Audience Askew

Volume 1, Issue 4

Posted on by BSRoberts
Purchase this issue of Audience Askew as print or digital!
Audience Askew Literary Journal 1|4 cover.

Authors, poets, and artists featured in this issue…

Poem:

First Day

Poem:

First Night Redux

Akiva Israel, Prison Poet, is an artist doing time in prison for men.  She is transgender and believes that, in a previous cycle of incarnation, she did witness the third live performance of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

Poem:

Pills

Alan Keith is a substitute teacher working out of Toronto, Canada. He tries to keep his writing honest by only writing about what he sees, but if he’s being (really) honest, he actually makes a lot of it up. Alan has printed two short story collections and a novel; they sit anonymously on his bookshelf… A poetry collection is his next project. When Alan isn’t writing, he’s either walking his blind Miniature Pinscher, riding his bike, or drinking a tea with his girlfriend. To comment on Alan’s work, whether good or bad, use writeralankeith@gmail.com.

Poem:

My Mother Died 20 Days Ago

Anon Baisch is currently a data analyst working in the semiconductor industry. Anon’s poems have been published most recently in Defunct, New Note Poetry, 2River, The Write Launch, Cathexis Northwest Press, OxMag and forthcoming in Waxing & Waning.

Story:

A Wee Blip

A. R. Turnbull is a writer from Scotland. She is originally from Dumfries but is currently based in Dundee. Turnbull has been writing since she was a child but studied the craft at Dundee University (receiving an MA in English and Creative Writing and an MLitt in Creative Writing). She has published a number of pieces across the board (short stories, essays, etc) by The Magdalen Magazine, Dundee University Review of the Arts, and Dundee University. She also works as a Publisher for Luath Press.

Art:

Broken Dreams

Charles Robert Wells is enrolled in the Chippewa-Cree Tribe Rocky Boy Montana. HeLives in the Flathead Reservation with his wife and three teenage kids.

Story:

All the Falling Stars of Rome

Christine Vartoughian is an award-winning Armenian-American writer and film director. Her debut feature film about love and suicide, Living with the Dead: A Love Story, received the Audience Choice Award at Art of Brooklyn Film Festival, Best Feature Film at Aberdeen Festival in the U.K., and is available on iTunes and Amazon in the United States and internationally. Christine is the founder of (Screen)Play Press, a publishing company for unproduced film scripts. Her feature script, Young Monsters, was published in 2022. She lives in New York City.

Cover Art:

Trapped

David Birozy left the urban life of southern California in 2014 for the peace, quiet, and open spaces of Wyoming. He is married, with five teenage or older children spread across California, Wyoming, Nevada, Washington and Texas. Mr. Birozy has spent 32 years working in the public sector, for state and municipal government in California and Wyoming. He has both a Bachelors and Juris Doctor degree. He enjoys a wide range of photography, however toy photography holds a special place in his heart

Art:

Liver & Gallbladder

Donald L. Patten is an artist from Belfast, Maine. He is currently a senior in the Bachelor of Fine Arts program at the University of Maine. As an artist, he produces oil paintings and graphic novels. Artworks of his have been exhibited in galleries across the Mid-Coast region of Maine.                                

Visual Poem:

Two Bed Apartment

Dr. Sam Kemp is an experimental poet. He teaches Creative Writing at Northeastern University London and leads The Writer’s Craft and The Writer’s Voice courses. His research interests include psychogeography, digital poetry and the pastoral. You can find his recent work in ANMLY and Streetcake Magazine, and he lives in central London.

Art:

Beneath the Moss

Ellery D. Margay is a freelance writer and mixed media artist, originally from the California wine country. His work has been featured in The Paragon Journal, Wicked Works Magazine, Underwood Press, Evocations Review, The Sonoma County Gazette, the poetry collection Untimely Frost, and in several FunDead Publications anthologies. When not dreaming up tales and occasional poetry, he can be found sampling and reviewing the newest restaurants and wandering the world in search of weirdness, wonder, and misadventure.

Art:

Color Quadrants

Em Harriett (she/they) is a queer agender author, illustrator, and photographer from New England. They are inspired by nature and enjoy writing speculative fiction when not knitting. Her photography has also appeared in Camas Magazine, Kelp Journal, and Reservoir Road Literary Review.

