Contributors


no. 6: winter, 2001

Nicholas Bhasin
columnists
Nicholas Bhasin is a comedy writer and screenwriter. He is a member of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre team, Pound, and a new, exciting, but as yet unnamed, sketch comedy group. He works as a script analyst for Miramax Films.
Bill Bilodeau
columnists

Bill is the editor of a small daily newspaper in New Hampshire. He studied creative writing at Harvard and is currently at work on a novel. He is married... with children.

Martine J. Byer
personal essays
Martine has written plays and screenplays that have been finalists at the Actor's Theatre of Louisville and at the Sundance Institute. She has written Safe House for the American Film Institute's Woman's Director's program. Her play What Difference Does It Make? was a finalist last year for the Arts&Letters Drama Prize judged by Horton Foote. It was produced in the summer of 2000 at The Guild Of Italian American Actors (GIAA). She currently writes a Q&A column for Woman's World magazine and has been published on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times.
Vivian Conan
humor
Vivian is a New York based freelance writer
Thomas Fast
memoirs
art gallery

Thomas, a.k.a. Naked Man, is teaching English and Spanish to junior high and high school students in Japan. He studied art history at New York University and has traveled and lived throughout Europe, Latin America and Asia. His photographs have appeared in articles and magazines, and have been exhibited in Japan. He also makes guest appearances as a DJ at his local coffee house in Okayama City.

E.B. Gallardo
trumpet fiction
E.B. is currently finishing her undergraduate degree in English at Hunter College in New York City. Formerly an actress, she now spends her time reading tediously think text and using multisyllabic words that she doesn't fully understand, with other geeky scholars who, likewise, do not understand the words that they are speaking but feel important just using them. She lives in New York with her dog, Esmeralda.
Mark Goldblatt
humor
trumpet fiction
Mark has published op-ed columns in the New York Times, the New York Post, the Daily News, and Newsday, and has written feature articles for Travel and Leisure and book reviews for Reason and the National Review. Mark resides in New York City.
Randi Hoffman
criticism
Randi has written about art for American Artist, Downtown, A Gathering of the Tribes and New Mexico Magazine. She lives in Manhattan, where she recently gave birth to a baby girl.
Mitchell Levenberg
trumpet fiction
Mitchell has published short stories in FICTION magazine, The New Delta Review, The Cream City Review, Fine Madness and others. He teaches writing at New York University and St. Francis College.
Johanna Li
illustrator / kids
Johanna is an associate editor at Simon & Schuster. Despite repeated attempts at rehabilitation she still likes to draw.
Benjamin Malcolm
columnists
Benjamin is a Washington, D.C. based freelance writer. He currently works as a program associate in an international educational development organization. In the past he has worked as a journalist and, later, as a Peace Corps teacher/volunteer in Thailand. When he isn't working on poetry, short fiction, or his novel, Benjamin plots how he will get back to Asia in time for World Cup 2002.
Laura Emily Mason
memoirs
Laura is both a reference librarian in a pubic library, and a business systems analyst for a major U.S. Corporation. She is currently at work on a memoir, Losing the Atmosphere.
Patti Munter
trumpet fiction
Patti is currently working on her first novel, Spinning Lucy Snow. Her short story, "Pre-Dawn Massacre," won the 1998 short fiction contest in Pearl. Her short fiction can also be found in Acorn. She was a semi-finalist for the Heekin Fellowship in Short Fiction in 1997 and 1998, and is a recipient of residencies at the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, New Mexico, the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony, and Sewanee. Her non-fiction has appeared in Nerve, Rolling Stone, and Passion. She lives in New York City.
Karen Ogulnick
personal essays
Karen is Assistant Professor of Education and Director of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages at Long Island University/C.W. Post Campus. She is the author of Onna Rashiku (Like a Woman): The Diary of a Language Learner in Japan, published by State University of New York Press in 1998 and the editor of Language Crossings: Negotiating the Self in a Multicultural World, published by Teachers College Press in 2000. She has also contributed essays and poems to the magazine, And Then, edited by Robert Roth and Arnold Sacher. She will be in residence at the Fundacion Valparaiso in Spain in the summer of 2001.
Margaret Hundley Parker
trumpet fiction
Margaret writes fiction and nonfiction. She is Associate Editor of Fit magazine and teaches at Kingsborough College. She also teaches children through the Teachers & Writers program of New York City. Margaret received an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College in May.
Sam Riegel &
Robert Blatt
humor
Sam was a New York actor. Robert was a Washington lobbyist. One guy played by the rules. The other guy auditioned for plays. Now, they write humor. Go figure. Along with writing material for ducts, Rob & Sam also co-author screenplays, sketch comedy, songs, feature articles, and various other short works of fact and fiction. This summer, comedy takes a back seat and nefarious space-monkeys grab the wheel. To find out more, visit www.amanaplan.com.
Harilyn Rousso
memoirs
Harilyn is an educator, social worker, psychotherapist and activist who has worked in the disability rights field, with an emphasis on issues of women and girls with disabilities, for more than twenty years. She is also a writer and painter, incorporating disability-related themes into her work. Harilyn is the author of the book "Disabled, Female and Proud! Stories of Ten Women with Disabilities," co-editor of a text on gender issues for students receiving special education services, and contributor to a variety of journals. Largely a self-taught artist, she has been a resident at the Millay Colony for the Arts and Vermont Studio School, and has had individual and group shows in NYC.
Hannele Rubin
bachelor girl
After a bad breakup with an Israeli Tank Commander, Bachelor Girl purchased the entire "Relationships" section at Barnes & Noble. On her way out, she also grabbed a copy of Gabriel Garcia Marquez' 100 Years of Solitude. Bachelor Girl is a 20-year veteran of fixup flops, bad bar pickup lines, great sex with bad men, and failed attempts to see the merits of socially maladjusted -- but marriage-minded -- guys. She's also a freelance journalist.
Thaddeus Rutkowski
trumpet fiction
Thaddeus grew up in central Pennsylvania and lives in Manhattan. His novel, Roughhouse, was published by Kaya Production, New York. His fiction was nominated for a 1998 Pushcart Prize. He has read his work at many New York spaces, including the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, where he has won the Friday poetry slam.
Iris N. Schwartz
trumpet fiction
Iris is a fiction writer, poet and singer-songwriter whose work has appeared in The Pikeville Review, Blue Collar Review, Curare and other literary magazines. She has performed on TV, radio and live Internet and has curated and hosted arts benfits for 5C Cultural Center and SR JazzArts. She vows to finish her novel-in-progress, Sirena Wailing, within the new millennium.
Peter Selgin
personal essays
Peter is a writer, illustrator and playwright whose work has appeared in Salon, The Chicago Sun-Times, South Dakota Review, Oasis, The New Yorker, Time-Out New York, Urban Desires, The Wall Street Journal and Newsday Sunday Magazine. His short stories have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and shortlisted for the Raymond Carver S.S. Contest and the New Millenium Short Fiction Award. His children's book, "S.S. Gigantic Across the Atlantic" was published by Simon & Schuster and is a Scholastic Book Club selection. "A God in the House," his play based on Dr. Kevorkian, was a finalist in the Eugene O'Neill National Playwright's Conference. Other plays have won the Charlotte Repertory New Plays Competition and the Virginia Duvall-Man New Play Award. His novel, Life Goes to the Movies, is currently under submission.
Christine Walters
art gallery
Christine has produced live action and animated series for the Children's Television Workshop, Jim Henson Productions, Comedy Central and HBO. She's given voice to many bimbos on the animated series, Beavis and Butthead. Christine also performs improvisational comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater with her group "Mother."
Francine Witte
trumpet fiction
Francine is a fiction writer, poet, and playwright. Her fiction has appeared in the Nebraska Review, Calliope, and Urban Spaghetti. Her poems have appeared in many national journals and she is the author of 6 chapbooks. She has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her short plays have been produced in NYC at Love Creek, The Turnip Theatre, and the Riant Theatre. She recently completed her first screenplay. In her spare time, she is a creative writing teacher at a high school in New York City. For more information, visit her website.
Thomas Ziorjen
art gallery
Thomas lives and paints in Pender Harbour, a small community on British Columbia's Sunshine Coast, with his wife and their two sons.
Staff

