visit her website.

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Susie Gharib is a graduate of the University of Strathclyde with a Ph.D. in English on the work of D.H. Lawrence. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Adelaide Literary Magazine, the Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Mad Swirl, Down in the Dirt, The Ink Pantry, Impspired Magazine, A New Ulster, Westward Quarterly, Miller’s Pond Poetry Magazine, The Opiate, Penwood review, Crossways, Amethyst Review, Synchronized Chaos, Pinyon Review, Leaves of Ink, Peacock Journal, The Blotter, and many others.

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Adrian  Green  is from Essex with mixed Welsh, Irish and English heritage.  His work has appeared in England and abroad, and in two collections, Chorus and Coda and  All That Jazz and Other Poems from The Littoral Press.  He also co-edited an anthology,  From the City to the Saltings,  for the Essex Poetry Festival.

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Elaine Croce Happnie is a mixed media artist whose work has been shown in select solo and group exhibitions in New York, Boston, and Fort Myers,  Florida.

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Justin Kramer Hare is a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he lives and writes. His work has appeared in Uppagus, the Ulu Review, The Road Not Taken, and Untenured. Click here to visit his website.

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James Higgins was born in Texas, and currently lives in Oregon. He has had poems that placed or won in Oregon Poetry Assn. contests, and while he has not submitted poetry in many years, he is now seriously pursuing publication. He is a graduate of the University of Oregon, where he studied poetry with Ralph Salisbury, and earned a BA in English literature. His work has appeared in Terra Incognita, Beyond Words, and  Jerry Jazz Musician.

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Sean Howard is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Trinity: Tribute Sequences for Robert Graves (Gaspereau Press, Canada, 2022). Sean’s poetry has been widely published in Canada, the US, UK, and elsewhere, and featured in The Best of the Best Canadian Poetry in English (Tightrope Books, 2017). Sean is adjunct professor of political science at Cape Breton University, and writes a monthly ‘War & Peace’ column for the Cape Breton Spectator.

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DH Jenkins’ poetry has appeared in  Jerry Jazz Musician,  The Tiger Moth Revue, and The Global South, as well as in the art films “Call From a Distant Shore”, “Our Autumn”, and “A New Mask”. For many years he was a writing and speech professor for UMUC-Asia, working in Japan and Korea.

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Connie Johnson is a Los Angeles, California-based writer who has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her poetry has appeared or will be forthcoming in Iconoclast, Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal,  Jerry Jazz Musician,  San Pedro River Review, Cholla Needles 85, Shot Glass Journal, Voicemail Poems, Misfit Magazine, Mudfish 23,, Exit 13, Glint Literary Journal, Rye Whiskey Review and Door Is a Jar.

Click here to read In a Place of Dreams: Connie Johnson’s album of jazz poetry, music, and life stories; published by Jerry Jazz Musician

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Erren Kelly is a three-time Pushcart nominated poet from Boston whose work has appeared in 300 publications (print and online), including Hiram Poetry Review, Mudfish, Poetry Magazine, Ceremony, Cacti Fur, Bitterzoet, Cactus Heart, Similar Peaks, Gloom Cupboard, and Poetry Salzburg.

Click here to read “Under Quarantine” — COVID-era poetry of Erren Kelly, published by Jerry Jazz Musician

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Miho Kinnas is a poet and translator  living in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. Her latest book is Waiting for Sunset to Bury Red Camellias (Free Verse Press, 2023).  She has published a book of poems in collaboration with E. Ethelbert Miller, We Eclipse into the Other Side (Pinyon Publishing).

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Lúcia Leão is a translator and a writer originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her poems have been published in  South Florida Poetry Journal, SWWIM Every Day, The Ekphrastic Review, Circumference Magazine, among others. She has a master’s degree in print journalism from the University of Miami, FL.

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Catherine Lee, a widely published neo-Beat, explores poetry’s percussive jazz voice. Lee’s Mentor Wonders poetic drama about mentoring “at risk” public elementary students is available at Amazon and as a Dramatic Reading video at VIMEO. Lee is currently writing a new play, Subconsciously Seeking a Maverick, about how children watching mid-20th-century TV Westerns were programmed with stereotypes about minorities and women, and led to accept open carry of firearms for intimidation. Lee’s extensive artistic biography is found here.

