On January 17th, we launch Issue 9 of the Fly on the Wall magazine, with the theme of Power. Brimming with poetry, short stories, flash fiction and artwork, the issue is a cracker. With that in mind, we wanted to champion the excellent international writers and artists that fill the mag's pages... all 30 of them!
Alex Reed is a poet living in Northumberland. His previous pamphlets A Career in Accompaniment and These Nights at Home explore themes of illness, care-giving and loss. His first full collection, knots, tangles, fankles (V.Press, 2021) is a poetic response to R.D. Laing & A. Esterson’s classic sixties text Sanity, Madness & the Family.
Bill Lythgoe is a retired primary school teacher and has been writing poetry seriously for about ten years. He has won prizes awarded by Writing Magazine, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, Fire River Poets, the Wakefield Red Shed, Creative Writing Ink and Nottingham Poetry Society, and been published by Earlyworks Press, Strong Verse, Southport Fringe Poetry and Gordon Square Review(Cleveland Ohio). If you Google Bill Lythgoe poems you can read some of his work.
Bonnie Meekums: Bonnie’s 2020 novel, A Kind of Family, was published by Between the Lines. Her joint working-class childhood memoir with sister Jackie Hales, Remnants of War, was self-published in 2021. Other words appear in Dear Damsels, Reflex Press, Moss Puppy, Open Page and the Poetry Health Service, among other liminal and paper locations. Bonnie lives with her husband in Greater Manchester where she grows disobedient vegetables, hill walks, reads, dances, and from which she travels alarming distances to visit people she loves who have inconveniently chosen to live as far away from her as possible. Twitter: @bonniemeekums
Carter Lappin is an author from California. She has a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and is scheduled to appear in a number of upcoming literary publications, including Falling Star Magazine.
Charlotte Jung is a visual poet, originally from Stockholm, Sweden and today she divides her time between the Stockholm countryside, and her adopted hometown Chicago. Chapbooks published; MBRYO (Puddles of Sky Press, 2019), (SEED) (Timglaset Editions, 2020), HOLE BEING (NoPress, 2021) and ABCDE (Trombone, 2021). Please see www.charlottejungwriter.com for more information about Charlotte and her writing.
Christian Ward is a UK-based writer who can be currently found in Wild Greens and Cold Moon Review. Future poems will be appearing in Uppagus, Chantarelle’s Notebook and Spillwords.
Despy Boutris’s writing has been published or is forthcoming in American Poetry Review, American Literary Review, Copper Nickel, The Journal, Colorado Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. She teaches at the University of Houston, works as Assistant Poetry Editor for Gulf Coast, and serves as Editor-in-Chief of The West Review.
Desree is an award-winning spoken word artist, writer, playwright and facilitator based in London and Slough. Producer for both Word Up and Word Of Mouth, and TEDx speaker, she has featured at events around the UK and internationally. Desree has a pamphlet, I Find My Strength In Simple Things (Burning Eye).
Eunice Ukamaka is a Nigerian self taught artist, whose work is forthcoming in the Epoch Press’s Third Issue. Eunice, who also majors in English and Literature in the university is a firm believer of “Life imitates Art, more than Art itself”. She sees the world through a pencil and a paint brush and hopes to show everyday reality through her art.
Eve Chancellor is a Teacher of English in Manchester, and she has previously studied in Liverpool and Melbourne. She has an MLitt in Victorian Literature from the University of Glasgow, with a specialism in the role of childhood in 19th Century fiction. She is a member of SCBWI, graduate of the Golden Egg Academy and published on East of the Web.
Jenny Rowe is an actor and improviser, living in Sussex, UK, with her husband. She enjoys hiking the South Downs and being obsessed with other people’s dogs until she can get one of her own.
Jane Ayres: UK-based neurodivergent writer Jane Ayres completed a Creative Writing MA at the University of Kent in 2019 aged 57. She is fascinated by hybrid poetry/prose experimental forms and has work in Dissonance, Lighthouse, Streetcake, The North, The Poetry Village, Door is a Jar, Kissing Dynamite, (mac)ro(mic), Selcouth Station, Crow of Minerva, Ample Remains, Sledgehammer and The Forge. In 2020, she was longlisted for the Rebecca Swift Foundation Women Poets’ Prize and her work has been nominated for the 2021 Best of the Net.
Joe Williams is a writer and performing poet from Leeds. His latest book is ‘The Taking Part’, a short collection of poems on the theme of sport and games, published by Maytree Press. His verse novella ‘An Otley Run’, was shortlisted for Best Novella at the 2019 Saboteur Awards. www.joewilliams.co.uk
John Winder is a landscape photographer working mainly in the medium of black and white. He began creative photography 40 years ago and is still surprised by the pleasure of both the act of photography and the resulting images. He enjoys the outdoors, nature and the environment.