 

Jonathan Kravetz
editor
Jonathan is a Brooklyn based freelance writer.
Philip Shane
designer
Philip is a freelance film editor. His programs have appeared on PBS, ABC, Cinemax, Lifetime Television, The Learning Channel, and in theaters and film festivals around the world. He lives in New York with his wife Julie.
Jenny Oh
illustrator
Jenny is a documentary filmmaker who is currently developing a project about the American coffee industry.
Jennifer Lauren Pelley
illustrator
Jennifer is studying cinematography at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She just recently signed her life away and moved into a new apartment...
Bryan LeBoeuf
illustrator
Bryan is a painter living in Williamsburg, NY. He is a recent graduate of the New York Academy of Art, Graduate School of Figurative Art. He is the current recipient of the Merreville Award for painting at the NYAA and is in numerous private collections throughout the United States.
Veera Hiranandani
children's editor
Veera is currently an Assistant Editor at Simon & Schuster. She received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and has taught fiction writing at Gotham Writers' Workshop in Manhattan. She writes both adult and children's fiction and her work has been published in Pearl Magazine.
Jennifer DeMeritt
assistant editor
publicity
Jennifer is a comedian, pseudo-intellectual and amateur hack psychologist. Her hobbies are watching bad performance art and spanking her cat Tatiana a.k.a. Fat Tati or Tati the Body.
Bob Slaymaker
poetry editor
Bob's poems have appeared in many literary reviews, newspapers, and magazines. These include Callaloo, The Christian Science Monitor, Essence, Exquisite Corpse, Free Lunch, New York Quarterly, On the Bus, Orbis, Pif, Poetry Ireland Review, River Styx, and The Texas Observer. He's been a featured reader at the Breadloaf Writers Conference, Barnes & Noble, The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Borders, The Knitting Factory, Mad Alex and the Cornelia Street Cafe. He has also read his work on WBAI-FM and WNYE-FM. You can check out Bob's website at bobslaymaker.com.
Christine Walters
publicity
Christine has produced live action and animated series for the Children's Television Workshop, Jim Henson Productions, Comedy Central and HBO. She's given voice to many bimbos on the animated series, Beavis and Butthead. Christine also performs improvisational comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater with her group "Mother."
Helen Zelon
publicity
Helen's writing has appeared in The New York Times, Cosmopolitan, Family Circle, Brooklyn Bridge and Scientific American: Explorations. A proud booster of her adopted hometown (New York), she is a nonfiction contributor to Totally Brooklyn.
Thank You

Jon and Phil also thank the amazing group of people on our staff. With your help, the ducts are growing in all sorts of new directions!