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Aurora M. Lewis, a retiree, worked in finance for 40 years. In her fifties, she received a Certificate in Creative Writing-General Studies, with Honors from UCLA. Aurora’s recent poems, short stories, and nonfiction were accepted by The Literary Hatchet,  Jerry Jazz Musician,  and The Copperfield Review, to name a few. She self-published her first book, Jazz Poems, Reflections on a Broken Heart, in 2021. Her 2023 book Jigsaw Puzzle in a Vortex, received an award from The Literary Titians in July, 2023.

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Phil Linz has been writing poetry since 1971, and is the founder and publisher of Fierce Grace Press, specializing in chapbooks & believing in the concept of “Publishing Under the Radar.” Work from his previous eight chapbooks have been published as The Chapbooks: Collected Poems (2019), available online. He has twice been selected as a Delaware Division of the Arts Fellow, and is a frequent reader at Wilmington’s Second Saturday Poets & Brooklyn’s Brownstone Poets. He is a member of the American Academy of Poets, the Mad Poets Society, and the Beat Museum.

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Gregory Luce, author of  Signs of Small Grace, Drinking Weather, Memory and Desire, Tile, and Riffs & Improvisations,  has been published widely in print and online. He is the 2014 Larry Neal Award winner for adult poetry, given by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. In addition to poetry, he writes a monthly column on the arts for Scene4 magazine. He is retired from National Geographic, works as a volunteer writing tutor/mentor for 826DC, and lives in Arlington, VA.

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photo by James Archbold

Kathryn MacDonald has published in Room, FreeFall and other Canadian literary journals and anthologies, as well as internationally in the U.K., U.S. and other countries. She is the author Far Side of the Shadow Moon (chapbook), A Breeze You Whisper: Poems, and Calla & Édourd (fiction).  Click here to visit her website.

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Jessica Lee McMillan is a legal worker, educator and SFU Writer’s Studio graduate with an English MA. Read her in The Humber Literary Review, Pinhole Poetry, Rose Garden Press, Crab Creek Review and others. She lives on the lands of the Halkomelem-speaking Peoples (New Westminster, BC) with her little family and large dog. Click here to visit her website.

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E. Ethelbert Miller is a poet and literary  activist living in Washington D. C. His latest book is How I Found Love Behind the Catcher’s Mask: Poems (City Point Press, 2022) and he was a nominee for a Grammy in the 2023 Spoken Word Album category with his Black Men Are Precious album.
He has published a book of poems in collaboration with Miho Kinnas, We Eclipse into the Other Side (Pinyon Publishing).

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Juan Pablo Mobili was born in Argentina. His poems have appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, Hanging Loose Press, Paterson Literary Review, among others, as well as many journals around the world. He received multiple nominations for the Pushcart Prize, and his chapbook, Contraband, was published in 2022.

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Sean Murphy has appeared on NPR’s “All Things Considered” as well as in USA Today, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, and AdAge. A long-time columnist for PopMatters, his work has also appeared in Salon, The Village Voice, Washington City Paper, The Good Men Project, Memoir Magazine, and others. He has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and his chapbook, The Blackened Blues, is now available from Finishing Line Press.  Click here to visit his website.

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Namaya is an internationally renowned Jazz Poet, storyteller, humorist and sublime improvisational artist. He has performed throughout the US and has toured in Europe, New Zealand, Japan, Asia, the Americas and Palmyra Syria. Both as a solo artist, with his band the Jazz Beat Blues Poetry Ensemble, and with jazz musicians around the world, Namaya performs an astonishing blend of jazz word, story and improvisation.  Visit his website by clicking here

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Michael L. Newell lives on the Atlantic Coast of Florida. His most recent book of poems is Passage of a Heart.