Art:

Desert Sun

J’Atelier9 / J’A9 emerged after its Los Angeles based visionary founder, Janine Tang, began her movement towards a circular economy by sourcing recycled repurposed salvaged objects into her fine arts. J’A9 reshapes the transcendent beauty of innovative repurposing & recycling, where her art becomes the vessel. She juxtaposes the dichotomy of consumerism against adaptive reuses of discarded materials, translating the interconnectedness of the world by highlighting society’s romanticism of media, elements of globalization, planet preservation, glorification of capitalism, technological dependence, world conflict, joy, love, nature, fashion, lifestyle, human complexities, materialism, and multiple facets of duplicity.

Art:

Axe Queen

Jennifer Frederick is an artist, a writer, and recently received their law degree from the University of Maryland Baltimore. They have been writing since a young age and creating collages since 2016. Their work has appeared in places like Coffee People Zine; Beyond Words Literary Magazine; and 1807: An Art and Literary Journal. They can be found online at Collages of College on Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr.

Art:

#406 Bulwer-Lytton II (Lupus-Toro-Athena-Feline)

Josh Stein (b. 1973, Hammonton, New Jersey; currently residing in Napa, California) is a lifelong multi-mode creative artist, musician, writer, professor with multiple advanced degrees from the University of California and the University of Liverpool, adult beverage maker, and current MFA candidate at School of Visual Arts in New York City. He has had multiple solo shows in California and Washington states and has participated in numerous duo and group shows nationally and internationally. He brings his influences of Pop art, Tattoo flash and lining techniques, and Abstract Surrealism and Expressionism to the extreme edge where graphic design and calligraphy meet the Platonic theory of forms.

Art:

Breathe In, Breathe Out

Larissa Monique Hauck is a queer visual artist who graduated from the Alberta University of the Arts in 2014, where she received a BFA with Distinction. Her artwork has been featured in multiple regional and national group exhibitions as well as a growing number of international exhibitions. She has been selected for inclusion in events such as Nextfest 2018 (Edmonton, AB), Nuit Rose 2016 (Toronto, ON), and the 9th Annual New York City Poetry Festival 2019 (New York, US). Her drawings and paintings have also been featured in publications such as Creative Quarterly (US), Wotisart Magazine (UK), Minerva Rising (US), and various others.

Story:

Answers

Luke Hannon  is an aspiring author and poet from County Meath, Ireland. In 2022 he received first place in the Macra na Feirme Creative Writing Competition Poetry Section with his poem ‘Altar Man’. He has previously been published in the Irish Farmer’s Journal, Agriland, Wingless Dreamer, Suburban Witchcraft, Tiny Seed Literary Journal and Black Poppy Review. He is soon to be published in Nat1 Publishing’s ‘Elderly Ones’ and ‘Black Ink on a Blank Void’ anthologies, Spirit Season Magazine, Wingless Dreamer’s ‘Sea or Seashore’ anthology and the next issue of Running Wild & RIZE.

Poem:

Thank You for Contributing to My Sexual Awakening

Maggie Bowyer (they/them/theirs) is a poet, cat parent, and the author of various poetry collections including Ungodly (2022) and When I Bleed (2021). They are an essayist focusing on Endometriosis, chronic pain, and trauma. They have been featured in Bourgeon Magazine, Capsule Stories, Plainsongs Poetry Magazine, The Abbey Review, Troublemaker Firestarter, Wishbone Words, and more. They were the Editor-in-Chief of The Lariat Newspaper, a quarter-finalist in Brave New Voices 2016, and a Marilyn Miller Poet Laureate.

Poem:

The Problem with Trevor-Adam

Michael David was born in McHenry, IL. He began writing poetry as a passive hobby to maintain some semblance of sanity during the pandemic; however, the act of writing quickly expanded to become a fixture in his life. David currently lives in Grand Rapids, MI with his partner and two cats–Meeko and Grandpa Louie.

Poetry:

A Woman (5 Poems)

Mykyta Ryzhykh is from Nova Kakhovka Citу, Ukraine. They have been published in the journals Dzvin, Ring A, Polutona, Rechport, Topos, Articulation, Formaslov, Colon, Literature Factory, Literary Chernihiv, on the portals Literary Center and Soloneba, and in the Ukrainian Literary Newspaper.

Art:

Mushroom Eggplant Drinking from a Mountain Stream

Serge Lecomte was born in Belgium. He came to the States where he spent his teens in South Philly and then Brooklyn. After graduation he joined the Medical Corps in the Air Force. He earned a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University in Russian Literature. He worked as a Green Beret language instructor at Fort Bragg, NC from 1975-78. In 1988 he received a B.A. from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in Spanish Literature, where he worked as a language teacher. He worked as a house builder, orderly in a hospital, gardener, landscaper, driller for an assaying company, bartender in one of Fairbanks’ worst bars, and other jobs.