Contributor Notes
Please scroll down; this list of contributor notes is arranged alphabetically in reverse order.
Oniffe White
Oniffe White (Echoes of a Winter Sunshine) was born in Jamaica to a Jamaican family. He came to the U.S. at age ten to attend two different military academies, Carson Long Military Institute and New York Military Academy, and traveled between the U.S. and Jamaica. He joined the U.S. Navy, lived in Japan for nearly five years, and then entered Fordham University, where he is currently a senior in Communications. He resides in Harlem, NY. Echoes of a Winter Sunshine is the recipient of a Discovery Award from Welcome Table Press. Follow Oniffe on Instagram at www.instagram.com/blackspacemagic and Twitter at www.twitter.com/blackspacemagic
Semein Washington
Semein Washington (interview with Oniffe White) is a twenty-seven-year-old Virginia poet, a West Virginia Wesleyan College MFA graduate, and a poetry co-editor for K’in. His work has appeared in Light Magazine, Eye to the Telescope, twice through the Writing for Peace Youth Summit, Sonder Midwest, and Sijo (an international journal of poetry and song). Follow Semein on Instagram at @theforemostsemein
Lauren Sperrazza
Lauren Sperrazza (“A Little Help with Fate”) grew up in Connecticut with Camp Ohana, a “camp” made up of her and her cousins. She began writing in the summer of her senior year of high school before moving to Fordham University, where she is senior majoring in English and pursuing a Master’s degree in Adolescent English Education. “A Little Help With Fate” is her first publication and is the recipient of the Suzanna Cohen Legacy Foundation prize in fiction. Follow Lauren on Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/rabidbooks/
Shannie Rao
Shannie Rao (“Moment from a Far-off World”) grew up in the countryside of St. Peter, Minnesota, before moving to New York City to study English and film at Fordham University. She has been writing as long as she can remember and spent her high school years writing and creating webseries and short films. Her writing has been published in Fordham’s literary and arts collective, The Comma, and she has continued to create short films since moving to New York. “Moments from a Far-off World” is the recipient of a Discovery Award from Welcome Table Press. Follow Shannie on Instagram at @shannie_rao and watch her short films here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLascl0jRP71fnOJbKZixqA
Aaron Pinnix
Aaron Pinnix (“Migrant: A Triptych”) is a doctoral candidate at Fordham University. His dissertation, Subaqueous Poetics: Exploring Oceanic Depths in Modern and Contemporary Poetry explores thematic relationships among twentieth and twenty-first century poetic texts that invoke the oceanic depths in ways that cross linguistic, temporal, and spatial borders. His work can be found in Atlantic Studies, Radical Philosophy Review, and various poetry venues. “Migrant: A Triptych” is inspired by his research, as well as by his grandfather, who was a preacher, poet, and gardener. “Migrant: A Triptych” is the recipient of the Suzanna Cohen Legacy Foundation prize in poetry. For more about Aaron, please visit http://www.aaronpinnix.com/
Bea Mendoza
Bea Mendoza (“The Dream”) is an eighteen-year-old writer based in New York, New York, who has completed her first year Fordham University. She was born in the Philippines and grew up in six different countries, often looking toward these experiences as a basis for her poetry and prose. Her work has been published previously by The Comma. “The Dream” is the recipient of a Discovery Award from Welcome Table Press. Follow Bea on Tumblr at: https://greatscapes.tumblr.com/ and on Instagram:@writingscapes.
Delaney McLemore
Delaney McLemore (interview with Oniffe White) is a writer from Oregon and West Virginia. Her work centers on family dynamics, gender, mental illness, and podcasts, to name a few of her favorite subjects. She received her MFA from West Virginia Wesleyan College's low-residency MFA program and is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Louisiana Lafayette. You can find her work in The Activist Historical Review, Entropy, VIDA!, and elsewhere. Delaney lives in Louisiana. Follow Delaney on Instagram at @freydis.is.it
Leeanna Hariprashad
Leeanna Hariprashad (Behind the Scenes of Echoes of a Winter Sunshine) is a student filmmaker and artist who currently studies visual arts at Fordham University. She was born in Queens, New York, to a Guyanese family. As a nineteen-year-old Indo-Guyanese woman, she plans to use her work to represent the culturally diverse group she is part of. Upon entering her junior year, she has worked on many student films as well as a number of her own. While working as a production assistant on Echoes of a Winter Sunshine, she shot and edited a behind-the-scenes project to capture the hard work that goes into filmmaking. Follow Leeanna on Instagram at: cxptainamerica and on Vimeo at https://vimeo.com/leeannahari.
Kim Dana Kupperman
Kim Dana Kupperman (curator) was inspired to launch (un)common sense as a blog on the day of the presidential inauguration in January 2017. She spent the next two years writing the story of a Jewish family forcibly displaced by the catastrophe of the Holocaust (the basis of her debut novel, Six Thousand Miles to Home from Legacy Edition Books, 2018) and feeling as if there were little to be done about the repetition of history inherent in the worldwide rise of nationalism and totalitarianism. In February of 2019, she had the great good fortune of encountering the talent of Fordham University students who submitted their work to the Suzanna Cohen Legacy Foundation prize series. In turn, she was inspired to re-vision and relaunch (un)common sense as a digital chapbook dedicated to the stories of people forcibly displaced by war, poverty, climate change, and otherness. Kim is the author of an essay collection, I Just Lately Started Buying Wings: Missives from the Other Side of Silence (Graywolf Press, 2010) and The Last of Her: A Forensic Memoir (Jaded Ibis Press, 2016). She is the founding editor of the nonprofit independent Welcome Table Press and lead editor of You: An Anthology of Essays Devoted to the Second Person (Welcome Table Press, 2013). An editor and teacher for over thirty-five years, and a former writer-in-residence at Fordham University, Kim now teaches creative writing privately. For more about Kim and Welcome Table Press, visit www.kimdanakupperman.com and www.welcometablepress.org.
Tatiana Gallardo
Tatiana Gallardo (“Mom, Please Stop Taking Care of Grandma”) is a writer, photographer, and hot-sauce enthusiast living and working in New York City. She'll be graduating from Fordham College at Lincoln Center within the next year and then plans on taking the advertising world by storm as a creative copywriter. “Mom, Stop Taking Care of Grandma” is the recipient of the Suzanna Cohen Legacy Foundation prize in visual art. Follow Tatiana on Instagram at @vividtatiana.
Dominique Dobransky
Dominique Dobransky (The Compass (You Are Here) and “We All Dream Under the Same Sky”) is a senior at Fordham University and The Ailey School, pursuing a BFA in dance and a minor in creative writing. She is fascinated by the communicative power of the arts and the interrelatedness of art and language and passionate about exploring how physical and visual expression can complement written or spoken words to communicate a story. As a bilingual, Belgian dual-citizen, she is passionate about traveling, collaborating, and meeting people from different cultures. Dominique aspires to dance in a professional modern/contemporary company that tours internationally, sharing the gifts of dance, art, and storytelling. The Compass (You Are Here) is the recipient of the Suzanna Cohen Legacy Foundation prize in mixed media.
Follow Dominique on Instagram at: @dominidoby and @WonderFeelia. You can view more videos on Vimeo at: https://vimeo.com/user77954119 or on her YouTube channel at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8DmDQkOI6YDNoHnM1LCJOA.