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Pamela Nocerino grew up in a house full of music –  hearing the American Songbook, jazz, and folk. She can only stay up late if she’s out with her sister listening to live jazz. Pamela’s published works include songs, short plays, poetry, essays, and a short story, “Space For Nothing,” which was published in  Jerry Jazz Musician.  It can be read by clicking here.

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Mary K O’Melveny, retired labor rights lawyer, lives with her wife near Woodstock, New York.  Mary became a fan of jazz as a very young girl listening to Louis Armstrong and Lester Young on her grandparents’ Victrola record player. Mary’s award-nominated poetry appears in many print and on-line literary journals, anthologies and national blog sites. Mary has authored three poetry collections. Her just-released fourth book,  Flight Patterns,  is available by clicking here

Click here to visit her web site

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Uchechukwu Onyedikam is a Nigerian creative artist based in Lagos, Nigeria. His poems have appeared in Amsterdam Quarterly, Brittle Paper, Poetic Africa, Hood Communists, The Hooghly Review, and in print anthologies. Christina Chin  and he have co-published  Pouring Light on the Hills  (2022).

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Martha Patterson’s short story collection Small Acts of Magic was published by Finishing Line Press in 2021. Other work has been published in more than 20 anthologies and journals, and her plays have been produced in 21 states and eight countries. She has two degrees in Theatre (from Mount Holyoke College and Emerson College)  and lives in Boston, Massachusetts. She loves being surrounded by her books, radio, and laptop.

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Born in Norman, Oklahoma, Carrie Magness Radna (she/her) is an archival audiovisual cataloger at the New York Public Library, a singer, a lyricist-songwriter and a poet who loves to travel (when it’s safe). She won the Third Place Prize for “Pink (a Ghazal)” in the 91th annual Writer’s Digest Writer’s Competition (Rhyming Poetry). She’s currently an Associate Editor of Brownstone Poets Anthology (2022-) and was nominated for the 2022 Pushcart Prize. Her fifth book, Shooting Myself in the Dark, was just published by Cajun Mutt Press in January 2023.

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Bradley Samore has worked as an editor, writing consultant, English teacher, creative writing teacher, basketball coach, and family support facilitator. His writing has appeared in The Florida Review, Carve, The Dewdrop, and other publications. He is a winner of the Creative Writing Ink Poetry Prize.  Click here to visit his website

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Bill Seigel’s work appears in Indigenous Pop: Native American Music from Jazz to Hip Hop, All About Jazz, In Motion Magazine, Brilliant Corners, Rust + Moth, Rabid Oak, and other publications. He created Jim Pepper Lives, collecting articles, reviews, poems and news celebrating the late saxophonist.  Of his work, he says “it’s the immediacy of personal experience that most interests and challenges me, and which I strive to capture and evoke in audiences and readers.”

 

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Christopher D. Sims is a writer of poetry, a spoken word artist, and a human rights activist who uses words to inform. Born and raised on the west side of Rockford, Illinois, he has been writing since he was nine years old.  In 2020, he wrote a poetry and memoir collection entitled I was Born and Raised in The Rock. He is also a fellow of the Intercultural Leadership Institute.

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Dr. Roger Singer was in private chiropractic practice for 38 years in upstate New York, and served as a medical technician during the Vietnam era. He has four children, Abigail, Caleb, Andrew and Philip and seven grandchildren. Dr. Singer is the Poet Laureate of Old Lyme, Connecticut. He has had over 1,070 poems published on the Internet, magazines and in books and is a 2017 Pushcart Prize Award Nominee. He is also the President of the Shoreline Chapter of the Connecticut Poetry Society.

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Leah  Ann  Sullivan  has been a jazz listener since her teens. Her
first purchased album was “Sunny Side of Stitt,”  found in a cut-out bin
in Woolworth’s in Springfield, Mass in the 1960s. Ms.  Sullivan is an ESL/EFL teacher, and lives in Nagoya, Japan.