Julie Stevens writes poems sometimes reflecting the impact Multiple Sclerosis (MS) has on her life. Her poems have recently been published on Ink Sweat & Tears, Sarasvati, and The Honest Ulsterman. Her winning Stickleback pamphlet Balancing Act was published by Hedgehog Poetry Press (June 2021) and her debut chapbook Quicksand by Dreich (Sept 2020). Website: www.jumpingjulespoetry.com. Twitter @julesjumping
Kate Young’s poetry has appeared in various webzines and it has also featured in the anthologies Places of Poetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlet A Spark in the Darkness is due to be published with Hedgehog Press. Find her on Twitter @Kateyoung12poet.
Katrina Dybzynska is an internationally awarded writer published in Ireland, the UK, the US, Australia, Germany, and Poland.Currently, she is working on a book that explores power, resistance, and compliance dynamics. Polish Non-Fiction Institute graduate and BA-MA Researcher for Global Center for Advanced Studies. Her main focus is climate justice, migration, and overpopulation. She is passionate about the narratives of uncivilization, indigenous cosmologies, and decolonization.
Kevin Crowe lives in the Scottish Highlands with his husband Simon. He is the author of the short story collection “No Home In This World” (Fly-On-The-Wall Press, 2020); editor of the Highlands LGBT+ magazine “UnDividingLines”; has been published in many magazines, anthologies and ezines and read online and at literary festivals.
Maggie Veness writes from Australia, where she has a view of the water to help keep her calm. Her credits include SLICE, Gem Street, LITRO, Award Winning Australian Writing, Page 17, Paris Lit Up, NAZAR, Bare Fiction, ADANNA, Best Lesbian Erotica, Bravado, Vine Leaves Literary Journal, plus scores of other fine literary journals, magazines, and anthologies across 10 countries to date. She enjoys music, red wine, long beach walks and feels lucky to be Australian.
Maria FitzGerald writes about identity, motherhood, love, loss and our interactions with Nature and place. She is a recipient of a Poetry Ireland New Poet Bursary (2021/2022). Further work is forthcoming in The Stinging Fly and Dedalus Press, Local Wonders anthology.
Marie Papier: A London Poetry School Student for the last 6 years, Marie has attended master classes, Seminars with Philip Gross and Greta Stoddart. Her poems are published by Arvon/Daily Telegraph, The North, Agenda, Stand, smith/doorstop anthology Poems about Running; Online; in Calyx, and Weather Indoors, two anthologies from Bristol Stanza (a member).
Martins Deep (he/him) is an Urhobo poet living in Kaduna, Nigeria. He is a photographer, digital artist, & currently a student of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. His most recent works have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Lolwe, 20.35 Africa: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, FIYAH, Cutbank Literary Journal, Blackbird Review, Brittle Paper, Barren Magazine, Agbowó Magazine, & elsewhere. He tweets @martinsdeep1
Michael Conley is a prose writer and poet from Manchester, UK. His prose work has been shortlisted for the Manchester Fiction Prize and has appeared in magazines like Storgy and Lunate. His short story/flash collection ‘Flare and Falter’ was published in 2019 by Splice, and longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize.
Nick Allen gets most of his sustenance from double espressos and malt whisky and after a lifetime of denial is finally willing to admit his poetry habit in public. He talks to poets in darkened rooms at the back of pubs and sometimes feels enlightened. Mainly he worries…
Rachel Burns was shortlisted in Wolves Poetry Lit Fest 2021 judged by Liz Berry and won second place in The Julian Lennon Prize For Poetry 2021. Her poetry pamphlet, A Girl in a Blue Dress, is published by Vane Women Press.
Sarah-Jane Crowson’s work is inspired by fairytales, psychogeography and surrealism. She uses bricolage to investigate the unusual and surprising; exploring the space between real and imagined. She is an educator at Hereford College of Arts, and a postgraduate researcher at Birmingham City University, investigating ideas of the ‘critical radical rural’. She has visual poetry published in journals such as Waxwing, Petrichor and Iron Horse Literary Review, and her haiku was shortlisted for the Haiku Foundation’s ‘Touchstone’ awards in 2020. You can find her on Twitter @Sarahjfc.
Selma Carvalho is a British-Asian writer whose short stories have been listed or placed in numerous contests including Fish, Bath, London Short Story, Dinesh Allirajah prize and is the winner of Leicester Writes Short Story prize. Her collection of short stories was a finalist for the prestigious SI Leeds Literary Prize. Her debut novel shortlisted for the Mslexia Novella Prize, was published by Speaking Tiger, India, in 2021. She lives in London and is represented by the Ruppin Agency.
Thomas Lawrance lives in Ireland, where he writes fiction and performs stand-up comedy. His writing was recently shortlisted for the Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize, and he was a runner-up in the Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Competition.
Tim Kiely is a criminal barrister and poet based in London. His work has appeared in ‘Lunar Poetry’, ‘South Bank Poetry’, ‘Under the Radar’ and ‘Magma’. His debut pamphlet, ‘Hymn to the Smoke’, is published by Indigo Dreams.
Yuan Changming hails with Allen Yuan from poetrypacific.blogspot.ca. Credits include eleven Pushcart nominations besides appearances in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17) & BestNewPoemsOnline, among nearly 1900 others. Recently, Yuan published his eleventh chapbook Limerence, and served on the jury for Canada’s 44th National Magazine Awards (poetry category).