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Nathaniel Terrell is an author, poet and storyteller. In 2021 he published Is there not a cause, a collection of poems, stories, songs and anthems.  (Atmosphere Press).   His work has also been featured in several journals, anthologies, online venues, magazines and more.

photo by Jack Underwood

Terrance Underwood is a retired Rolls-Royce Service Engineer, veteran, College Grad (B.A. History) who has been listening to recorded jazz music since he was 5-6 yrs old. One of his first memories is listening to a 78 version of “Cherokee” by Charlie Barnett.

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Judith Vaughn lives in Sonoma, California. She is a member of Poetic License Sonoma, who read their poetry the 4th Tuesday of each quarter at Sebastopol Center for the Arts; and Redwood Writers’, a branch of the California Writers Club. She attended New York City College, John F. Kennedy University, and Dominican University.  Her work has been published in several poetry collections, including Crossroads and Phases, the Redwood Writers’ ’22 and ’23 Poetry Anthologies, and  Moonlight & Reflections: 9 Sonoma Poets, Valley of the Moon Press ’22.

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Anthony Ward chooses to write because he has no choice. He writes to get rid of himself and lay his thoughts to rest. He derives most of his inspiration from listening to classical music and jazz since it is often the mood which inspires him. He has recently been published in  Jerry Jazz Musician, Synchronized Chaos, Literary Yard, Mad Swirl, Shot Glass Journal and Ariel Chart.

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Phyllis Wax writes in Milwaukee on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. Inspired by nature and human nature, as well as by music of all sorts, her poetry has appeared previously in  Jerry Jazz Musician  as well as in many other journals and anthologies, both online and in print.

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Emmett Wheatfall is a poet and recording artist. He has published several books of poetry, including his 2018 publication As Clean as a Bone, which was an Eric Hoffer Book Award Finalist as well as a da Vinci Eye Award Finalist. He has also released albums of spoken jazz, blues, gospel poetry. Click here to visit his website.

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Isabel White has performed across the UK, at Shakespeare & Co in Paris and in Rotterdam. She was twice runner up in the BBC Radio 3 Proms Competitions; a finalist in nine others and poet-in-residence for organizations working with marginalized communities. With three full collections and a pamphlet under her belt, Isabel’s poetry has been widely published – in 18 books and journals to date. Isabel founded performance collective Alarms and Excursions in 2009.

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Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. Click here for her website, and here for her Facebook page.

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Antoinette F. Winstead is a poet, playwright, director and actor living in San Antonio, Texas, where she’s a professor at Our Lady of the Lake University. Her poetry has appeared in several publications, including Voices de la Luna, Langdon Review, Texas Ballot Poetry, Tejas Covido, and The Poet Magazine. She is currently serving as the 2021-2022 Writer in Residence for the Carver Community Cultural Center in San Antonio, Texas. She was nominated for the 2022 Pushcart Prize by  Jerry Jazz Musician  for her poem “Life Is…“

[Editor’s Note: Antoinette recently participated in a conversation with two other Jerry Jazz Musician contributing writers titled “Why We Write,” which can be viewed by clicking here]

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Henry Wolstat is a retired psychiatrist in his late 80’s living in the greater Boston area with his wife. He is the author of a poetry book, Driftwood, and has also been published in online and printed anthologies. He is passionate about running, the arts, and poetry.

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Jianqing Zheng is the author of The Dog Years of Reeducation (Madville Publishing, 2023) and A Way of Looking  (Silverfish Review Press, 2021). He teaches at a historically black institution in the Mississippi Delta.

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Click here to read the summer 2023 collection of jazz poetry

Click here to read a collection of jazz haiku

Click here to read the spring 2023 collection of jazz poetry.

Click here to read a collection of short jazz poetry, published in January, 2023

Click here to read the fall/winter 2022/23 collection of jazz poetry

Click here to read “The Old Casino,” J.B. Marlow’s winning story in the 64th Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest

Click here to read On the Turntable – The “Best of the ‘Best Of'” in 2023 jazz recordings

 

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Click here for information about how to submit your poetry or short fiction

Click here  to subscribe to the quarterly  Jerry Jazz Musician newsletter

Click here  to help support the ongoing publication of  Jerry Jazz Musician, and to keep it commercial-free (thank you!)

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